City of Night (Rechy, John)

by John Rechy

  “They will bust you again for sure if you have that wedding, Miss Destinee,” said Chuck gravely.

  “It would be worth it,” sighed Miss Destiny. “Oh, it would be worth it.”

  Then we noticed a welldressed man standing a few feet from us in the shadows, staring at us intently until he saw us looking back and he shifted his gaze, began to smoke, looked up furtively again.

  Miss Destiny smiled brightly at him, but he didnt smile back at her, and Miss Destiny said obviously he is a queer and so he must want a man. “So darlings, I will leave you to him and him to whomevuh eenie-meenie-miney he wants. But let me tell you, my dear—” me—confidentially ”—that when they dress that elegantly around here, why, they will make all kinds of promises and give you oh two bucks,” and Chuck said oh no the score was worth at least twenty, and Miss Destiny laughs like Tallulah Bankhead, who is the Idol of all queens, and says in a husky voice, “Dalling, this is not your young inexperienced sistuh you are talkin to, this is your mothuh, who has been a-round.... Why, Miss Thing told me about this sweet stud kid going for a dollar!—... Ah, well, as my beloved sweet Juliet said, Parting is: such—sweet—sorrow—...” And she sighed now, being Juliet, then whispered to me loud enough for Chuck to hear, “There will be other times, my dear—when you are not Working.”

  And she moved away with peals of queenly laughter, flirting again, fluttering again, flamboyantly swishing, just as she had come on, saying hello to everyone: “Good evening, Miss Saint Moses, dear—...” spreading love, throwing kisses, bringing her delicate hands to her face, sighing, “Too Much!” after some goodlooking youngman she digs, glancing back at Chuck and me as the man moved out of the shadows, closer to us, jingling money.

  So there goes Miss Destiny leaving Pershing Square, all gayety, all happiness, all laughter.

  “I love you too, dear, unnmnnm, so much....”

  2

  Those first days in Los Angeles, I was newly dazzled by the world into which my compulsive journey through submerged lives had led me—newly hypnotized by the life of the streets.

  I had rented a room in a hotel on Hope Street—on the fringes of that world but still outside of it (in order always to have a place where I could be completely alone when I must be). Thus the daulity of my existence was marked by a definite boundary: Pershing Square: east of there when the desire to be with people churned within me; west of there to the hotel when I had to be alone.... At times, after having combed the bars, the streets, the park, I would flee as if for protection to that hotel room.

  Yet other times I needed people fiercely—needed the anarchy of the streets....

  And Main Street in Los Angeles is such an anarchy.

  This is clip street, hustle street—frenzied-nightactivity street: the moving back and forth against the walls; smoking, peering anxiously to spot the bulls before they spot you; the rushing in and out of Wally’s and Harry’s: long crowded malehustling bars.

  And here too are the fairyqueens—the queens from Everywhere, America—the queenly exiles looking for new “husbands” restlessly among the vagrant hustlers with no place to stay, and the hustlers will often clip the queens (if there is anything to clip), and the queens will go on looking for their own legendary permanent “Daddies” among the older men who dig the queens’ special brand of gone sexplay, seldom finding those permanent connections, and living in Main and Spring Street holes: sometimes making it (employed and unemployed, taking their daddies and being taken by the hustlers) —sometimes hardly, sometimes not at all.

  And the malehustlers live with them off and on, making it from bar to lonesome room, bragging about the $50 score with the fruit from Bel Air who has two swimming pools, jack, and said he’d see you again (but if he didnt show, you dont say that), and youre clinching a dime and a nickel for draft beer at Wally’s or Harry’s or the 1-2-3 or Ji-Ji’s so you can go inside and score early, and make it with one of the vagrant young girls to prove to yourself you’re still All Right.

  And so Main Street is an anarchy where the only rule is Make It! ... And the only reminders of the world beyond its boundaries are the policewagons that cruise the streets—the cops that pick you at random out of Hooper’s all-night coffee shop after 2:00 in the morning.... The free jammed ride to the glasshouse for fingerprints ...

  Rock-n-roll sounds fill the rancid air.

  This was the world I joined.

  A couple of blocks away from Main Street, on Spring—squashed on either side by gray apartment buildings (walls greasy from days of cheap cooking, cobwebbed lightbulbs feebly hiding in opaque darkness, windowscreens if any smooth as velvet with grime—where queens and hustlers and other exiles hibernate}-just beyond the hobo cafeteria where panhandlers hang dismally outside in the cruel neonlight (fugitives from the owlfaces of the Salvation Army fighting Evil with no help from God or the cops; fugitives from Uplifting mission-words and lambstew)—is the 1-2-3.

  Outside, a cluster of pushers gather like nervous caged monkeys, openly offering pills and maryjane thrills, and you see them scurrying antlike to consult with Dad-o, the Negro king of downtown smalltime pushers—and Dad-o, sitting royally at the bar like a heap of very black shiny dough, says yes or no arbitrarily.

  And that is the way it is.

  I saw Miss Destiny again one Saturday night at the 1-2-3. And that is when it swings.

  “Oooee ...” she squealed. “I wondered where you were, baby, and I have thought about you—and thought, why hes gone already—Escaped!—and oh Im so glad youre not, and come here, I want you to meet my dear sistuhs and their boyfriends—” being, naturally, the downtown queens and hustlers who are Miss Destiny’s friends.

  And squeezing expertly through the thick crowd, Miss Destiny led me into a cavern of trapped exites—of painted sallow-faced youngmen, artificial manikin faces like masks; of tough-looking masculine hustlers, young fugitives from everywhere and everything, young lean faces already proclaiming Doom; of jaded old and middle-aged men seeking the former and all-aged homosexuals seeking the latter—at! crowded into this long narrow, ugly bar, plaster crumbling in chunks as if it had gnawed its own way into the wall; long benches behind the tables, splintered, decaying; mirrors streaked yellow—a bar without visible windows; cigarette smoke tinged occasionally with the unmistakable odor of maryjane hovering over us almost unmoving like an ominous hand.... And the faces emerge from the thick smoke like in those dark moody photographs which give you the feeling that the subjects have been imprisoned by the camera.

  “This is Trudi,” Miss Destiny was saying, and Trudi is probably the realest and sweetest-looking queen in L.A., and youd have to be completely queer not to dig her. Her hair is long enough for a woman, short enough for a man. Her eyelashes were painted arched over round blue coquettish eyes, and of all the queens I will meet in L.A., Trudi has most accurately been able to duplicate the female stance so that, unlike most other queens, she has not become the mere parody of a woman. “Hi, baby,” she says, pursing her lips cutely, “welcome to the snakepit.” She indicates the scene about her as if she had been born to reign over it.

  “And this is Skipper,” Miss Destiny continues, and as if presenting his credentials adds, in a lower tone for me only—and I can barely hear her over the blasting music: “He used to be a physique model, baby, and he became quite famous in Hollywood once—hes even hustled Officer Morgan—and that’s the truth—but he’ll tell you all about that, Im sure—” And Skipper is restlessly scrutinizing the familiar scene; almost—it seems at times—in bewilderment—as if looking around him each moment, he is newly aware of where he is. Often he squinted as if to cloud the scene from his mind. He is now—and it will turn out is usually—talking about a plan to hit the Bigtime again. “Hi, jack!” he says, and his eyes rake the bar.... And all at once he doesnt look nearly as young as he first appeared.

  “And my dear, Dear sistuh Lola—” Miss Destiny is saying (queens calling each other sisters); and Lola is quite possibly “dear, Dear”
because undoubtedly shes the ugliest queen in the world, with painted eyes like a silent moviestar, and a black turtleneck sweater running into her coarse shiny black hair so that it seems shes wearing a hood—and has a husky meanman’s voice and looks like nothing but an ugly man in semidrag. “Always room for one more,” she rasps, welcoming me.

  And you have of course already met Mistuh Chuck,” Miss Destiny says sighingly, and Chuck tipped his widehat in salutation : “Howdee.”

  “And this is Tiguh—” Miss Destiny went on. And Tiger (names, you will notice, as obviously emphatically masculine as the queens’ are emphatically obviously feminine and for the same reason: to emphasize the roles they will play) is a heavily tattooed youngman who has precisely that quality you sense in caged tigers glowering savgely through iron bars.

  “And Darling Dolly—” Miss Destiny said.

  And Darling Dolly corrects Miss Destiny: “Darling Dolly Dane, Destiny dear.”

  And Destiny corrects her: “Miss Destiny, Darling Dolly Dane, dear.”

  Truly, you will admit, Darling Dolly Dane is cute in the dimlight and smokeshadows, with softlooking creamskin and dancing eyes and a loose sweater tonight and slacks—acung like a flirt teenage girl out to get laid.

  “And Buddy—” Miss Destiny finishes with the introductions.

  Buddy is a blond very young boy, I would say 19—at whom, as Miss Destiny and I sit at the already-crowded table, Darling Dolly Dane is glaring. Miss Destiny tells me confidentially, to explain the cool looks between Darling Dolly and Buddy, that Buddy had been living with Darling Dolly Dane until last night when she found he hocked some of her drag clothes and she locked him out and he had to sleep in his brokendown Mercury, which may not even be his....

  Now a score at the bar is ostentatiously turning us on to free drinks—and cokes for Darling Dolly, who is making such a thing about her Not Drinking. On a small balcony over the head, the rock-n-roll spades are going, perched like a nest of restless blackbirds. A queen, obviously drunk, has climbed on it and has started to do an imitation strip, and Ada, who runs the bar and is a real woman—a mean, tough blonde like a movie madam—climbs after her dragging her roughly off the balcony just as the queen is unsnapping her imaginary brassiere, saying:

  “Ssssssssssssufferrrrrrrrrrr....”

  At the table, everyone is talking, eyes constantly searching the bar. The beat of the music somehow matches the movements, the stares, the muted desperation all around; the smothered moans of the spade now blaring words from the balcony is like a composite moan, a wail emanating in unison from everyone crushed into this dirty bar.... Darling Dolly is breathlessly explaining the Severe Jolt she got when she got home and found her best drag clothes gone: “My lovely lace negligee—my studded shoes!” Buddy shakes his head and says to the table: “I needed the bread.” Darling Dolly stabs him with a look. Chuck says hes heard of a malehouse in Hollywood where he can make hundreds of dollars a day: “But I don know where it is so I cain apply.” Miss Destiny says, “Chuck, my dear, you are just too lazy to get ahead—remember the $15 score I got you and you fell asleep?” ... Trudi is wondering wheres her daddy, and Miss Destiny explains to me that Trudi’s “daddy” is an old man whos been “keeping Trudi for ages—and keeps Skipper, too, sometimes—but indirectly”: Skipper living off and on with Trudi and hitting it big occasionally—“after being Really Big in Hollywood once”—and going away, coming back to Trudi’s.... Nearby, an emaciated man with devouring deep-buried eyes is pretending to read the titles on the jukebox, but it’s obvious that he is fascinatedly studying Tiger’s tattoos—and Tiger, noticing this, glances at him with huge undisguised contempt, which sends the emaciated man into an ecstasy of sick smiles.

  Now the queens at the table are wondering aloud who the score buying the juice is digging: the queens or otherwise, and which one. And which does it turn out hes digging? The queens. And which one? Darling Dolly Dane. And when this became known, by means of the “waitress,” Darling Dolly skips over to him, perches on the stool next to him at the bar, and says, “Another tall cool Coca-Cola please, honey, and make it straight.” Miss Destiny sighed, “Well, lordee, Tara is saved tonight.”

  Immediately Skipper had a plan to clip the score, and Trudi says philosophically, “Dont get nervous, youll shake the beads”—(the beads being life—fate—chance—anything)—“and besides, Darling Dolly saw him first.” Miss Destiny says theyre all Too Much. Suddenly shes becoming depressed—and the obvious reason is that the score who it turned out dug queens didnt dig her.

  “Oh, Im really depressed now!” Miss Destiny said. Someone had mentioned that Pauline had just walked in. I looked, and theres Pauline—a heavily painted queen who thinks she looks like Sophia Loren—with a collar like the wicked queen’s in Snow White.

  Miss Destiny said icily: “Pauline ... is a lowlife ... prostitute.”

  Trudi: “A cheap whore.”

  Lola, in her husky man’s voice and glowering nearsightedly: “A slut.”

  Trudi: “A common streetwalker.”

  Lola: “A chippy.”

  Miss Destiny—conclusively, viciously: “A cocksucker!”

  Chuck gagged on his beer. “She ain got nothin on you, Destinee!”

  Then quickly, diverting attention from Pauline and putting Chuck down with a look, Miss Destiny asked me abruptly do I know anyone in Hollywood who has a beautiful home with a beautiful Winding Staircase where she can come down—“to marry,” she explains, “my new husband and spend my life blissfully (thats very happily, dear) on unemployment with him forever.”

  Darling Dolly Dane returned suddenly very angrily lisping the man had offered her two bucks, after such a show of buying drinks. “And do you know what the sonuvabitch wants for two miserable goddam bucks?”

  “To marry you,” said Destiny aloofly.

  Skipper had a plan to clip the score.

  “I dont have my husband picked out yet,” Miss Destiny went on as if there had been no interruption. “That part isnt too important yet—I’ll wait until I fall in love again (dont look at Pauline, shes looking over here)—the important thing now is the Winding Staircase.”

  Darling Dolly Dane: “Two miserable bucksl”

  Lola: Youve gone for less, dear.”

  Darling Dolly Dane, wiggling: “This aint no change-machine, Mae.”

  Chuck: “Hey, sweetie, you light up with a nickel?”

  Skipper: “Darling Dolly, you go with the cholly, and I’ll cool it by the parking lot—”

  Tiger: “Stomp the shit out of him.”

  Trudi, sighing as if no one but she really understands: “My dears, I tell you it’s the goddam beads.”

  Buddy: “Darling Dolly, tell him ten so you can get your drag clothes out of hock.”

  Miss Destiny sighs: “Oh! this! is! too! depressing!—really, my dears, you talk like common thieves and muggers—and what am I doing here? ... Now as I was saying—what?—oh, yes—...”

  Now the score—checking the looks and mean sounds—starts to leave, and Darling Dolly rushes after him, leaving Skipper plotting, and she whispers something to the score (on tiptoes; she is very short), and as they went out togetner, Buddy laughs and laughs: “Two bucksl” And Lola said, “Youve gone for less, dear.”

  I promised Destiny to tell her if I met anyone with a beautiful home and a winding staircase.

  “Baby,” she said abruptly, unexpectedly moodily, “dont you think I look real?” And before anyone can answer, possibly afraid of the answer, she went on hurriedly, “Oh, but you should have seen me when I first came out”

  “Here it comes, dears, the goddam Miss Destiny beads,” said Trudi, recognizing Miss Destiny’s cue and looking over the crowd for her “daddy,” who is to meet her here tonight and take her—she says—to Chasen’s—Beverly Hills’ exclusive restaurant.

  And indeed, just like that, Miss Destiny—on—has begun to tell me about when she first came out and how she became Miss Destiny. Soon, Im the only one listenin
g to her, the others moving away restlessly, having heard it or portions of it or a version of it: Trudi finds her “daddy”—a fat middle-aged man—and Chuck goes to the bar and is now talking to a flashily dressed fruit in a redcheckered vest. Skipper is playing the shuffleboard, ramming the disk vengefully into the pins.... Wordlessly entranced, the emaciated man is standing next to Tiger where hes leaning against the peeling wall. Buddy has left the bar, probably going to Main Street or the park. And Lola is sitting alone at the bar, elbows propping her ugly face dejectedly. Looking at her from the distance, I realized how much she looks like a lesbian.

  “Before I flipped,” Miss Destiny was saying, rushing, as if the hurried flow of her words would keep me with her, “I was very Innocent,” and I could sense the huge depression suddenly, perhaps that one rejection just now echoing into the very depths of her consciousness setting off a thousand other rejections. “Of course,” she went on, “Miss Thing had told me, ‘Why how ridiculous!—that petuh between your legs simpuhlee does not belong, dear.’ And oh, once, when I was a kid, I asked my father for paperdolls, and he brought me some Superman comicbooks instead—and then, oh! I asked him for Superman paperdolls.... And they were always so ashamed of me when I wanted to dress up—and my father threw me out—on a cold night, too—and I took my doll with me that I slept with since I was little—and I had to quit college (where I studied Dramatics, dear, but not for long, because they wouldnt let me play the girl’s part), and I went to Philadelphia. And the first thing I did, why, I bought myself a flaming-red dress and higheeled sequined shoes and everyone thought I was Real, and Miss Thing said, ‘Hurray, honey! youve done it—stick to it,’ and I met a rich daddy, who thought I was Real, and he flipped over me and took me to a straight cocktail party....”