by John Rechy
He looks so alone, Paul thought. Maybe it was true he broke up with his girlfriend, maybe he was figuring himself out. He'd seemed nice, except for that moment when—It wasn't easy, despite what everyone said about everything being so different now—not easy to come out when everything resisted. Paul slowed his car. The man was aware of him now, looking in his direction. Paul lowered his window. He'd drive by slowly.
“Aren't you the guy I went home with earlier?”
“Yeah. I thought I recognized you. Mitch, right?”
“Paul—right? Listen, man, I'm sorry about what happened at your place. I was confused, about my girlfriend, but mostly about myself.”
“And now?”
“I've cleared my head. Look, man, you think we could get together again, I mean really get together and—?”
“Sure. Okay. It's crazy, but, yes—”
Of course, it wasn't the same guy, Paul told himself as he stopped imagining what might have happened if it had been, what might have been said.
He drove out of the lot. He would go to the Studio Club, where he had met Stanley.
Already there was a line to get in.
Ahead of him, a group of pretty young men walked in laughing past a man guarding the door, choosing who might be allowed in. Paul glanced back. A troop of shrieky black men who had joined the line would be kept out, Paul was sure, and so would a heavy young man, sweating profusely from the heat or out of anxiety as he approached the sentry. No one could say the gay world couldn't be brutal. He pushed away that thought when he reached the entrance and the man at the door let him through with a smile.
Inside, strobe lights slashed at beautiful bodies gyrating in sensual motions, touching, arching, miming sexual positions, at times with and then at times against the palpitations of music, which was drenched through with air-conditioned heat and the stench of poppers. Paul looked at the once-familiar vortex of bodies offered, bodies accepted, bodies rejected, bodies offered again—Did he want to pitch his body among them?
“Dance?”
“Oh, Christ, Stanley, you didn't leave—?”
“No, babe. I stayed at the airport, thinking about lots of things, about us, and then I drove back. I saw you with that guy—cute, too, good choice—but I saw him leave right away”
“Why didn't you come in then?”
“I wanted you to be sure, too, that you wouldn't follow him, change your mind.”
“How can I believe you didn't pretend to leave so you could go out cruising here tonight, and now that you see me here—?”
“I'll prove it to you, babe. I followed you here, where we met, where we first fell in love, and now we'll pretend it's that time again, and then we'll go home, like we did that night, remember?”
“Remember? How could I forget?”
But I will forget, Paul thought, drinking from the beer he had ordered during the imaginary encounter he had, even now, conjured up with Stanley. Even if it had happened like that, he would have turned away from him and—
“Dance?”
“Yeah!” he answered the good-looking shirtless man who had asked him twice.
“Poppers?”
“Sure.” Paul sniffed the vial extended to him. He didn't use poppers that often, although Stanley insisted when they were together and sometimes Paul pretended. But on this hot sexy night, he inhaled again from the vial of butyl or amyl, and within the sudden rush, he heard the words he was dancing to—The Little River Band's “The Night Owls,” and he half heard, half felt its refrain, about a restless breed trying to find its place, doing time—going where?
The man with him opened the top button of his jeans. Paul removed his own shirt. They whirled together onto the dance floor. His pelvis arching toward the other's, their bodies drawing closer, groins rubbing together, both hardening—bodies grinding against each other to the throbs of music, Paul knew, I‘m back!
Nick
EVENING
Nick saw the hustler he'd talked to ride away with the weirdo.
Well, fuck that guy if he didn't wanna listen to me that the guy's a weirdo, man, Nick thought. And fuck him if he thinks I‘m gonna come back to get together. He dodged off Santa Monica Boulevard when he saw a squad car approaching, at the same time, dammit, that a john was about to stop for him. He tried to deliberate who'd reach him first, the john or the cops. The john. The cops moved on along the Boulevard.
He went with the man, who at first rejected his price—fifty dollars, always ask for more—and offered him twenty dollars—“for a quickie, I come real soon, and all I wanna do is blow you and you don't have to come. Coupla minutes. I just wanna get off. We'll do it in the car.”
“Make it thirty dollars—”
“All right, get in.”
In a quiet street of small tree-sheltered houses, the man lowered his head over Nick's cock. Nick stopped him. “Uh, the money first, okay?” The man gave him the thirty dollars he had readied in a pocket. As the man's mouth enclosed his cock, Nick shut his eyes and thought about—
That was sometimes a problem, finding something to think about. The girl he'd fucked, with three other guys, back in—the girl he'd met on the street one night after hustling, and he and another hustler took her to a room they'd rented and she blew them both and then they fucked her, the girl and the guy who—
The man came. Wordlessly, he drove Nick back to the Boulevard.
Things were moving along better, man. Nick felt encouraged, especially when another car stopped quickly for him. He peered in. But he didn't get in—“Catchya later, man”—because, ahead, beyond whorls of debris-laden wind and walking toward him was the kid who said he was Angel. Relieved that the guy was okay after being with that weirdo he'd warned him about, Nick walked across the street to join him.
It wasn't him. Another hustler. Angrily, Nick kicked away a jagged frond the wind had pushed, trembling, against his feet.
Clint
EVENING
His room at the Château Marmont was dark. Darkened by early shadows falling on this side of the building? By ashen clouds sweeping into the City from outlying fires? Or was it later than he thought? As Clint lay on the sweat-moistened bed, time seemed to be in limbo, as if the day had shattered, holding night at bay, time fractured.
NEW YORK
Last Weekend
When Clint walked into the Mineshaft—into a light like cold fire—he surrendered to the excitement of so many other times, an excitement that bludgeoned everything else. The earlier sense of seeing this world as if for the first time—that had been only an impression, a spell broken. But as he moved into the cold, darkened red light, it was as if one spell had replaced another, and the two were at war.
A smoky redness bled into the large room and flowed into smaller rooms, doorless, like gashes. Slabs of decayed wood slanted in fallen diagonals, as if a mine had collapsed, leaving only ruins. Crumpled papers, oxidized cans, garbage—debris imported from the piers and the area of the parked butcher trucks—accumulated throughout. Low murmurs of music without visible origin panted into air torpid with the odor of poppers, sweat, dead cum.
Within the reddish murk, dozens of men—more, a hundred, more—uniformed or in leather, naked or in chain-decorated nudity—bunched into masses of flesh and leather as muffled sighs, throttled sobs, faded into strangled moans.
The dark stare of a man in full leather grasped Clint's attention—the leatherman he had seen enter with two naked, dog-collared men. The leatherman jerked the chains that restrained the two men. The naked men opened their mouths. The leatherman spat into the gaping mouths. Spittle dribbled to the floor. The leatherman wrenched at the chains. The two men licked the spattered floor. His eyes on Clint, the leatherman yanked again at the chains of the collared men. The naked men crawled toward Clint.
Clint's eyes interlocked with the leatherman's. The collared men knelt before him, offering their mouths. Clint moved away, past locked bodies.
Wrists and ankles bound, a naked man thrust
his torso up from the floor, presenting it to men bending over him—fingers searching, tongues licking—his mouth open wide to suck cocks wedging in between his lips, cocks offered to other mouths, more mouths, as a man tossed the naked man over, down, and fucked him while others waited to follow, and followed while a man inserted the tip of his oiled boot into the ass of a man squirming on the floor, wrenching to coax the tip of the boot in deeper, the boot replaced by a cock, another, prodding together, while nude men handcuffed to army cots lapped at boots and gloved fists held over their faces by uniformed men and one man ground his heel into a naked groin as a clot of bodies lined up to share arching mouths of men sitting on the props of toilets in black cubicles, men groveling on the floor between their legs sucking and licking the readied organs and within tangles of dark-red light and shadows, leather straps restrained naked men in anxious surrender, nipples twisted and bitten, asses invaded by fingers and tongues and cocks—and one man shackled to a wall, contorted, alone, in deep pain, without inflictor—next to four nude bodies squatting on the floor, faces pressed down to the littered floor by roaming hands while other men fucked them, one then another, taking turns, and within a pool of red shadows bodies crouched to watch a man remaining unmoving inside another, hips locked against bare flesh, until piss flowed out of the naked buttocks, down, onto the floor, to the tip of the boots of a man driving his cock in and out of the ass of a man bent toward a cluster of cocks, while hands slapped his buttocks, and a man in leather mounted a harnessed man, silver bit between his teeth, head swiveling before cocks slapping his face, shoving into his mouth, other mouths joining, other men mounted, and a few feet away, men surrounded a nude man in a tub—and others waiting to replace him mimed his contortions—his mouth gnawing at genitals pushed at him as others spat on him, came on him, pissed on him, his mouth twisting to receive the liquid mixture until hands forced his face down to slurp the stained tub, muted gasps joining those of men strapped in a row of leather slings hanging by chains from the ceiling, feet bound, legs spread open, feet lodged in metal sockets in preparation for cocks to penetrate, mouths to rim them, legs to straddle faces, fingers to probe and squeeze—and then move on to other masses of flesh, other mouths, other cocks, more flesh.
A leathered cowboy held his greased fist against the ass of a naked man lashed into one of the slings before alerted shadows emerging out of pits of darkness to witness the signaled ritual now progressing as men hunched under the slung body, spreading the man's buttocks, moistening the opening with their tongues, preparing him for the leathered cowboy, who, ready, inserted one finger, two, three, deeper into the widening hole of the slung man, sweat like black dye coating the delirious face, cock soft, mouth opening, making no sound, as more spectators leaned closer to watch as the leathered cowboy's fingers eased out to form a fist—
Clint turned away from the rite he had once been eager to perform. He swung about to confront a pursuing presence.
As he had moved through the carnal vista of the Mineshaft—moving as if in a trance awaiting definition—he had felt the presence of the leatherman. Now they faced each other. The leatherman tugged at the collars of the crawling men—and the two naked men sprang up on their knees—and he flung his head back in silent laughter.
Through a wide slash on the floor, a wooden ladder led to a lower depth. Clint descended.
Flesh and leather copulated on imported garbage.
Ahead, a darker silhouette within dark silhouettes, a naked man lay supine on the rancid floor. His outstretched hands and feet were tied by leather straps. Before gathering men, a man in black leather pants and boots held out in both hands a thick black belt, an offering.
Next to Clint, the leatherman jerked the chains of the crawling men. They rose. Now one held a vial of white powder, the other held cracked ampules of amyl. The leatherman snorted from each, deep, over and over, and nodded toward Clint. The chained men crawled toward Clint, rising before him to proffer the powder and the amyl. Clint's eyes steadied on the leatherman's. He's challenging me to take it and resist its control.
Clint inhaled from the powder and the amyl, once, again, again.
He felt caught in the same clasp he was sure contained the leatherman, the same violent craving, and he knew that the leatherman had seen him here before, performing like him and with the others, and had recognized him outside, without the full regalia, had sensed in his reaction a wavering of allegiance, and he was now demanding that allegiance back, and as he became certain of all that, rage invaded his senses, time jumped into a darker darkness that enclosed him and the leatherman, and within it he saw the leatherman take the proffered belt and slash over and over—spitting out aroused words, "Fuckin’ cock-suckin’ queer!"—and flailing at the buttocks of the naked man, who groaned—“More, master, more?—at each harsh sting, and within the darkness, which erupted in his head in a burst of cold red light like ice on fire, Clint saw the leatherman hold out the belt to him—"Take it!"—and at the same time that he knew he would resist this challenge—"No, bastard!!"—he saw himself emerge out of the circle of men watching, and his hand lashed the belt across the bound body, and his mind imploded with rage that had not yet found its object, and he drew the belt back and lashed again across the naked loins of the bound man, who growled in pained ecstasy, and Clint came.
Throttling a scream, as his cum continued to spurt, Clint dropped the belt and faced the triumphant smile of the leatherman, heard his muted laughter.
As he moved out of the bowels of the Mineshaft, Clint saw masses of flesh grinding, throbbing, moaning like a great wounded beast devouring itself or licking its own wounds—coming or dying.
Coming or dying.
In his hotel room as he lay in the sweat-drenched bed, Clint welcomed voices outside in the hall, the sound of the elevator, the hum of the air conditioner, the distant sound of hectic traffic, the panting of wind at the windows.
What did that man feel?
Who?
This time he located a face, but it was a face he had never seen except in his mind, a face that dissolved into another, another, others—faces of the men he had encountered that long night, the faces of the collared slaves crawling on garbage, the face of the leatherman, of the man slurping cum and piss and spittle in the filthy tub, of the men spitting on him, of men sitting on the props of toilets, men crammed against their mouths, the face of the man at the piers, his open mouth begging, and of the men straddling him, the face of the man pressing a boot over the face of another, and of the man licking it, the faces of shackled men, faces of men strung up in slings, of the men crouching about them, the face of the man who had yowled as hot wax dripped on him, the face of the man holding the lit candle, the face of the man prepared for the leather cowboy's assault, the face of the leather cowboy, the face of the man mounted like a horse, the face of the man who had held out a belt as an offering and the man stretched out on the floor to be flogged, his face as the whip lashed—and the face of the shackled man contorting alone in deep pain inflicted by an absent torturer—all those faces, and now his own joining others rushing across his memory, shaped in his feverish mind into the face he had been trying to locate.
It was the face of a man he had never seen, the man he had heard about when he was leaving Fire Island. It was the face of the man who had been brutalized by a group of straight punks in Sag Harbor. They had called him “faggot, queer, cocksucker!”—kicked him with heavy boots, whipped him, shoved him against garbage, spat on him as he lay on trash, pissed on him.
Ernie
EARLY EVENING
Hey! Nothing wrong with checking out Griffith Park just one more time before he left, right?
And a good thing he did, too, because look at that cowboy along the path—definitely cowboy day. Oh, shit, no. Yeah, it was the same cowboy he'd met earlier who had asked him if he was in town for the “roundup.” Ernie proceeded ahead.
The cowboy slipped into a nest of dried twigs and branches.
Not
hing wrong with checking him out. Backing up, Ernie could see the cowboy licking his lips, squatting on his haunches, pants down to his ankles, cock aroused—
Ernie walked in.
“You're hot, gotta great bod, hmmmmm,” the cowboy said, “glad I saved myself all afternoon for the best, hmmm.” He grabbed the cowboy hat off his head, pushed it onto Ernie's—“Yeah, cowboy!”—and pulled Ernie's pants down. “Lemme lick your hot cowboy balls, yeah, turn around so I can rim your cowboy hole—mmmmm. Real hot from the roundup, huh, cowboy?” He licked under Ernie's balls, and pushed his tongue into his ass, probing in and out, around. “Now, cowboy, fuck the beejeezus out of me, you deserve a good fuck after the hard roundup. Yeah! Ride ‘em, cowboy!”
Ernie gave it to him like a man, and the guy took it like a cowboy. After only a few strokes Ernie let himself go. “Yeah, comin’, cowboy's fuckin’ your ass, yeah, ride ‘em—ahhhh—”
“Great fuck.” The guy removed his hat from Ernie's head.
“Glad I came in from the roundup, guy,” Ernie said.
Who said things couldn't stay mellow? Ernie worked his way down along the sloping path. He would definitely leave now “Wanna get together, muscleman?” On the fallen trunk of a tree charred by fire sat a guy with longish hair, his hand groping his exposed groin.
Was he ready to, again? Ernie considered. Nothing wrong with finding out, right? Too open here. So he walked ahead toward a cove. When he glanced back, he saw that another man had advanced on the guy on the fallen trunk, and so he proceeded ahead. Then he heard scuffling, agitated voices. He backed up. Can you believe this fuckin’ shit? The guy who had sat there working his cock up, the guy who'd admired his muscles—that fucker was a vice cop, and he was handcuffing the man who had approached him. A fat cop was rushing down to join the arrest. The handcuffed man looked—trapped.
Really trapped.
Mitch
EARLY NIGHT
Mitch got back in his car and wondered, Now where? He was parked in a lot in Venice Beach.
