City of Night (Rechy, John)

by John Rechy

  I whispered dont tell anyone, but me too.

  “Next youll be the Prince of Wales,” she says bitchily, glowering at Chuck and Buddy making up to the nympho, who was fanning herself with her slip now.

  And Miss Destiny goes on haughtily—sure of her ground: “Then—tell—me: if you read Shakespeare, Who Is Desdemona?” doubting it superiorly, giving me The Supreme Test: Shakespeare and his queenly he-roines who were first, remember, played by men.

  I answered (and remember the pills, the liquor, the maryJane): “Desdemona was a swinging queen in the French Quarter who married a spadestud who dug her until a jealous pusher turned him on that his queen was making it with a studsailor, and the spade smothered the queen Desdemona and the heat came for him and he killed himself....”

  Miss Destiny stared at me a long while—not speaking. And as she was staring at me like that, Lola—who had gone to the head outside, Destiny’s being occupied—returned howling theres a man in the head outside and he aint got no pants! Miss Destiny sprang up, rushed at Darling Dolly Dane:

  “You dizzy silly cunt! you brought him here didnt you?”

  “Where else, Miss Destiny?” Darling Dolly Dane pleads helplessly, covering her face dramatically.

  “Go give him his pants!”

  “How can I, Destiny? I dont know where I left them!”

  “Miss Destiny!” Miss Destiny screamed.

  “Miss Destiny dammit!” Darling Dolly Dane shrieked back.

  “Here!” Miss Destiny rushes into the other room, comes back with a pair of pants (which turn out later to be Buddy’s, who is with the nympho in the other room), empties the pockets on the floor, tosses the pants at Darling Dolly Dane, shouting: “Throw them through the transom!”

  Darling Dolly rushes out whimpering.

  “Silly bitch,” says Miss Destiny, glaring at her when she returns giggling now the man must have thought the pants came from Heaven.

  Now Miss Destiny sat on the floor next to me. “You do know who Desdemona is!”

  Then again there was a long silence between us.

  Suddenly!

  Suddenly, and strangely—strangely then but not so now: now, inevitably and very clearly like this: Something was released inside Miss Destiny and something established between us in that moment by the simple fact of the mutual knowledge of Desdemona: that something released and that something established which she had yearned for with others from person to person in this locked world—and trying always futilely before, had given up. And of course too it was the liquor, and rejection earlier smashing at her stomach like a huge powerful fist—and the pills pushing-pulling in opposite directions, jarring her—the memory too of the Real girls with whom three of us had gone earlier—and this importantly: the loneliness churning beneath that gay façade desperately every awake moment shouting to be spoken, to be therefore shared: released by something as small as this, the common knowledge of the sad sad tale of Desdemona—or maybe more accurately than released: say, erupting out of the depths of her consciousness, aroused by the earlier rejection, resulting in that rare fleeting contact made rarely somehow like a match struck in the dark for a breathless sputtering instant.... And so now, because of Desdemona and all this meant to Miss Destiny, and all the things set off from the knowledge, Miss Destiny blurted suddenly frantically:

  “Oh, God! ... Sometimes when Im very high and sitting maybe at the 1-2-3, I imagine that an angel suddenly appears and stands on the balcony where the band is going—or maybe Im on Main Street or in Pershing Square—and the angel says, ‘All right, boys and girls, this is it, the world is ending, and Heaven or Hell will be to spend eternity just as you are now, in the same place among the same people—Forever!’ And hearing this, Im terrified and I know suddenly what that means—and I start to run but I cant run fast enough for the evil angel, he sees me and stops me and Im Caught....”

  (Like in the game of statues long ago and someone swung you round and round and you stayed frozen as you fell, and the angel is the swinger now....)

  And Miss Destiny went on desperately:

  “And I know it sounds crazy but I came here believing—no, not really Believing—but hoping maybe, maybe somehow crazily hoping!—that some producer would see me, think I was Real—Discover me!—make me a Big Star! and I would go to the dazzling premieres and Louella Hopper would interview me and we would stand in the spotlights and no one would ever know I wasnt Real—”

  (That impossible strange something that will never happen ....)

  And Miss Destiny rushes on feverishly:

  “And at night in bed drowning in the dark, I think tomorrow will be just like today—but I’ll be older—or I come unexpectedly on myself in a mirror or a reflection in a window, and it takes my breath: Me!! ... And I think about my wedding and how Fabulous I’ll be—but I want to fly out of my skin! jump out! be someone else! so I can leave Miss Destiny far, far behind....”

  (And Miss Destiny wakes up at night terrified by the knowledge of that strange impossibility, and the darkness screams Loneliness! and impossibility, whirling around us —and soon youll have to face the morning and yourself—the same, again....)

  In the other room someone yelled, and it was the nympho. I heard Chuck shouting Whoooooooppeeeee!! ... and Darling Dolly shrieked: “Chuck, get off!—thats Buddy!” And Lola came out rushing yelling at no one, “Leave me alone! Im ugly! Im ugly!”—her face smeared grotesquely with paint and enormous tears—“Im ugly, Im ugleeeeeeeee!” and Trudi trying to soothe her with her fur stole—momentarily leaving Skipper, who is passed out drunk....

  “All this is going on,” Miss Destiny sighed, hugging the orphan doll, “and when tomorrow someone will maybe ask us, What did you do last night?—we’ll answer, Nothing.... And, oh, do you believe in God?” she asks me abruptly, and I answered it’s a cussword. “Oh, yes, my dear,” Miss Destiny said, “there is a God, and He is one hell of a joker. Just—look—” and she indicates her lovely green satin dress and then waves her hand over the entire room. “Trapped! ... But one day, in the most lavish drag youve evuh seen—heels! and gown! and beads! and spangled earrings!—Im going to storm heaven and protest! Here I am!!!!! I’ll yell—and I’ll shake my beads at Him.... And God will cringe!”

  Now Miss Destiny leans toward me and I can smell the sweet liquor and the sweet ... lost ... perfume—and with a franticness that only abysmal loneliness can produce, she whispered.

  “Marry me please, dear!”

  5

  I was out in the street with the jazzcat from New York wearing dark shades who had somehow turned up later at Destiny’s. And Los Angeles was dreary in the earlyhours with the sidewalks wet where theyve just watered them and the purplish haze of the early morning. And he asked me which way I was going. That way, I said. Me too, he said. And we walked through the streets.

  Then somewhere a bell began to sound, and I looked up instinctively at the sky.... One day that bell will sound and Miss Destiny’s evil angel will appear! ...

  I left Los Angeles without seeing Miss Destiny after that night. And I went to San Diego, briefly.

  And I returned to Los Angeles.

  A few of the people I had known were gone—even in that short time—back to the Midwest or to Times Square, or had been busted, or moved to Coffee Andy’s in Hollywood, or gone to Golden Miami. They had disappeared, one day: One day youre here and thats fine, and the next day your gone and thats fine too, and someone has that very day come in to take your place whatever it might have been.

  Chuck was still here, boots and widehat. And Skipper ... And Trudi still blaming it on the beads ...

  I asked Chuck about Miss Destiny, one night, when we were again at the 1-2-3, but this time it was quiet. Not even the jukebox was playing. Everyone was broke. Not a single score. Even the pushers hung dismally inside the bar.

  Chuck said he hadnt seen Miss Destiny in a long time, she had just disappeared. Somewhere. “Man, she was a gone queen,” he said, pushing his cowboy hat ba
ck in a kind of tribute to Miss Destiny.

  I asked him did she have her Fabulous Wedding.

  “Oh, sure, man, I did not go though—someone tole me about it, she had it out in Hollywood, man, in this real Fine pad, an I heard she akchoolly dressed like a bride, man —she married some studhustler from See-a-dal, and it musta been a real Fine bash, if I re-call Miss Destinee right....”

  Then he went on to tell me he had a job washing dishes for a few days but he quit and how some score has promised to put him in some malehouse in Hollywood where he’ll make at least $50 a day.

  Later I saw Pauline (and now the jukebox was playing the song which I will always think of as part of L.A.: For Your Love—and the sad throaty sounds of Ed Townsend meaning it), whom (Pauline) I had met before I left, having found Miss Destiny’s warning that first night in the park was justified: Pauline coming on Big with how she would have her own beautyshop in a few weeks and whoever she dug would have it Made and Made Big.

  “Let me tell you about Destiny—” Pauline said. “You left before she got married—well, she had her wedding all right, she didnt invite me, but I heard, and it was Hor-ri-ble. It was A-tro-cee-ous. She had her winding staircase all right, too, and she stumbled on her train and ripped her veil and came face down! Then the place was raided. And thats where Miss Destiny the college co-ed is now, busted!—in the joint —again—for masquerading—and this is not the first time she gets knocked over so she will be cooling it there for quite a while! And can you imagine the sight? Miss Destiny in bridal drag sitting crying in the paddywagon this is her wedding day? ...”

  Trudi claims Miss Destiny is living in Beverly Hills with the man who sponsored the wedding (though Trudi didnt go either, afraid theyd raid it, but they didnt, and she says she wishes now she’d been a beautiful bridesmaid like Destiny asked her, and it broke Destiny’s heart when Trudi said no but thats the beads). “And I hear the Destiny looked simply Fabulous in her gown and red hair,” says Trudi, “and, honey, it just goes to show you some more about those goddam beads—here the Destiny meets this rich daddy who wants to see a queen get married in drag to a butch studhustler, and the Destiny says does he have a winding staircase? and he does....” Well, anyway, Trudi says, so far as she knows, Miss Destiny is still living in Beverly Hills (Skipper says oh no, Bel Air, if she really made it Big) with the rich daddy and her stud husband.

  “The rich cholly,” says Skipper knowingly, “I bet he digs Destiny’s stud, not Destiny—but he gets kicks watching them make out, jack. You know, hes queer—” and Skipper goes on to tell me how hes tired of the small hustling and how hes ready to push back into the Bigtime—and Trudi says, “Don’t be nervous. babe, youll shake the beads.”

  And so, of Miss Destiny’s Wedding there are many versions.

  No one seems to have gone to it.

  But everyone has heard about it.

  Only one thing is certain. Miss Destiny is no longer around.

  And I wondered if somehow she had escaped her Evil Angel.

  And again for a period I avoided the park and the bars—and when I came back, Chuck of course was still around. And now we’re sitting in Pershing Square at the same place where 1 first met Miss Destiny.... (And Jenny Lu is in the park too, as if The Angel had got her number—woe-uh! ... and Holy Moses ... and Saint Tex, who outstayed The Word and was reconverted by Saint Thunderbird to California ... and the five white angelsisters with Christ still bleeding wax....)

  Suddenly Chuck said:

  “Oh, man, did you hear about Miss Destinee?—you remember her, that far-out queen with the redhair? Well, man, some queen was saying how she got this letter from Destinee. An remember this ah this ah head doctor she was going to, man?—the one she said she would have on the couch next time? Well, he finally cured Miss Destinee, man —Miss Destinee wrote she ain a queen no more, she has honest-to-jesus-gone-Christ turned stud, man!—an that ain all, man!” he goes on gleefully “—Miss Destinee wrote she is getting married, man!—to a real woman! ...”

  And Chuck pushed his widehat over his eyes as if to block his sudden vision of a world in which such crazy things can happen.

  I imagine Miss Destiny sitting lonesomely in Somewhere, Big City, America—carefully applying her makeup—and I think:

  Oh Destiny, Miss Destiny! I dont know whats become of you, nor where you are—but that story Chuck just told me, as you yourself should be the first one to admit, is oh Too Much to believel

  CITY OF NIGHT

  FROM PACE TO PACE, FROM ROOM to room, from bed to bed, the shape of the world I had chosen emerged—clearly but without definable meaning. Each morning the pale sun rose in the imitation-blue sky of Los Angeles, and the endless resurrection of each new day began. Like the palmtrees that lined the streets of the city, the world seemed to be shrugging indifferently.

  For me then there followed a period of untrammeled anarchy as I felt my life stretching toward some kind of symbolic night, as the number of people I went with multiplied daily. With those many people—only in those moments when I was desired—the moments before we became strangers again after the intimacy—I felt an electric happiness, as if the relentless flow of life had stopped, poised on the very pinpoint of youth; and for those moments, youth was suspended unmoving.

  Now I began to feel that world demanding even further anarchy. Often I remembered the man I had met that first afternoon in Los Angeles, when, with his money already in my hands, I had suddenly found myself unable to steal from him. It was something that remained unfinished: a test prepared by that chosen world which I had failed.... The man’s face dimly mysteriously haunted me.

  There was still, too, the narcissistic obsession with myself —those racked interludes in the mirror—the desperate strange craving to be a world within myself. And I felt somehow, then, that only the mirror could really judge me for whatever I must be judged.

  As the weeks passed, under that hazily smeared sky, I would stand often in the midst of the masked turbulence of Pershing Square, watching it fascinated. At the same time, I felt an overwhelming sadness as intense as if I were the only person in the world who had ever felt it for this life: awed by the terrifying spectacle of this outcast boiling world.

  And so the park became the focal point of my life, those long, long afternoons.

  Like a lord surveying his kingdom, Sergeant Morgan marches through the park in the afternoons, nodding condescendingly at the familiar faces of the perennial park pensioners pinned to the benches.... I see him stomping along the sidewalk now, imperiously flanked by two younger cops. They walk like soldiers, in perfect step, the two on each side like younger, if slimmer, imitations of the fat one in the middle, marching as if to the cadenced rhythm of a drum heard only by them. I had seen the fat cop often—but he hadnt stopped me. Now, watching the determined march, I think: Hes after someone. As they approached me—and they were looking straight ahead—the fat one turns sharply, toward me. “Come on, youl” he barked.

  Boom!

  Boom!

  Boom!

  Along the way they pick out two other youngmen: one a slim, sullenfaced boy of about 18; the other, squarefaced, older, smiling and composed, cocky even, as if this to him is routine.

  Now down the escalator we go. Into the parking lot below the park, across the lot: The people getting their cars stare at us, wondering what weve done, hoping for the worst.... Up the steps again, into the other side of the park. Down more steps, through a door, into a room, where, ostensibly, they keep park toots—but hidden in typical sneak-cop fashion, it’s a place for police interrogations, like a baby joint.

  Inside, another policeman is sitting at a desk. There are two small rooms. On a board behind the desk are many photographs of hardened wanted faces: staring stonily into the room as they had stared into the camera and at the cop behind it—as they had stared defiantly at the world. On a small bench facing the desk, the three of us theyd picked up sit waiting now for the identification scene to begin.

&nbs
p; They frisk us. They look through our wallets, our pockets, they ask how much money we have—what we’re wanted for, sneering when all three of us answer: “Nothing.” They check our arms for “tattoos”—hypo needle marks.... Then they run their hands slowly down our legs, between them—and I am amused at how lovingly, thoroughly, slowly they do that part. Now they glare at us disappointed when they find nothing incriminating on us. The one at the desk calls the police station. We hear our names, code numbers covering certain offenses. Again theyre disappointed: none of us here is Wanted.

  As the cop at the desk writes out spot-interrogation cards, the fat cop stations himself before us, stands fat-legged, bull-spread, the stick like a scepter before him. He reminds me of an arbitrary general-sir. He has a round chubby face, like a soft beachball, red; tiny mud-eyes. If he had a white beard and wore a red cap, he would resemble a fierce Santa Claus.

  He booms:“I

  Am

  Sergeant Morgan!”

  As If Announcing The Second Coming Of The Lord.

  “Why I brougnt you down here,” be says, “is I never talked to none of you before—but I been keeping my eye on you—I seen you hanging around the park.” Eyes snap calculatingly from one of us to the other. “And I gotta know everyone in this park.... Now I dont know what youre after. But I suspect! ... What Im saying is: Watch out! I wont have no wise guys in My Park.... No pickpockets, No hypes. No heads.... No hustlers! Understand?” He studied each of us for a reaction. We look at him in deliberate blankness. “Im getting a good look at you now” (and he was) “and I got cards on allayou. If I keep seeingya in the park, I can grabya on open charge. And I’ll do it; and when they let you out, I’ll grabya again. This here aint no warning. It Is A Threat.... Ever-one’s hearda Pershing Square, and I figure thats why youre here—cause you heard what goes on. Well, it aint so easy as you think—and it aint gonna be, not while Im around—no sirl” He swings his stick menacingly. I get the feeling one of the other cops is a rooky and the fat one is trying to impress him. “Now lotta people in this park knows me and likes me,” he went on, “they tell me things I wanna know—so I always know wot goes on. And Im gonna let you innonna secret: We got plainclothesmen all over, watchinya. You wont get away with nothin! Now maybe I cain tell you stay outta the park cause it’s public—but I sure as hell can make it Rough for you.” He stopped abruptly, as if for applause.