The Coming of the Night

by John Rechy

  His cock was average.

  Larger than average, he amended. He had read in a men's fitness magazine that the average cock was five inches—and his was over that, by half an inch, at least, and the fact that he wasn't all that tall, five feet six, made it look even bigger. He did worry at times that the magazine had been referring to cock size when it was soft. Of course it hadn't. So he could put that out of his mind.

  For all his muscles, Ernie didn't consider himself a “muscleman”—too odd-looking, like that spooky Lars Helmut in porn.

  “Hey, Lars, huccome you have to hold your arms way out and walk funny?”

  “Coz my lats get in da way and my thighs bump each odder.”

  “Yeah, well, how do you like this?'’ And Ernie would pose before him, showing the symmetry of his muscular body

  “Yah—I vish I looked like dat.”

  “Too late, guy”

  So Ernie preferred to regard himself as a “bodybuilder.”

  Hey! He knew what he would do. Have sex. Gay guys knew where to go at any hour of the day to get it. After he worked out at the gym—shiny pumped bodies all around, sometimes some good cruising there—he might take in a porn movie at that theater on Sunset in Silverlake. He liked to join the real action along the dark rows while he pretended he was making it with the guys on the screen. He was proud that porn was a part of gay life. Straight people felt dirty about it. Not gay guys. Gay people wouldn't hesitate to elect a hunky porn star president. Didn't some gay guys live their lives like they were in a porn movie?

  None of that solved the present problem—he was horny right now. Too horny to set up the projector for one of his super-8 sex flicks, especially since, a couple of times before, he'd become so excited at the prospect that he'd come before he'd looped the film.

  His hand on his stiffening cock, he closed his eyes and ran through the scenes of some of the movies he'd watched recently. What scene, what scene? He rejected anything with Rex Steed, dead meat with all his I'm-straight-don't-kiss bullshit.

  “Ernie, I used to think I was straight, until I saw you.”

  “Yeah, Rex? Well, hey, tough shit, because you don't turn me on,

  guy.”

  Ernie chose to recall a favorite scene from Drill Deep with Wes Young, a favorite of his. The movie had been directed by Z.Z.—obviously a real macho guy himself, bound to have big muscles because only a real macho could know, that smack-on, what men wanted from men, right?

  In that movie—Ernie saw it vividly in his mind again—Wes Young, a construction worker, has gone home with Sal Domingo or Tony Piazza—Ernie couldn't tell them apart. Wes urges Tony—definitely Tony Piazza—to rim his ass, lick his balls, and suck his big cock, now, yeah, yeah!

  Ernie looked down at his cock, comparing it with Wes's in the movie. Wes's was longer. But not all that much longer, guy.

  Tony Piazza—no, Sal Domingo—follows Wes's instructions to a “T,” rimming, licking, sucking—

  Ernie opened his eyes, to stop the sexy recollection, but they fell on his own tensed body, and—too late—his cum spurted out. A bad shoot, like he hadn't really come. But that would only make him hornier later, and soon, right?

  He got up, stretched. He turned on the radio to the station that still played great disco hits, and guess what was playing? Linda Clifford! One of his favorites that really said it, “Shoot Your Best Shot”—and that's what he always tried to do, right?

  For such a muscular guy, he sure could dance, Ernie complimented himself as he twisted about to the music, his larger than average cock bopping. This would make a good scene in a movie, right?—maybe doing it with his briefs on at first? He'd be good at one of those nude-dancing places that were happening around town. Hey, everything was sexy nowadays. He'd come out dressed as—a fireman! He'd keep on his cap and floppy boots, and this one hunky guy in the audience would take his own clothes off, a bodybuilder like him, and—

  He almost shot, and it would have been another bad shoot. He sat down, to cool off. They said disco was on the way out. Never! Not in gay bars. New Wave taking over? Bullshit.

  He wouldn't want this to get out, with his muscular image, but every now and then he did like a good old-fashioned musical—he had two recordings of Gypsy. He didn't keep the albums out, though—who would?—because that would make people think he was a musical-comedy queen, which he wasn't.

  He stood up, threw out his hands, and belted out—

  “Look at Rose!”

  He stopped, nervous.

  What if that old queen in the apartment down the way from his heard him? She'd spread it around, right? She'd run into him at Evita in the Music Center, and smiled a knowing smile, and, then, the next time he passed her apartment, and he was flexing and without a shirt so she'd eat her heart out, she played the campiest number from it on her stereo so that he had to swagger past her window to the strains of “Don't Cry for Me, Argentina.”

  Hey, he liked sports, too, right? With a group of his friends, he'd watched the Raiders whup up the Eagles in the Super Bowl. They'd drunk some beers, had dips ‘n’ chips, and punched at each other in celebration when the Raiders scored. Was he a baseball fan? Hadn't the baseball strike sent him into a funk? Fuckin’ baseball players—he wouldn't forgive them, striking like that and always groping themselves on the field. Boxing didn't do much for him—droopy trunks on those beat-up guys—but like everyone else he was waiting to see what Muhammad Ali did. You had to admire that old guy, still sluggin’. A credit to his race, right?

  The cooling perspiration felt good on his body. He wouldn't have any trouble making out, no, sir. He never did. Almost never. Well—It still amazed him that at times he could go to a bar, and everyone—almost everyone—would look at him, even comment on his body—and then nobody would approach. Those times, going home alone after all the attention, Ernie marveled at the gay world, all its odd games. Safe to say that no one ever avoided rejection. It was just part of it.

  Size queens!

  Ernie lay back in his bed, holding his cock, semi-hard again. He hated size queens, those guys who asked how big your dick was. One guy had once said, “You've got a great bod, but I don't know a single bodybuilder who's not—” He had held his thumb and his index finger real close together. There was another guy who had told him, “I don't mind that you're not hung because I go for big muscles like yours.” Even though the guy was into one of his favorite scenes—body worship—Ernie couldn't keep his hard-on, especially since the son of a bitch kept saying, “Relax, that's okay, really.”

  Did most bodybuilders have small dicks? Muscles didn't shrink your cock, right? Maybe steroids did, but he didn't take that stuff. He had nothing to worry about because he was bigger than average.

  The radio station was playing a song he didn't like about some kind of war. Great beat, sure, odd group—Kano—lousy words. Hey, the wars were over for gay people.

  The wind coaxed Ernie's attention. He stood up and looked out the window. Those eery winds were attacking palm trees, tearing off fronds, which lay scattered about the street as if they were wounded.

  Mitch and Heather

  MORNING

  Mitch pushed himself into her, focusing his attention on how sexy she was, auburn hair, milky breasts ready for licking, sucking, flat stomach flaring into the curves of her hips, light brush of reddish hair at the parting, moist lips eager for cock—his cock—inside her, naked legs.

  “You're hurting me. You're forcing yourself.”

  “I'm not, goddammit, I want you.”

  Heather eased away from under him. “I don't want to.”

  “Just say that, but don't blame me.”

  “Okay I don't want to. Not that way.”

  Mitch fell back on the bed, his head turned away from her. Earlier in the week, this had almost happened, but at the last moment urgency had flushed his cock and hardened it.

  They had known each other for almost three months. She twenty-five, he three years older, two attractive people,
with athletic bodies, they both liked “healthy food.” When Pat Benatar's “Fire and Ice” came on, they would both reach for the volume control to turn up the sound. They loved sexy foreign movies and had recently seen Spetters but were equally “grossed out by that one scene.” Both had started reading, but had not yet finished, The White Hotel. "You gotta really think about it,” he had told her, and she had agreed. After they saw For Your Eyes Only and he commented on the array of beautiful women in bikinis, she said she could hardly wait to see that new Tarzan in Tarzan, the Ape Man.

  They jogged regularly along the beach, past vibrant young men and women skating, running, biking. On the sand, they would lie side by side, surrounded by other sensual figures on a stretch of beach that appealed to attractive young people. At times, playfully, without arousing each other's jealousy—an easy banter between them—he and Heather would comment on the attractiveness of those about them, she finding fault with the women he pointed out, and he dismissing the men she admired.

  Earlier this morning, on the beach—already crowded because of the heat—Heather had startled him by asking in a serious tone, “Who are you looking at?”

  “That girl—she's got a terrific bod, but not as sexy as yours,” he said, with their usual playfulness.

  Heather removed her sunglasses. “She's gorgeous.”

  Glancing in their direction, the woman, dark hair bunched behind her, stretched her bronzed body, covered only by three tiny triangles of a white bikini. Next to her, a man removed his sunglasses and followed her gaze toward them.

  “The guy next to her's not bad either,” Heather said—not the usual light tone.

  Mitch stood up. The Sant'Ana, rising, was unnerving him, had begun to unnerve him earlier, sand whipping about, gliding along the beach, the water agitated as it swept onshore toward him. “It's getting too windy and hot,” he said. “Let's leave.”

  Now as they lay in her bedroom, in her duplex in West Los Angeles, he listened to the intermittent gasps of wind outside, and rage and bewilderment at the earlier failure gathered at his groin. He twisted over her, pushing his tongue into her mouth. His hands clasped her breasts, held her rigid nipples to his mouth, moistening them, biting. He mounted her, shoving as his cock refused to respond. She eased him away.

  “Goddammit,” he said, “I'm ready now, but you're not helping.”

  “You're damn right I'm not, not when you're trying—-just trying—to rape me.” She wrenched away from him and stood up.

  “What the hell's the matter with you today?” he demanded. “It started on the beach.”

  “Yeah, when you kept staring at that guy.”

  “That guy?” He shook his head in disbelief at her words. “Christ, I saw him only because he was with that great-looking woman.”

  “He wasn't with her, Mitch. Just near her. He's been around before. He was looking at you and you were looking at him. He followed you when you went to the rest room earlier.”

  “Jesuschrist! I didn't even see him there. So what if we both had to piss at the same time? What the fuck are you trying to do? You blamed me earlier for not making it, and then you admitted you didn't want to, and just now you wouldn't even try to respond. Maybe you were staring at that woman. I've seen you looking at lots of girls on the beach. Maybe that's why we can't fuck anymore—why you don't want to.”

  Dave

  MORNING

  You'll turn into someone that I choose,

  Look in the mirror and be surprised—

  Dave did, in the bedroom of his house on the crest of pretty Mount Washington, up from the Eagle Rock section of downtown Los Angeles. He touched the cultivated dark stubble on his angular face, lingered on the scar he had given himself on his cheek. Over the sounds of Man 2 Man pumping—hard, dude—into his bedroom—he had speakers even here, in his garage—he heard the panting of the Sant'Ana, doubling the sensation of this sexy day as he looped his fingers over his beltless jeans, lowering them to the edge of the dark triangle of hair that inverted the one on his bare chest.

  You'll see a person you won't recognize—

  I'll always be a mystery, a figure in the night,

  a thought of your own fantasy—

  He did an about face away from the mirror and stood over his newest acquisitions, brand-new replacements and additions, picked up first thing this morning and now laid out on his bed like a body without a face. Fitted black chaps open at the crotch, black leather cap with an inclined visor, shiny black leather vest—tailored—handcuffs, black bike boots, black leather gloves, lots of close-knit chains, and, to loop over his black belt, a heavy key ring—looped on the left side to proclaim he was a top man, the one in command, a hot master, dude.

  They can live their lives their own way—

  Let the rest of the world ignore us—Life's too short, and that's a fact—

  Yeah!

  He slung one of the chains over his neck and let it dangle over his chest. He was ready for action, rough gay action, no vanilla sex for him!

  I'll always be out running wild—

  Looking at his new outfit—more than a thousand dollars’ worth, dude—made his cock throb under his jeans, ripped carefully near the groin. Smell the new leather! He rubbed the boots on his stubbled cheek. He put them on. He opened the top button of his jeans so that a few dark hairs peeked out. He located the cap almost over his eyes, so he'd peer out in a fuck-you attitude. He turned around to see his reflection in the full-length mirror of his bedroom.

  Oh, yeah! Tough dude!

  At thirty-five, Dave wasn't handsome. He was better than that, much better—who wanted to be a pretty boy?—he was masculine and sexy. Best of all, he looked tough—like a gay man should look—wiry body, lean face always slightly unshaved, his dark hair beginning to recede—and damn if that didn't make him look sexier, rougher, meaner. He twisted his arm to display his large tattoo in the mirror, a griffin. He touched the scar on his cheek. That scar affirmed his toughness. He had brought a sharp knife in a jagged line from his lower cheek to his chin, under his lips, until he drew enough blood to make the scar permanent.

  He planted his booted feet apart. His cock bulged under his Levi's and almost pushed out at the rip. The odor of leather overwhelmed him.

  Leather, and its world, dude, the world of S & M—that was where the new gay frontier was, true liberation.

  You see me in the midnight air,

  I'm not looking for someone to care—

  L.A. was behind the times, new times comin’. New York and San Francisco—heavy stuff there, dude. The Bulldog Baths! Real jail cells! The Toilet Room! Get down pig style. The Mineshaft! Piss-tubs, fuck-slings—

  Time for L.A. to grow up, learn what it was all about, new sensations, not for sissies, dude, give it like a man, take it like a man, yeah—all willing, trust, ultimate trust, the trust of masculine brothers—proud gay men!—totally liberated, everything allowed, heighten all senses, expose the body to all sensations, pain and pleasure, search for limits, discover none—

  Hard-hitting love,

  the kind that's hard to crack,

  Hard-hitting love

  that pulls no punches back—

  From his pocket, Dave took out an ampule of amyl nitrite, popped it, and shoved it into his nose to inhale as long as he could. The chemical vaporescence raced to his brain, encircling him in an encroaching darkness that gradually opened, leaving only a powerful craving lodged in his groin.

  New Wave—yeah! New sounds that tapped into gay currents, gay man currents—and, dude, gay men were the only real men now—and he was connected to those currents, ridin’ waves of new sensations that were sweeping the gay world, his world—and he was on the crest of it all—

  Follow me and you will see

  There's excitement right outside—

  He picked up his belt, smelled it, licked it from the buckle to its tip. He heard the wind's howling outside, and he thrust into its howl lines he repeated—

  Don't forget who's i
n control,

  You can lose your very own soul—

  He swung the belt at an invisible eager slave.

  You're the one to burn my fire—

  To satisfy my own desire—

  Make me feel wild and free—

  Hard-hitting love—

  Yeah!

  Two

  You can enter the park in West Hollywood from San Vicente Boulevard and walk in along or behind bleachers that form an L about the baseball field. Impromptu games occur on that field, seldom scheduled. From an adjacent court, the thump-thumping of a basketball is almost constant during the day, at times into evening. Young men join games in progress or wait for them to end so they may start their own. Within this pretty park, regular strollers glance at the players or move on along its many walks. Others remain on benches, reading, having a soft drink, a snack, or just resting.

  These regular activities are altered, somewhat, during the Sant'Ana winds. Then, like today, everything seems astir.

  Jesse

  AFTERNOON

  In his apartment, Jesse outfitted himself in the uniform of many gay men in West Hollywood, snug shorts, to show off his legs and round butt, a tight tank top, to show off his swimmer's torso and his slim waist, and Reeboks, without socks, to bring it all together.

  Proud to be gay and sexy!

  Older people—people over thirty—still had all those guilts about being gay. Guilty about what? he'd like to ask them. He wouldn't change being gay for anything in the world. He didn't have to march in the Gay Pride Parade to show he was proud. He did go, though, to cruise among all those showy guys without shirts, marching or watching. He always drew lots of admiring looks himself, and extended a lot. He wasn't what people called an activist. He showed his pride by being gay every moment of his life. What better way?

  What was so special about being heterosexual? He had noticed that, very often, attractive heterosexual men didn't do much for themselves, let themselves get out of shape, wore baggy clothes. Gay men of the same age cared, went to the gym, stayed trim, healthy.