Bodies and Souls

by John Rechy

  Quite successful in real estate for a time—he charmed men and women with his easy, concerned manner—he was confronted by a shaky period in the business; and so two nights a week he bartended at the Modern Man, a homosexual “cruise” bar; and three other nights he stripped at Tiffany's. In college, which he hadn't completed, he had worked as a dance instructor in a studio.

  Up to his later teens, Dave had been “into girls”—although he had been aware of a powerful energy when he wrestled on his high school team. Then early in college, he proudly announced his homosexuality, long before others tumbled out of the closets.

  His best friend remained a very pretty heterosexual woman; Julie's male lovers were more jealous of Dave's special friendship with her than of each other. He told her “everything”—as she did him—and she understood him as well as anyone else—as he did her. She would not go see him dance at Tiffany's, though; and there had been a few strained minutes between them recently when, driving past a “leather bar” on Santa Monica Boulevard, they had seen two men, both in black leather. Around the neck of one was a studded collar; a leash was hooked to it and held by the other man. “Ugly—and silly; ugly,” Julie had said. Dave had explained earnestly that everyone knew “gay S and M” was strictly charade among consenting adults, no real force involved; “and it might even be the new frontier of man-to-man sexuality,” he said—and added that he himself was not “into it.” That was true—although days earlier he had bought a pair of tailored black leather chaps, and a black biker's cap—both items still unworn.

  Tonight many bodies cruised the sexhunting area, into the crevices of the alley. Dave parked on a side street, and walked into the strip of darkened buildings. Several men floated by. A handsome dark man stared at Dave and disappeared behind a parked car. In the garage, the two men were about to reach for each other's cocks when lights smashed the darkness. “Come out, fags!'’ a woman's harsh voice said.

  In the bath of light from the car's spotlight, Dave saw a white male cop and a black female cop.

  “You try to run, and I'll shoot your brains out!” the woman's deepened voice promised.

  The handsome dark man with Dave was trembling. Dave was cool. There had been nothing they could have seen, although it was not rare for cops to make up heated lies. More often, their incursions into sealed known cruising areas were just harassment. When the cops asked them for identification, Dave understood why the other man was so terrified. “You from I-ran, huh? —came here to suck cock, huh?” the male cop said in a Southern redneck drawl to the frightened man.

  “Cause where he's from the Aya-toll-ly executes queers,” the black woman said.

  Breathing in to force back his anger, Dave did not protest—they would turn on the vulnerable man, he knew.

  The two cops asked them routine questions—names, addresses—writing on white cards; a tactic to pretend to have a record of all cruising homosexuals.

  The woman's fingers slid up and down the holster. Both cops got into the car, waited, the light left glaring on the two men. Defiantly, Dave put his arm around the Iranian student; the other's shoulders still trembled. Hugging him the length of the alley, Dave walked him back to his car, assuring him the white cards had no validity.

  Still early. Dave called Julie from a booth. Neither went to bed before two, often talking late at night. He hoped she'd be alone and ask him over. She was but didn't. Dave told her how successful his new “Sniper” act had been, and then he told her about the incident in the alley. “Ugly,” she said, but he wasn't sure what of everything he'd told her she was referring to. She broke a date they had made, though tentatively, for early dinner tomorrow before his performance.

  The next day Dave drove his jeep to Griffith Park, to gather fresh sexuality for tonight's performance. He always showered before going to the park, but not after—to preserve the sexual connections. It was a warm erotic afternoon.

  Several miles up the paved winding road, he parked in one of many indentations of dirt, ground into filmy dust by countless cars. An attractive youngman looked back as he drove by—and made a quick U-turn. Dave proceeded down the nearest trail. Moments later, in a cove carved by branches, an enclosure not unlike a large nest on its side, the two men faced each other. Both were shirtless. Similar sculpted cutoffs on each exposed firm, tanned legs over heavy hiking boots and logger's sox.

  Feet planted firmly, thumbs hooked toughly through beltless loops, the two men aimed narrowed looks at each other. The other man was younger, mid-twenties. The two squared off, waiting for the triggering move. Dave drew—pulled out his semihard cock. The other toyed with his so it would match Dave's. Ready, he released his “six shooter.” Glancing slightly sideward, neither moved. The hardened cocks aimed at each other. Do or die, weapons were drawn. If the other resists the challenge and leaves at this point, within the mutual defeat of frustration he will be the victor—by rejecting—the other left toughly slouched, eyes a sexy squint, proud cock abandoned.

  A draw! Both groped each other simultaneously. Now their cocks fenced. Pants sliding to hiking boots, the two men kissed deeply. Their fingers probed hair-brushed buttocks just as deeply. Dave coaxed the other's head down; the younger man swallowed Dave's cock expertly. Now Dave raised the man, lowered his own head, and sucked the other in sure strokes. Then he leaned against a low branch, cocked one hairy leg, and let the other man suck him for a long time. He pushed the bobbing head against his hips, miming force. It was important that he didn't come, and so Dave removed pressure from the man's head. The man jerked off into his own hand while Dave's cock was buried in his throat. Seeing the thick cum jetting, dots of it spurting hotly on his bare legs, Dave felt the rushing hot charge he needed for tonight.

  As he moved back alone to his jeep, he looked down the hill, far away. Yesterday he had seen a figure rushing into dense thicket and carrying something pointed. Hunting was, of course, outlawed in the park. Probably just a kid with a toy rifle—but it was that which had given Dave the idea for the Sniper costume—which, on the telephone later, Jay had immediately approved as “timely.”

  Collecting other erotic images for tonight from among the army of exposed cruising bodies, Dave drove out of the park.

  At the store Jay had recommended for the “more realistic” rifle, the clerk said, ‘This is an almost exact replica of the M-16 weapon that our boys used in Vietnam; the real one could kill a squad in seconds. It's so light they could just hold it behind their heads and spray a whole area without looking back.” There were realistic war toys all around. “Is your son having a birthday?”

  My son! “No,” Dave said curtly.

  At Tiffany's that night, Dave's Combat Sniper was an even greater success. Next week Jay would definitely use it as the last number, he told him; tonight he wanted to end with a new, “daring” act.

  When Dave had completed his performance that night and as he moved out of the stage, he heard a shrill whistle blasting out of the back of the auditorium. In the gray shadows, he watched a motorcycle policeman with knee-length boots strut down the aisles past surprised women. “All right, everyone freeze!” he shouted. “This is a raid!” The emcee and the hostess dashed away as if to hide. Now the policeman stood on the dance clearing. Legs spread and planted, looking down at the women through dark, dark glasses, he growled, “You women know the rules, right?”

  Joining in the charade, the women answered, “Right, officer, right!”

  “Well, you've broken them!” barked the dark presence. “And so I'm here to bust you!”

  Applause—led by the advancing hostess, in pink tonight, with sequins in a vortex of hair.

  “If you don't spread when I say spread, I can get rough!”

  “I bet you can, officer,” the hostess growled. “Stripsearch them all, all!” she told him.

  Applause erupted.

  “And if you don't submit,” he said, “I got these.” He dangled handcuffs.

  Dave watched the scene intently.

&nb
sp; Now the music began, and the “policeman” started his performance, subtly altering the motorcycle garb so that it became an adaptation of it—semi-cop, semi-outlaw biker in black. With a black-gloved fist, he held between his legs the butt of a coiled whip.

  “A new presence!” the emcee shivered. ‘The man in black leather and a whip—… Ladies, the Leatherman! Gnu!”

  The hostess hissed at the women, “And you love him, don't you?”

  Loud cheers answered. “Yes!”

  The Leatherman uncoiled his whip.

  Dave studied the dark presence in black leather. That was a costume hundreds of men in hundreds of homosexual leather bars throughout the country wore nightly. Almost all the “costumes” of the male dancers had appeared years ago in cruising bars. Now here they were before women. Fantasies in common! Dave heard the crack of the Leatherman's whip.

  A woman screamed, “Ouch! That hurt so good!”

  Another whimpered, “Oh, dad-dee!”

  Dave felt a powerful, vague disturbance. Tonight he deliberately left Tiffany's through the ballroom.

  This was one of the evenings when “gentlemen clients” are allowed early, because the second phase of the entertainment is provided by sexy young women wrestling in mud pens.

  Dave watched the beautiful women in tiny brown bikinis squirming and writhing in the gray brown liquid muck. It oozed down their lustrous flesh.

  “Wallow in it, baby!” a red-faced man goaded them on.

  “Deeper!” another man prodded. “Dig deep!”

  “Dig in, hon!” a youngman who looked like a college student demanded, while others in his young group hollered, hooted, whistled at the girls covered with mud.

  Some of the women with the men called out, too; most just laughed.

  Dave went home, changed his clothes, and drove to Bolts, a bar he had never been in. It was known as “the heaviest leather bar” in the city; and it was located in a seedy section of East Hollywood, among crumbling assaulted buildings, their windows replaced by boards. Dimmed yellow streetlights hardly created shadows, merely pools of grayish night.

  The bar's exterior was painted black. A reddish electric glow floated over its entrance.

  A row of large, expensive motorcycles was parked on the curb before it.

  Dave walked in. For the first time, he was wearing the tailored black chaps.

  Others in the red smokiness of the sleazy bar—studiedly unkempt to evoke the aura of decay, with broken beer crates, gutted stools, patched walls—looked like the Leatherman at Tiffany's. They congregated here, some in heavy black jackets, cop uniforms; others wore leather vests or crossed studded belts or chains on their torsos. Some wore black leather gloves, sunglasses. A few dangled handcuffs. The smell—and the sound!—of leather soaked the rancid air.

  Dave almost left. But a choking, not totally pleasurable excitement kept him there. He moved away from the more extremely leathered men who approached him—and from a man he was at first attracted to, until he noticed a ring piercing the right nipple of his bare torso. The excitement choked tighter. A man in worn jeans and denim vest—wearing a twisted red bandanna around his head—asked Dave, “Looking for a heavy scene, top man?” “Top man” is the master, the dominant one over the “low man” in “heavy sex.” Dave stalled, drinking slowly from his beer, waiting for his own answer. The bandannaed man coaxed. “You can tie me up, do whatever you want.” Dave left alone.

  He returned the next night. And left alone.

  On the third night he wore jeans, the chaps, a black belt, and the leather cap. When he walked in, a voice out of the smoky darkness said, “Wow!” Dave moved into a small back room off the main bar; more thickly darkened. Bodies were swallowed by eager shadows. When his eyes adjusted, he saw the bandannaed man kneeling, licking the boots of a man in full leather who twisted the other's nipples like screws.

  Back in the less shaded part of the bar, Dave had a beer, to cool the fever that had increased amid the odor of leather in the heated shadows.

  Outside, there was the snarl of motorcycles, loud, agitated. The machines idled, a menacing, even roar. Then one or more revved out a mechanical growl, tires screeched in short sorties. Over the increasing angry murmur of the motorcycles, there were shouts now, sounds of a scuffle. A bottle smashed on concrete; there was the harsh sound of metal jangling. A man who had left moments earlier backed into the bar through the open door. Blood stained his face.

  Through the pulled leather drapes at the door, Dave saw about ten motorcyclists lined facing the parked bikes of the men in the bar. The angrily purring machines were mounted by youngish, skinny, long-haired men wearing dirty jackets and insignias. Several were Mexicans and Negroes. They were brandishing lead pipes and bottles. Ugly scrunched faces twisted out words:

  “Faggots!” “Cocksuckers!” “Fuckin’ queers!”

  A bottle burst into the open door. Other bottles and lead smashed on concrete, against windows.

  “Next time we'll bring knives and guns, cocksuckers!” one of the mounted men screamed. Others echoed his threat. Motorcycle tires screamed away. It had all happened in perhaps one astonished minute.

  Dave walked outside. Near the entrance lay a bloodied lead pipe. He picked it and flung it in the direction of the fleeing invaders. “Cocksuck— …!” He blocked the word. “Dirty fuckin’ coward punks!” he shouted. On the street, other men, bleeding, reeled from the unexpected assault; the invaders relied on surprise.

  Men tended the bloodied men. Someone called the cops. Dave waited to see whether they'd come. They didn't.

  Next morning flotsam from a dream floated onto the brightness into which he woke: a bottle crashing without sound, a soft, subdued, almost saddened voice of a man—or a woman—or both—sighing, “Dad-dee—…” No. The voice said, “Wow, Dad-dee.” The cracking sound of a belt. No, a whip.

  In the mirror, Dave looked tired. He freshened his face with cold water, brushed his hair, running his fingers through the brush to remove whatever hairs were there without having to look at them.

  Oh, Christ, it was later than one in the afternoon—he'd missed an appointment to show a house. Had Martin called him earlier? Or was that part of the dream? Martin saying something about a slave auction. A slave auction.

  He dialed Martin, the owner of Stud Studios, the man who had taken the Partygirl magazine photographs that assured his job at Tiffany's.

  “Honey, I thought you were dead when I called. Either that or you had five cocks—large ones—in your mouth; you couldn't utter a coherent word—…”

  It irritated Dave that Martin was always doing nineteen-Fifties’ camp, although he constantly told everyone he “just loathed queens, femmes, and sissies.”

  Martin affirmed with delight: “Yes, I called you about a mock slave auction to raise money for several gay causes—isn't that delicious? I'm providing the slaves from my—uh—famous stable of gorgeous models, all hunks, all types. We're selling invitations only to the hottest men. We'll auction the willing slaves—did I say ‘willing'?—honey, it's more like eager! —we'll auction them to the highest bidder for a night of ‘service.’ Isn't that utter ecstasy?”

  Dave's cock hardened; his body felt cold.

  “We need three divine slavemaster auctioneers: the very best,” Martin gushed on. “I'm asking Oklahoma and all his muscles, and Tim Pierce and his muscle—I could faint to utter the name. And you, Mr. Macho!”

  Dave's throat tightened. “Will it raise a lot of money for a good cause?” he managed to say.

  “Oh, yes, a very worthy cause,” Martin assured him. “You know I wouldn't do anything to support one of those tacky fringe groups that give us a bad name. Anyway! We'll give the girls in their Adidas shirts at their tea-dances a shock, won't we?—when we simply overwhelm their donations! There'll be an elegant scaffold, and cells, and a—… Oh, wait—I'm being buzzed on another line!”

  Sudden heat overwhelmed Dave's bedroom.

  Martin returned to the phone. �
�Can you believe that bitch? Oklahoma declined, says it's not good for her image with women! The last time he was with a woman was when his mother nursed him, and even then I bet he—… What next! But I know I can get Buzz Saw—he's here from the East—and he'll be even better. To die for, darling! Simply to die for. And we want real—not closet—masters!”

  Martin's words stirred the mysterious disturbance Dave had become aware of the other night. At Tiffany's? Then again at—…” I'll do it,” his voice said.

  “I knew you would, you delicious hunk!” Martin's voice purred on.

  The tone bothered Dave, the certainty. Martin was telling him that he and his partner had opened a new afterhours club—a euphemism for an orgy room. “Very exclusive, just beauties,” said Martin, who was almost sixty and at best plain. “I'll send you a membership card; but if you just can't wait, simply go there; the attendant will recognize you from your pictures—he's wild about you. And—…” He stretched out the emphasis. “… —one room on the premises is très heavy, darling, très rough. Terribly au courant: leather slings for you-know-what, shackles, a tub for—que sais-je?”

  Apprehension and sexual longing mixed, separated, tangled into one knot as Dave drove his jeep later that day to die park.

  A Santa Ana condition was increasing, and the upper portions of the park were closed to automobile traffic because of “fire hazard.” Cars park at the foot of the cruising areas at those times, and the men trek up the hills.

  In his logger's outfit, Dave did that. But he didn't feel “on top of it” today. Weariness wound through the unfocused sexual desire, the hot disturbance, which turned cold. He felt very angered by Martin—his campiness; his constantly using, probably misusing, French when he was sure whoever he was speaking to didn't know the language; his— …

  Dave started to make it cursorily with someone in the bushes. When a third man attempted to join them, Dave just walked away. Other times he might have welcomed the added sexuality.