City of Night (54 page)

           He probably asked for it, I tell myself defensively, as if the man had been accusing me....

          
Improvised costumes: Capes spread like devilwings ready to soar. Masks elaborately protruding in tinseled whiskers from the eyes. Someone covered with playing cards, another with dominoes....

           A queen is talking to two men. “My name,” shes telling them, “is Miss Ogynyst. And I specialize in group parties—If You Know What I Mean.”

          
A Vampire woman stalking the streets, fangs over her lower lip... craving blood... craving life.

           Grinding against her from the rear, a sailor pressed himself against the wiggling butt of a young calicoed girl holding hands with another man, who giggles uncontrollably as he crushes eagerly into her from the front. As I pass, the girl turns her face sideways to me, inviting me, and we kiss.

           Moving away, I begin to laugh, and I stop laughing and become strangely paranoically angry when a ratty old man out of nowhere says to me: “Wanna go with me, boy? For just a few minutes.” And in graphic terms he describes exactly what he wants to do.

           “You cant afford me,” I said, hugely pleased to put him down this way for taking my mask for granted.

           “Who you fooling? Ive seen you every day in the bars.” He looked at me with contempt. “Another one with delusions of grandeur,” he smirked, which oddly made me start laughing again.

          
More clown faces, grotesquely paint-tattooed.

           At The Rocking Times a youngman I know wants me to help him “finish a rumble with some bad cats from Gretna.”

           “Hell, man, I dont want to fight anyone. Im not mad at anybody—nobody! Im happy!” I said crazily. At the same time, I feel depression and loneliness hammering at my senses.

           “Whats the matter?” he asks me, squint-eyed, “you too chicken to fight?”

           “Yes,” I said, “too chicken—and too happy—and too tired.” feeling my stomach toss, my head throb vengefully.

          
Grimacing masks, leering masks, laughing masks, weeping masks....

           I see Sylvia at the bar. Her face too is a mask.

           In a corner a man was glued to a woman in a bathing suit.

           “Disgusting!” a queen sneered, turning away from The Heterosexual Spectacle and bumping into a lesbian dressed like a male Apache dancer. “Excuse me, sir,” the queen said

           Tall ears wire-erect, a man beside me in a bunny suit removed the rabbit mask. “Wish fulfillment—thats what theyd call
this
costume!” he laughed merrily, although the wish-fulfillment costume, like the wish itself, was about to come apart; he hangs on to the bob-tailed pants with one hand.

          
The Tin Man from Oz!

           Two youngmen who look like college students have been flirting with two queens in high drag. “You wanna drink?” one asks the queens, who nod demurely. The other youngman said: “Hell, let em get their own.” “But theyre ladies,” the first one protested. “The crazy-fuck they are!” said the second, staggering away.

           “Here we are! Just in from Los gay Angeles!” Arms eagle-spread, there stands Lola, Miss Destiny’s ugly queenfriend from downtown Los Angeles. And with her is Pauline, whos already spotted me.

          
“Baby!”
she gushes at me. “How
good
to see a
familiar
face—From
Home!
Oh, I just
knew
youd be in New Orleans.
Why
did you
desert
me!”

           Acknowledging Lola’s hazy salutation—and promising to see Pauline later—I fled back into the streets.

           In the reverberating currents of franticness, I tell myself insistently that Im still too sober.

           At midmorning the Parade of Rex, King of Mardi Gras, will begin. After that the streets will be ruled by even greater Madness. The true anarchy will reign under the contemptuous Sun.

           “I gotta know how big it is before buying,” a fairy said to me.

           Another one with him lisps: “Mary! He’ll think we’re
size
queens!”

           The other one shrieks: “We are!
Any
size!”

           From Jackson Square, the steeples of the Cathedral are luminous, uncovered of the night. The Cathedral seems to be expanding as if in preparation for siege.... Before it: completely in black, with black angelwings, a longhaired woman stands frozen: a statue who has left its holy sanctuary to mourn over the city.

           I avoid looking at Her, turn my attention to an empress gliding along the park, her train held by two candy-striped pages.

           Winking, disappearing, someone Ive been with or talked to hands me a pill. Beside me a man holds out a hurricane glass to me. I down the pill with the proffered liquor.

          
Cannibals! Executioners!

           I feel cold but theres no breeze. It will be a warm day. The sun floats on the purplish horizon.

           Wrapped around a post near the Bourbon House, a drunk man is proclaiming: “This is my true love!” as he hugs the post passionately. An outraged woman pulls at him insistently. “Get away from me!” he commands her, “I found My True Love!”—as one leg curls about the post like a dog’s.

          
Sorceresses! Wizards!

           Crowds whipped up, exacerbated by each fleeing moment.

          
Alice in Wonderland!—billowing skirt raised obscenely.

          
Tom Sawyer!—pants open at the rear.

           A cruddy-looking youngappearing boy-man, his eyes like black marbles, is talking to me: “I seen you the other day,” he said. “You was in a pink Cadillac with some fags. Man, I got contacts you never dreamed of! I connect for guys like you—but I gotta test you out first, myself!... I aint queer, myself, dig?—but nacherly I gotta know what youre like.”

           “Shag, man!” I said belligerently, strangely repelled by him.

           The shadows become deeper on the streets, the sky brightens.

          
A hobo in rainbow patches....

          
Devils prowling the streets!

           “I own a chain of stores,” a shabby man is trying to impress me.

           I turned away from him.

           He tries to dazzle Sonny, nearby. “Shit, man, Im going to Paris,” I heard Sonny say to him, turning for affirmation to the two scores hes been with. “Right?” the two scores nodded solemnly, a nod that could have been a permanent farewell.

          
Seminaked men and women!

           For no coherent reason, I thought about Chi-Chi—the cigarette holder in that screw-you symbol of contempt, the mask stripped off for those blazing moments in the courtyard....

           And then incongruously, I think, Maybe this will be Jocko’s last Mardi Gras. And Kathy’s.... Not Sylvia’s. She’ll always be here waiting. The Evil Angel has already passed sentence on her.

          
A fugitive from some scorched wasteland, his body draped in orange and red crepe paper, howling through the streets in simulated searing pain....

           A score at Les Petits says to me and a youngman next to me, “I’ll buy one or both of you,” and he opened his wallet clumsily, showily. The other snatched it from him, rushed away through the mobs. No one cared. Not even the clipped man. He dug into his pockets, brought out a wad of bills. Laughing, he says to me: “I still got more than enough for you—how about it?”
Hes asking for it!
I snatch the remaining bills from him, all guilt erased by the man’s still-unconcerned laughter following me.

          
Demons!

           In flashing waves of bursting colors as they whirl from one to the other, the costumed revelers create patterns like those locked accidentally within the mirror of a child’s kaleidoscope, images so easily shattered by a sigh....

          
Two souls dredged from a netherworld, their bodies draped in ashen mummy-tatters.

           Most of the malehustlers are dressed in their ordinary clothes—the studiedly carelessly open shirts, the casual jackets, the levis, the khaki pants....
This is their costume.

          
This is our mask!

           Heaven, hell, earth have unleashed their restless souls.

          
Angels!

           And lucid suddenly as if I had stepped beyond the world, I watch the spectacle, and I remember myself years ago before I left that window through which I had merely watched the world, uninvolved.

          
Masks!

           Masks, masks....

           And I think: Beyond all this—beyond that window and this churning world, out of all, all this, something to be found: some undiscovered country within the heart itself....

           Suddenly, I feel released—the emotional coil sprung.

           But the next moment, I feel horror scratching at my mind.... I force myself to think. It’s Mardi Gras!—but that thought is followed by another: It’s the day before the Ashen mourning.

           And to escape that thought, I rush through the streets, fleeing from myself.

           Again at The Rocking Times, in the courtyard.

           And afterwards—when the vortex of this carnival has become a haunting memory and I recall what occurred then—what Kathy and Jocko, standing in the midst of it, will do in a few moments—I will try to find a clue there for my own subsequent actions, my compulsive attempt to drop my mask, to try, at least, to face myself at last....

           In an immaculately white dress of a flimsy material like a veil—shoulders uncovered, smooth and rounded and feminine—Kathy stood gazing into the mashed crowds. Her eyes appear to be fading, as if the color had been washed away by tears.... Over her hair, she wore a sequined crown, from which a long white bridal veil flowed over her dress. She shook her hair free of the crown now, and the golden hair came loosely to her shoulders. Even in the midst of the drunken scenes, she commanded awed attention.

           Beside her, Jocko is dressed in black circus tights, as if mourning the Lost Trapeze.

           Kathy is the bride at that final wedding, and Jocko is her groom.

           Moving now, Kathy’s gossamer figure reeled. Threatened by that sudden blackout, she staggered a few steps like a puppet tangled on its strings. Jocko held her firmly.

           I gravitated through the crowd toward them.

           A tourist had made his way eagerly toward Kathy. “Pardon me, buddy,” he said to Jocko, “but I gotta say your girlfriend is bee-yoo-tee-ful!”

           Jocko looked at him ambiguously. “You want to kiss her?” he asked the man, and Kathy smiled.

           “Could I?” the man said enthusiastically.

           Kathy turned her smiling face to the man, her parted lips inviting him.

           “Yes!” Jocko said, pushing the man savagely toward Kathy.

           The man kissed Kathy, very long.

           And then, suddenly, ferociously, Kathy reaches for his hand, pulling it from where it wound about her back. Leaning slightly back, she plants the man’s hand firmly between her thighs. The man’s hand explores eagerly. Kathy smiles fiercely. The man pulled his hand away violently, stumbling back in astonishment. Kathy follows him with the fading eyes. Now Jocko smiles too.

           I turn away quickly from the sight. I feel gigantically sad for Kathy, for the dropped mask—sad for Jocko—for myself—sad for the man who kissed Kathy and discovered he was kissing a man.

           Sad for the whole rotten spectacle of the world wearing cold, cold masks.

           And I remember someone’s words—from some darkcity:

           “The ice age of the heart”

           Minutes later, my own mask began to crumble.

           I was standing drinking at Les Deux Freres with two scores who wanted to make it with me—“before the parade,” one said, “weve still got time”—and I had agreed. And as they gulped their drinks hurriedly to leave the bar with me, suddenly something uncontrollable seized me.

           Incongruously, like this: out of nowhere, surprising myself by the sounds of my words, I blurted to those two:

           “I want to tell you something before we leave. Im not at all the way you think I am. Im not like you want me to be, the way I tried to look and act for you: not unconcerned, nor easygoing—not tough: no, not at all.”

           And having said that, as if those words had come from someone else—someone else imprisoned inside me, protesting now—I felt as if something had exploded inside me—and exploding at last, I went on, challenging their astonished look: “No, Im not the way I pretended to be for you—and for others. Like you, like everyone else, Im Scared, cold, cold terrified.”

           Predictably, I became a stranger to them. They had sought something else in me—the opposite from them; and I had acted out a role for them—as I had acted it out for how many, many others?

           Almost despising me, I knew, for having duped them—for having exposed my own panic to them when they had sought momentary refuge from theirs in the flaunted, posed lack of it in me—the two moved away, trying perhaps—I think with perverse pleasure—to forget they had ever wanted me. Now theyre talking to a youngman who looks as unconcerned as I had tried to pretend to be with them.

           I moved back, against the wall, feeling a wave of depression sweep over me; depression made many times more horrible by the fact that, although unfocused (like the thousand unnamed fears experienced in the dark when you know only that
Something
lurks, waits), it had something to do with vulnerability.

           I closed my eyes, right at the point where I will admit: Im going to be drunk.