by John Rechy
Father Norris remained motionless on the bed. Who was that woman who had come to the confessional this morning?—so commanding, so ominous. Had he imagined her? A vision of doom, of something terrible approaching—
Whatever he had to do, wherever he had to go, whomever he had to ask, follow, track, pursue, whatever he had to do within this charged territory he had entered, he would find the naked Christ tonight.
Za-Za and the Cast of Frontal Assault
THAT AFTERNOON AND EARLY NIGHT
As she joined the others rushing away from the threat of fire, Za-Za heard a booming voice and turned back to see Smythe on his veranda, refusing to move, challenging anything to burn his mansion, and shouting—
“The flames will shift, they always do.”
“Silly queen, mad queen!” Za-Za shouted back. She forced her full attention on reaching her car.
Ah-ha! Tony Piazza, clutching pants and shoes, was running past her. She grabbed him. “You little slut, I should leave you here to burn, but you're coming with me.”
“Let go of me, you fat queen!”
That did it! Za-Za clasped his shorts even more tightly and shoved him ahead of her. “Into the car! I drove you here, and I'm driving you away.”
“You didn't drive me here, I came with Jim Bond—”
“—who's already gone, in case you didn't notice.” They were outside the gate. Cars driven by naked and only partially clothed performers were almost running into each other, skidding back, dashing into the road. Za-Za pushed Tony Piazza into her car.
“Ouch!” He grabbed for the door.
“You get out and you'll have to walk through flames,” she warned him. He sat back, sulking.
Minutes later they were at a standstill. Cars crept down the hill, an exodus from other nearby homes. Fire engines cluttered lanes. Water spouted out of giant hoses held by men in yellow uniforms. Police guided vehicles down the hills, motioned directions to television crews.
Like a giant premiere, Za-Za thought as she reached over with her arm—and left it there—to assert that Tony Piazza remained in place. “You jump out, Tony Piazza, and I swear I'll run over you,” she promised.
It took forever to maneuver out of the bottleneck and onto the blocked highway. Once they did—and the sky had darkened—they were stuck again near the freeway, cars unmoving. When disaster struck, the whole City, connected by freeways, was ambushed. Za-Za turned on the radio. Clyde Barnes, the station's “Rhymin’ Weatherman,” always inebriated, had been enlisted to report on this emergency.”—has burned two homes in one of the wealthiest sections of the City. Spared, however, when flames shifted to another property, was Studio Mogul Dick Gellman's mansion. ‘I knew the flames would not touch my estate,’ Gellman, who had been entertaining, was quoted. In another—”
Za-Za turned off the radio. That mad old queen had been spared, along with her mansion. Where was the justice? Never mind, now the silly old queen would be around to see her soar to the top of the heap of auteurs, and be so regretful she'd wish she had vanished in flames.
It was dark when they reached their destination, Za-Za's small, smart house located in the cul-de-sac up from Beachwood Drive in Hollywood—a house where, the Realtor had sworn, Greta Garbo's personal lighting man had once lived and the great aloof star had stayed over frequently.
Za-Za prodded Tony Piazza up to the entrance. “Run off and you'll be miles away from where you want to go.” She knew he loved to make “personal appearances” in the many cruising areas of the City
She paused. The hot wind had stopped. The only evidence that it had raged was the stifled heat left behind, and torn palm fronds piling, criss-crossed, not even quivering now, dead.
With her urging him on, Tony Piazza walked in petulantly, and sat down in her favorite chair, a giant puffed mushroom that seemed to embrace him—the way she would like to, dammit, but mustn't, although, God, she longed to. Look at him still in his briefs, deliberately not bothering to dress.
She sat before him on a moderne antiquité, a sofa striped black and white. She tried to drape one arm over the chair's jutting angles, but it slipped, snaring her pose. She'd make do. She held her hand lightly to a brow she hoped had remained arched.
“What happened at Smythe's mansion—,” she began.
“I was performing. I'm a star.”
“A star! You are not a star. Garbo was a star, Bogart was a star, Hedy Lamarr was a star, Gable was a star, and Bacall and Elizabeth Taylor are the only stars left. You are not a star.”
“Yes, I am,” Tony Piazza said.
“You're a piece of trash I tried to salvage!”
“I'm a star,” Tony Piazza insisted.
Za-Za relented, somewhat. “Whatever you are, who made you?” The way Welles reshaped Rita Hayworth, and Norma Jeane created Monroe.
“Me.”
“Why, you thankless little sow—”
“Huh? What the hell is a—?”
“—sow! A sow!” Sow? Where did that word come from? Oh, yes, in The Exorcist, that's how Satan, the voice of the great Mercedes McCambridge, referred to the possessed girl, that unforgettable line. “The sow is my-iiiine.” Why had she thought of that? Whatever. “Ungrateful sow!” she reiterated.
“Okay, okay, so you helped me along.”
“Helped you along? I sponsored you, changed your gaudy look, made you shed your baby flesh, weaned you off Tootsie Rolls, encouraged you to work out. I took you to Bob of Transcend—in Los Feliz!—where real movie stars go to get their hair done.”
“Hey, that's where Rex Steed says he goes. You never took me there, Za-Za. I begged you to take me to Bob of Transcend, remember?”
“I gave you a gorgeous place to stay—here, where Garbo once lived. Herman Marcus, I even renamed you.”
“Huh?”
The dumb, divinely gorgeous slut probably didn't even remember his true name. Or had that been somebody else's name? “I took you away from the streets, where you would have disappeared like all the others after one summer.”
“Oh, yeah? Yeah?”
Obviously he was struggling to think of something to say “Yes—and I put you in my erotic films, turned you into a star”—oops—“into a performer—”
“See, you said I was a star, and you don't make erotic films, Za-Za, you make porn—and I made money for you, and I bet you'll get paid much more than I will for today—”
True.
“—and, Za-Za, you're just a pimp, ya know?”
Hmmmmm. “And you're just a whore.”
“Right. I'm a whore and you're a pimp who sells our flesh.”
How to argue? “Yes! As long as your flesh stays young, trollop, and then you'll be through while I go on—grandly!”
“Right again, Za-Za. You think I don't know that?”
“What?” He had startled her.
“Think I don't know that everything'll end for me in a few years? Fuck, I'll be around only as long as people want my ass. You'll go on, Za-Za, there'll always be young guys to use in your porn. Think I don't worry about what's gonna happen to me?”
“What?” He had startled her again.
“Shit, Za-Za, sometimes I think about suicide, y'know?”
What! “You—?” No, she would not listen, not allow her heartstrings to be tugged. True, there were always newer bodies. But didn't she always introduce the ones on the way out to rich fans who had desired them for ages and might still see them as they had been—for a while? Of course she felt sorry for the ones who were out, like Wes Young, and those—most of them—that she never saw again. They were all self-destructive anyway Whose fault was that? Not hers. It wasn't as if she didn't have compassion. She always kept a white baggy in reserve for those who came to her in need, to get them through. Obviously, she couldn't lend them money or they'd keep coming back demanding it. So who could blame her? Who? No one! “I provided you the best coke.”
“You got some?”
Greedy harlot. “No! I opened doors for
you—”
“—you got me johns, yeah. But you always got a big cut, Za-Za, don't forget that. You make money from us, and you don't have to do anything. We do.”
The sow was gaining some ground. Za-Za snorted a pinch of coke, spooning it carefully with a tiny silver spoon—from India?—out of a little crystal affaire shaped like a hand and kept on a plastic table like a twisted tube.
“Cummon, Za-Za, let me have a taste.”
“No.” She deliberated. “All right.”
He snorted, twice in each nostril. Then again.
Like a sow. “I had bigger plans for you. When I become a big Hollywood director—you may have seen me and Mr. Smythe discoursing about this—”
“Yeah?”
Oh, that interested him. “Then I intended to make you a real star, like—uh—” Whom would he know, the stupid magnificent shit? “—like—James Dean!”
“Dean!” He slouched on the couch. “Yeah, I—”
“But now—”
“Listen, Za-Za, let's make up, okay?”
He stood up, his briefs bulging at the groin.
Hypnotized, Za-Za's eyes didn't budge from there for long seconds. She forced herself to look away. Then back. Had he fingered her stash box in that brief moment? Impossible.
“I don't even know why you're so pissed at me, Za-Za.”
He just stood there, enticing, the dazzling slut.
“You don't? Because all these months I've—” Longed for you, dreamt about you, imagined you, every time I saw someone fucking you, I wished that you were fucking me—and—because—I've—come—to—love—you—have I, really? "Because all these months I've groomed you as the best-known bottom in erotic films, and then all Rex Steed had to do was open his fucking big legs, and you—”
“I wanted to expand my horizons.”
Expand his horizons? Where had he heard that? “Expand your fuckin’ asshole!” she yelled at him.
“You're pissed because I never fucked you.”
What to answer?
“Za-Za—” He walked over to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Za-Za, I do have feelings for you.”
“You do? Really?” She hadn't intended to answer so quickly, certainly not to sound pleading, eager. But she had, oh, she had.
“A lot.”
“Really?” She had to stop saying that.
“A real lot.”
“Really?” Oh, this would make a bad script. She didn't care, didn't care at all. Of course it was true. In his own way he had loved her all along—loved, truly, for the first time in his desolate life, and now it would all come out. She reached over to touch him, to touch the maddeningly desirable crotch.
“Za-Za,” he whispered into her ear, nibbling on it.
“Yes?”
“I love you, Za-Za, I've loved you from the first. It hurt me when you put me in porn, because the only person I wanted was you, and I wanted to hurt you back because I thought you were keeping me away, and I didn't know what to do. Za-Za, would you really make me a real star like James Dean? I'll even try to fuck you, I swear I'll try.”
“You sow!”
“What the hell is that?”
“You fuckin sow!” There was no other word. She stood, shaking. “Get your stupid ass out of here now—and you can walk to wherever the hell you're going. And you're through in porn!”
He stood defiantly before her.
Oh, he looked so beautiful.
“No, I'm not through, I can always go to Alfred Chester, be one of her stars, you're not the only porn maker, not even the best. I heard someone say your doseups of asses look like hairy cunts.”
“Oh, oh, you despicable—strumpet! Get out!”
Clutching his clothes, he stood at the door pondering how to resurrect it all, pondering how to make it all right, Zaza was sure.
“I will get out—and fuck you, you ugly fat bitch!” He opened the door. “I'll tell you where I'm going, I'm gonna find the hottest place in the City, wherever that is, and I'm just gonna fuck up a storm, and it won't be you, I'll just go out and hump and hump and hump—everyone but you.”
“Sow, sow, sow!” Za-Za screamed, and like Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind she threw a vase at him—rejecting the first one she had grasped, a favorite cher objet—but he dodged before he fled in his shorts. “And don't you come back when everyone's through with you, Tony Piazza, because then I won't want you either!”
Then Za-Za realized that her feet hurt. Where were her shoes? She'd kicked them off, left them at Smythe's, walked through the scorched earth without feeling anything—nothing!—and those shoes had been favorites. Probably drowned in hosed water by now along with—she hoped—that silly, mad queen Smythe—she'd forgotten his real name. Well,’ thank God's infinite wisdom for allowing her a closet full of other wonderful shoes, just as grand. What better—more than enough!—to assuage whatever she had ever felt for that little sow?
Dabbing at her cheeks—where she was disappointed to find no tears—she walked to her shoe closet, an interplay of mirrored slabs slashed silver at the edges. She pushed the panels open onto a dazzling array of shoes. Before she bent down to choose among them, she thrust her head back, the way the heroic Ida Lupino did in Hard, Fast, and Beautiful to indicate that nothing—nothing—daunted her.
Thomas Watkins
EARLY NIGHT
He couldn't find a parking space after he'd driven away from that infernal bathhouse. He hadn't realized—until he saw men gathering, most dressed in leather, others as “cowboys,” God knew what else—that there was some kind of gay place nearby
He found a parking space and walked hurriedly. So quiet suddenly, so hot. His feet ground on dry palm fronds, like scattered bodies—he pulled away from the dreadful image and walked on. He had to see it at night, just see it.
At the mouth of the street tunnel he had fled from this afternoon, a tall man leaned against the wall, his hand over his groin. Another man walked past him, paused, touched the other's crotch, and walked up the darkened stairs. Forms entered the tunnel.
Thomas remained at its mouth. He was numb. All his feelings had been disconnected at the bathhouse. He stood waiting, for—what?
An older man, older than him, out of shape, matted black hairs clinging to his exposed oiled chest and protruding stomach, stopped near him. Thomas retreated in disgust. The man moved toward someone else pressed against the graffiti-smeared wall.
When had he taken the first step up into the tunnel? Thomas waited for his eyes to adjust to the blackness. When they did, he saw, at the top, shadows. His eyes penetrated the darkness, stabbed by shafts of street light. He could see three—no, four—four men, more, standing before a squatting form. Trying to hold his breath to avoid the stench in the tunnel, a mixture of urine and those filthy chemicals everyone carried, Thomas moved up, steadying himself.
The kneeling man was sucking several standing forms, head arcing from one penis to another, sucking, withdrawing, swallowing another. A fourth man moved down from the stairs above, his penis out. As the squatting form shifted toward the new body in the stained light, Thomas saw the face of the man kneeling.
He ran down the stairs, past other figures ready to join the bunched forms. Had he imagined it? Had he really seen the man kneeling before all those bodies, shadows, just shadows, erections, just erections, any erection?
Had he really recognized Herbert?
Orville
EARLY NIGHT
The night was calmed. The Sant'Ana had abandoned its heat, stagnant heat.
Orville and the man he had agreed to go home with, the real good-looking guy he had danced with all night, stood outside the Studio Club. The two faced each other under a streetlight. Nearby, a group of three men whispered among themselves, looked at them. Orville stared back.
The guy with him followed his stare, then turned to Orville and shook his head. “I just remembered—,” he started, t hat I have to meet someone else, that I have to get up early, that my roo
mmate is using my apartment tonight, that I have to pick up my lover at the airport, that I promised to drive my best friend home. Orville didn't have to hear any more to know what words would follow, words of rejection that always began, “I just remembered—” He knew what had happened. The guy had recognized those three guys staring at them and that made him uneasy about being seen going off with a black guy.
Orville stalked away.
Paul
EARLY NIGHT
What the hell was wrong with that guy? They'd been together all night, danced, kissed, even talked—and then he'd just walked away like he was angry He hadn't even let him finish telling him to wait there, follow his car—that he'd just remembered where he'd parked it. The sudden thought of Stanley angered Paul even more now. On this first night of his freedom from him—and he had gotten even harder thinking about making it with someone else on the bed he and Stanley had shared for so long—this had happened, whatever the hell had happened. He saw the guy turn, as if to come back. No, he had already crossed the street.
Some kind of misunderstanding, Paul was sure. That happened so often in cruising, signals misread, usually as some kind of rejection—so you rejected first. There hadn't been any rejection. It might still work out.
Paul walked after the black guy, who was moving ahead.
Nick
THAT NIGHT
A man stopped for him.
Nick rushed over.
“How much? All I want is to blow you and get off real quick. Twenty bucks? Short time. We'll find a street off the Boulevard.”
“Yeah, sure.” Nick had shouted those two words into the car, and then realized how still it was all around. The Sant'Ana had stopped, just like that. Only heat remained, unbudging.
They drove a few blocks along Santa Monica Boulevard. The man began to turn.
“Not here. I know a better place. Ahead.”
They were out of hustling turf, in West Hollywood. “There's a small park somewhere around here,” Nick said. “A guy told me about it earlier. It's got a baseball field, bleachers.”
“I think I know where.” The man drove on, turned off the Boulevard.
Nick saw it, the small park.
The man was about to stop. “Looks sheltered enough.”