Bodies and Souls

by John Rechy

  Now they were driving past an area of Wilshire Boulevard that had once been glamorous—like so many now seedy sections of the city: Mac Arthur Park was dying, the cultivated lilies gone from its ponds, unruly grass inviting weeds; and Lafayette Park with its colorful rows of flowers still holding on, stared ominously at the intruding waste and poverty; carelessly aging houses, now separated into apartments, rooms.

  Farther on, Wilshire Boulevard glittered as it prepared itself for Beverly Hills.

  After dinner at a Sizzler Steak House—and Jesse's mood lifted when Orin encouraged him to have the steak and lobster combination—Orin told Lisa she could choose a movie from the newspaper listings.

  “Casablanca!” she drooled, not believing the good luck. “And Now, Voyager!”

  They were playing in the old Warner's Theater in Beverly Hills, an enormous, lavish shell of a theater, being allowed to disintegrate in cruel humiliation: worn faded carpets; chunks of walls unrepaired; broken mirrors removed, squares left gray. And yet the remnants of its resplendent Art Deco excesses shine through defiantly: prisms, arcs, layers of once-bright colors, geometric bursts of glass. It flaunts its tattered presence—knowing it will soon be crushed, replaced by the sinister levels of still another parking lot, or the concrete slabs of a rectangular building.

  Lisa cried, again, through Casablanca. But an intrusive, unformed thought pushed her away for moments from the story: Ingrid Bergman looked very much like that woman in that odd movie Orin had chosen that other night—The Conformist, that was the name. She startled herself when she realized her mind had wandered away while Ingrid Bergman was crying in the man's hotel room. So mean to her, so mean.

  Jesse liked Bogart a lot—but not all that much in this movie; he wasn't really tough in this one.

  Orin sat as if he was scrutinizing the movie.

  Lisa pled to stay for Now, Voyager. Jesse hated it immediately and fell asleep. Lisa cried through it again, too—and this time her mind didn't wander from Bette Davis. Orin sat stiffly, as if deep inside himself.

  In the lobby Lisa caught an unexpected reflection of herself in a long mirror. She paused. “Here's looking at you, kid,” she repeated from the first movie. “Don't ask for the stars, we got the moon,” she mixed from the second.

  “Awright, kid,” Jesse asserted his own line. “Cody said that: ’Awright, kid.’ “

  Lisa continued to study her reflection. Yes, she could have been a movie star—but only then; the very time her mother had been young. She thought of Pearl; fading. Makeup. She'd use some makeup on her when they got back.

  Outside, the heat waited. Orin brought his watch to his ear.

  Making certain he has the right time, Jesse felt sure, as they walked toward the car. That meant they would watch Sister Woman tonight; they hadn't last night—too late when they returned from the park, or was Orin making her wait now? Last night had been so full of turbulence that Jesse realized only now that, no, Orin had not even turned the television on!

  Although it was out of the way, Orin took the Hollywood Freeway; traffic was fast and smooth. He always slowed down when they approached a giant mural beyond a grassed slope and on a tall wall. It was an enormous painting of an old woman, graying, beautiful, with brilliant eyes. There were murals all over the city. Another painting, on a long wall off Santa Monica Boulevard, showed Los Angeles crumbling under water released by a giant earthquake, a freeway toppling into raging water.

  “Movieland Wax Museum!” Lisa read aloud. Signs on bus benches all over the city advertise it, almost as often as they advertise mortuaries Each time she had seen it before, Lisa forced herself into silence. The Movieland Museum was too precious a venture to risk wrong timing. She had waited for the right moment, which she decided impulsively was now. “Please, Orin, we've got to go to the Movieland Wax Museum!”

  “Sure,” Orin said.

  So quickly. He kept acquiescing to Lisa, or so it seemed to Jesse. But then, Orin seemed to be acquiescing to them both, perhaps because of Lisa's—their—anger after the journey into the park. “Sure,” he echoed Orin, as if his approval were required equally.

  They were becoming alike—no, similar—in a way she didn't understand, Lisa thought, hearing Jesse echo Orin.

  On Western Avenue, Lisa was relieved when Orin took Sunset to the motel. There was still the implicit hint that at any moment he might want to return to the park.

  In the motel room Lisa insisted Ingrid Bergman should have been allowed to stay with Bogart. “She loved him, and he only pretended to love her—she sacrificed so much for him; he was mean to let her go—and”—this occurred to her for the first time, with doubled horror—“he forced her to go with the same man who left Bette Davis in the other movie. Oh!” She went immediately to Pearl Chavez on the bed; she would make her beautiful again.

  In the bathroom with the door open, Orin was washing his hands, slowly, methodically; he did this often after a long day.

  “I bet your favorite movie is The Wizard of Oz” Jesse teased Lisa, paying her back for deriding him earlier about White Heat.

  “The Wizard of Oz!” she blurted in indignant disbelief. She had begun to apply makeup to Pearl. Rouge first. That really helped, she told herself. After all, the real Pearl Chavez had been a half-breed. “No, that is not one of my all-times, not even a half-favorite. It's too real.”

  “Real!” Jesse couldn't believe her. “Real?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said. The makeup was working. She applied lipstick to the tiny lips of the doll; more, thicker, more— … Her finger moved unsteadily and it smeared the doll's lips; they looked bloody. With a tissue, she cleaned the smudges. She added more of the waxy makeup.

  “Hey, Orin,” Jesse called into the bathroom. “Can you believe Lisa thinks The Wizard of Oz is too real?”

  “The reason it's real,” Lisa said with conviction, “is that it's too much like life would look like if you looked inside.” She paused, reasoning it out carefully. “Not the singing and the funny parts—although I'm not so sure there really were any. All those scared people— …” She outlined Pearl's eyes darkly.

  “You're not making sense,” Jesse derided.

  “I know exactly what I mean,” Lisa said firmly. “And sometimes Orin doesn't make sense either,” she said tentatively; then boldly: “But you sure do listen to him, yes sir. And I bet you liked those ugly evil flying monkeys in that Oz movie and the— …”

  “I don't make sense?” Orin stood calmly wiping his hands as carefully as he washed them.

  Jesse marveled: Orin wasn't angry; he was smiling!

  “I guess you do make sense,” Lisa retreated somewhat, but only because it was true. Even when he didn't make strict sense, she understood. But not always. And she was beginning to listen much more carefully. “I take it back, Orin,” she said faithfully. “At first I didn't understand you, but now, when you talk such beautiful words, I do understand. Sometimes,” she heard herself add. With scissors, she cut the doll's dress, making it jagged, short; she lopped off the sleeves, formed a V at the bosom. With her finger, she forced a rip into the dress, near the thigh. “And sometimes, Orin,” Lisa went on, “you look like an angel, you really do, with that beautiful reddish hair and blue eyes; other times, even though you're so fair, you get that dark stare— …”

  “How do I look now?” Orin distorted his face at all angles.

  “Ugly!” she said. She stared at the doll.

  Jesse laughed at the faces Orin was making. So happy. But in another moment he might become all solemn.

  Orin turned on the television.

  “… —attributed to the purported damaging effects of Agent Orange, a chemical used by the army in jungle warfare.” Kenneth Manning finished. Now Eleanor Cavendish was saying, “Sporadic brush fires continue to cause grave concern among firefighters and citizens of threatened areas. Winds up to fifty miles an hour in the canyons are fanning fires at— …”

  Lisa dabbed rouge on Pearl Chavez's cheeks, pushing
the color up and back toward her ears.

  Orin shifted channels.

  Brother Man faced Sister Woman on her throne against the imitation sky. The telephone number to call for witnessing and pledging was on the screen. “Fire burns on the lips of sinners—and only he can quench it. Come.” Sister Woman's hand beckoned, the chiffon sleeve a blue ghost. “Surrender to the Lord, let Him unburden you of the weight of your grievous sins—and the sins of those departed!—sins which are not buried with them but which extend deep down into hell and out— …” Her hands burst open, fingers thrust outward. “… —to you, who have the power to bring them peace.”

  With the edge of her comb, Lisa frizzled Pearl's hair, thickening it into a bushy halo. She was forcing herself not to listen to that woman. She threatened her—them; aroused intrusive doubts, like last night's.

  The sighing chiffon flowed to Sister Woman's shoulders as she raised her hands as if to bring down heaven to purify hell. Her exposed arms were white. Her soft voice stumbled on a sob, resumed in anger: “But! If you wait too long, the beast will grow stronger, roaring out of the abyss—strengthened by sins captive in hell!” Her head turned away as if from a vision of the burning holocaust of perdition. The colorless eyes faced ahead now. “And then the beast will rise to lure you into the flames of hell, heated beyond comprehension by sin—the tinderwood of hell!” The arms and hands crushed down. “And I have known him in hell!” Her eyes closed. “I see four lost angels,” she barely whispered, as if to herself.

  Lisa heard, “… —four lost angels.” She looked at Orin, who nodded.

  Sister Woman's voice purled again. “Escape, now, oh, the deceiver is powerful, so powerful and cunning that at times it is difficult to tell the demonic angels from those of the Lord.”

  “Then how shall we know the difference?” asked Brother Man.

  Sister Woman's lips smiled.

  Jesse's eyes shifted to Orin, who watched, watched.

  Sister Woman reached out with her hand. “How shall we know the good from the deceiving evil? you ask. By calling on the Lord. And he— …” The wings of chiffon spread outward, up. Then her hands fainted into delicate crucifixion on her lap. “And He will tell us! He will give us the radiant proof of His righteousness!”

  “No,” Orin said softly to the figure on the screen. “You will tell us, just like you promised her.” He turned off the television.

  He reached for the telephone, pressed it tightly to his ear, his fingers on the dial.

  Lisa looked in surprise at the doll, what she had converted her into. The doll looked savage, cruel, brutal, grotesquely sexual. I made you that way! she thought triumphantly and heard similar words aimed at her from her past: You made me ugly! … When she heard Orin dialing, she looked up in fear.

  Holding the receiver so tightly to his ear—Jesse noticed—to drown the sounds that would reveal no one would be on the other end? He'll put down the phone, Jesse thought, and then his face will be the little-boy one and he'll laugh and make us laugh at his playacting and for letting him fool us into thinking— …”

  “This is Orin! … I called, left a message— …” He repeated the identifying details he had left the earlier time. He reached for a piece of paper, wrote down a number. “No, not tonight. Tell her tomorrow—after I hear her sermon.” He repeated the telephone number. He hung up.

  “Stop pretending, Orin!” Lisa was desperately washing Pearl's face with a moist towel. “You know you weren't speaking to anyone!”

  Billy and Stud: “Bitter Street Love”

  Billy fell in love with Stud the moment he saw him entering Coffee Andy's on Highland Avenue. Coffee Andy's is a restaurant where malehustlers gather throughout the day before scattering along Santa Monica Boulevard a distance of perhaps a mile, an ugly gray stretch from the tip-end of Hollywood to the beginning of West Hollywood long before the boulevard turns chic in the area of mutual cruising, unpaid homosexual encounters.

  Billy heard Stud before he saw him, heard his motorcycle have a fit outside before it passed out. “The Wild One,” Billy looked out the restaurant window and said to Ed, a middle-aged married client of Billy's; he drove in from Pasadena once or so a week to see Billy, and paid him $30, the amount Billy had asked for when they met—and then Ed would always add more. He would also take Billy to dinner—like now.

  Stud walked in shirtless, showing off his gymnast's body, pushing the time before he would have to put his shirt on—a waitress was charging at him; he peeled on a sleeveless t-shirt with a slight tear that showed a part of his chest. He was frowning because the motorcycle had hinted of a death rattle.

  Seeing him approach, Billy lowered his long, dark eyelashes, assuming a look he knew was among his very best, and then he flashed his beautiful green-speckled brown eyes at Stud and allowed a strand of sun-lightened blond hair to fall over his forehead. Billy was eighteen.

  Stud stopped before Billy. His mouth opened.

  Billy pushed away the strand of hair, counting on its falling again, and splashed a dazzling look on Stud.

  “I saw you on TV!” Stud said excitedly.

  Billy was crushed. “Oh, that thing,” he said. Ed had been consoling Billy about that.

  Recently that woman announcer and her busy crew had invaded Santa Monica Boulevard with vans and wires and lights and cameras, doing, they said, a feature on “street life” that would tell “the truth.” They interviewed several hustlers; Billy was featured. Yes, he'd looked great—his eyes even greener, mistier. It was only when he saw the news program—as he sat about the TV set with several of the other hustlers who shared the two-room apartment in a building that would be demolished at the end of summer—that Billy realized he'd been used. The female announcer had kept saying, “You're very beautiful; certainly you make a lot of money.” She kept reminding him all his friends would see him on television—along with prospective rich customers, even a movie director. So Billy told her he made $1000 a week hustling the streets. In the segment, none of that Mandy Lang-Whatever's pushing had been included; just the figure—which a vice cop who followed in the program used as evidence that there were a “lot of perverts out there buying young bodies.” The program had ended with a long shot of other street hustlers, idling along the trashy blocks, peering into slowly moving cars, malehustlers searching that night's cheaply paid contact. “They peddle their bodies for high stakes—to the highest bidder, these young prostitutes, coming here to make their fortunes on the erotic streets, the way others in yesteryears came to find fame—legitimately—in the movies,” the woman's voice-over had throbbed. Billy had felt dirty—the way he hardly ever did hustling the street.

  “Yeah, I thought it was you,” Stud said. He strutted to a table in back, pulling several pairs of eyes after him.

  Including Billy's. “… —and that woman said I was effeminate—I'm not effeminate,” Billy protested to Ed.

  Ed soothed him. “She said you were very beautiful, effeminate or boyish, depending on how one viewed you,” he reminded Billy. “My wife commented on what a beautiful youngman you are, Billy. You do have a boyish beauty,” he emphasized.

  Billy was beautiful. He had a slender blond body that turned golden instead of tan, eyes so misty at times they looked painted with water colors, and long dark eyelashes. It was true he was not effeminate—he was gracefully boyish, looking radiantly younger than his eighteen years. Tonight he was wearing the familiar Levi cutoffs, which showed off his proud round buttocks, and a powder blue shirt, chopped at the stomach to exhibit his gold-tanned waist hardly 27 inches. He was from Louisiana, from “a city with a French name,” he would say, not wanting to evoke it further. A southern accent filtered his speech.

  “That youngman who just walked by thinks you're very beautiful also,” Ed said, tracing Billy's gaze on Stud.

  Billy did notice him looking his way. “A lot of people stare at me since I was on that TV show and said I made a thousand dollars a day,” he said ruefully. “I could kill that Mand
y Do-Shit!”

  Stud looked away when he realized the two were talking about him. He was good-looking, eighteen years old; he hadn't had a haircut since long before he'd left Bozeman, Montana—empty fields, frozen winters, poverty, anger—and so it curled in dark loving licks at his neck and about his ears. He had a muscular body built by hard country work and improvised gymnastics. He'd been in Los Angeles a night and a day and had made $30 hustling. Like other restless youngmen of his age and meager background, Stud learned from scandalized newspaper and television accounts about malehustling in large cities. These reports were always breathless in their denunciations. Like the others, Stud heard only the huge amounts of money to be made “out there.” That message became an insistent beckoning away from a drab life and angry shouts.

  Last night, with his satchel containing his possessions, he had walked to Santa Monica Boulevard; he saw dozens and dozens of youngmen on the streets, semi-exposed bodies, some masculine, others effeminate. The pretty ones sometimes called each other “she” and the masculine ones called them that, too, at times. Some were not effeminate, but pretty in a way Stud found confusing. A man stopped for him. Stud asked for “the usual.” The man offered $30. Stud wondered whether he should have asked for more. At the man's pretty home—as pretty as any Stud had ever seen before—he watched the segment in which Billy starred on television.

  Ed gave Billy an extra $20 today. “Go over and talk to that kid.” He paid at the cash register and left. There were mean clients and sweet ones—just as there were good hustlers and the criminal types who beat and robbed their clients—and hustlers sometimes got beaten up, too—and Ed was one of the sweetest clients—giving Billy an “emergency telephone number,” even trying to talk him into leaving the streets, offering to help him get a job, or go to a trade school—even though they didn't have sex at all sometimes. But Billy hadn't even finished grammar school and had already been busted for prostitution.