Numbers

by John Rechy

  Johnny says nothing, wanting to make him believe he didn’t notice.

  They’ve reached the place the musclemen have taken over. Perhaps half a dozen are working out on a platform, appropriately like a small stage. About it on a square of grass another half dozen or more idle about. Usually quite short, they seem to want to compensate for their lack of vertical dimension by growing horizontally. There are three youngwomen milling about in bikinis; they resemble big warm-water doll-bottles: all hips and bust and ridiculously tiny waists. Both men and women are like a distinct, incestuous species. Like most of the men—who would be handsome—the women would be pretty if their bodies, like the men’s, were not literally “stacked”—part by part developed with no visible relation to the other.

  An enormous-chested man on an exercise bench presses a bar heavily loaded with discs. Another stands behind him, almost over his head—to “spot” him if the one pressing can’t complete the lift. On another bench a youngman is doing situps rapidly, while his partner sits on the lower part of his body straddling him—in order to enable the one on the bench to perform the waist movement strictly. Another man is doing “donkey raises”—for the calves: Leaning with his hands on the edge of the platform, he rises on his toes; another man sits on the buttocks of the one exercising—in order to add weight and resistance to the movement.

  When you first come on it, the spectacle is startling: Each couple—in brief trunks—appears to be performing a distinctly recognizable sex act.

  One of the men on the grass has been lifting a woman; she holds her body prone while he presses her overhead, twirls her around in adagio movements. Catching sight of Danny and Johnny, he dumps her unceremoniously on the grass. He calls out: “Oooeee, there’s my one-and-only favorite, Danny-boy. Howya, sweetheart?” Although the words are clearly a parody of “gay” jargon, they’re spoken in a deep, masculine tone, which is intended to make it All Right. Others are now waving and calling endearments to Danny. The man who was lifting the woman comes up to him. Bored, the woman lies face down on the grass.

  “Hiya,” Danny says to the man, introducing Johnny. The man’s muscles are like armor plates pasted on his body. He wears an imitation leopard-skin bikini. Realizing that this man is quite obviously appraising him, Johnny feels proud of his own shirtless, tightly muscled body. Danny and the man begin talking about the relative merits of “frog kicks” for the “abs” as opposed to regular situps—which may or may not actually make the waist wider by enlarging the obliques. Danny says yeah, man; the other says no, man.

  Turning his back on the whole scene—deciding to say so long to Danny and walk away—Johnny looks toward the walk; and he spots a thin, wispy, very swishy young queen about half a block away. “She’s” looking bewilderedly about her, evidently “lost”; probably trying to find the part of the beach she’s heard has turned gay.

  As if realizing that Johnny is about to split from him, Danny breaks his conversation off abruptly. “Cummon, kid,” he says. “Let’s sit over here.”

  As they’re moving to a bench nearby, one of the men in the exercising arena calls out to Danny, “Blow us a great big goodbye kiss, beautiful.” The faggy words, the determinedly masculine tone—the latter again meant to obviate the former and render it acceptable.

  “Say,” Danny says suddenly to Johnny as if it just occurred to him, “why don’t you work out with me this afternoon, kid?” His eyes are fixed on Johnny’s almost imploringly. “There’s a gym downstairs where I live—it’s got pulleys, racks, everything. You got a great build now, and you gotta keep it that way. But you need a partner, everybody does.”

  Johnny imagines the scene: He’d want me to sit on his butt while he does “donkey raises” like that guy on the beach . . . for his calves. I’d “spot” him on the bench press, standing over his face . . . for his chest, triceps, and deltoids. I’d sit on his legs to keep his movements strict . . . for his abdominals. And then he’d want to do all that for me. And we’d rub each other down afterwards, all sweaty and breathless. Thanks a lot.

  Before he can answer, a great tide of hooting, catcalling, and whistling is coming from behind them. Without yet looking, Johnny knows that the musclemen have caught sight of the young “lost” queen.

  And so they have: There she is, trying to ignore them, dredging up all her dignity, her face set, fixed straight ahead. She’s very meek, Johnny can tell. Another queen, more brazen, would have put them all down in an instant with something like: “Well, look at all the topless lesbians”; or: “Fuck you in the ears, muscle-ladies”—and she would have dashed—skipped—merrily away. But not this poor fluttery creature; she’s too young, too inexperienced, probably wearing eye makeup (very lightly) for the first time.

  Noticing that Danny has joined in the derisive whistling, Johnny feels a twist of anger.

  Now that the queen has passed and the nasty ritual hooting has stopped, “Wotdayasay, man?” Danny is asking Johnny. “Wanna go work out?”

  Johnny sees the queen, safely past the mocking group, pause to mop her forehead; he hopes she noticed he didn’t join in the derision.

  “No, thanks,” Johnny tells Danny. “I’m real tired right now. And I’m used to working out alone. I think I’ll just go lay down on the beach a while.”

  “Swell!” says Danny imperturbably. “I’ll go with you. Wanna go to my place and I’ll lend you some trunks?”

  “No, thanks,” Johnny declines again.

  They begin to walk back toward Santa Monica.

  When they’ve reached the soon-to-turn-gay part of Venice West, Johnny says, “I think I’ll stay here.” A few feet away the lost queen is now sitting on the sand, trying to compose herself.

  “Man,” says Danny, “this is the queer beach.”

  “I know,” says Johnny.

  Bewildered, Danny insists: “Ya sure you wouldn’t rather come work out with me?” He looks so helpless and pitiful standing there, with that body exercised way out of control; so isolated by it: doomed to the coterie of his “fans” at Mr. So-and-So shows, and to his “buddies”: to those who will adore his very grotesquerie: doomed always to surrogate sex.

  “I’m sure, Danny,” Johnny Rio says, with kindness; and he is very, very sure.

  Already, the clusters of men on the beach have noticed them, are looking on interestedly.

  “Okay, then,” Danny says sadly. “Seeya around. Be cool, kid.”

  “You, too, mano, you be cool, too,” Johnny says.

  Danny walks away, flexing his “lats.”

  Johnny moves toward where the “lost” queen is sitting.

  “Hi, honey,” Johnny says to her. He winks at her.

  “Huh-eye!” she drools at Johnny; she’s entirely composed.

  Now Johnny Rio is not coming on with this queen—although he spoke to her and winked. The fact is that even the Myth of the Streets allows a “butch number” to flirt with a queen—as long as he leaves the ultimate sexual pursuit to her. Beyond that, Johnny did what he did for the same reason he stopped last night to hear the Negro woman preaching: merely because she was so alone, because he wanted to make her feel better.

  Seeing Johnny already moving away from her, the queen calls out, “Why don’t you stick around?”

  “Some other time,” Johnny says; “I gotta be somewhere else soon, and I’m late. Another time.”

  “Whenever you say, doll,” she says. (Oh, Mary, she’ll tell her “sisters,” I’ll simply die all my life thinking of that living dream on the beach—the sexy number who saved me from those muscle queens!)

  At least she’s honest about what she is, Johnny thinks suddenly.

  And he thinks: Poor Danny, poor guy. Jesus, have I ever sounded like that? Don’t ever let me!

  A harsh, unexpected glimpse of The Myth makes Johnny force himself to stop thinking at that point.

  Dark, dark like a gypsy, with long straight black hair and yellowish eyes that jump out at him from the smooth, brown-tanned face, a gorgeous y
oung sea witch with a turned-up nose is bending to retrieve a beach ball that rolled toward the bench on whose back Johnny sits moodily on one of the limbo-stretches of beach. “Hi!” she says.

  “Hi!” Johnny answers.

  She moves away from him, wiggling her tiny cute butt, lovingly emphasized by a series of red-polka-dotted ruffles on the lower part of her bathingsuit. Glancing back twice, she joins a group of three young men and two other girls. They’re all tanned and goodlooking, all 18 or 19 or in their early 20’s. A guitar on the sand near them; a transistor radio turned up—rocking music raiding the air.

  Johnny watches the girl closely.

  Her back is to him for the first few moments as she plays with the others thrusting the ball back and forth—but not in a real game. Too cool for that, too hip, they’re using the ball simply to localize their restless movements. Slowly, the girl is maneuvering herself so that, now, she’s looking in Johnny’s direction.

  He’s interested in her; yes. She might even be able to cleanse the stagnating memory of Tina. But she’s with those others. Probably nothing would come of waiting, he tells himself. So he jumps quickly off the bench preparatory to leaving.

  Watching him, the girl misses the ball tossed at her.

  Johnny remains standing by the bench. His eyes follow her as she goes after the ball. On her way, she turns around as if to make sure he’s still there. Ignoring the ball, she stands over it and waves at him. A welcoming, perhaps beckoning, wave.

  Johnny waves back at her. But in farewell.

  FIVE

  THE NEGRO WOMAN with the raisin face is standing at the corner of 7th and Broadway again. “We awll doomed,” she’s saying, except that her voice is even less emotional now; “we awll go tomorrow”—although it’s already yesterday’s tomorrow, and there she still is.

  “We awll doomed.” Johnny Rio repeats the words, imitating the way she said them. Soon they’ll become like a recurring tune grooved into his mind.

  Because it was a decision made without deciding (his mind shut itself off, his body moved), Johnny will try to insert his “reasons” later in attempting to discover—when he looks back on what will happen tonight—what finally set it raging.

  Tina and her sad, sad child. The anger. Yes. And Tom, too—the shattered yesterdays. And someone else. Who? Danny. Yes, somehow Danny! And the feelings of loss on the once-familiar, now haunted, beach. And the Negro woman proclaiming—no, stating—doom . . . for tomorrow. So near.

  Yes, all that.

  Yet by then he was already in Los Angeles—and so he will try to search even further back. To the moments outside of Phoenix, perhaps—when he witnessed the ritual of death; the spectral birds in his path, seemingly rushing to welcome destiny that tenebrous morning; the moth-creatures on the windshield, their “numbers” up . . . so quickly. But he was already on his way here. So: Try further back. To Laredo. To a mirror . . . We awll doomed.

  (So soon!)

  But Johnny still doesn’t understand.

  All he knows is that from the time he left the beach he moved like a somnambulist.

  Johnny pauses in front of the bright marquee of the theater he walked out of only last night—pauses like someone about to descend into the turbulent city from a remote mountain. Lighted dots chase each other frantically:

  OPEN ALL NIGHT

  The ticket seller hardly looks up.

  Still like one hypnotized, reacting to some awful demand beyond his consciousness, Johnny Rio walks into the lobby.

  Up the stairs.

  To the balcony.

  Suddenly, the heavy mood lifts. Instantly it’s converted to euphoria. He’s like someone reacting to a powerful stimulant—like an alcoholic returning to his liquor, an addict to his drug: spuriously renewed, as if the storm that raged is over but within the calm, the manifestations of the devastation remain.

  He stands at the upstairs landing and looks at this balcony for the first time, as though it were a foreign country that must be conquered. It’s an enormous cavern of dark at first—so enormous that he can’t tell how far up it goes, nor how wide its last rows stretch at the top. The dark becomes heavier, thicker, gathering clouds of cigarette smoke as the rows of seats ascend—until, toward the vanishing top, the blackness, erasing everything, swallowing itself, could go on forever.

  Like the flailing wing of some icy bird, something passes over Johnny, smothering the euphoria. An internecine clash between his charged body and his numbed mind is taking place. He waits at the landing for the struggle to end. He tries to focus his attention on the screen.

  The movies are the same as last night’s. But the one with the loony woman isn’t on. It’s the other feature. A mousy man is claiming to have seen a ghost in an abandoned house.

  Directly below Johnny in the loge several people are scattered about. Between its last row and the first row of the balcony, there’s a wide aisle. In the lower rows of the balcony, people are sitting, carefully spaced several seats apart—unless they’ve come here together in the first place. Then, not unlike the limbo stretches of beach that separated the distinct groups, there’s a thinning beyond those first few rows, a bare sprinkling of people. This is the boundary, the division—an invisible separation tacitly accepted. Beyond that boundary is the deep, dark throat of the balcony.

  Square and squat like a huge gravestone, the projection room in the center splits the highest section into two pits on either side; an amber light hangs over each, without visible suspension: the lights are like yellow space saucers floating in the dark.

  Johnny welcomes those lights. He knows that when he finally moves up and his eyes adjust, he’ll see perfectly in this balcony. Its top rows will be just dark enough to be obscured from the sight of the people sitting in the lower rows, and light enough, within that uppermost area, for him to be seen clearly. He will not be—he would not want to be—a shadow.

  Now in those years he had spent earlier in this devouring city, Johnny never came specifically to dive into the black sea of the balcony’s last rows. That is usually not the turf of hustlers—and, then, Johnny considered himself “strictly a hustler.” Especially in the area of the hustling bars and of Pershing Square, it would have hurt him crucially—as it would have hurt any other hustler, financially—to join the free scene of movie theaters. Johnny had never even been tempted.

  When he went to theaters, it was to see a movie. Someone might sit next to him and make an advance, true; and if that person was interested enough to pay, they’d leave the theater, Johnny making sure to add the price of admission to what he asked for so he could return to finish seeing the interrupted movie.

  Tonight, though, he has come for another purpose. He still has almost seven hundred dollars, in his wallet—and some more in a bank in Laredo; so he can’t tell himself he needs money. Just knowing—from that man yesterday on Main Street, and indirectly from the queen in Pershing Square—that he can still make it that way—hustling—continues to satisfy that side of his ego.

  He moves under the halo of dim yellow light fallen on the landing. Eyes are looking down from behind the curtain of dark; he knows that—and so he stands there for long moments, allowing himself to be seen, wanting those on the top rows to hope he’ll make himself available. He can feel that tide of darkness flowing toward him to claim him. He moves slowly. Eyes in the black pool follow him. He stands in the aisle as if undecided whether to sit in the loge or the balcony. But there’s really no decision to be made now. He walks up. Slowly. The first row. The second. The third. Higher. Midway—at the “boundary” and still in the aisle—he waits again. I want them to want me, I want them to . . . love . . . me, he thinks. But of course he means “desire me”; there has always been a severe confusion between “love” and “desire” for Johnny Rio.

  He sits within the “boundary”—almost exactly halfway between those on top, waiting, and those below, watching the movie. Despite the trance leading him, he wasn’t able to walk all the way up. Not yet. Ne
vertheless, he can be seen clearly here from those upper rows. An image of how he will look from above guides him into a casual, sexually inviting pose; he sprawls on his seat, legs propped on the back of the seat in front.

  He’s acutely aware of the stares from the dark cave. He knows they’re on him.

  He’s been sitting there only a few minutes when a shadow melts from the darkness, flows along the row where he’s sitting, and materializes as a man only one seat away. He’s carrying a coat, which he places partly on his lap, partly on the empty seat. Johnny has seen all this without turning; he’s aware that the man’s face—an opaque oval at the extremity of Johnny’s vision—is fixed sideways toward him. That man’s interest established, Johnny looks at him openly now, sees him clearly, as he knew he would be able to in this light. Not yet 30, the man is well dressed, attractive.

  Johnny invites: He stretches his legs, both arms behind him—exhibiting his body as he often does instinctively, but, now, deliberately. Instantly, the man’s right arm encircles the back of the seat between them, the fingers of his hand—a smaller opaque object—moving up and down as if restless to find a place to settle. Finally, the hand drops to the empty seat, awaiting a sign from Johnny.

  Johnny gives it. Left elbow on the armrest, he allows his hand to dangle bare inches over his own crotch.

  The man’s fingers crawl toward Johnny’s thigh.

  Abruptly, Johnny moves his leg away, removes the invitation harshly.

  Obviously bewildered, the man doesn’t withdraw his hand yet; it remains glued there—as if the action will call attention to the thwarted movement. After a few seconds, he does remove it, like a thief.

  The moment he does so, Johnny invites again. Lightly, and only for an instant, he cups his own groin. Perversity has seized him (a perversity he’ll regret later, because he isn’t really cruel—but, now, his own needs are roaring): Leading this man on, he’ll force him to withdraw, encourage him again: Johnny is playing a sinister, exciting, brutal game, testing his desirability.