City of Night (Rechy, John)

by John Rechy

  Hes a slender not-yet middle-aged man—well dressed—although in his juiced-up state, his clothes are slightly disheveled. He is not effeminate, but from the way hes looking at me calculatingly, I know hes a score. I sit there next to him for long minutes, and he doesnt say anything. I begin to think hes lost interest. I go to the head, through the swinging door. The odor of urine and disinfectant chokes me. There are puddles of dirty water on the floor. Over the streaky urinal, crude obscene drawings, pleading messages jump at you. Someone has described himself glowingly, as to age, appearance, size. Beneath the self-glorifying description, another had added: “Yes, but are you of good family?” Another scrawled note—a series: “Candy is a queen.” “No she isnt.” “Yes I am....” And in bold, shouting black letters across the wall:IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED FAIRIES & THEY MADE MEN

  The drunk man walks into the head. “You broke?” he asks me abruptly. I wasnt; I said yes. “Wanna come with me?” he said.

  We leave the bar—the bartender calls after us: “Have a good time!” ... Outside, we turn left, past the burlesque house with the fullblown tantalizing pictures of busty women. We enter the hotel next door.

  A ratty-looking man with a cigar barely glances at us, opens a splotchy old register book, we scribble phony names. “Three dollars,” the man behind the counter says. The man Im with opens his wallet. Bills pop out. He counts out three. The man behind the desk says: “That rooms open, you can lock it from the inside.” He doesnt give us a key.... We go up the long grumbling stairway. Along the hall a door is half-open, a youngish man sat alone on a bed, in shorts, rubbing the inside of his thighs. We move along. the maze of ... lost ... rooms, until we reach ours. Inside, the room is almost bare. For an ashtray theres a tin can. No towels. The walls are greasy, sweaty plaster peeling in horrendous childhood-nightmare lepershapes snapping at you—no window-screens. Paper curtains with ripped edges like saws hang dismally over the window: a room crushed in by the brief recurring lonesomeness that inhabits it throughout the days, the nights. The bed is slightly rumpled—as if only a hurried attempt had been made to straighten it after its previous occupancy.

  The man almost reels. “Heres money,” he says, again opening his wallet, some bills flutter carelessly on the rumpled bed. I take them. He stuffs the other bills clumsily back into the wallet.

  “You gonna rob me, boy?” he asks me suddenly.

  Then he grins drunkenly. “Hell,” he says, “Idon-givfuck—happens—happened—manytime.... Don-givfuck.” His look sobered momentarily. His eyes, which are incredibly deep, incredibly sad, look at me pleadingly. “Gonna rob me?”

  Im thinking: He wants to be robbed, thats why he came up here with me, hes asking me to rob him.... I feel a sudden surge of excitement—as if Im being tested. He pushes the wallet loosely into his back pocket.

  After a few frantic moments during which I didnt even take off my clothes but merely lay in bed with him touching me, he sighed: “Whew!”—closed his eyes. He turned over on his stomach and seemed to pass out. His wallet is almost sliding out. With an excitement that was almost Sexual, I reach for it. It slips out easily. He didnt move.... I stand over the bed looking steadily at him, very long, fixing the scene in my mind, experiencing the same exploding fusion of guilt and liberation I had felt that first time, with Mr King. I hear the man almost-sob: “Gonna rob me?”

  The monotonous beat from the jukebox outside invades the room persistently.

  I replace the money I had just removed from his wallet. I lay the wallet—intact—beside him. And I walk out, past the unconcerned glance of the man at the desk.

  Outside, in the rancid air, I stand looking at the carnival street. Through the grayish haze of the smoggy afternoon, the sun shines warmly but feebly—the great myopic eye of Heaven....

  Somehow—I knew—in that room just now—I had failed the world I had sought.

  A few minutes later I was in Pershing Square.

  I walk about the teeming park for the first time—past the statues of soldiers, one on each corner of the Hill Street side—past an ominous cannon on Olive, aimed defiantly at the slick wide-gleamingwindowed buildings across the streets: the banks, the travel agencies (representations of The Other World, to which I will flee recurrently in guilt and feel just as guilty for having abandoned, if never completely, the world of the parks, the streets)—past the statue of Beethoven with a stick, turning his back fiercely on the Pershing Square menagerie.

  Throughout the park, preachers and prophets dash out Damnation! in a disharmony of sounds—like phonographs gone mad: locked in a block-square sunny asylum among the flowers and the palmtrees, fountains gushing gaily: Ollie, all wiry white hair, punctuating his pronouncements with threats of a citizen’s arrest aimed at the hecklers ... Holy Moses, his hair Christlike to his shoulders, singing soulfully ... the bucktoothed spiritual-singing Jenny Lu howling she was a jezebel-woman (woe-uh!) until she Seed The Light (praise the Lord-uh!) on the frontporch to Hell (holy holy Halleluj-uh!), grinding, bumping at each uh! in a frenzied kind of jazz; and a Negro woman, sweating, quivers in coming-Lord-type ecstasy: “Lawd, Ahs dribben out da Debil! Ah has cast him back to Hell! Lawd, fill me wid Yuh Presence!”—uh!-ing in a long religious orgasm.... Gone preachers wailing receiving God: Saint Tex, who got The Word in Beaumont scorched one wined-up morning on the white horizon: BRING THE WORD TO SINNING CALIFORNIA! ... And five young girls, all in white, the oldest about 16, stand like white candles waxing in the sun, all white satin (forgive my uncommitted sins!), holding in turn a picture of Christ Crucified, and where the blood was coming, it was wax, which caught the light and shimmered like thick ketchup; and the five white angelsisters stand while their old man preaches Sinners! Sinners!! Sinners!!! —and the cutest of the angelsisters, with paradoxically Alive freckles snapping orange in the sun, and alive red sparkling hair, is giggling in the warm Los Angeles smog afternoon among the palmtrees—but the oldest is quivering and wailing, and one day, oh, I think, the little angelsister will see theres nothing to giggle about, Truly—her old man having come across with the rough Message, and of course she’ll start to quiver and wail where once she smiled, freckles popping in the sun.... And an epileptic youngman thanks God for his infirmity—his ponderous, beloved Cross To Bear....

  Among the roses.

  And while the preachers dash out their damning messages, the winos storm Heaven on cheap wine; hungry-eyed scores with money (or merely with a place to offer the homeless youngmen they desire) gather about the head hunting the malehustlers and wondering will they get robbed if—... Pickpockets station themselves strategically among the crowds as if listening in rapt attention to the Holy Messages. And malehustlers (“fruithustlers”/“studhustlers”: the various names for the masculine young vagrants) like flitting birds move restlessly about the park—fugitive hustlers looking for lonely fruits to score from, anything from the legendary $20-up to a pad at night and breakfast in the morning and whatever you can clinch or clip.... And the heat in their holy cop uniforms, holy because of the Almighty Stick and the Almightier Vagrancy Law; the scattered junkies, the smalltime pushers, the teaheads, the sad panhandlers, the occasional lonely exiled nymphos haunting the entrance to the men’s head; more fruits with hungry eyes—the young ones searching for a mutual, unpaid-for partner; the tough teenage girls making it with the lost hustlers.... And—but mostly later at night, youll find, when the shadows will shelter them—queens in colorful shirtblouses—dressed as much like women as The Law allows that particular moment—will dish each other like jealous bitchy women, commenting on the desirability or otherwise of the stray youngmen they may offer a place for the night. And they giggle constantly in pretended happiness.

  And on the benches along the inside ledges, the pensioned old men and women sit serenely daily in the sun like retired judges separated now stoically from the world they once judged....

  All!—all amid the incongruous music of the Welkian-Lombardian school of corn, piped periodically from some
where along the ledges! All amid the flowers!—the twin fountains which will gush rainbowcolored verypretty at night. ... The world of Lonely-Outcast America squeezed into Pershing Square, of the Cities of Terrible Night, downtown now trapped in the City of Lost Angels....

  And the trees hang over it all like some apathetic fate.

  MISS DESTINY:

  The Fabulous Wedding

  1

  THE FIRST TIME I SAW MISS DESTINY was of course in Pershing Square, on the cool, almost cold, moist evening of a warm smoggy day.

  Im sitting in the park with Chuck the cowboy on the railing facing 5th Street. “Oh oh, here comes Miss Destinee,” says Chuck, a cowboy youngman with widehat and boots, very slim of course, of course very slow, with sideburns of course almost to his chin, and a giant tattoo on his arm that says: DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR. “Destinee’s last husband jes got busted pushing hard stuff, man,” Chuck is going on, “an she is hot for a new one, so watch out, man—but if you ain got a pad, you can always make it at Destinee’s—it’s like a gone mission, man!”

  Indeed, indeed! here comes Miss Destiny! fluttering out of the shadows into the dimlights along the ledges like a giant firefly—flirting, calling out to everyone: “Hello, darling, I love you—I love you too, dear—so very much—ummmm!” Kisses flung recklessly into the wind.... “What oh what did Chuck say to you, darling?” to me, coming on breathlessly rushing words. “You must understand right here and now that Chuck still loves me, like all my exhusbands (youre new in town, dear, or I would certainly have seen you before, and do you have a place to stay?—I live on Spring Street and there is a ‘Welcome!’ mat at the door)—oh, they nevuh! can forget me—of course I loved Chuck once too—” (sigh) “—such a butch cowboy, look at him—but havent I loved every new hustler in town?—but oh this restlessness in me!—and are you married, dear?—oh, the lady doth indeed protest Too Much—” (this last addressed to Jenny Lu, still bumping (woe-uh!). I adore Married men—as long as they are Faithful to me, you understand, of course—and I must warn you right here and now about Pauline, who is the most evil people in this city and you must stay away from her when she tries to make out with all kinds of—Ah Beg To Tell You—“ (“Whewool” sighed Chuck.) ”—untrue promises as some—people—have—found—out—“ looking coldly at Chuck, then rushing on: “Oh I am, as everyone will tell you, A Very Restless Woman—”

  She—he (Miss Destiny is a man)—went on about her—his—restlessness, her husbands, asking me questions in between, figuring out how Bad I was (“Have you been ‘interviewed’ yet by Miss Lorelei?—I mean Officer Morgan, dear—we call her Miss Lorelei. And dont let her scare you, dear —and Im sure you wont—why. Miss Lorelei—I mean, Sergeant Morgan—is as much a lady as I am: I saw her in the mensroom one time, and she ran everybody out—except this cute young boy—and—...”)—looking alternately coyly and coldly at Chuck then me seductively: all of which you will recognize as the queen’s technique to make you feel like such an irresistible so masculine so sexual so swinging stud, and queens can do it better than most real girls, queens being Uninhibited.

  Now Miss Destiny is a youngman possibly 20 but quite as possibly 18 and very probably 25, with false I.D. like everyone else if she is underage: a slim young queen with masses and masses of curly red hair (which she fondly calls her “rair”), oh, and it tumbles gaily over a pale skinny face almost smothering it at times. Unpredictably occasionally she comes on with crazy Southern sounds cultivated, you will learn, all the way from northern Pennsylvania.

  “Oh my dear!” she exclaims now, fluffing out her “rair,” “here I am talking all about my Sex life, and we have not been Properly Introduced! ... Im Miss Destiny, dear—and let me hasten to tell you before you hear it wrong from othuh sources that I am famous even in Los gay Angeles—why. I went to this straight party in High Drag (and I mean High, honey—gown, stockings, ostrich plumes in my flaming rair), and—”

  “An you know who she was dancing with?” Chuck interrupted.

  “The Vice, my dear,” Miss Destiny said flatly, glowering at Chuck.

  “An she was busted, man—for ah mas—mask—...”

  “Masquerading, dear.... But how was I to know the repressed queer was the vice squad—tell me? ...” And she goes on breathlessly conjuring up the Extravagant Scene....

  (Oh shes dancing like Cinderella at the magic ball in this Other World shes longingly invading, and her prince-charming turns out to be: the vice squad. And oh Miss Destiny gathers her skirts and tries to run like in the fairytale, but the vice grabs her roughly and off she goes in a very real coach to the glasshouse, the feathers trembling now nervously. Miss Destiny insists she is a real woman leave her alone. (But oh, oh! how can she hide That Thing between his legs which should belong there only when it is somebody else’s?) ... All lonesome tears and Humiliation, Miss Destiny ends up in the sex tank: a wayward Cinderella....)

  “Now, honey,” she says with real indignation, “I can see them bustin me for Impersonating a man—but a woman!—really! ...” And you will notice that Miss Destiny like all the other swinging queens in the world considers herself every bit a Lady. “But nevuh mind,” she went on, “I learned things in the countyfawm I didnt know before—like how to make eye-shadow out of spit and bluejeans—and oh my dear the kites I fiew!—I mean to say, no one can say I didnt send my share of invitations out! ... Of course, I do have to go regularly to the county psychiatrist (thats a mind doctor, dears)—to be (would you believe it? this is what they actually told me:) ‘cured’! Well! One more session with him, and I’ll have him on the couch!—but now—” turning her attention to me fullblast, because, you will understand, Miss Destiny scouts at night among the drifting youngmen, and at the same time you can tell shes out to bug Chuck: and when she asked me would I go to the flix with her now (“across the street, where it is Divine but you mustnt be seen there too often,” she explains, “because they will think youre free trade—...”), Chuck said: “It would not do you no good, Destinee, they will not let you in the men’s head.”

  .“Miss Destiny, Mister Chuck,” she corrects him airily.

  And went on: “Didnt I tell you all my exhusbands are jealous of me? Chuck lived with me, dear,” she explains, “as just about every other studhustler has at one time or another, I must add modestly. But, baby, it was a turbulent marriage (that means very stormy, dear). Why, I just couldnt drag Chuck from the window—he—”

  “Oh, man,” interrupts Chuck. “Next to Miss Destinee’s pad theres this real swell cunt an she walks aroun all day in her brassiere—standin by the window, an she—”

  “But I fixed that!” Miss Destiny says triumphantly. “I nailed the damn windowshades so no one can look out at that cunt anymore! ... Oh!” she sighed, her hand at her forehead, “those days were trying days. Chuck’s a good hustier—but hes too lazy even to try to score sometimes. And, honey, my unemployment check went just so far: You see, I took a job just long enough to qualify for unemployment, and then I turned up all madeup and they let me go—and everytime they call me up for a job, why I turn up in drag and they wont have me! ... But anyway—...”

  Looking at Chuck and Miss Destiny—as she rushes on now about the Turbulent Times—I know the scene: Chuck the masculine cowboy and Miss Destiny the femme queen: making it from day to park to bar to day like all the others in that ratty world of downtown L.A. which I will make my own: the world of queens and malehustlers and what they thrive on, the queens being technically men but no one thinks of them that way—always “she”—their “husbands” being the masculine vagrants—Seetingly and often out of convenience sharing the queens’ pads—never considering theyre involved with another man (the queen), and as long as the hustler goes only with queens—and with other men only for scoring (which is making or taking sexmoney, getting a meal, making a pad)—he is himself not considered “queer”—he remains, in the vocabulary of that world, “trade.”

  “Yes,” Miss Destiny is going on, “those were stor
my times with Chuck—and then, being from cowcountry, God bless him, Chuck believes every Big story: like when Pauline told him she’d really set him up—”

  “Man,” Chuck explained, laughing, “Pauline is this queen thats got more bull than Texas!”

  “Can you imagine?” Miss Destiny says to me. “She offered him a Cadillac! Pauline! Who hasnt even got enough to keep her dragclothes in proper shape! ... But nevuhmind, let him be gullible (thats someone who believes untrue stories). And, besides,” she says with a toss of her head, “I flipped over Sandy, a bad new stud.... But Chuck’s still jealous of me—he knows Im looking for a new husband—now that poor Sandy (my most recent ex, dear) got busted, and I know he didnt have any hard narcotics on him like they say he did—they planted them in his car—... Shake that moneymakuh, honey!—” (this to a spadequeen swishing by) “—and ! I still love my Sandy—did the best I could, tried to bail him out, hire a good attuhnee, but it was no good—they laughed when I said he was my husband. The quality of muhcee is mighty strained indeed—as the dear Portia said (from Shakespeare, my dears—a very Great writer who wrote ladies’ roles for dragqueens in his time). And it breaks my heart to think of my poor Sandy in the joint away from women all that time, him so redhot he might turn queer, but oh no not my Sandy, hes all stud. If I know him, he’ll come out of the joint rich, hustling the guards.... And I tried to be faithful—but the years will be so long—and what can a girl do, and restless the way I am?—restless and crying muhself to sleep night aftuh night, missing him—missing him. But my dears, I realize I Will Have To Go On—he would want it that way. Well, queens have died eaten by the ah worm of ah love, as the Lovely Cleopatra said—she was The Queen of Ancient Egypt —” (quoting, misquoting Shakespeare—saying it was a lovely he-roine who said it in the play—taking it for granted—a safe assumption in her world—that no one will understand her anyway). “Then Miss Thing said to me (Miss Thing is a fairy perched on my back like some people have a monkey or a conscience),” she explained, “well, Miss Thing said to me, ‘Miss Destiny dear, dont be a fool, fix your lovey rair and flnd you a new husband-make it permanent this time by really getting Married—and even if you have to stretch your unemployment, dont allow him to push or hustle’ (which breaks up a marriage)—and Miss Thing said, ‘Miss Destiny dear, have a real wedding this time.’ ... A real wedding,” Miss Destiny sighed wistfully. “Like every young girl should have at least once.... And when it happens oh it will be the most simpuhlee Fabulous wedding the Westcoast has evuh seen! with oh the most beautiful queens as bridesmaids! and the handsomest studs as ushers! (and you will absolutely have to remove those boots, Chuck)—and Me! ... Me ... in virgin-white ... coming down a winding staircase ... carrying a white bouquet! ... and my family will be crying for joy.... And there will be champagne! cake! a real priest to puhfawm the Ceremony!—” She broke off abruptly, shutting her eyes deliriously as if to visualize the scene better. Then she opened them again, onto the frantic teeming world of Pershing Square....