City of Night (35 page)

           And so all those reminders of the premium placed on Youth mesmerized me, made me focus on that particular summer, as, later, I would try to focus on whatever particular season it was. I canceled out the future—or tried to—as if only the Present existed and would go on forever. I was crazily convinced that somehow if I concentrated only on Today, the specter of that shattering tomorrow would disappear.... But in a life that can date you when you begin to look over 25, I felt myself clawing to hold on to the present....

           At the Ranch Market on Vine Street, a cockeyed clock winds its hands swiftly backwards. Longingly I stand before it.

           It was that summer that I met Dave.

           On the beach one morning I had met a malenurse who was going on a splurging scene with several credit cards (which may or may not have been stolen), and I got in on it: Wellington boots, khaki levis, shirts. Because he was staying at the home of the man he was nursing, we went that night to the apartment of a friend of his—a giddy short Italian.

           Lying on a couch was a darkly handsome, masculine youngman who looked immediately to me like a hustler. We acknowledged each other with a nod. When I came out of the room with the malenurse and the giddy Italian, the dark youngman I had seen on the couch was gone.

           A few days later, in an all-night coffeehouse on Sunset, he sat next to me.

           His name was Dave, and I had been wrong about his scene: He was not a hustler. He worked in an airplane factory, he told me, and he went to school at night. He quickly explained that he merely shared that apartment with the giddy Italian; that there was nothing between them.

           For a long while we spoke about many things—but not about the homosexual scene. I was beginning to think he was straight, despite his roommate. Then he said: “That malenurse you were with that night, he just likes hustlers.” He was obviously trying to find out about me. I said nothing. “I cant see just going to bed with a lot of people—different ones every night,” he said. “I mean, a person, whether hes queer or not, hes got to find someone.... Nothing like a lonely fairy,” he said smiling. I liked him right away.

           And for that reason—resisting the temptation to say no (I had known immediately that he was not a score—and I sensed, although I dismissed it, that sexually he would be attracted only to someone who would be equally attracted to him, and I sensed, too, that he would look in that person for more than a night-long partner)—I went to his apartment with him when be asked me if I felt like talking some more.

           In the apartment, when he touched me, I told him quickly I had to leave.

           He looked at me steadily. Then he smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Maybe youll want to go to Arrowhead with me tomorrow.” Surprisingly, he was not annoyed that I had put him off. “It’s Sunday. I’ll pick you up if you want to.”

           I said yes, suddenly anxious to leave. As he drove me to the hotel on Hope Street, I felt certain I wouldnt be there when he came by.

           But I was.

           And after that, I saw him more and more often. When he wasnt working or going to school, we would drive out of the city.... And I began to discover in him an honesty that constantly amazed me, an integrity and decency rare in the world of the bars and streets: It pleased me strangely that soon after I met him, he moved into another apartment, this time alone. Although he openly acknowledged his interest in other youngmen, when it was a mutual interest—and he was a very desirable member of that group—I could tell that his was not the furious hunger that it very often is with others. Since that first night, he hadnt attempted to come on with me, and we rarely ever spoke about that scene.

           He told me about himself: about the stone-cold woman who was his mother; the ranting father, consumed in flames one nightmare night: a cigarette dropped drunkenly on the bed. He told me this without selfpity, merely as the recitation of his life.

           And I found that I was revealing myself to him, letting slide off more than ever before the mask I had protectively cultivated for the streets and bars. At times, I felt he knew even more about me than I told him, which alternately pleased and disturbed me.

           “Why do you hustle?” he asked me once. It was the first overt reference he had made to that, and it was the kind of statement that, from almost anyone else, I would quickly have put down.

           I was tempted to point out that I hadnt asked him for anything. Instead, I merely said. “I have to.”

           “Thats not true,” he challenged. “Youve told me youve worked.”

           Annoyed far beyond his question, I said: “Okay, then, I prefer to.”

           More and more, I was now in the bars or on the hustling streets only when I had to score. I avoided Main Street altogether. The craving for the sexual anarchy began to diminish for the first time since I had begun that journey through nightlives. I felt a great friendship for Dave (and an amount of pity for the paradoxical fact of him in a world of furtive contacts; he should be married, the father of adored children).... But all this, I told myself, was merely a welcome friendship in a period of ennui with the turbulence of the chosen world.

           Still, there were those times when a different kind of fear began to seize me.

           Im sitting with Dave in the outside arena of Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica, watching the animal circus. It’s a bright breezeless afternoon, when, miraculously, the usually hazy Los Angeles sky is purely clear, like a childhood-remembered Texas sky.

           “Miss Pinky! The Graceful Elephant!”

           The announcer, who has just introduced the next animal performer—“Miss Pinky”—leads a small elephant into the arena. Painted a garish purplish pink, the elephant wears a small, multicolored, flowered hat perched absurdly on the giant head, slightly bowed as if in shame. The liveried trainer puts the pink elephant through a series of dance routines, accompanied by music. The elephant with the ridiculously flowered hat goes doggedly through the motions of a hula, a mambo, a waltz. The trunk sways clumsily, enormous legs execute the steps ponderously. The flowered hat fell over one eye, and the trainer coaxed the elephant to push the hat back on with its trunk.

           The audience rocked with laughter.

           As the elephant lurched from side to side, the great ears as if rejecting the hat, the announcer says: “Miss Pinky isnt really a dainty young girl, Folks! She is really a boy-elephant But he has such A Special Appeal—such Graceful Talents—as Im sure youll agree—”
(Applause!
—and the elephant is persuaded by the trainer to bow his great head in thanks.) “—that we think it would be a shame to waste them. And so, Folks, a Great Big Hand for Miss Pinky—the graceful boy-elephant!”...

           I see Dave stare solemnly at the elephant being led off the small arena, the flowered hat perched crookedly over one ear....

           “It’s sad—that great big male elephant painted pink—and that hat on his head,” Dave said.

           Suddenly Im frighteningly moved by this youngman beside me. I feel that impotent helplessness that comes when, through some perhaps casual remark, I see a person nakedly, sadly, pitifully revealed—as I see Dave now.

           We were both silent as we drove to his apartment.

           Along the hall of that building, a door is open. Two youngmen had moved in—and the mother of one, Dave had told me earlier, had come to visit them, staying there with them, aware that her son and the other youngman were lovers. Through the open door as we passed it, I heard the voice of one, whining peevishly:
“Mommee!
listen to what Duane is
saying
to me!”... I cringed visibly. Dave noticed this. “They fight all the time,” he told me. “Duane thinks Rick is making it with other guys—and Rick’s mother always takes Rick’s side.”

           Inside the apartment, Dave said unexpectedly:

           “It sure is great to be with you!” He put his hand fondly on my shoulder, letting it rest there—the first time he had touched me even this intimately since that first night

           For a long moment, I didnt move, feeling his hand increasingly heavier.... I ierked away from him.

           The words erupted out of me: “Maybe so—but it’s all stopping!”

           Even when I saw the look of amazement on his face, even when I wanted to stop, even when I felt that compassion, tenderness, closeness to this youngman—even then, I knew, as much for me as for him, that I had to go on; that although, inside, I was cringing at my own words, in hammerblows I have to destroy this friendship. “I mean—well—Ive spent too much time with you—thats all.”

          
And crazily through it all, I keep thinking about the pink elephant at the park
—
the ridiculous flowered hat!
—
the sad eyes!... And the echoing, petulant, girlish “Mommee!” that had emerged from the half-open door along the hallway....

           “Im sorry, Dave,” I said at the door, which I was opening now, to clinch the Escape, to get
myself
away from
him.
“Im sorry,” I repeated, “but this scene is nowhere!”

           Outside in the hall, I close the door behind me. I pause for a moment, not knowing why. Then I walked out of the building quickly.

           Im back in Santa Monica, alone, facing the wind-tossed ocean.

        
SOMEONE: People Dont Have Wings

           I HAD SEEN HIM ON THE BEACH several times before.

           He never wore trunks. He was always dressed neatly in summer sportclothes. After I began to notice him—and even on the crowded beach he stood out—I realized that during the last week he had been here daily.

           He would stand on the sidewalk before the beach, looking, it seemed to me, not at anyone in particular but at the whole beach and everyone on it. After a few minutes, he would drive away—alone, without having spoken to anyone. Occasionally, that same afternoon, he would return. Soon, I began to watch for him to appear.

           Once, going to Sally’s bar, I saw him closely. He looked at me; and realizing I had noticed, he quickly turned away. He resembled a highschool coach: neatly cropped hair, ruddy face, trim build. He was possibly in his late 30s. He didnt look like a score; he didnt look like a masculine homosexual (that is, his masculinity did not seem posed); he looked completely incongruous—and I suppose this is why I had first noticed him. After seeing him so often, standing in almost the same spot those afternoons—I began to be strongly intrigued by him.

           That afternoon, when I saw him again, I was lying on the beach with two fairies who had spotted me for a teahead and were trying to get me to go with them by telling me they had some marijuana at home—changing the subject when I kept referring to being “broke”: the standard hint when youre not entirely sure someone will pay you for making it.... Both of them were youngish and slender; they looked masculine, but their coy gestures, their rolling eyes, their suggestive, high-pitched comments canceled out their initial physical appearance.

           “Well, hon,” said one, “if you dig—uh—pod, we will—uh—turn you on—and have a—real smash—I mean blast—at our—uh—pad.” He spoke the jivewords as if he had memorized them.

           Im still looking at the man standing before the concrete ledge separating the beach from the sidewalk.... I said to the gushing fairy lying beside me on the sand: “Well, see, I
would
dig making it to your pad—but I dont know how far out you live, and I dont even have enough bread to make it back downtown.”

           “Well,” said the other one, “no problem there, honey—well be glad to give you a lift back!” They were either very dense or determinedly avoiding the hint—and I leaned heavily toward the latter theory. In a few minutes I would leave. I had stayed this long largely because the sun kept me glued to the beach—that lazy, pleasurable, sensual feeling hugging me as I felt my skin turn browner.

           “Who are you looking at?” the first fairy asked me.

           Startled to find that I had been so obviously staring at the man on the sidewalk, I turned quickly sideways—but following my gaze, the fairy had already discovered where I had been looking.

           “Look,” he said to the other one, “theres that strange man again. Hes here every weekend—just stands there. Ive never seen him go with anyone. He just stands there.”

           “I wouldnt be too Interested in him, hon,” the other one warned me. “He may be welldressed—but he doesnt look like a score.” And now I knew they had been hip to my scene all along, trying to con me with the weed. “Hes kinda cute, too—but not Young enough,” he added.

           “He looks like a plainclothes dick to me,” said the first one—then turning to me: “Is ‘dick’ the right word, hon?—it sounds so strangely dated or something. Or would a plain-clothesman also be referred to as fuzz’?”

           “‘Dick’—like Dick Tracy,” I said with a straight face.

           He was right: The man did look like a plainclothes detective. Obviously, others had noticed him. The fairy next to me is saying: “Thats all he could be—a plainclothes dick!”

           But the other one was already dismissing him: “Why dont you take your pants off, hon,” hes saying to me, “so we can see what you look like all over—before buying?” And so hes decided this is the only way.

           “Im not wearing trunks,” I said.

           “Thats exactly what I mean,” he said, throwing up his hands in glee. “Lets see what you
really
look like!”

           That did it. I mumbled something about having to leave, and I walked away. They said something, but I didnt hear what it was—undoubtedly something Bitchy.

           But had I left really because I was annoyed at what he had said?—or was it that I had wanted all along to do what I was now doing?... I sat on the concrete ledge—near the man in sportclothes. Glancing up purposely suddenly, I see him looking at me. I wiped the sand off my pants, I light a cigarette—stretching the time that I could stay there without being obvious. This time I look at him directly for a response. He smiles at me.