Homeboy

by Seth Morgan

  At that moment a stakebed truck cruised by the Blue Note. People crowded to the curb, waving their arms, clutching at whatever a gang of blackrobed women were tossing from its rear. A banner strung between the stakes read SISTERS OF PERPETUAL INDULGENCE, LATEX FOR SAFE SEX, MAKE LOVE NOT DEATH. But wait, these weren’t women, but men, bearded mostly, in whorey makeup and nuns’ habits with obscene décolletages flashing flabby hairy titties squeezed in pushup bras. And the foilwrapped objects they tossed were hardly devotional aids but Ramses brand prophylactics. The Egyptian trademark seemed a fulfillment of Holy Hubert’s biblical maledictions; and, indeed, a handful showered on Officer Daniels’s besotted head. What more fitting plague when frogs were scarce, Joe sniggered, than cheap rubbers.

  On Joe barked beneath the neon stars and honkytonk moon, promising humiliations to match any guilt. The music throbbed, the neon fried, the lights cartwheeled across waxed hoods and spun in chrome hubcaps. He downed a few more balloons, hustled another dozen rubes into the Blue Note. Intermittently he dreamed that instead of standing at the center of a blue neon cloud, he was alone in the subaqueous gloom of Steinhart Aquarium, within its soothing liquefactive geometries, where often he went secretly to rake the ashes of his junked soul.

  But now his nose was flowing and skin squirming. The writhing lights needled his eyeballs; his bowels ground like broken glass, making him fart abjectly. He touched his cheek, clammy and unalive. His reprieve from feeling was running out; the Big Hurt was coming home to be fixed once more.

  How long Poppa Whoppa had been standing in the shadows beyond the border of blue neon Joe didn’t know. He motioned him closer. The Whoppa wore a purloined Shriner’s fez and a dashiki that had seen better days at sixties sitins. Formerly he’d been a yegg, safecracker, the best on the Coast. “Shittin in tall cotton,” was the style to which the Whoppa in those days was accustomed. Then arthritis gnarled those virtuoso digits that could pickpocket little girls’ hearts as easily as tickle tumblers behind six inches of steel. Now he was reduced to hustling streetcorner threecard monte. And only the stuff, Poppa Whoppa’s holy hairwine, could thaw the frozen fingers sufficiently to make those cards whisk and whir, snap and blur so that the one eyed pimp faced up where the rube purely swore he couldn’t.

  “I’m short n sick, Homes,” moaned the Whoppa. The old yegg’s withdrawal was a palpable effluvium, a contagion bathing Joe with microwaves of misery. With his own sick coming on Joe was too weak to withhold the junk from another sufferer, he lacked that essential pusher’s obduracy. He took Poppa Whoppa’s short money, telling himself he’d have to hustle up some action for Kitty. And he could hear her now, “Shitfire, fella, why you gotta give up your stuff so I gotta give up mine? Sometimes I feel like my big ass and chichis is supportin the habits of half the dopefiends in San Francisco,” and him rejoining, “It’s that or go sick,” wondering Why dont she leave me, why wont she? until she returned flushed and flustered maybe but never hurt half so bad as he would hurt until that tiny prick plunged away all feeling, swept aside the shards of shattered self like broken mirror that cuts to look into.

  “The Man be after you n Rooski,” Poppa Whoppa said once his balloons were safely stashed behind a cheek ashblack and cracked as his ancestral riverbanks.

  “They know where to find me,” Joe cracked brave. Why did lever hook up with Rooski in the first place? he raged. Why caper with an informer unless to foster your own betrayal? In his sleep he’d heard the whisper in the telephone, the murmur at the bluesleeved elbow, the sob before the squadroom desk. Yet he meant only to deliver himself from the streets, not life; he didn’t count on murder. But Christ! Why not? What else remained but more of this? And since he hadn’t the iron to extinct himself by bullet or Big Shot, it was just as well he set up another of the damned to do the dirty work. Yes, this was best. Far less terrifying than his fate was the prospect of regaining a hand in it. Fervently Joe petitioned the Bearded Madman presiding over the nightcourt of his soul that the cops might find Rooski first and relieve him of what he’d inherited with breath, this requirement to survive.

  “I reckon they do at that,” solemnly agreed the Whoppa.

  “What?” Joe felt his voice stretching like catgut, twanging.

  “Know where to find yo ass,” shuffling off humming a dirgelike ditty soon swallowed by the thumping jukes and traffic.

  NEVER BAD ENOUGH

  Two blocks down the Strip, in the basement offices of the Tender Trap Massage Parlor, Baby Jewels was in conference with his lawyer. Sidney Dreaks had mournful eyes, a long patrician nose, and looked more like a seedy headwaiter than San Francisco’s premier defense counsel. “Civic morality undergoes these convulsions every four years,” he was explaining. “They’re called elections. Mayor Mancuso and D.A. Faria are in real danger of losing their reelection bid to the Clinton Marks ticket. Marks has portrayed them as being ‘soft’ on crime. Actually, real, violent crime’s declined during their administration. But that doesnt matter. All that matters is public perception, illusion. So the mayor and the D.A. have to brandish hardons for socalled victimless crime. Statutory, service crime. You, Jules … The City Council appropriated the funds for Faria’s Victimless Crime Task Force with just you in mind …”

  Across the ivory-inlaid desk Baby Jewels wheezed indifferently. He was absorbed in the gems strewn on blue velvet trays before him. One after another he picked up to examine through a jeweler’s glass screwed in his fatty eyefolds. The way his neckless head coned to a point recalled Cold War cartoonists’ renderings of human H-bombs.

  “The first statute they’re going to use on you is the Red Light Abatement Act,” Sidney continued. “It was passed before the turn of the century to contain prostitution on the old Barbary Coast. Under its provisions they can conduct warrantless searches and padlock any establishment suspected of operating for immoral purposes. I’m sure Faria had no idea it existed until one of his paralegals exhumed it. It’s fucking medieval, forget unconstitutional. But then so are statutes prohibiting watering your horse at public fountains and kite flying west of Van Ness Avenue. But you can go to jail for either. These relics stay on the books because there’s no political mileage to be gained removing them.”

  On the padded wall behind the Fat Man babyspots were trained on a gallery of framed and autographed photographs: Baby Jewels gladhanding politicos, grabassing showgirls, squeezed into nightclub booths with minor celebrities, lolling in his box at Candlestick Park. In one, the Fat Man in a Hawaiian shirt the size of Maui actually dwarfed a giant marlin strung up from a dockside hoist.

  Sidney lowered his voice in the habitual manner of a man who is, by virtue of his profession, an accomplice after the fact to innumerable felonies. “They’re raiding you tomorrow night. Luckily our man in Muni Court informed me. But such tipoffs are going to get scarcer than hen’s teeth if we dont regain some initiative.”

  Baby Jewels set down the jeweler’s glass and popped a lozenge in his cupidsbow mouth. That cloying lavender bloom always reminded Sidney of a mortuary. “Tch,” went the disembodied baby voice. “Those shleppers in Faria’s office might just as well hire skywriters, Sidney. I knew they were coming. I have sources you dont know about.”

  His client’s nonchalance began to nettle Sidney. He said, “Cant you see this is just the beginning, the kickoff? They’ve already impaneled a grand jury, which will surely hand down indictments.” When Baby Jewels cavalierly screwed the glass back in his eye, picking up a stray emerald, Sidney took off the gloves: “Faria’s not just going to padlock you. He’s sure to bring multiple pimping and pandering charges which I dont see how we can beat. They wont deal, of that I’m certain. Not in the public spotlight …” Sidney scooped air up his long nose. “Jules, I cant guarantee I can keep you out of jail.”

  “Sidney, tomorrow night every girl upstairs will be a licensed physical therapist. And every shmuck will be getting a real massage … As for your guarantees, ma
ybe I dont need them. They might convict in Superior Court, but I got a stopper higher up … Or will, shortly.”

  “Very good, Jules. I’m glad you’re so sanguine. What I cant understand is why you’re even making a fight over it. Why dont you follow my advice and close up? Johnny Formosa and the tongs have slammed all the mahjongg parlors and doll shops, Connie Truck, his lowball rooms. They’ve got enough salted away to wait this thing out. Certainly you do.” Sidney swept his hand over the desk. “You’ve enough right here to live like fuckin Farouk until after the election. Then, with the administration back in office, reopen your whole operation. All you’re doing fighting them is playing into Marks’s hands. And with him in office you may as well open a string of dry cleaners … Jules, if you close yourself, you beat them at their own game. Why not?”

  “Because I’m right.”

  “Right?” Sidney thumped the heel of his hand to his tall forehead. “What’s that got to do with anything? This is business.” He leaned forward in his chair to coax his client the way he might a witness in the box. “You know better than anyone, Jules. As soon as the last editorial is printed, the last speech made, and the last pulpit pounded, all the Dudley Dogooders will be the first back down here for a little fun. It’s been that way since time immemorial. You’ve nothing to prove fighting them.”

  “Wrong. I have two things to prove. First, that Jules Moses backs down from nothing. Second, that I offer services as legitimate as any priest or doctor … not to mention lawyer. See, without me those johns would be out catching AIDS and getting rolled. Without me those girls would be in the streets getting maimed by pimps and murdered by sex maniacs. There’s a saying in the Life, Sidney—‘You can always treat a woman too good, but never bad enough.’ It’s the girls themselves who promote that kind of mentality, so you could say I protect them from their own worst enemies—themselves.”

  Sidney Dreaks shrugged helplessly. Baby Jewels wasn’t the first crook he’d represented who was convinced he was a misunderstood philanthropist.

  Baby Jewels lifted a cabuchon blue sapphire to the cyclopean magnification of his eye. Between appreciative kissy sounds, he absently simped, “Look what happened to that girl Gloria Monday.”

  “What girl Gloria Monday?”

  “Tch. I thought she made the evening edition.”

  “Why should she?”

  Removing the glass Baby Jewels smiled his patent smile lost in fat before lighting the chips of anthracite pressed deep beneath his hairless brows. From above thumped the night’s moronic pulse.

  “You’ll read about her over your morning coffee, Sidney. I hate giving away a good story.”

  THE FIX

  Midnight a stepvan doubleparked in front of the Blue Note. Out hopped a boy in orange coveralls humping a bundle of newspapers. A quarter flipped from the polished digits of a longlipped horse degenerate in a snapbrim hat. Joe smiled in the Blue Note doorway—Just the jerk to spell me while I fix.

  The carrier snatched the neon twinkle in midair and handed Club Charley the top racing form before locking the rest in the curbside vending machine. Club set immediately to work, licking his pencil, picking ponies, and Joe had to call out twice for his attention. Club sniffed and hitched up his pants crossing the sidewalk. What? he asked, dogeyeing the Barker. Would Club mind watching the Blue Note door while Joe rounded up a girl from another club to replace one the Manager sent home for getting too drunk? Well, okay—but don’t expect Club to talk dirty, he had a wife and kids at home. Naw, all Club had to do was stand there looking sharp as a jockey’s prick in his pearlgray threepiece.

  Lucky Louie, proprietor of the One-Stop-Smut-Shop, perched on a stool behind a tall glass display case. Within were ranked triple-X videos, rainbowhued and roostercrested French ticklers, an arsenal of vibrating missilery, brass benwah balls, silver cock rings, batteryoperated Autosuckers trimmed with Gen-U-Pube nylon hair like Astroturf, Pocket-Pal Buttholes and heroic dildos of every color and configuration, including one candy-striped doubledonger affair that promised a trip to the emergency room for the uninitiated.

  Louie looked more like a longhaul freight dispatcher than the weapons broker for the aging shock troops of the sexual revolution. Bloodless lips sucked one of those gnarly dago cheroots that put one in mind of a smoking cat turd. Cold greasy sweat waxed his brow; fingers smudged with Treasury ink blindly changed Joe’s two dollars into quarters. Goatlike eyes followed the embroidered dragon vanishing through the footfreak and rubber racks.

  The mingled reeks of crusted sperm and Pine Sol flipped Joe’s stomach like a gaffed fish. The clicking hum of projectors was interspersed with slurps and muffled grunts. Joe refused to meet the wet importunate eyes floating through the haze of a single red bulb dangling in the aisles between the booths—until a breathy whisper at his elbow: “Oh Jowhee …”

  “Dwan! What are you doing here? … No, dont tell me.”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.” Dwan Wand’s swastika earring twinkled like a rhinestone spider.

  “You get to work or the Manager’ll fire you.”

  Pouting fiercely, Dwan stamped a Cuban heel. “I quit! I’m joining the peace corpse, teach those Negroes what time of month to fuck. Goodness knows they got every other kind of rhythm,” adding selfeffacingly, “A shitty job, but someone’s gotta do it.”

  “Sure’ll be shitty the way you’ll go about it.”

  Joe ducked into the closest booth and locked the door against Dwan’s urgent little knocks. He had to threaten to tell Bermuda on Dwan to make him go away, sobbing.

  In the rank dark Joe extracted the paraphernalia stash from his boot, arranging on the narrow ledge beneath the coin meter the water vial, syringes, cotton balls, and cooking spoon. He deposited a quarter, the loop began its run, something with two men taking a woman orally and anally. Deftly Joe bit open and shook two balloons into the cooker, snapping them to empty each last grain of Mexican brown heroin. He drew up 50 cc’s of water into the syringe and sluiced it into the cooker. The booth went black; he fed the meter another quarter.

  Next he lit an entire book of matches, quickly folding it back and setting it on the ledge to stand freely. The sputtering sulphur pinched his olfactories, making him sneeze. By passing the cooker lightly over the flame and stirring the sediment with a plastic needle sheath, in seconds he had an injectable solution. Once more, darkness; another quarter. Into the cooker he dropped a tiny cotton ball, delicately setting the needle into this crude filter. He drew up the amber solution into the syringe’s slender barrel. He was ready to fire.

  Darkness again while Joe unbuckled and slithered off his belt. He clamped the buckle beneath his boot, cinched the worn leather tightly around his bicep, and clamped its tongue between his rotten teeth. He levered his arm then, raising ravaged veins, and dropped another quarter. The winnowing light was just sufficient to reveal the nasty cicatrices littering the crook of his arm. Gingerly his finger prodded for a vein tender and defined enough to drink the shot. Oooh, there we are; hush now, slowly, breath held, slooow. Set the minute, steely gleam against the tender ridge. Tap the plunger, penetrating, flesh opening, swallowing steel … Christ! Out went the light. Joe left the syringe impaled in his flesh while he fumbled another quarter into the hungry slit. Looking back down he saw in the amber lumen a filament of blood, the merest undulant tendril. Sucking air through his teeth, whimpering softly, he adjusted the needle’s depth. Bingo! A mushroom cloud of blood exploded into the barrel, billowing, blooming a crimson orchid. Weeping gently, Joe raised his boot, releasing the belt’s tension, and slammed the syringe like a detonator, plunging the flower of forgetfulness into his bloodstream.

  Orbits of panic and astonishment collided across Lucky Louie’s brow watching the Barker weave out of the arcade, almost capsizing the watersports and bondage racks. The bentnosed geek seemed too relaxed. Like a deboned chicken or an underinflated Stan the Man, Yes-He
-Can blowup party stud. His leadlidded eyes kaleidoscoped around pupils reduced to pinpricks.

  “Yous awrite?” Louie asked solicitiously. The Health Department made him keep a first aid kit on the premises, he just hoped he wouldn’t have to remember where. The Barker stood before the counter scratching his goddam nuts and swaying like a man in a typhoon, though Louie’s labored breathing was the biggest wind around.

  At times like these Joe truly did stand within a wind that whirled around just him; transfixed at the center of a religious instant in which Louie’s display case, for instance, became a shrine of sexual sacraments, an altar of latex amulets, anal idols, priapic periapts, fertility fetishes. Tonight he noted two new additions to the fluorescent reliquary: a Day-Glo neoprene gag and a brutal lowtech buttplug (this one with wire bristles like a bottle cleaner), each ritually situated within the others’ ranks on the glass shelves according to a divine order beyond his knowing, augmenting an iconographic sense of concealed message, an intent to enlighten, like the voices within his whirlwind, tremblings of revelation Joe felt yet couldn’t hear.

  “Hey!” Louie shouted, “I asked you if you wuz okay.”

  Joe smiled secretly and slurred, “I’m fine, Louie,” ungluing his gaze from the numinous case, “if I felt any better I’d be unconscious.”

  The pinwheeling eyes were making Louie dizzy, like one of those gismos that hypnotists use. He was glad when the Barker, taking two steps sideward to each one to the fore, headed for the door. Louie stared after him, marveling that it must be true, fags could outsuck any broad, because that geek looked like he’d just gotten the Cosmic Bigdaddy of Blowjobs.

  They grabbed Joe just outside the One-Stop-Smut-Shop. Slapped him on a squadrol’s hood (reflexively he swallowed his remaining balloons), frisked, cuffed, Mirandized him—“I know the drill.” “Shut up, punk.” Head squashed sideways against cool metal, Joe saw the Manager down the sidewalk waving his arms screaming Why couldn’t he get good help these days and would they pulleeeze hustle Joe out of there, cops all over worked no wonders for biz; and Kitty in her stupid hotpink peignoir crybabying in the doorway with that heliumheaded gashgrinder Bermuda Schwartze patting her back going it’s all right now baby with her mouth while her eye meeting Joe’s wished him a oneway ticket to the House of Many Slammers; and there, Club Charley, he had to be the one to tell them Joe’d gone to Louie’s, hiding behind his tip sheet.