Bodies and Souls

by John Rechy

  Today, several of the youngest were skate-boarding. Others rooted or jeered. A blond boy carved out a dazzling series of 8's on his board. Another wove perfect S's about him. Challenged, the first one somersaulted onto his board, knobby knees held rigidly, bare feet poised. The other tried to best him—balancing himself on one hand. He fell. Glee broke out as the two began wrestling. Others joined the pileup of flailing, laughing bodies.

  Ernie saw Stud standing with Billy. The Mexican youngman showily tied his shirt about his waist. He jumped, grasping the protruding part of a billboard announcing a movie about the end of the world. He began chinning himself, counting aloud until he had drawn a growing crowd, who took up the count. Numbers rose. Ernie's straining back was a smear of brown sweat. He forced one more chin, another—101!—dropped himself easily, and accepted cheers.

  Stud grasped the same board. They all counted aloud. Billy looked on, both proud and apprehensive as Stud, dripping sweat, approached Ernie's record—but everyone could see his lats beginning to quiver, resist: 97! 98! 99! 100! 1-01! 1 … 0 … 2! The record toppled. One more chin and Stud let go. Ernie came over bigly and congratulated him. The clasped congratulations turned into a hand-wrestling contest—which Ernie won. Now others swung from the billboard—12 hard chins, 5, 3! Heckling, laughter. The skate-boarders tried new tricks, falling deliberately, all laughing, romping—and then two squad cars came, scattering these male prostitutes.

  Ernie and Stud walked away with Billy. “You both won,” Billy congratulated the two. That didn't please Stud. He suspected there had been something between Ernie and Billy. Among hustlers sex may occur—unpaid, of course—affairs unaffected by each other's hustling. That morning when Billy was in the bathroom, Stud had pushed Ernie's mattress a few inches away from Billy's. Billy saw him. “Cleaning up,” Stud said.

  Dianne came over one afternoon when Billy and Stud were watching the chained television. She laid down a sack of groceries. She sat in her familiar way, arms crossed about the back of a chair, legs straddling it. It was the afternoon movie, about a soggy creature who appears out of a murky pool.

  “Who'd be afraid of that seaweed?” Dianne said. “I can show you a thousand scarier things just outside the door.”

  Stud watched rapt. Billy leaned over on his bare shoulder and rested his head there at the same time that he reached for Stud's hand. Stud pulled away as if he had been scorched by fire. Billy's head jerked from the sudden movement. Dianne shoved the chair away and stood up, glowering down at Stud.

  “What the fuck's the matter with you?” she demanded.

  Stud said, “I'm not doing nothing to you.”

  “Not to me—to Billy.”

  “Not doing nothing to Billy, either,” Stud said firmly.

  “You're encouraging him—and you keep insisting you're fuckin’ straight.”

  “I am straight,” Stud said. He faced Billy, knowing Billy would tell Dianne to mind her own— …

  “Let's go for a drive, Dianne,” Billy said.

  “Asshole!” Dianne thrust back at Stud.

  Stud was still staring incredulously at the shut door when it opened and Gary staggered in. He acted jittery, glanced at the food Dianne left but didn't touch it. He nodded at Stud and lay on a mattress and fell asleep. Stud noticed he was wearing a flashy new watch.

  Angered that Billy had gone out just like that, Stud went to Coffee Andy's. Ernie was there. Now that they had both won a physical contest—a “shoot-out,” Ernie called it—they were friends.

  “Everyone's on a downer, man,” Ernie said. “Big raid coming down. That TV program really got people all fucked up about perverts and shit, and the vice is moving in…. Hear all about those hustlers robbing Johns?—that ain't gonna help either, man. This rich guy got beat up in a motel the other night, robbed, maybe got killed—heard it both ways. You never know.”

  The street was a cauldron of rumors, often exaggerated, embellished. A robbery became a wave. A rape became an epidemic. There were the recurrent rumors—a heterosexual who hated hustlers was going around beating them up, then it was a closet homosexual, then a cop on the force, on-duty, then an off-duty cop, a retired cop. Most rumors signaled a dangerous new truth in that forbidden world where anonymity invites violence. Youngmen with little identity beyond the outlines of their bodies were rendered vulnerable to others, just as others were vulnerable to them.

  “… —heard two, but Tim said three or four and only to femme guys, or the pretty ones, but I heard they picked up only masculine dudes, so watch out, man,” Ernie was going on.

  “What?” Ernie's words pulled Stud away from his thoughts about Billy walking away like that.

  “These guys, man,” Ernie repeated. “They drive a van or a pickup; Gary said he saw them in a long limousine—same guys, though. Maybe they shift around, you know? They pick up hustlers, man, rape them real ugly, like with their fists and weird dildos. They're supposed to be straight, hate gays, especially hustlers. Cops ain't doing shit about it…. Hey, look at that Gary!—he's shooting up hard now— …” Gary didn't even nod back when they left.

  Outside, a smoky dusk pulled at colors. Smog was making an urgent incursion before the wind pushed it away. Around the city, the foggy smoke gathered like enclosing barbed wire. Scenery seemed sketched on a gray screen. Gray, starless night descended. Hustlers lined the streets at their posts.

  Suddenly an army of squad cars invaded the boulevard. Up and down the street, the hated angered glow of cop-lights filtered into the night. Cops rushed at every hustler in the area, shoving them against the nearest wall.

  Billy! Stud thought. A brutal white light flashed in his face. “Put your fuckin’ hands up and move to the corner,” the amplified voice ordered Stud and Ernie. Two cops jumped out of the quivering car and corralled other youngmen. One of the cops was a redneck with the beginning of a beer belly and broken veins on his nose, although he was hardly thirty. The other cop was an oval-shaped blond woman with a mean face.

  Ernie winked reassurance at Stud. Stud winked back. The thought of Billy persisted. Billy, shoved against the wall! Billy, mauled! … The cops made them face an abandoned hot dog stand—palms against it. “Feet out farther,” the woman cop ordered. Ernie's arm slipped.

  Both cops drew their guns.

  “Smartass!” the male cop wrenched one of Ernie's arms behind him.

  Rage gripped Stud. But he had to stay like that, powerless. One word, and they both would be handcuffed. Another squad car drove up; two more cops jumped out. Stud felt hands exploring his lower body, for “hidden weapons.” He kept thinking of this happening to Billy. No!

  The woman told them to turn around. Stud blinked in disbelief. All the cops had their guns out. The redneck said, “Whattayasay we book ‘em all?”

  “Sure,” the woman tried to match his tone.

  The two other cops drove away, to other rousted groups on the street.

  The redneck went back and radioed in the squawking car. The woman moved her gun in an arc covering them all.

  The jumbled cop-jargon came back in broken snatches on the radio. “Compound's booked solid; no more buses,” the cop said.

  “We see you again, you go to jail,” the woman said.

  They got in the car and screeched away.

  “Pigs!” Ernie spat.

  “What did they mean about a compound?” Stud asked.

  “They set one up in an alley nearby, take everyone there, then to jail in buses,” Ernie said. “They just ran out of buses, that's all. Hey, where you going?”

  Stud was walking into the red-glowing battlefield ahead.

  “Gotta look for Billy,” he said.

  “You walk over there and they'll stop you again and this time they'll have a bus,” Ernie said.

  “Fuck it.” Stud continued on his way.

  “Hey, I saw that old guy Billy sees—waiting for him when we left Coffee Andy's; I bet Billy's there—I'm sure.”

  Billy was there, with Ed. Billy rushed
up to Stud. “Ed drove me up and down the boulevard to see if they'd stopped you.”

  “I worried about you” Stud sulked.

  “Join us,” Ed called.

  “Thanks. I'm going home.” Stud looked at Billy in signal.

  Billy walked in just minutes after Stud entered the apartment. “You really went looking for me?” Billy asked him.

  “Yeah.” He tried to sound indifferent now. He felt Billy's hand like burning iron on his shoulder. This time he didn't push it away.

  Gary walked in. Stud pulled back. “Feel like I'm thirty years old and just turned eighteen,” Gary said. The garish watch was gone. There was another one on his wrist. His face was white beneath a layer of tanned skin. He sat on the mattress, counting out some money from a wallet, discarding cards and papers, keeping others. “I'm not asking for money anymore,” he said to no one, “I'm taking it!” He started to light a cigarette, but his fingers were trembling so erratically that the match kept blowing out. Billy lighted the cigarette for him. “Shit!” Gary threw the cigarette on the floor and walked out.

  Billy gathered the discarded cards carefully. There was a driver's license with the photograph of an older man. He didn't look like Ed, not at all—but Billy thought of him. He decided to put the cards in an envelope and mail them to the address on the license.

  That night, Billy woke up startled. Stud was asleep beside him. Billy leaned over and outlined his shoulder, his arm, his hip. “I love you, Stud,” he whispered to the still form.

  Stud heard, but he didn't move.

  The next night heat gathered. More young bodies were bared on the street. The streets were inhaling the heat in the day and exhaling it at night.

  Two happy middle-aged men in an expensive Mercedes stopped to talk to Billy and Stud. “We want both of you. We're having a grand party, and we want to liven things up with pretty, fresh faces. We'll pay you for the night, and then you can just have a good time.”

  They got in. The two older men, still attractive, were lovers. “Together twenty-five years—so, you see, it can work.” “With a little bit on the side,” the other said naughtily. “And we're celebrating the anniversary of another couple—thirty years together!”

  There were about twenty men in the beautiful old home. Most of them were of the same age as the two, also well-dressed, attractive. On a long table, food was spread like a chopped rainbow.

  Sounds of approval and applause greeted the entrance of Billy and Stud when they walked into the dining-room. “Have you ever seen two more beautiful boys?” one of the men whose anniversary this was asked his companion of thirty years. “Well, we were rather pretty in our time,” the companion remembered, to happy applause from the other men. “They are adorable,” the first man said. “And so obviously in love,” the other added. “They'll last thirty years, too!” one of the men who had invited them said, to more responsive applause.

  Billy looked apprehensively at Stud. His shoulders squared wider.

  But everyone had a great time. No sex. Billy and Stud were star presences. At midnight they all toasted champagne to the couple's thirtieth anniversary.

  That night in the apartment it was Stud's turn to look at Billy asleep. The moon did not enter this side of the building, blocked always, but on bright nights its light filtered in—so did the gray morning. Stud watched Billy intently. Billy's body was not softly formed; where had he got that idea? It was slim, yes—but very solid-looking. Stud leaned back and had trouble falling asleep.

  The next day when he returned to the apartment in the afternoon, Billy was sitting on a mattress sewing a shirt.

  “Whatya doin'?” Stud wanted to emphasize the obvious.

  “Sewing my shirt,” said Billy.

  “Sewing!” Stud laughed, felt pleased, and liked Billy a lot.

  “Got a mighty fine body there,” a man called out of a car window to Stud that night. Stud flexed, as he did always to that remark. There were hustlers on every corner. So Stud got in. “How much you go for?” the man asked, “and what can I expect for it?” Stud knew instantly the man was a cop.

  “Not hustling,” Stud said firmly. “Let me off at the corner.” At the corner, two arms reached in through the open window on Stud's side and pulled him out. The driver of the car handcuffed him. He and the man waiting at the corner said, “Los Angeles vice officers.” “You're under arrest,” the man who had propositioned him said easily.

  “For what?” Stud said incredulously.

  “Prostitution,” the cop said.

  Stud protested. “I told you I wasn't hustling.” He couldn't believe he was actually chained.

  “Guess I didn't hear that part,” the cop said. “All I heard was when you told me you'd blow me if I paid you twenty bucks.”

  The enraged heat rushing out of Stud's body made the night's warmth chill his flesh.

  “Fuckin’ liar!” Stud yelled.

  They pushed him roughly into the back of a waiting squad car.

  In the cop station flooded with hideous white light like in hospitals—but colder, uglier than that—Stud was booked for prostitution. All about were other chained, crushed presences, mostly Mexicans and Negroes, and youngmen like himself—and women, most in short skirts.

  Stud felt himself drowning in a stagnant ocean of indifference. He could disappear, just disappear—because a cop had lied—and no one would know where he was.

  “You can make a phone call.”

  Call whom? He shook his head. An iron door opened with a grating electric buzzing. Beyond it were rows of iron-barred cells. Years ago, Stud had gone to a zoo. He left, crying, so sorry for the pacing animals locked up like that, like him now in this nightmare that was proceeding. He was put in a cell with four bunks suspended by angled chains. An uncovered toilet. There was a youngman sitting on a bed.

  “Hustling?” he asked Stud.

  “No—the pig just said so.”

  “Happens,” the youngman said. He looked haunted. “I called my father; the bitch said he's not coming for me.”

  “What… happens now?” Stud asked, his heart a frozen fist of anger and fear.

  “Wait. Eventually they'll take you to a judge; you can't pay the fine so you'll go to jail.”

  “But I didn't do anything, I can prove— …”

  “Can't prove anything,” the kid said knowledgably.

  The nightmare pushed deeper. Stud felt his body trembling inside, but the outside was rigid. The world was outside and he was in a cage. Would Billy think he'd just gone away, just like that?

  Billy heard about the busts. A real raid was going on, not like the routine harrassment every night, the news was flashed to Coffee Andy's. Stud! “Yeah—I saw him, they busted him,” one of the skinny skate-boarders said.

  Billy dialed the “emergency number” Ed had given him.

  “Hello?” a woman answered.

  An answering service. “I want to leave a very, very urgent message for Mr. Edward— …”

  “You don't have to leave a message,” the woman said.

  “He's here. Is this Billy?”

  Billy couldn't believe it. “Yes!”

  “I hope you're not in trouble, Billy,” the woman said.

  “I am! No, my friend! I— …”

  “I'll call Ed.” Billy heard the woman's voice: “Ed, it's Billy, I think he's in trouble.”

  Before Ed came to the telephone, Billy's anxiety burst, and he was crying.

  It had been so long since he'd heard his real name that Stud didn't respond at first when a cop yelled it out. “Bailed out,” the kid in the cell with him said. Stud merely accepted it. “Can I call someone for you?” “That bitch? Fuck him,” the kid said.

  The buzzer hissed. The iron door parted. There stood Billy, in his cutoffs and blue shirt chopped at the middle. For all the cops to see, Billy hugged Stud. Ed was talking to the bondsman. Billy's description of Stud, the location of the arrest, and “Bozeman, Montana” had identified him.

  As they we
re walking out of the cop station—and making sure the cops’ attention was on them—Billy stopped, looked around. “You ever noticed?” he asked. “You ever noticed that cop stations are lighted the color of weak piss?”

  Even in the deep depression he was in, Stud was able to look at Billy with a lot of admiration.

  As Ed drove them to the apartment, Stud felt more fear than when, at ten, he had run away the first time—a distance of ten miles.

  At the loose iron gate to the building, Billy told Stud to go ahead, he'd be right up. Stud thanked Ed, promised to pay him back, really, really. Billy got back in the car with Ed.

  “He'll have to go to court; they'll reduce the prostitution charge to disorderly conduct. A fine. I'll take care of it.” He gave Billy money.

  Billy remembered his own arrests: the miserable days in jail, the ugly man who called him a queer and tried to fuck him—but Billy fought and fought—the odor of urine, the spotted food. “What did the cop report say?”

  “That Stud offered to go down on the arresting officer for twenty dollars,” Ed said softly.

  Billy winced in anger and pain for Stud. “You know it's a lie,” he said to Ed.

  “Of course,” Ed said.

  Billy kissed him. “Thank you, really. I love you, too. Really.”

  “In a different way,” Ed said, “yes.”

  “Your wife— …”

  “She knew before I did. We love each other, too—in a different way.”

  In court Stud was fined on a reduced first offense of disorderly conduct. “The cop lied,” Stud said to the judge, perched over everyone like a humped hawk. That was the only moment the judge looked—glanced—at him.

  Not even the steak that Billy treated him to could bring Stud out of his dark, dark mood. “Fuckin’ liar cop!” he kept saying; he seemed more depressed by the cop's report than the fine or the arrest; the cop had deliberately humiliated him further, that was clear—had known how to do it.