City of Night (Rechy, John)

by John Rechy

  We sit now on Russian Hill, in his apartment, which, like him, is impeccable. If I stand by the wide window, I can see the city, fog-covered tonight: tiny pinpoints of smothered lights trying to penetrate the mist.

  Distrusting his Grand Show, I have asked for the money first —which he gives me unquestioningly.

  “You really didnt know why I drew that sketch for you?” he asked me. “Or why I suggested thats what you should wear?”

  “No,” I said, but of course, vaguely, I did.

  He went into another room. When he returned, hes holding a black jacket, high boots, black belt—the same items he had drawn so adoringly in the sketch. “Try them on,” he said.

  I remember the man on Times Square. But I know that this time I will not be expected to walk around the streets in this man’s clothes.

  “Please,” he coaxed, extending the clothes toward me. A disturbing note—almost a whine—is creeping into his voice.

  “I’d rather not,” I said.

  He shrugs. “Suit yourself. You will eventually. If not with me, with someone else. Remember that.” And then burying his finger into the collar of his shirt to exhibit a tiny chain on which dangles an “M,” he announced proudly: “Do you know what this means? It means Im a masochist. It means I adore pain.” He spoke with alarming aloofness. “It excites me because I really do believe youre new to this—to this aspect of it,” he adds. “And the best experiences Ive had are with such people.”

  In one fierce movement, he planted one of the heavy boots harshly on his crotch, grinding it in savagely. His previous look —impeccable, compoaed—disappeared, became rapt. His face contorted ecstatically as he utters a pained “Ugh!” And he coaxes me: “Put them on please.” His voice has become a complete whine. “Please—? Please command me to do whatever you want!”

  I stare fascinated at him.

  “Is that a glimmer of interest I detect in your eyes?” he asks me, laughing. The boot is still pinioned between his legs.

  “You dont detect anything!’ I said angrily.

  “I feel cheated, then,” he said. “Not because of the money—but because I somehow expected so much of you.... Wont you ... let me ... Idolize you?” he said slowly. “Won’t you be brutal?”

  I have always been repelled by pain, either inflicting or receiving it. Why then did I feel a dart of excitement at the man’s words? To squelch that feeling, I walked out quickly.

  There is a theater on Market Street that changes features daily: One of those enormous swallowing buildings with a dark, dark balcony. Its back rows fill quickly with men, and there is constant movement. The most intimate sexscenes are sometimes played out here, at times in groups gathered like dark vultures....

  As I sat down, halfway up the balcony, a man moved hurriedly from another aisle to sit directly beneath me, where my legs were propped on his seat almost straddling his shauders. In a quick movement, he turned his face sideways, brushing the Wellington boots with his tongue. When I didnt move, he got up, startlingly gasped at me:

  “I like mean sex, I’ll pay.”

  My stomach contracted violently. With excitement? With revulsion? ... I didnt wait to find out.

  Three people haunted me now much like that man whom I had first attempted steal from: the man with the bleeding nose, the man with the boot hammered into his crotch, and the man in the theater.... I told myself I had seen enough. I stayed away from the Stirrup Club.

  In the afternoons, at the Y, I would go to the highest part of the sundeck where you could make it. Late at night, into the mornings, the showers ran unstopping. Eventually it became too hectic, and I moved out of the Y and into an apartment on Bush Street.

  Now in the afternoons I would go to Aquatic Park: a short beach curled along the bay, a section like a truncated stadium —concrete stairs—where you sit and wait.... Other times I would go to a cliff outside the city—where, walking along a path that seems completely deserted, you suddenly may discover men intimately locked with each other.

  With someone met in that journey through other lives, I went to Carmel. To Monterey.... To Big Sur: craggy awesome cliffs outlined by twisted trees.

  Back in San Francisco, to North Beach, usually to the Raven bar—which, at that time, was the best scoring bar in the city—especially on weekends, when a queen would go through a parody of an opera, playing all the female parts.

  Market Street by the magazine store, and you stand pretending youre watching the toylike trolley swinging around to begin its weary ascent up Powell....

  Pickup places scattered from the Embarcadero to the fashionable sections of the city....

  Walking through North Beach one silver afternoon—a few blocks beyond a flowered park where people on their lunch-hours sit in the sun (and where another afternoon a sad drunk woman, angered when I turned down her offer of a drink, started yelling hysterically: “He tried to snatch my purse! Catch him!”), I looked up at the huge statue of a monk before a church.

  And I went into that church.

  There were only a few noon people inside. Automatically, I knelt, crossed myself with the holy water: iron-binding echoes of childhood you cant shed no matter how you try. Mechanically I said some childhood prayers. It was serene and peaceful here—yes—but it was also Empty, infinitely Empty. The painted statues with blind eyes fixed into the air were remote and distant, like that heaven which doesnt exist. Whatever was to be found was not in here. It was in the World.... I made the sign of the cross—again embarrassedly—and I walked out.

  If I relented now in that journey through this submerged world, whatever meaning I might have found would evade me forever.

  Now those three haunting faces which had invaded my life were turning a searchlight into my soul. I had to follow that penetrating glare no matter where it took me.

  NEIL: Masquerade

  1

  “WILL YOU HAVE SOME TEA?”

  The man who has just asked me that question is dressed like this:

  In black mounting police pants which cling tightly below the hips revealing squat bowlegs; boots which gleam vitreously and rise at least a foot above his ankles—silver studs forming a triangular design on the tip of each boot, then swirling about the upper part like a wayward-leafed clover.

  “One lump or two?”

  The belt—futilety trying to squeeze his large stomach (squeezing it—although he was not otherwise excessively fat—to the point where even his breathing has to come in short, sharp gasps) but actually causing it to bulge out insistently over and under it in two sagging, lumpy old tires of Sesh—is also black. Looping in waves like a wildly zigzagging snake, the ubiquitous studs (and each silver stud is haloed by tiny gleaming beads) join in front at an enormous buckle at least five inches wide on which is engraved a large malevolently beaked, bead-eyed, spread eagle.

  “Do you take cream?”

  Over a dark vinyl shirt, he wore a black leather vest, tied crisscross with a long leather strap from his chest to his stomach. On each lapel of the vest is reproduced the triangular clover-leafed pattern as on the boots (and each silver stud, again, is encircled by the beaded haloes). The vest, the shirt, the legs of the pants are so tightly molded on his stubby body that his movements are restricted. Cautiously, he reaches for the teapot, the sugar, cream—each gesture threatening to burst a seam somewhere.

  “Perhaps you prefer lemon?”

  He himself, when you can pull your gaze from the hypnotizing costume in disbelief, is a florid rather short man, in his early 50s. Actually he looks much like what is depicted in American movies as the typical pre-war Bavarian who sits goodhumoredly drinking beer out of a giant stein, bellowing ebulliently in beered-up delight as a blonde-braided girl and a lederhosened man dance to the accompaniment of a merry accordion.... But dressed as he is, he resembles a somber, heavily silverlighted Christmas tree.

  It is not Halloween.

  It isnt even New Year’s, and we’re not even at a costume party.

  No.


  We’re sitting, instead in the early afternoon, in the living-room of a neat house in a lushly treed area in Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco.

  The room is decorated in “antique” style—but of what period, it is impossible to determine. Rather, it seems to have been decorated to suggest an indefinable time somewhere, nebulously, in The Past. Over a bursting metal sun pinned to the wall, are two crossed swords. A shield. A lance. The drapes are wine-purple velvet and droop to the floor in highlighted folds. There is a small replica of a suit of armor by the brick fireplace. An oriental-looking statue of a monkey is poised as if to spring from a small, arch-legged desk.... The sun pours in through a windowed wall in a warm rush of light which accentuates the colors of the chairs, upholstered in striped gold and red, striped silver and blue.... It struck me that this room, which is all Ive seen so far of the house, is much like a conglomeration of movie furniture acquired from many period films.

  (This is how I happen to be here now, drinking tea, self-consciously, with this man: Only a few nights earlier, at the Stirrup Club, I had noticed a man wearing knee-length boots, a dark leather jacket with a goldsewn insignia of a rapacious bird, a cap much like that of a policeman, and a silver chain around his left shoulder; I asked the person I was with who he was. “Neil,” he answered, “the weirdest character in San Francisco. I’d keep away from him if I were you.” ... Later that night, Neil had come over—he knew the man I was with—and introduced himself. Brazenly, he asked me to have lunch with him the next day. Considering him the most ridiculous man I had ever seen—but still greatly intrigued—I said yes. )

  “Shall I freshen up your tea?”

  “No, thanks, Ive had enough.”

  “Tea is very invigorating in the afternoon, especially after a big lunch,” he insisted curiouslv-and poured out another cup.

  It seemed so ludicrous—this hvbrid movie-set room (like a small-scale parody, at times, ot a medieval chamber, with anachronistic touches of Contemoorary California) and the man in the incredible costume—so ludicrously incongruous it all seemed, to sit sinnina the carefully laid out tea (and cookies!) from the small lilac-decorated china cups.

  Glancing over the teacup, into another room (to avoid looking directly at this man and thereby to thwart his excoriating gaze by not acknowledging it—and throughout lunch he had hardly spoken, concentrating merely on studying me), I catch sight of a foot—just the tip—jutting from behind the slightly open door.

  I asked Neil: “Are you alone?”

  “Oh, yes! Just you and me—and my cat,” he answered, savoring the tea loudly as if to induce me to take mine.

  I dismiss the foot, which hasnt moved. It is probably a shoe—or, more likely, a boot—tossed behind the door.

  The telephone screams, and I almost drop the cup nervously. Excusing himself, Neil goes into the other room. He steps carefully over the jutting foot as he goes through the door. The door, slightly farther ajar now, reveals, still unmoving, what is definitely a boot.

  “Hello?” he answers the telephone. A pause. “Hello?” again. Silence. I hear him hang the telenhone up. There is a shuffling sound of moving in that next room. The boot disappears entirely.

  “Ive been getting these Mysterious Calls,” Neil explained, returning. “At least once a day—sometimes more often. Someone calls up, listens to mv voice, doesnt say a word.”

  “Someone must be trying to bug you,” I offered.

  “Oh, no!” he exclaimed adamantly, obviating such a simple explanation. “Nothing like that! ... Im convinced it’s someone who just wants to know—has to Know!—that someone, somewhere—someone like Me—exists. Eventually,” he predicted solemnly, “whoever it is will speak to me, and he’ll ask me if he can come up.... Oh, you may not know it, but I am rather—well, I’ll say it: Why not?” (Except that he said it like this: “Whu-I NOT-” and he shrugged his fleshy shoulders—or, rather, attempted to: The warning stretching sound of the shirt rejected the movement.) “I am rather Famous in California.”

  “Because of your costumes?”

  “ ‘Dressing up,’ ” he corrected me coolly, “does not mean wearing costumesr!” He finished his first cup of tea—offered me another cup, which I refused. “When I spoke to you the other night in the bar,” he told me, “it was because I felt a certain propinquity—I mean,” be added carefully, “a certain interest.”

  “You stood out—even in that bar,” I said tactfully.

  Again, it wasnt what he wanted to hear. “What I mean,” he said testily, “is that I felt you were ‘ready.’ ”

  “Ready for what?”

  He avoided the question mysteriously.

  A furry amber cat curled like an ostrich plume about the man’s boots, then jumped lithely on his lap. Neil began to stroke the cat absently. In the long silence that followed, I could hear the satisfied purring of the animal as it pressed itself against the leather costume. As if just realizing that he’d been stroking the cat, Neil pushed it away suddenly, thrusting it angrily to the floor. He almost lifted it away with the tip of his boot. “I hate him when he becomes snivelingly affectionate!” he said.

  He rose precariously from the chair. The tight costume would not even allow him to walk easily. And when he opened a drawer in the antique desk, he crouched before it uncertainly, rigidly to keep his clothes intact. He brought out a box, removed a key from another smaller box, opened the first, and took out a stack of pictures which he brought over to show me.

  I prepared myself. That world, being a world of fleeting contacts, has a great attachment to photographs, as if to lend some permanence to what is usually all too impermanent. But I know before Ive seen them that the ones Neil will show me will be far from ordinary—will, in fact, be a part of a game Im convinced hes playing with me.

  Withholding the pictures dramatically, he said proudly.: “These are only some of my Converts. People just Radiate toward me. And I open the world theyve been hunting—hunting, mind you, without even knowing it sometimes. That way, I help them find Themselves.” He spoke as if delivering a familiar speech. “You should see some of the ones that come to me—so timid: Just knowing someone like Me exists helps them. Even the first time, they walk out the door differently: Proud. Erect. Glad to be: Men! ... I lead them carefully. I open doors for them, slowly.... They call me up—I had a call from a youngman in Seattle the other day. He’d heard about me, through friends—and he wanted to come down especially to see me. Why, I get calls all the time from Los Angeles.... And, well, Whu-I NOT?” He attempted another shrug, again frustrated. Dreamily: “I like to see youngmen coming out—I like to see them—well, flower out—... Rather,” he corrected himself hastily, “I like to see them burst out Violently! And I watch them move in the direction they were meant to go. Theyre like Disciples, discovering The Way. ... Sometimes,” he said wistfully, assuming a benign look as he gathered his hands over the photographs on his lap, “sometimes—I get the feeling that Im something of a—... yes, something of a Saint.”

  I look at “The Saint” in the strange costume. His stare challenges mine. With a flourish, he spreads the photographs on a table before me as proudly as a peacock spreads his tail.

  There are youngmen dressed as military officers of long-ago periods, cowboys, motorcyclists, policemen, pirates, gladiators. ... Single, they seem to have menaced the camera. In groups, they depict scenes of violence.... I lay the pictures down without looking at the rest.

  “I took every one of them myself,” he sighed.

  The cat had returned surreptitiously, winding in and out of Neil’s legs. Again, he shoved it away with his boot, this time much more violently. He watched as the cat moves away.

  “And now!” Neil announced. “I’ll show you My Real Collection! —the most complete in California—and (Whu-I NOT) possibly in the United States!—though Ive heard theres a man near Griffith Park in Los Angeles who has a pretty good collection,” he condescended. “His name is—... Dan? Stan? Something like t
hat. But Ive been told hes not at all like Me!”

  He ushered me into the bedroom. When he pushed open the door, past which I thought I had seen an unmoving foot earlier, I start.

  There are two men in the bedroom: a policeman wearing sun-glasses and a motorcyclist, legs spread, hands planted on hips, his head thrust forward as if ready to attack with gloved, clenched fists.

  Seeing me start, Neil laughs. “Theyre manikins!” he announced triumphantly at the deliberate deception. “They look terribly real, dont they?” He went fondly to the dummy dressed as a policeman, and he adjusted the cap, to one side; to the motorcyclist now and changed his stance, lowering the head to emphasize further the impending thrust. “I prefer this one.” He indicated the motorcyclist. “He looks more—oh. Rough!”

  The room has about it a twilight darkness—the same indefinite antiqueness as the living-room. The bed is covered with a shiny black-leather spread. Creating the illusion of a throne, a high-backed carved chair faces a three-paneled full-length mirror. Behind the chair, dark drapes brocaded along the edges are held back majestically by a gold cord. The furniture here belongs to that limbo-historical movie period.... The manikins have been sedulously arranged so that their reflections, in the mellow light, are reproduced realistically from a variety of angles in the mirrors.