Numbers

by John Rechy

  He does a set of very wide chins, performing each strictly, lowering himself each time to a full dead-hang, feeling the muscles at the sides of his chest (which give him the V he’s so proud of) pull, contract, expand. Eleven repetitions. Another set: ten; then nine, nine again, then seven. Five sets.

  Narrowing his grip and pulling himself up rigidly over and over, he pumps up his biceps like rocks; reversing the grip, he works his triceps.

  Next with cables: He pulls the coiled wires stretching his chest. He follows this with wide-handed parallel dips between the backs of two bar stools; for his pectorals.

  Immediately after, he does many frog kicks for his waist: hanging from the bar, raising his legs sharply, squeezing his thighs against his abdomen, thrusting his feet out, at a 90-degree angle, holding that position to feel the severe pull on his abdominal muscles.

  Lying on the floor, the iron exercise-shoes strapped to his feet, he does 77 leg raises, very quickly, lifting his legs to a position over his head, almost touching the floor in back. Then 49 more. Then 42. (Seven being his lucky number, he often exercises in multiples of it.)

  Although in Laredo he does many different exercises with barbells and dumbbells (presses, curls, squats, and their variations)—working out, each session, up to two hours, sometimes three—six days a week—now he has concentrated on a few movements. And he performed each with fury, as if the flushed blood and the flowing perspiration will bathe something away, out of him. He wants to become very, very tired, to feel a blessed fatigue, a physical satisfaction that will quench this thing inside.

  But as the perspiration covers his body, he feels progressively more exhilarated. Weariness is determined to elude him. The more he pushes himself to exercise—repeating the same exercises for additional sets—the more hopped-up he feels—almost like when, years ago, he forced his endurance repeatedly by going on benzedrine pills to keep himself awake beyond the night, sometimes several nights in a row.

  In the full-length mirrror on the bathroom door, his body gleams golden with perspiration as he breathes very hard, panting.

  Staring at himself, he feels,—he knows with certainty—that looking like that he can make it wherever he wants in this vast city of doomed angels.

  He tried the pool—although he was apprehensive that Tina or her child would be there. But an older man and a woman are sitting serenely on lawn chairs before what had been her room. I wonder if that poor kid’s beating on another door, Johnny thought.

  The first few moments sunbathing under the white sun Johnny felt somewhat calmer, but as the sun grew warmer, more passionately lapping at his body, Johnny felt the full return of excitement and craving: augmented by the fact that a man—who looked like a payer—kept hovering about him by the pool, but the man himself turned Johnny off badly; he just emphasized the ubiquitous erotic ambience of southern California.

  By noon, having eaten in the motel coffeeshop, Johnny Rio is dressed and ready to go out. Loving the luxurious feel of that material, he’s wearing another silk shirt—also tightly tailored; this one is grayish-green. He wears his Levi’s a size bigger than his waist because he’s become convinced that loose jeans are more attractive than too-tight ones—which are faggy. He’s wearing the tanned, scuffed boots.

  I’m an irresistible number, he thinks vainly, not at all embarrassed to wink at himself in the mirror.

  But the cockiness wore off quickly.

  Back on Broadway, he panics curiously when he sees that the Negro woman isn’t preaching on her corner this Sunday afternoon—which would seem to be a very appropriate time. Is she here only in the evenings? Is Sunday her day off? Or does the awareness of doom hit her only at night when she’s alone?

  We awll doomed, his mind says with some wistfulness. He actually lingers at that corner, hoping she’ll turn up, his heart responding in anticipation when, half a block away, he sees a small dark figure carrying a black book. But it isn’t her; the black “book” is a black bag.

  Johnny buys his third ticket in three days for the same two features.

  Now he expects that, this being Sunday afternoon, the balcony will once again be filled as it was last night, but with different, new hunters who will want him like those others.

  Inside, he realizes immediately that it’s all different.

  The balcony is filled, yes, but with Sunday-afternoon couples and families seated all the way from the loge to what was the “boundary” last night—probably, too, all the way into the back rows. Evidently That World stays away on Sunday afternoons—at least from this theater: a tacit agreement perhaps. It’s actually possible that another theater nearby swings only on Sunday afternoons.

  Still, he walks all the way up the balcony. Two or three men at the top eye him with interest; but the male-and-female couples, necking, extend even to the last row. Nothing really could happen here—not what Johnny wants: not a recurrence of last night.

  Sitting in the crowded loge, Johnny tries watching the movie. Again. The thought occurs to him that he still hasn’t actually seen either feature, but he’s grown tired of them; it seems he’s seen the same scenes over and over.

  After about half an hour of trying futilely to follow the movie about the man who claims to have seen a ghost, Johnny is once again outside on the smoggy street. The warmth of today has intensified the smog. The Cloud looms heavily over the city.

  Automatically Johnny walks toward 7th Street. He pauses. Does he really want to find out if the Negro woman is there? If she is, it will make him feel mysteriously better. . . . After all, as long as she’s prophesying doom, then we’re still not doomed, he thinks; as long as she’s there to talk about, it’s all right.

  She still isn’t there.

  In this area of Broadway, there are several movie theaters. Johnny remembers one with a restroom like a dungeon. His purpose thwarted so far, his need is increasing alarmingly.

  Inside that theater, he goes straight to the restroom. A long row of stairs angles sharply at two different landings before leading to a narrow corridor which in turn leads to the restroom. Along the stairs several men, smoking or pretending to smoke, watch Johnny, perhaps trying to determine what purpose he’s down here for. Johnny pegs them right away as sexhunters. In the corridor outside the head, two more men. Inside, another at the urinal.

  Predictably, one of the men who was in the corridor comes in, stands near Johnny. Now another one, on the other side. Another one pretending to wash his hands, comb his hair—actually staring in the mirror at the reflection of the others’ backs. Johnny picks up immediately on what all this would mean: the waiting. The halting movements. The interrupted acts hardly begun. The making sure those who enter aren’t hostile—aren’t vice cops. The attempts to outlast the others. The nervousness. And, possibly, after all that waiting, nothing will have occurred.

  Frantically, the fever raging, Johnny tries the balcony. Another enormous cavern. But, to thwart the type of activities that occurred in the theater he was in last night, the whole upper third of the balcony is roped off. The bottom two-thirds of it is taken over by necking couples, families, children.

  Johnny leaves this theater too.

  Main Street. The smell of greasy fried chicken everywhere. The familiar bars he hustled. He’s tempted to go into Harry’s bar.

  No.

  He’s in a hurry, and bars take too long: Someone would buy him a drink, make conversation, make an implied or overt offer of money, invite him to a place perhaps a long distance away. . . . I don’t need money, Johnny reminds himself.

  The burlesque-movie theater. Occasionally, years ago, Johnny would go there when he’d be too tired from hustling but wanted to come back to the bars and the street. He remembered the frantic activity in that theater—an activity of which he had not been an immediate part—being “strictly a hustler.”

  Something incredible has happened to that theater, Johnny discovers when he enters. Every other seat has been removed. It’s a decaying mouth, with teeth hid
eously missing. A giant, crystalline light glares down rudely on the men—several servicemen—scattered about, separated like naughty children. Evidently the City Authorities discovered What Went On—and they conquered. For now at least.

  Where are the groping ghosts? Ghosts then, they’re now ghosts . . . of ghosts.

  On the screen, a woman with long blond hair is removing her clothes casually, almost bored. She looks disconcertingly like Tina.

  Johnny walks out. The third theater in about two hours.

  Across from Pershing Square there was another one. As with the one on Main Street, he’d go there when he was tired and wanted to come back or when rumors spread that the cops were going to raid the park for vagrants. There was action in that theater, too; but, again, and for the same reason, Johnny wasn’t strictly a part of it.

  Now, three years later, it’s become a girlie-movie house. The man who takes Johnny’s ticket has a look of hatred stamped indelibly on his face—like that on the faces of the City Authorities. Then what the hell is he doing here?

  Clusters of servicemen and others watch a cheap Grade Z movie made maybe 15 years ago, given a sexy new title that bears no relation to the story (Rape of the Strawberry Blonde on Avenue F), and redistributed. No sooner has Johnny sat down than the man who took his ticket is pacing the aisles with a flashlight (like a dog on a leash), up and down, pausing to look, hard, wherever two men are sitting together.

  Now Johnny knows why he works here: He actually has to search out the object he hates. Poor man, Johnny thinks.

  Coming here was another mistake.

  The movie is such a gray drag that Johnny leaves after a few minutes.

  Now where?

  For a brief period—when he was living here and decided to get away from downtown Los Angeles—Johnny moved into a small apartment only a block or two from MacArthur and Westlake parks and a block or two more from Lafayette Park. To hitchhike on Wilshire, he often had to cross those parks at night; and he had seen shadowy figures prowling. Intuitively, he knew of course what went on. But he also knew that such dark cruising parks—like movie heads and balconies—are unreliable hustling turf—too many there for free kicks. So Johnny would walk through them only when it was necessary.

  Once again on the street now, he decides he’ll go there. But first (glancing back at Pershing Square as at a house one has moved out of) he walks back to Broadway and 7th Street.

  The Negro woman isn’t there.

  Waiting for the evening to cloak the parks protectively, Johnny drives back to the motel. In the trunk of his car he brought a black-leather jacket—one he used to wear those many years ago: molded to his body like his shirts. Impulsively, when he was packed and ready to leave Laredo, he returned to his apartment and put the jacket in the trunk.

  He tries it on in his room, looks in the mirror. He looks terrific! Like a black panther. Hustling, he wore this jacket often at first; but after a while he wore it less and less, along with the black, buckled engineer boots he had, because the combination tended to attract masochists. And that’s never been Johnny’s scene. Besides, it’s his body Johnny wants admired, not his clothes.

  Reminding himself that Los Angeles nights are awfully chilly, he’ll wear it tonight; and he changes to black Wellington boots.

  Tonight Johnny Rio will look like a tough fallen angel.

  Outside, darkness has begun to gobble the long shadows of early evening. By the time he reaches Westlake, it will be night.

  Parking his car a few blocks away, Johnny walks up Wilshire—remembering (but he forces himself to stop quickly) that it was nearby that Tom picked him up that hot, hot evening. Deliberately, Johnny avoids that corner.

  Now Wilshire Boulevard splits what is technically one park into two: Westlake and MacArthur. In the first side Johnny explores, a large lake is taken over by rented boats; young couples are certainly necking on the black glossy water. On benches along the paths, old men and women, speaking a foreign language, linger into the evening. Not for hunters, this side.

  Emerging from a small tunnel that connects one side to the other, Johnny sees another lake, smaller—the lake he now remembers: a shallow one, no boats here. Ducks perch shivering on the grass. . . . There is an enormous shell—evidently for concerts; benches face the empty stage. It’s hillier here, in MacArthur Park; there are more trees, more shrubbery, more dark places. And: On a slight hill and in back of a row of benches, two shadows stand idly.

  At the rim of the park, along which Johnny will later discover is a walk ledged by flowers, other shadows glide slowly. Lone figures sit on benches in the darkest parts of the park. A man leans on the wooden railing on a small bridge. Two outlines separate from the dark and walk out of the park together.

  As in the dark movie-theater balcony, there is here something of pantomime, something of a frozen dream, a trance, of something dazed, traumatized, unreal. A flowing dance of ghosts.

  Johnny walks up the small hill nearest him, where benches curve in an arc; walks to the top—a symbolic position. One of the two men there moves toward him quickly. The other surrenders to another puddle of dark, disappears. Now Johnny walks down a few feet, sits on the back of a bench, his feet propped on the seat. He’s chosen this bench deliberately because it’s almost hidden by an enormous, shaggy tree, its tattered branches grotesque and gloomy in the moonless night.

  The man who has moved toward Johnny sits about ten feet away. He appears slender and youngish.

  As he did last night, for just a brief moment, Johnny lets his hand touch his own groin. Withdrawing it quickly, he glances at the man, determining his interest. In answer, the man moves next to Johnny’s propped legs. Johnny repeats the gesture, wanting the man to reach up quickly and touch him there—needing that contact badly.

  Instead: “Nice night,” the man says.

  He wants to talk. It’ll take forever. “Yeah,” Johnny answers tersely.

  The man is staring between Johnny’s legs. But he persists: “New in town?”

  “Yeah,” Johnny says again.

  “Rode in with a gang? . . . I mean, you look like a motorcyclist; and they travel in gangs, don’t they?” the man asks awkwardly.

  “I drove in alone,” Johnny says.

  “Working yet?”

  “Yeah.” Hustling, Johnny would have answered: “Nope.”

  “I’m from Michigan myself,” the man says, settling back on the bench, perhaps encouraged by what he thinks he’s found out about Johnny—if he’s answered truthfully. “I’ve lived in L.A. for years, though.”

  Now Johnny is very, very impatient. He wants this man to make an advance—or move away. He’s trying to sound me out, Johnny thinks; trying to figure what my scene is—hustler (“Working yet?”), mugger or decoy (“. . . with a gang?”)—as if I’d tell him if I was a mugger, for gods-sake! He’ll take very long, Johnny determines, and then he’ll ask me if I want a cup of coffee. I’ll have to make him move, he decides, not wanting to abandon this place, which is so appropriate to his purpose.

  His voice turns purposely rough: “Wahdayaaftuh, mon?”

  “Pardon?” the man says.

  “What? Are? You? After? Man?” Johnny repeats.

  The man becomes very nervous right away. “Oh, well, uh, nothing, really, I just, well, I was just taking a walk, and I, uh—. . . Excuse me.” He moves hurriedly away.

  That’s that!

  Predictably, Johnny’s sorry for the man. But I’m in a hurry! he explains to himself urgently as if that will justify what he’s done, may do—no matter how cruel.

  As the man leaves, other shadows shift course, pass before Johnny, to the side, in back. Occasionally someone sits near him, studies him, moves closer, sits down, stands up, moves away. Johnny realizes what’s happening: He looks too tough—like the mugger or decoy that other man at first suspected him of being. And despite the fact that he isn’t hustling, he’s automatically assumed the hustler’s stance, the look. The very same aspects that strongly a
ttract those here to him also make them suspicious of him—and afraid. He considers removing the jacket; that might help. But it’s cool, almost cold. The sky is gray and watery.

  Boldly, a blond, curly-haired, well-made man in his 30’s approaches Johnny, almost defiantly. “Hell-oft.’” he bellows—an angry greeting.

  “Hiyuh,” Johnny answers.

  The blond man faces the shadows moving centrifugally. “Look at them!” the man says, and there’s no disguising his outrage. “All those guys—out for a one-night stand!”

  “And what are you doing here,” Johnny asks quickly, to keep the scene moving and avoid another waste of time.

  “Me?” The man faces Johnny, frowning as if greatly annoyed that the question came up. “Me? Hell, what I’m looking for—. . . Well, the chances of its being here—. . . well, they’re one in a—. . . You name it: high odds.” He laughs bitterly. “But you wonder what I’m looking for, right?” Before Johnny can answer, he goes on: “I’m looking for: Someone I Can Really Love!” the man blurts crazily.

  “Oh, wow!” Johnny can’t help deriding. “In this park? You’re putting me on!” What the hell now! he wonders, struck by the man’s fantastic approach.

  “Precisely!” the man says. He raises a finger like a prophet. “You see, you think it’s remote. You scoff at the very idea of love.” He sounds like a poet from long ago. Very long ago.

  “Yeah. Especially in this park,” Johnny says. The man may be nutty, but Johnny is intrigued by him. More, he’s touched powerfully by the man’s tone of profound despair.

  “But why not?” the man pleads passionately. “Why is it impossible for love to be . . . poised . . . waiting . . . in the dark? Why is it impossible for love to be hiding in the shadows?”

  Why? Johnny thinks. And he answers himself: Because it isn’t there, that’s why.

  “And look at you!” the man lashes abruptly at him. “Looking so tough and . . . desirable. . . . But desirable for what? For someone to take you home and blow you once and say goodbye when you say goodbye! Is that love! Is that anything! Just by the way you look, the way you strutted (I heard you across the park!), the way you swaggered—by all that—you do away with everything that might be possible between two people: decent emotions, friendship, real ties—. . .”