City of Night (Rechy, John)

by John Rechy

  Through the door, I see him standing on the steps, between the two lions, waiting for me. He is even more neatly dressed than before. Smoking. He looks at his watch, looks toward either side of the street. I can almost smell the sweet cologne. Carefully dressed and talcumed, clothes freshly pressed, his grayish hair combed neatly. . . .

  Frantically trying to look good for me!

  Suddenly I turned back, away from him, down the hall and the stairs, out the 42nd Street entrance, through the park waiting somehow like a Trap—through the popcorn-crunching leaves, the shadows of the trees grotesque in the faint autumn moon like in a witchstory . . . the stars hugely unconcerned.

  And I take the subway back to 34th Street, to that giant spider building I had moved into. . . .

  And days later I saw him again, on Times Square, as he crossed the street cockily with a hoodylooking black-haired boy to get into a cab. He glanced at me, turned away quickly.

  His hat still slouched defiantly to one side.

  CITY OF NIGHT

  FROM THE THUNDERING UNDERGROUND—THE MAZE of the New York subways—the world pours into Times Square. Like lost souls emerging from the purgatory of the trains dark rattling tunnels, smelly pornographic toilets, newsstands futilely splashing the subterranean graydepths with unreal magazine colors), the newyork faces push into the air: spilling into 42nd Street and Broadway—a scattered defeated army. And the world of that street bursts like a rocket into a shattered phosphorescent world. Giant signs—Bigger! Than! Life—blink off and on. And a great hungry sign groping luridly at the darkness screams:F*A*S*C*I*N*A*T*I*O*N

  I had been in the islandcity several weeks now, and already I had had two jobs, briefly: each time thinking now I would put down Times Square. But like a possessive lover—or like a powerful drug—it lured me. FASCINATION! I stopped working. . . . And I returned, dazzled, to this street. The giant sign winked its welcome: FASCINATION!

  I surrendered to the world of Times Square, and like a hype who needs more and more junk to keep going, I haunted that world not only at night now but in the mornings, the afternoons. . . .

  That world of Times Square that I inhabited extends from 42nd Street to about 45th Street, from grimy Eighth Avenue to Bryant Park—where, nightly, shadows cling to the ledges: malehungry looks hidden by the darkness of the night; and occasionally, shadowy figures, first speaking briefly, disappear in pairs behind the statue with its back to the library and come out after a few frantic moments, from opposite directions: intimate nameless strangers joined for one gasping brief space of time. Periodically the newyork cop comes by meanly swinging his stick superiorly, sometimes flashing his light toward the bushes—and the shadows scatter from the ledges, the benches, the trees—walking away aimlessly.

  But that world exists not only along the streets; it extends into the movie theaters. And the moviehouse toilets on 42nd Street and the toilets in the subways—with the pleading scrawled messages—form the boiling subterranean world of Times Square. Steps lead down from the moviehouse lobbies as if into a dungeon—and in the toilet, the purpose may be realized, and you walk up the steps—aware of the danger after the danger is over—you and he complete strangers again after the cold intimacy. You may move from the dungeon into the cavern of the moviebalconies and try to score again: swallowed instantly by that giant wolfmouth of dark at the opening of which the dreamworld of a certain movie is being projected: the actors like ghosts from an altogether Different world. . . .

  By now winter was approaching in New York. Hurricanes and threats of hurricanes had stopped, and the air was clear. Daily the leaves turned browner, the orange disappeared. Along the walks in the parks, leaves fell like rejected brown stars.

  As the weather had changed, from hurricane warnings to cool, I had stood along 42nd Street and Bryant Park waiting to be picked up, and with the changing season I felt a change within me too: a frantic lonesomeness that sometimes took me, paradoxically, to the height of elation, then flung me into depression. The figure of my Mother standing by the kitchen door crying, watching me leave, hovered ghostlike over me, but in the absence of that overwhelming tearing tove—away from it if only physically—I felt a violent craving for something indefinable.

  Throughout those weeks, on 42nd Street, the park, the moviehouses, I had learned to sift the different types that haunted those places: The queens swished by in superficial gayety—giggling males acting like teenage girls; eyeing the youngmen coquettishly: but seldom offering more than a place to stay for the night. And I could spot the scores easily -the men who paid other men sexmoney, anywhere from $5.00-usually more—but sometimes even less (for some, meals and drinks and a place to stay); the amount determined by the time of the day, the day of the week, the place of execution of the sexscene( their apartment, a rented room, a public toilet; their franticness, your franticness; their manner of dress, indicating affluence or otherwise; the competition on the street—the other youngmen stationed along the block like tattered guards for that defeated army which, Somehow, life had spewed out, Rejected.

  I found that you cant always tell a score by his age or appearance: There are the young and the goodlooking ones—the ones about whom you wonder why they prefer to pay someone (who will most likely at least not indicate desiring them back) when there exists—much, much vaster than the hustling world—the world of unpaid, mutually desiring males —the easy pickups. . . . But often the scores are near-middle-aged or older men. And they are mostly uneffeminate. And so you learn to identify them by their method of approaching you (a means of identification which becomes instinctively surer and easier as you hang around longer). They will make one of the standard oriented remarks; they will offer a cigarette, a cup of coffee, a drink in a bar: anything to give them time in which to decide whether to trust you during those interludes in which there is always a suggestion of violence (although, for some, I would learn later, this is one of the proclaimed appeals—that steady hint of violence); time in which to find out if you’ll fit their particular sexfantasy.

  I learned that there are a variety of roles to play if you’re hustling: youngmanoutofajob butlooking; dontgiveadamnyoungman drifting; perrenialhustler easytomakeout; youngmanlostinthebigcity pleasehelpmesir. There was, too, the pose learned quickly from the others along the street: the stance, the jivetalk—a mixture of jazz, joint, junk sounds—the almost-disdainful, disinterested, but, at the same time, inviting look; the casual way of dress.

  And I learned too that to hustle the streets you had to play it almost-illiterate.

  The merchant marine at the Y had been the first to tell me that. With Mr. King I had merely acted instinctively. But I was to learn it graphically from a man I had met on Times Square. As he sat in his apartment studying me, I leafed through a novel by Colette. The man rose, visibly angered. “Do you read books?” he asked me sharply. “Yes,” I answered. “Then Im sorry, I dont want you anymore,” he said; “really masculine men dont read!” Hurriedly, his sexfantasy evaporated, he gave me a few bucks. Minutes later I saw him again on Times Square talking to another youngman. . . .

  And so I determined that from now on I would play it dumb. And I would discover that to many of the street people a hustler became more attractive in direct relation to his seeming insensitivity—his “toughness.” I would wear that mask.

  By now, of course, I have met several of the shadows along Times Square.

  There was Carlo, an actor, whom I met coming out of the subway head, who took me home and for a week came on strong—“helping me out”: How sad that I should hang around the streets. If I move in with him, he’ll give me Everything I Need. And when I was almost conned, he got a job in Hollywood, and, with apologies, split, giving me $5.00 that night—and a smiling! triumphant! goodbye! . . .

  And Raub—a bastard—whose frog-shape and inclinations make me remember him as a “fraggot”—the fraggot with the enormous black-velvetdraped bed on Park Avenue: I was swiftly succeeded by, as I had very briefly succeeded, a st
ring of others. . . . And there was Lenny from New Jersey, whom I saw twice a week, until one night he didn’t show; and I learned later he’d been arrested for selling pornographic pictures.

  There was, too, Im perversely glad to tell you, a cop met in an extension of the same world of 42nd Street. After midnight walking from the west to the east side, I crossed Central Park, and he was out rousting the bums sleeping in the park —the wagon parked a distance away. When he stopped me, I came on I was square: Just Now Came To The Big City. And he goes through the identification scene. Well, you havent really seen New York then,“ he said. ”Maybe I can meet you somewhere on my day off and I’ll show you around.” I saw him a couple of times, but My Pride won out: To be with a cop—even for scoring—humiliated me, and that stopped.

  Feeling that recurrent guilt which will come on me unexpectedly in that life, I placed an ad in the Sunday paper for a job: “YOUNGMAN desires gainful employment”—and the number of the telephone in the hallway where I lived.

  “Can you come up now?” the faintly-British-accented male voice on the telephone said. It was Sunday evening. I took down an address on Sutton Place. “Take a cab,” the voice said, “and I’ll reimburse you when you get here.”

  In a fashionable apartment overlooking the East River, I face an elegant silver-haired man. At the door he had started, looked at me in surprised.

  “What kind of a job are you looking for?” he asked me after offering me a drink.

  “Anything that I like and that pays.”

  “Oh?” he said. “That must cover a lot of territory. . . . I have an opening,” he said.

  “What kind of work?”

  “Oh, thats such a boring subject, isnt it?” he said. “Why not lets just get to know each other first.” He sits very close to me. “Youre nervous,” he said. “Maybe it’s the suit youre wearing. You dont seem to be used to it,” he said slyly. “You neednt have worn it, you know. Oh, Im terribly informal myself!” Yet he wore a cuff-linked shirt, vest, tie, coat. “Are you desperate for money?” he asked in an amused tone, as if he were reading a line out of a familiar play.

  “I need it,” I said.

  He gave me a $10 bill. “For the cab,” he winked.

  “This job—” I started.

  “I like you,” he said, touching my arm.

  “I have another appointment—with someone else,” I lied, suddenly bewildered, realizing that hes obviously taken for granted that Im available.

  “You know, youngman, I have to make a confession,” he said, like someone exhibiting a trump card, “Ive seen you before. On Times Square. . . . When I called you, of course, I had no way of knowing it would be you. No idea in the world. But when you turned up, well, I was delighted. . . . I never speak to anyone on the streets. . . . And, incidentally, Im glad to see youve graduated out of Times Square and into the want-ads of the newspapersl” He went on with amused sureness: “Anyway, about the .. uh . . . job. Ive got . . . an opening.”

  “Doing what?” I asked him, trying for some strange reason to make him believe I am not the same person he has seen on Times Square—hoping very much to watch him retreat. But he didnt.

  “Cawnt you guess?” he asked coquettishly. “Now dont tell me you go to Times Square just to see the pretty Fascination lights!” He made an attempt to mime the word “pretty” with a frivolous flutter of his hands. . . . “Why dont you give being in my . . . employ . . . a spin, youngman? We’ll try it for, say, a week—or a few days. Youll move in of course. And if were both satisfied, well, we’ll make it permanent. And if it doesnt work out,” he shrugged, “I have many, many friends. ... I can easily place you.”

  I feel a sharp resentment. I got up.

  “If you let me ‘employ’ you,” he persists cunningly, “you wont have to be on the streets—or advertise in the papers.”

  At the door as I left, he snapped: “Oh, yes do keep the change for the cabfare...”

  The door slammed.

  Outside, I quickly removed the tie I had been wearing.

  I walked along the river—the sad horns from the boats mourning. Several obvious homosexuals sat on the benches under the pale lights.

  “You got a light?” one asked me lonesomely. I gave it to him, and walked on.

  Behind me, this islandcity glittered like an electric, magnetic animal. . . .

  With that silver-haired man just now, I had realized this: It would not be in one apartment, with one person, that I would explore the world which had brought me to this city.

  The streets ... the movie theaters ... the parks ... the many, many different rooms: That was the world I would live in.

  I walked back. The man who had asked me for a light still sat there.

  PETE: A Quarter Ahead

  1

  THERE WAS A YOUNGMAN I HAD seen often around Times Square. Like me, he was there almost every night; and like me, too, he was, I knew, hustling. I would learn later his name is Pete. Although each of us had noticed the other—and it was obvious—we avoided pointedly more than glancing at each other whenever we met: He was very cocky, a wiseass; and, I figured, I struck him much the same way.

  One night I saw him by the subway entrance on 42nd Street talking to an older man dressed in black. It was a warm night. After a series of wintry ones, the warmth returned miraculously and the street is crowded tonight, each person clutching for one last taste of a springlike night. . . . Theyre glancing at me, Pete and the older man. They talk some more, the older man nods yes, and Pete swaggers up to me. He said: “That score digs you, spote—” (He said sport like that: “spote.”) “—he’ll lay ten bucks on you—and itll be like cuhrazy,” rolling his eyes. Pete’s in his early 20s, not tall, very well built, dark; knowing eyes, sometimes moody, dreamy. Hes wearing an army fatigue cap rakishly almost over his eyes, so that he has to hold his chin up to look at you. . . . I turned and looked at the black-dressed man, and he smiled broadly at me, walked toward us. If he had worn a white collar, he would have looked like a priest. Pete says to me: “This is Al,” indicating the older man, pats my shoulder—“Later, spote”—and disappears jauntily into the street, almost bouncing into the crowd.

  “I havent seen you before—youre new?” the man in black was saying. He didnt wait for an answer: If he asks too many questions, he exposes himself to the possibility that he will get an entirely different answer from the one he wants to hear and it will shatter his sexdream.

  I went around the corner with the black-dressed Al, down from 42nd Street—wordlessly—to a large room in an apartment house. “I dont live here,” he explained as he opened the door into an almost-bare room: a bed, a table, two chairs. “I just keep this place—well—as a Convenience.” He asked me to take my clothes off, but, “Not the pants, theyll do,” he tells me. He went to a large closet, and brought out some clothes. Theres a black leather jacket with stars like a general, eagled motorcycle cap, engineer boots with gleaming polished buckles. He left the closet door open, and I could see, hanging neatly, other similar clothes—different sizes, I knew. On the floor were at least seven pairs of engineer boots, all different sizes. “Ive reached the point,” Al said. “where I can tell the exact size by just glancing at the person, on the street. . . . Here, put these on.” I did, and they fitted. “Finel” he said. “Now lets go.” Im startled. “Where?” I asked him. “Outside,” the man says, then noticing me hesitating suspiciously: “I just want us to take a little walk. Dont worry—I’ll pay you.”

  That night, for about an hour, I walked with him through Times Square, from block to block in that area, into the park, silently—just walked. A couple of times I was tempted to leave, walk away with his clothes—but Im curious and I need the money. At the end of the hour we returned to the room, I removed the clothes. He didnt touch me once. He hands me $10.00. I looked at him surprised. I thought somehow I had disappointed him, and I felt grossly rejected. “Thats all,” he said; he smiles. “You were fine, just fine,” he says, sensing whats troubling
me. “But, you see,” he said, rather wistfully, “thats all I want; to be seen along Times Square with a youngman in those clothes.”

  A few minutes later, I was back on 42nd Street, and Pete was still there, slouched outside the spaghetti place. He smiled at me. “Some scene, huh?” he said.

  “Did he give you anything for it?” I ask him.

  “What do you think, spote? He gives me five bucks for everyone I get him. I meet him once every two, three weeks. He spots someone he digs, I introduce him. Hes too shy to talk to anyone, so I do it for him, and he lays some bread on me—and I dont have to do nothing,” he says smartly.

  “Did you ever go with him—spote?” I said.

  “Oh, sure!” He laughed. “And thats all he digs, spote. He dresses everyone he goes with in that motorcycle drag—and it bugs him for me to call it that. Then he walks around with them. Hardly anybody ever walks away with his clothes—theyre too curious. Hes hung up on that drag, thats how he gets his Kicks. . . . Oh, sure, I been with him.” Then proudly -his gaze shifting back and forth from me to the street, pegging people—he adds. “Im the only cat he walked around with two nights—in a row!”

  2

  Pete was a familiar figure in that world of Times Square. With his slouched army fatigue cap and his thick shaggy army jacket which he had dyed brown, his bouncing walk—it was easy to spot him in any crowd.

  After that first night, I would meet him often, never by arrangement, but always at about the same time, around the same place. We would hang around together for a while, and then, compulsively, we’d split. Often, minutes later, we would meet again standing in the same place.

  Although he wasn’t much older than I—but because, as he told me, he’d been hustling the streets since he was 16—Pete liked to play the jaded, all-knowing street hustler, explaining to me how to make out. He had a series of rules: Walk up to people, dont wait to be asked; if you do, you may wait all day. Forget about the vice squad, and you’ll never get caught. A quick score in a toilet for a few bucks can be worth more than a big one that takes all day. Stand at the urinal long after youre through pissing. At the slightest indication of interest from someone in one of the cubicles, go up to him quickly before he gets any free ideas and say. “I’ll make it with you for twenty.” But go for much less if you have to.