by John Rechy
Sitting facing Johnny—but pointedly looking away (just as Johnny pointedly looks away from him each time their eyes meet accidentally—and they do so recurrently)—Guy Young has just poured himself another large shot of liquor, as if to quench a moody restlessness which is already apparent.
“You’ve been in Laredo three years?” Sebastian sounds incredulous, perhaps because he knows so much about the turbulent life Johnny led here. “But whatever can you do there?”
“I work for my father’s brother. In the evenings. At home. In the day I exercise a lot.” He flexes; the silk shirt protests lovingly.
“Oh, my, it does show!” says Emory. “I should exercise,” he says somewhat distractedly.
“And here—now that you’re Back—for ten days?—are you still leading: ‘a very, very quiet life’?” Sebastian asks.
Now as a kid, Johnny Rio loved to go to confession—rather, he loved the feeling afterwards of purity. Now that he no longer believes in God, he’s replaced strict confession with a compulsive honesty about his sexual activities, but that leaves him without absolution—without a substitute for salvation. . . . Johnny confesses: “No—I’ve been back only a few days—since Friday—and I’ve already made it with 16 people!”
“Sixteen! Oh, I am envious!—and heartbroken,” says Emory.
“I’m terribly impressed!” says Tony.
“Marvelous!” says Paul.
Sebastian said nothing.
Aware that he hasn’t made it clear that he spoke in despair when he mentioned the 16 people, Johnny tries to clarify the matter this way: “But it shouldn’t be like that—not this time. I mean: Like I wasn’t too happy when I was hustling and fucking around. (You know that, Sebastian.) That’s why I left—I just knew I had to. And I kept away for three years. But—just like I knew I had to leave—I knew I had to return; I guess because I had to know if I’d really changed in those three years—changed inside—and to find out if I could stop hiding like I have been in Laredo—scared all the time even when I didn’t know it.”
Swallowing his second drink, Guy looks openly at Johnny for the first time since they were introduced. “But now—. . . Now—. . .” Johnny goes on. “And it’s not for money any more—just for kicks!” He feels infinitely frustrated. He doubts that he’s been able to convey the mysterious seriousness this has for him. He had wanted to verbalize the strange fear he felt today. “Something’s ‘off,’” is how he attempts to describe it again.
Still, Paul is already chiding him, though gently: “I’m sure all this has to do with the fact that like all so-called immoral people you’re much too moral, John. Too bogged down in guilt.”
Tony: “Imaginary guilt.”
Paul: “I’m absolutely convinced it merely has to do with all that nonsense about original sin—which was clearly devised by the impotent to outlaw fun!”
Emory: “How clearly you’ve convinced me!”
Nevertheless, Johnny tries again, floundering, wanting to indicate that it doesn’t have to do with guilt so much as with something out of control: “And I haven’t screwed around every one of those days. Like today, I actually forced myself not to go to the park.”
“Of course you mean Griffith Park,” Emory says; admitting: “I’ve heard all about it. It’s supposed to be the most divinely wild place in the world!—but too much for me! . . . And did you read some time back about the hermit who was discovered to have been living there undetected for two years—sleeping on leaves, eating whatever he could find?” he asks everyone.
Johnny remembers how the park looked in the darkness of his awake dream. He shudders at the thought of someone “living” there. “It’s possible—it’s a hell of a big park,” he says. “I’m sure he wasn’t in the same sections I mean, though.”
Guy continues to drink silently.
“Anyway! Why did you force yourself not to go today?” Tony wants to know.
“Because—. . .” Johnny was about to say: Suddenly I was afraid! But he feels the futility of trying to convey the strange, mounting horror of—. . . Of what? Being swallowed.
“Perhaps you should try—only because you imply there should be something else—and only because of that—perhaps you should try . . . a fuller range of experience,” Sebastian fills the silence for Johnny.
“You mean why don’t I come on with somebody—mutually?” They all know what his one-sided sexual scene is: the single homosexual act which is his symbol of sexual power: to have his body adored.
“In a general sense, yes,” says Sebastian, “but more what it leaves unsaid.”
“If I wanted to, I would,” Johnny says staunchly.
“It may be that, among all those numbers of people, you’ve been looking for the number,” Emory suggests.
“But the number is death!” Sebastian surprised everyone by saying—though he smiled and said it lightly.
“Oh, how dreary and black and morbid and—. . . boring!” Emory laughs. “I very clearly meant the one person!”
“Anyway!” says Sebastian to Johnny. “Your ten-day period of discovery isn’t up yet. And the discovery of a lifetime can occur—. . . in one second!”
At the candlelit dinner table, random conversation:
Sebastian on using real people in novels: “It’s axiomatic: One can say anything one wants about a person’s morals—describe them as black as black—but never anything disparaging about his physical appearance!”
Paul: “I’m unswervingly convinced!”
Emory on camp: “I wish that giddy woman who started the populace fussing had shut up. My butcher the other day offered me a ‘campy leg of veal.’”
Tony on movies and women: “It was marvelous! For once they allowed the woman to tower over the man. That way she even looked like a man-eater.”
Emory, as if grading an essay: “Perfect!”
Sebastian on heterosexuality: “It’s brought about the downfall of all the great civilizations.”
Tony: “I’ve never doubted it for an instant.”
Paul on Sodom: “I’m convinced the real reason Lot’s wife looked back is that she wanted to make sure the city was razed—otherwise, she’d go back to join the fun. She turned into salt in simply absolute boredom at the prospect before her!”
“Oh, the poor dear,” says Emory.
Johnny is reacting to the mixture of wine and liquor; he hasn’t drunk in so very long. The conversation at the table is beginning to float in and out of his awareness.
Sixteen.
Out of nowhere he “heard” the number in a part of his mind, which then “said”: It could have been 19 or 20 or 21—if you’d gone today.
Dinner over, they sit in the living room drinking.
Sixteen! Johnny’s mind insists. The Labyrinth, the Cliff, the Trail. . . . Where are the people who were there?—now that the park is dark, black, closed, dark? Where? The Nest . . . . And where’s the curly-haired guy wearing the sailor’s cap? I should’ve at least said so long to him. That might’ve helped. He must feel rotten. . . . And all, all, all those people. Without names.
Suddenly the Fear chokes Johnny with iron fingers.
I’ll never go back again!
The sudden resolution is so strong, the Fear so encompassing, that he can hardly wait for tomorrow to prove he won’t return to the park.
All at once he notices that everyone is staring at him in what appears to be either apprehension or shock, as if awaiting some angry response from him—all except Guy, who’s merely looking at him. Johnny realizes that someone just asked him something. “What?”
“With all those people—did you ever have . . . several at the same time?” The question came—completely unexpected and in thick, liquored, slurred tones—from Guy. It’s the first time he’s addressed Johnny since they mumbled a few words on being introduced.
Now Johnny might have resented the blunt question from someone he’s just met, and with others around, if it weren’t that he perceived no real malice in it;
it was obviously an expression of fascination released perhaps by the liquor. Rather than angering him, the fact of that fascination saddens him in a curious way.
The others are still looking on in disbelief—not realizing that the question didn’t bother him. In fact, he would have answered; but Tony said quickly: “John, may I show you my recent drawings?”
“I’ll come too,” Emory says, flinging a look like a dart at Guy.
Guy merely takes a long, long swallow of his drink.
In Tony’s studio. Outside the main house. A cool sea breeze assures Johnny he’s not drunk at all.
“Of course, I did want to show you my drawings,” Tony is saying as he brings them out—black-and-white portraits, mostly of writers, dancers, actors and actresses, “but I also wanted to stop Guy from going on so rudely.”
Emory: “It’s a bore. . . . What an interesting expression on Marla Hedwig’s face. That’s the first time anyone’s ever pictured her not showing her legs.”
By deliberately emphasizing the eyes and mouths and merely sketching in the other details in his portraits, Tony has achieved a haunting, haunted effect, to which Johnny immediately responds. Each face seems to be on the brink of self-discovery.
Tony: “Yes, I quite like it myself. . . . I’m sure Guy won’t stay at Paul’s after he starts acting again.”
Emory: “I’m absolutely convinced he’ll move out immediately. As much as we all love dear Paul, we’re not blind—and whatever one may think of Guy, he is very goodlooking—and, well, after all, his lovers have been people like Tim Story, who’s the rage on Broadway.”
Determined not to mention Guy, Johnny makes comments on Tony’s drawings as he exhibits each.
Emory: “Do notice what Tony does with the eyes! Oh, that’s Barbara Banner!”
Tony: “Her famous nose gave me the most difficulty.”
Emory explains to Johnny: “Now that Guy has condescended to work on television and films, he’s been staying with Paul.” To Tony: “You did catch the nose just right.”
Now it’s perfectly obvious to Johnny that they don’t like Guy because they suspect he’s staying with Paul only out of convenience until he gets work. Instinctively, Johnny “knows” Guy’s scene: two or three relatively long affairs with men—always very handsome—and as many shorter interludes with others: a completely “safe,” if potentially emotionally complicated, scene—the antithesis of the tumultuous worlds Johnny has known.
Tony: “And, you know, Guy is quite a good actor. I saw him on Broadway in Dusty Moon; he played the young romantic lead.”
Emory: “I’d be the last to say he’s not talented—probably—but, oh, he can be so aggressive—like just now with John!” Struck by a pang of let’s-be-fair-though, Emory adds: “Of course, he must be under terrific pressure. I mean, his career—leaving the stage for films.”
Tony: “Yes—and he’s rushing—in more ways than in his career. There’s something else driving him. He’s on fire.”
As if they’ve become much too grave, Emory adds quickly: “Well! Whatever it is, it’s an absolutely devastating bore!”
Then: Johnny felt sorry for Guy. Even sympathetic. . . . On fire . . . rushing . . . driven. . . . Johnny Rio might have overheard that about himself, though his life is so different from Guy’s.
Back in the living room with the others—and out of the cool breeze—Johnny knows the sobriety was spurious; he’s quite high.
“And how many will there be . . . this time?” Guy asks immediately, as if he’s been waiting for Johnny to return. “You know—how many? People. You said . . . 16? . . . in . . . few days. What’s your . . . goal?”
Again, Guy’s question was asked in abject fascination, a disturbed fascination; again without malice, with just that saddening, exacerbated, drunken fascination with Johnny’s scene.
In a strange state of inexplicable franticness (and—adding to the sudden quandary—at the same time that he knows for certain that he won’t return to the park because a serious threat exists)—Johnny reaches quickly—desperately—for a number: “Thirty,” he says. It seemed to have been on the edge of his awareness, waiting to be summoned. “Thirty in ten days,” he repeats, as if that will enable him to understand his reaction.
“Why 30?” Sebastian is interested.
Johnny shrugs. He still doesn’t understand what made him answer what he did (though his mind suspects there’s a “reason”)—especially since at that very moment he knew without doubt he’d never return to the park.
Guy seemed about to continue his strange questioning of Johnny. But:
“We must be going!” An embarrassed Paul gets up abruptly.
Suddenly—exactly like this—while the others stand by the fireplace saying goodnight—Guy sits next to Johnny on the same couch.
Looking lost—curly black hair over his forehead, one hand resting there—and terror very clear in his voice, a note of doom—Guy is saying to Johnny: “I know too—but in a different way—. . . When you said ‘scared’—. . . Like there are times when I can’t sleep at all, I’m so fuckin afraid.”
And Johnny, hearing his own words as if someone else were speaking them: “Yeah—like someone shook you and you’re suddenly awake—alone, but with yourself—. . .”
Guy: “And everything’s so . . . weird!”
Johnny: “And even when it’s going right, you know there’s something all, all wrong.”
Guy: “Especially at night—. . .”
Johnny: “But even on the brightest after-goddamn-noon!”
And Guy: “Like time is fighting you—and there’s never enough!”
And Johnny: “Yeah—but at the same time there’s too much . . . time—. . .”
Then they were both silent, until—grasping for lucidity out of the drunken spell which engulfed them without preparation—Johnny Rio muttered: “We’re gonna regret this tomorrow, man”—and he means getting drunk, the confessions of dark fears, the revelation of possible vulnerability.
Guy says: “Only if we don’t make it tonight.”
Johnny has grown used to the fantastic occurring in his life. It’s become the expected. But now he wonders if he heard right. “What?” he asks.
“Make it.” Guy whispers so the others can’t hear—but he forms each word distinctly: “I. Gotta. Make. It. With. You.”
Johnny hears himself ask: “How can we?”
“I’ll walk away from Paul’s car,” Guy says, “and I’ll wait for you. I know a place—we can walk there.”
“Okay,” Johnny hears himself say.
“Okay,” Guy echoes.
The night is foggy. The Cloud is hovering lower than usual.
By his car, Johnny says so long to Tony and to Sebastian. (“You’re sure you can drive?” “Yes, of course!”) As if belatedly understanding Johnny’s earlier franticness—if indeed he didn’t before—Sebastian invites him to come up whenever he wants: “We’ll have a long talk—if you care to,” he offers earnestly.
“And do call me!” says a tipsy Emory, driving away jerkily.
Across the street—shadows—Paul and Guy seem to be arguing.
Reeling, Johnny gets into his car. Paul into his. Guy waits on the street a few moments. A desolate outline in the dark mist. Johnny starts his engine. Guy walks ahead. Paul calls out to him. Guy waits—and then he gets into the car with Paul.
Now the two cars rush away in opposite directions.
Jesuschrist!
Would I have gone with Guy?—hurt Paul? Johnny asks himself over and over.
He keeps reaching dead ends in the canyon, backing up, taking wrong roads. Finally he’s on the Malibu highway.
No, I wouldn’t’ve! I would’ve driven away. Then why the hell did I ask, “How?” when he suggested making it.
He parks his car near the shore as the world threatens to tumble blackly on him.
Hell, Guy propositioned me! he reminds himself.
The ocean roars like an echo of something infinitely m
ore turbulent.
Of course I won’t go back—not Sunday, not ever!
He leans back on the seat of his car, shutting his eyes tightly as if that will also shut out his thoughts.
I just asked, “How?” figuring he knows his business, he’s hip to my one-way scene, and if he wants to—. . .
Dawn is breaking the fog in a lightening arc at the edge of the starless sky.
ELEVEN
ALWAYS BEFORE, at each crisis of his life, the only salvation Johnny Rio has found from total, shattering anarchy has been the grasping for and finding of a reason for his actions—no matter how ugly, no matter how wild those actions: a frame to contain his fantastic existence. Whether or not it’s the real reason (he has never looked too closely)—a reason has always emerged to save him from disorder, to keep him from surrender to chaos, from complete disintegration. (When he hustled: I go with men only because I need the money they give me. And so on: the entire Myth of the Streets.)
Erected on such a flimsy foundation, then, his life, like a pyramid of playing cards, requires perfect balance: for every action, a reason. One without the other can topple Johnny’s whole world. Like a row of dominoes.
Although he can function for a time in a state of suspension—as he has for the past few days—inevitably a questioning takes place.
Like now.
As he stands in the Arena of the park.
Yesterday, he was struck by the anonymous horror, the emotional carnage of the sexual hunt in the park; and he resolved never to return. But today he merely got into his car and drove here—although the fear that kept him away yesterday has not abated. Until he felt the Fear of the park so acutely, no reason for his actions was needed; there was no crisis. But now an action exists without a reason—with, instead, many reasons against the action; and this signals a crisis.
Of course he’s aware of all this only as a festering irritation, something which blisters his consciousness and makes him feel that he’s “floating”—drifting, afraid, in what has become a hostile but deceptively welcoming sea: the Park.
It’s Friday afternoon, a few minutes after 1:00. Late—because Johnny Rio woke up slightly before noon—miraculously without a hangover and curiously relieved to find he couldn’t remember what Guy Young looked like. No, not at all. In fact, the incidents of last night are like slides projected in rapid succession on the screen of his memory: sharp images changing instantly. Like this:
