City of Night

by John Rechy

We went to a cafeteria on the same block and ate. The drifting youngmen were in there, sitting at the tables sipping coffee, staring at the older men who walked in. “Sometimes this whole scene bugs me,” Pete said. “I guess maybe I should split—leave New York—go somewhere else: L.A., maybe. You wanna know something? I been in the East all my life—New Jersey—New York. . . .” He stared dreamily out the window. “Lets go to Washington Square!” he said abruptly.

  In a few minutes, by subway, we were there.

  In Washington Square there were many people. In the center, around the fountain, the young painters and their girlfriends clustered; some had baby carriages. They seemed very happy. And I felt the same. I was sure it was the approaching warm weather. . . . One youngman with a beard played a guitar and sang softly in Spanish. Pete and I sat by the fountain, listening. Soon, we got up, walked around the west side—toward the “meat rack”—the gay part of the park. There, it was as if someone had hung a line of marionettes on the railing: the lonesome young homosexuals, legs dangling, looking, waiting for that one-night’s sexual connection. . . . “This wouldnt be a good place for scoring tonight anyway,” Pete says, “theres too many out for free fun.” But we sit there too, silently.

  Next to us, a Negro queen has nervously stationed herself—a screamingly effeminate youngman in a candy-striped shirt: twisting her neck haughtily, looking around her in pretended disdain. Soon a couple of her white “sisters” swish by, two equally effeminate youngmen. They stand talking to the Negro queen, gossiping breathlessly. Now theyre talking about gowns. “It was Fabulous!” said the Negro queen, “I dressed like the Queen of Sheba, and honey, I Mean To Tell You, I looked Reall”

  “Wasnt thuh Queen of Shayba white?” says one of the white queens, a fiercely blond one, affecting a thick Southern accent

  The Negro queen’s eyes open Wide. “Are you trying to dish me, Mary?” she says angrily.

  “Honey,” said the blond one, “all Ah asked was a simple question. Wasnt thuh Queen of Shayba White? For all Ah know, you painted youhself White.”

  “Mary,” says the Negro queen, ready to spring from the railing, “I may not be the Queen of Sheba, exactly, but I am The Queen of This Meat Rack—and I’ll prove it to any nellyassed queen that wants to try me.”

  “Youre too much,” says the blond one airily. “Why! who-evuh heard of a nigguh Queen?”

  In one instant, the Negro queen jumps off the railing, grabs the blond one by her thin shoulders and shakes her back and forth until she begins to sob, trying tearfully to tear herself away from the Negro queen. Finally, the Negro queen lets go, and the blond one rushes off wailing:

  “Mothuh-fuckuh, if we wuz in The South, Ahd show you whos Queen of thuh Meat Rack!”. . .

  Pete said moodily: “She shoudnuh called her a nigger.”

  A fat zero-policeman comes by swinging his stick like a baton: “Move on, move on,” he says. “Yes, sir, officer, sir,” Pete says, raising his middle finger up at the cop as he passes by. . . . We move on, and it was beginning to get cool—the hint of spring withdrawing teasingly. We walk again through Washington Square. The guitarist with the beard has left, and we sit on a bench.

  Sitting there with Pete, a great Loneliness overwhelmed me. Was it the sky? So like a Texas sky at night—the stars flung prodigiously in the expansive blackness. Or the sudden breathtaking memory of my Mother miles away? Her love radiates that great distance toward me stifling me. . . . Or was it the sudden change in the park?

  The youngmen and girls had left—the older people were gone from the benches too. Now there remain only the hunting young homosexuals looking for a partner. They sit momentarily on benches, move away, stand restlessly. One sat near us. “You figure he thinks we’re queer?” Pete asked me indignantly—and then he stared him away. . . . I wondered if the franticness of their search was overwhelming Pete as it was me; he was strangely silent. . . Two youngmen walked by. Previously I had seen them standing a few feet apart, on the walk, moving slowly closer to each other. Then they had talked briefly—now they walked away together, speaking softly. They were both young, both goodlooking. I saw them smile at each other: For them, this night’s search was over—not for money—but for a mutual, if fleeting, sharing. Staring after them, Pete says: “They coulda fooled me, even. They look like hustlers, dont they? And I bet theyre gonna make it with each other.”

  We move along Fifth Avenue, past a dimlit bar in a hotel. Through the windows we see a woman playing the piano. A man is leaning over her, her lips move in a song, she slides closer to him. . . . We pause for a while, and then we continue walking—into Union Square now, were we stand listening to a man in a tight suit heatedly hollering about what a blight Union Square is. “Perverts and tramps!” he yells. And a little old tramp staggers up to him, he reeks of wine, his nose like a red lightbulb—and he shakes his old finger unsteadily at the man yelling out damnation and says: clearly: “Listenere, you—you jes listenere: Theres gonna be hobos! homos! and momos! in Our Park long after youve grown deaf and dumb!”

  “Hey, spote,” says Pete to me, “whats a momo?”

  “I dont know, I guess he just made it up.”

  “Thats cute,” says Pete. “Homos, hobos and—and—what?”

  “Momos,” I said.

  “Yeah: Momos. Hey! Maybe we’re momos!” he laughs.

  Weve reached the 34th Street, the corner of the Armory on Park Avenue.

  “Heres where I live,” I told Pete now.

  “Can I come up and talk a while?” he asked me, rushing the words together.

  “Im tired,” I said quickly.

  “Cummon,” he insisted, “it’s early yet—or you can come up with me Im still staying at Al’s with all the motorcycle jackets. Come up there, I got a pint of juice, well kill it”

  “It’s too far,” I told him.

  He looked hurt.

  “Okay. Lets go to my place,” I said hurriedly.

  There is still a doorman in the building where I lived: a Negro from Jamaica: a clinging relic, like the mirrored lobby, of its sadly gone elegance: Beyond the lobby and the doorman—who sits in a little room, nodding asleep through the night—the building is seedy two-room apartments and gray rooms—layers of wallpaper make the walls soft like quilts; the plumbing rattles; steam gives out on the coldest days. . . . We went up in the complaining elevator, into the apartment, broken up, in turn, into smaller apartments, tiny rooms. I turned on the light.

  “This is nice,” Pete said, looking at the dingy room. One thing was colorful: a Mexican blanket which my mother had sent me. . . . “I wish I had a place of my own,” Pete says. “You know, I actually been thinking of getting a small apartment—with someone, maybe—you know, split the rent—it wouldnt be much that way. . . . You like living alone, spote?”

  I pretended I hadnt heard him. . . . But long before that night when I had resolved to explore this world not with one person but with many, I had become aware that there was something about someone getting too close to me which suffocated me. . . .

  “Maybe,” Pete says, going on, “maybe—you know—I was just thinking—shacking up with another guy for a while—we could hustle together, really make the scores. It wouldnt be hard: I know lots of scores. Theyd stop digging me; dig you; so on—I mean, whoever it was, we would keep going like that. . . . I was even thinking—Christ—well—that fuckin street—it bugs me—sometimes I get nightmares about those toilets—I mean, all those fags—and—well, if I got a job, even—and split the rent with someone—well—”

  “It’s past midnight,” I said interrupting him.

  For a long while there seems to be nothing to say. Im aware of a smothering self-consciousness between us. I wanted him to leave. It was the first time anyone other than the curious men and women in the other rooms had been in this room with me.

  “Can I stay here tonight?” I heard him ask clearly.

  In a kind of panic, I want to say no. “Yes,” I answered.

  The li
ghts are out now. The darkness seems very real, like a third person waiting. I lay on the very edge of one side of the bed, and he lay on the very edge of the other. A long time passed. Hours.

  “Are you asleep?” he asked me.

  “No—I cant sleep.”

  “Me neither,” he says. “Maybe I should go.” But he didnt move.

  More silence.

  And then I felt his hand, lightly, on mine.

  Neither of us moved. Moments passed like that. And now his hand closes over mine, tightly.

  And that was all that happened.

  The man in the other wing of the building, on the other side of my window, began to cough very early, and I got up hurriedly and dressed. “I have to go out,” I told Pete.

  “Me, too,” he said. “I have to see someone.”

  We avoided looking at each other. “I’ll see you around The Street,” he said at the door. “Man,” he says—but his voice was forced, as mine was, “I got a real tough score lined up today—hes worth Twenty.”

  “Later,” I said.

  “Later—spote,” he said.

  I saw him again, many times—in the movie theaters, in Bryant Park, on Times Square. We would say hello to each other, stop, talk casually: He would exaggerate his scores, I would exaggerate mine. But we were never together for long any more. “I have to score,” one of us would say, and we’d split.

  Soon we wouldnt stop to talk to each other when we met We would say hello, rush on. . . . And then one day, one stifling summer day, I saw him bouncing along the street in my direction. I turned sharply, pretended to be looking at some movie posters; and glancing back once, briefly, I notice that he—for the same reason I had turned away, to avoid meeting—had crossed to the other side of the street.

  CITY OF NIGHT

  THE WORLD OF TIMES SQUARE was a world which I was certain I had sought out willingly—not a world which had summoned me. And because I believed that, its lure, for me, was much more powerful.

  I flung myself into it

  Summer had come angrily into New York with the impact of a panting animal. Relentless hot nights follow scorching afternoons. Trains grinding along the purgatorial subway tunnels (compressing the heat ferociously, while at times, on the lurching cars, a crew of Negro urchins dance appropriately to the jungle-rhythmed bongoes) expel the crowds—From All Points—at the Times Square stop. . . . And the streets are jammed with sweating faces.

  The chilled hustling of winter now becomes the easy hustling of summer.

  At the beginning of the warm days, the corps of newyork cops feels the impending surge of street-activity, and for a few days the newspapers are full of reports of raids: UNDESIRABLES NABBED. The cops scour Times Square. But as the summerdays proceed in sweltering intensity, the cops relent, as if themselves bogged down by the heat Then they merely walk up and down the streets telling you to move on, move on.

  Inevitably youre back in the same spot.

  For me, a pattern which would guide my life on the streets had already emerged clearly.

  I would never talk to anyone first I would merely wait at the pick-up places for someone to talk to me—while, about me, I would see squads of other youngmen aggressively approaching the obvious street-scores. My inability to talk first was an aspect of that same hunger for attention whose effects I had felt even in El Paso—the motive which had sent me away from that girl who had climbed Cristo Rey, long ago, with me: I had sensed her yet-unspoken demands for the very attention which I needed, and she had sensed them in me too, I am certain. . . . And so, in the world of males, on the streets, it was I who would be the desired in those furtive relationships, without desiring back.

  Sex for me became the mechanical reaction of This on one side, That on the other. And the boundary must not be crossed. Of course there were times when a score would indicate he expected more of me. Those times, inordinately depressed, I would walk out on him instantly. Immediately, I must find others who would accept me on my own terms.

  From the beginning, I had become aware of overtones of defensive derision aimed by some scores at those youngmen they picked up for the very masculinity they would later disparage—as if convinced, or needfully proclaiming their conviction, that the more masculine a hustler, the more his masculinity is a subterfuge: “And when we got into bed, that tough butch number—he turned over on his stomach and I—. . .” a score had told me about a very masculine youngman I had seen on the streets. Later, I would hear that story more and more often. Whether that was true or not of the others, with me, there were things which categorically I would not—must not—do to score. To reciprocate in any way for the money would have violated the craving for the manifestation of desire toward me. It would have compromised my needs. . . . The money which I got in exchange for sex was a token indication of one-way desire: that I was wanted enough to be paid for, on my own terms.

  Yet with that childhood-tampered ego poised flimsily on a structure as wavering and ephemeral as that of the streets (and a further irony: that it was only here that I could be surfeited, if anywhere), it needed more and more reassurance, in numbers: a search for reassurance which at times would backfire sharply—insidiously wounding that devouring narcissism.

  a bar with two men from out of town who have come to explore, on vacation, this make-out world of Times Square, I agree to meet them later at their hotel room in the East 20s. When I got there that night—and after I had knocked loudly several times—the door opened cautiously on a dark room. One of the men peeked out, said, hurriedly in order to close the door quickly: “Im sorry but weve got someone else now; lets make it tomorrow.”

  But there were others to feed that quickly starved craving.

  In theater balconies; the act sometimes executed in the last rows, or along the dark stairways. . . . In movie heads—while someone watched out for an intruder; body fusing with mouth hurriedly—momentarily stifling that sense of crushing aloneness that the world manifests each desperate moment of the day—and which only the liberation of Orgasm seemed then to be able to vanquish, if only momentarily. . . . Behind the statue in Bryant park; figures silhouetted uncaringly in the unstoppable moments. . . .

  Still, for me, there were those days of returning to what had once constituted periods of relative calmness, in my earlier years, when—to Escape!—I would read greedily. . . . Now, at that library on Fifth Avenue, I would try often to shut my ears to the echoes of that world roaring outside, immediately beyond these very walls. Again, I would read for hours. And this would be a part of the recurring pattern, when impulsively I would get a job, leave the streets, return to those books to which I had fled as a child. But because there would always be, too, that boiling excitement to be in that world which had brought me here—and, equally, the powerful childhood obsession with guilt which threatened at times to smother me—emotionally I was constantly on a seesaw.

  And I began to sense that this journey away from a remote childhood window was a kind of rebellion against an innocence which nothing in the world justified.

  In the library one night as I sit in the reading room surrounded by serene-masked people like relics from a distant world, a handsome youngman said hello to me. He sat at the same table. Noticing that he kept smiling and looking at me—at the same time that I felt his leg sliding against mine—I left Sharply, I resented that youngman. His gesture had an implied attraction within the world of mutually interested men. While I could easily hang out with other youngmen hustling the same streets (although, since Pete, I seldom did for more than a few minutes, preferring to be alone), with them there was a knowledge—verbally proclaimed—that we were hunting scores, not each other. With this youngman just now, there had been the indication that he felt he could attract me to him as clearly as he had been attracted to me. . . .

  The youngman followed me outside. As I cut across Bryant Park, I heard his steps quicken to approach me.

  “I’d—like to meet you,” he said, the last words hurried as if he had
rehearsed the sentence in order to be able to speak it

  “Im going to go eat now,” I said, avoiding even looking at him.

  “All right if I sit with you and just talk?” he asked me. He was masculine in appearance, in actions. He could not have been over 20. But already there was a steady, revealing gaze in his eyes.

  We went to a cafeteria. As we sat there, he told me he was a student at a college, he lived with his parents. On weekends he worked at the library. . . . Throughout his conversation, there were subtle references to the homosexual scene, which I didnt acknowledge. . . . Afterwards, for about an hour, talking easily, we walked along the river.

  “I’d like to go to bed with you,” he said bluntly. “We could rent a room somewhere.”

  Remembering Pete with a sense of utter helplessness, and surprising myself because of the gentleness with which I answered this youngman, I said:

  “Youve got me all wrong.”

  In the following days (on this unfloating island with that life that never sleeps—in this city that seems to generate its energy from all the small, sleepy towns of America, sapped by this huge lodestone: the fugitives lured here by an emotional insomnia: gathered into like or complementary groups: in this dazzling disdainfully heaven-piercing city), in those following days, I discovered Third Avenue, the East 50s, in the early morning, where figures camped flagrantly in the streets in a parody stagline; the languid “Hi” floating into the dark, the feigned unconcern of the subsequent shrug when you dont stop. . . .

  And there was Howard Thomson’s restaurant on 8th Street in the near-dawn hours. They gathered then for the one last opportunity before the rising sun expelled them, bringing the Sunday families out for breakfast

  I discovered the bars: on the west side, the east side, in the Village; one in Queens—appropriately—where males danced with males, holding each other intimately, male leading, male following—and it was in that bar that I first saw flagrantly painted men congregate and where a queen boy-girl camped openly with a cop. . . . But because most of those bars attracted large numbers of youngmen who went there to meet others like themselves for a mutual, nightlong, unpaid, sexsharing—or for the prospect of an “affair”—the bars made me nervous, then; and, largely, I avoided them.