City of Night (Rechy, John)

  And so, with Eminent contradictions (I must warn you), the wayward saga of Miss Destiny unfolds—that night at the 1-2-3, in the ocean of searching faces:

  “Naturally,” she continued, “I got into the Finest circles. Philadelphia society and all that—and Im sippin muh cocktail at this party when in walks the most positively gorgeous youngman I have evuh seen. And he stares at me! Walked away from the hostess—who was a real lady (a society model, baby, and later she became a Moviestar and married that king—you know)—” muttering bitch after Pauline who just then passed brushing my shoulder purposely to bug Miss Destiny “—and this gorgeous youngman, why, he comes to me and says—just like that—‘You Are My Destiny!’ and I thought he said, ‘You are Miss Destiny,’ mistaking me you know for some other girl, and when the hostess says Im the most beautiful fish shes evuh seen, what is my name, Im terrified the gorgeous youngman will drop me if Im not who I think he thinks I am, so I say, ‘I am Miss Destiny,’ and he thinks I said, ‘I am his destiny’ (he told me later), and he says, ‘Yes oh yes she is,’ and from then on I am Miss Destiny—”

  (Oh they go home that night and Miss Destiny must confess she is not a real woman, but, oh, oh, he doesnt care, having of course flipped over her, and he takes her to his country estate, his family naturally being Fabulously rich, and they simply Idolize Miss Destiny....)

  “His name was Duke,” Miss Destiny sighed, “and when I met him, oh I remember, they were playing La Varsouviana (thats ‘Put Your Little Foot,’ dear)—you see, although it was a cocktail party, it was so Elegant that they had an orchestra —and how I loved him, and I know thats a strange name—Duke—but it was his real name, not a nickname—but he would be a wild rose by any other name and smell as sweet! ... Being aristocrats, all his family had strange names: his mother’s name was ah Alexandria, just like the ah queen of ah ancient Sparta who killed the ah emperor in Greek mythology (those are very old stories, dear)—”

  Suddenly here is Darling Dolly Dane back gasping tugging at Miss Destiny, who of course resents the intrusion in the middle of her autobiography. “Destiny, Destiny, quick,” Darling Dolly pleads, “Ive got to have the key to your pad right away quick hurry!” I notice Darling Dolly is carrying a small bundle that looks suspiciously like a pair of pants. All right, all right—and what does Darling Dolly want the key for? Darling Dolly Dane says she just clipped the score she went with who promised her the deuce, remember? She told him dont bother getting a room, give the extra bread to her, honey, and: “I know a swinging head in an apartment house right around here,” Darling Dolly told the score, who was pretty juiced anyhow. So they go up to the head, and the score is thinking this is really getting Saturday-night kicks: gone sex! with a cute queen! in a head! And she took off his pants cooing and his shorts cooing and ran out with both pants and shorts—and wallet. “And lookl” she said now, pulling out the wallet, which was green, green like a tree. “So Ive got to go to your pad in case he comes back looking for me.” “Without pants?” Destiny asked, and adds: “And why my pad? why not yours?” Darling Dolly explains it’s too far and too early. Miss Destiny tilted her head, consulting her gay fairy. “Miss Thing says dont give you the key,” Miss Destiny said, “but then Miss Thing aint nevuh been busted—so here—” Darling Dolly dashed out with the key. Miss Destiny sighed Darling Dolly was positively Too Much, and I noticed Chuck going out, widehat over his eyes, with the flashy fruit.... Lola is still sitting very much alone glowering at her madeup face in the minor behind the bar....

  And Miss Destiny continues typically as if nothing had interrupted her story:

  “And then, before I knew it, Duke was dead.... He was a truckdriver, and sometimes we were so poor we couldnt even make it: I had to hustle in drag in order to keep us going—of course, he didnt know this—” And then remembering The Wealth and the country estate: “Well, you see his family disinherited him, they couldnt stand me.” And then remembering the way his family Idolized her: “Well, you see they loved me at first, until they Found Out—”

  (Now Duke the Aristocrat is Duke the Truckdriver, disinherited but oh so in love with Miss Destiny, and on a cold murky damp foggy day his truck turns over on the highway, the brakes screech shrilly, the wheels are turning round, round, round.... The sirens wail: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-uh. And When They Came To Tell Miss Destiny, she senses it before they say anything and says: I Want To Be Alone ... and there is no one to turn to....)

  “You see I was an orphan,” and then remembering her father who threw her out: “I had lived with my aunt and uncle and called them my father and mother—and it was my uncle who threw me out, the same uncle who Raped me when I was eight years old and I screamed it hurt so and my aunt said forget it, it would go away (she was a degenerate).... And each time I close my eyes, I see those goddam wheels going round, round, round—and I hear that tune they were playing when I met him. (‘Put your little foot’),” she hummed. ... “And it won’t stop until I hear the crash! ... Oh!”

  (So Miss Destiny lones it to Washington D.C. where she makes it with men who think shes Real. And when they reach That Point in the cramped car she must insist on, she will say no honey not that, I have got the rag on—she will of course be welltaped. “But thats no reason why we cant have a swinging time anyway.” And if not she will say shes underage and threaten to scream rape. (And dont ask how, Or If, she always got away with it.) But a jealous bartender, who Knows, tells three sailors who want to make it with her that shes not a fish, shes a fruit, and the sailorboys wait outside for her, mean, and start to tear off her beautiful dress and say, If youre a girl wow the world is yours honey, but if youre a goddam queer start praying.... And oh Miss Destiny runs as you will begin to think she is always doing, and they grab her roughly as you will begin to think they are always doing, and she rushes into the street and into a taxi passing by luckily and the driver says have you been clipped or raped lady?—and: I will take you to the heat station. She says oh no please forget it ... and goes back to Philadelphia to place a Wreath on Duke’s grave, and comes to Los Angeles with a Southern Accent....)

  “And I became what you see now: a wild restless woman with countless of exhusbands,” Miss Destiny said. “But do you know, baby, that I have never been Really Married? I mean in White, coming down a Winding Staircase.... And I will! I will fall in love again soon—I can feel it—and when I do, I will have my Fabulous Wedding, in a pearlwhite gown—” and she went on delightedly until she caught sight of Pauline’s reflection in the panel of mirrors behind the bar, and something about the way Pauline was looking in our direction clearly threatened she would come right over and introduce herself and bug Miss Destiny.

  “Goddam queer,” Miss Destiny murmured, and she was fiercely depressed.

  3

  I left the 1-2-3 and went to Ji-Ji’s bar—another malehustling and queen bar: but tougher. You walk under a small tattered awning into a dark cavelike room. Beyond the dark, through a tunnel-like opening, the bar leads into a small narrow lunch-counter, where malehustlers and queens sit eating. And Ji-Ji, the old, haggard queen who owns this bar, reigns over it adoringly as if it were a wayward mission—a hidden underground sheltering those rebels from the life that spat her out. ... Dad-o, the Negro pusher, is here now, huddled at one end of the bar, almost eaten up by the darkness, except where the light from under the bar gleams in shiny eery highlights on his sweaty skin; hes talking to a skinny boy next to him—obviously a pusher.

  It is much more quiet here than at the 1-2-3—the superficial gayety is absent, there is a brooding silence: an undisguised purposefulness to make it. Even the scores who haunt Ji-Ji’s are colder. They stand appraising the young malehustlers as if they were up for auction.

  As I walked in, a tall newyorkdressed man leans toward me and murmurs: “Lets get out of here and go to my place, boy —I got a bar there myself.” His assurance bugs me strangely. The guilt seizes me powerfully. I feel an overwhelming shame suddenly for looking so easily availa
ble. “Youre taking a lot for granted,” I said. He shrugs his shoulders. “It’s Ji-Ji’s, isnt it?” he says—but—not so sure of himself any more—he walks away hurriedly.... I leave the bar immediately, the sudden inexplicable shame scorching me inside. The youngman who had been with Dad-o is now outside. The night is brighter than the bar.... The youngman asks me furtively if I want to turn on. He opens his hand, tiny joints of marijuana squirm in his palm. He looks strangely like a biblical prophet—with a beard, infinitely sorrowful eyes. I say no.

  When I came back to the 1-2-3, Chuck was back too. He asked me to go outside with him. “I got some sticks,” he says, “you wanna blast?” (I remember the prophet-faced youngman only moments earlier.) ... I walk with Chuck along Spring Street, left, across Broadway, then Hill, beyond the tunnel, around the area with all the trees. Chuck says: “I don really dig this stuff, man—too much of a hassle to hold any, an I don dig hasslin it noway—but somebody turned me on free—so might jes as well....” We squatted there among the shadows, shut in by the trees, smoking like Indians—or maybe, like children forbiddenly in a garage.

  We went to Main Street, and Im feeling an intensified sense of perception—as if suddenly I can see clearly. Now Main Street is writhing with the frantic nothing-activity in the late hours. We walked into Wally’s, exploding with smoke. Then to Harry’s bar and more smoke, more streaky mirrors, more hungry eyes and stares—and later, before the burlesque house with the winking lights and the pictures of nude women, we saw three girls, and Chuck went casually and talked to them and they said yes. They belonged obviously to that breed of young girls with whom the hustlers periodically prove their masculinity. Like the malehustlers, they live the best they can from day to day.... We went back to the 1-2-3 to look for Skipper or Buddy to come along with us. Miss Destiny was standing outside with Lola, and when she saw the girls with us, she stomped angrily inside the bar. We found Skipper, and we got into Buddy’s car and Skipper made it run, and since no one had a place to go, we drove to Echo Park.

  And the night was miraculously clear as it rarely is in Los Angeles, and the moon hung sadly in the sky as unconcerned as the world, as we sexhuddled in the car with the three lost girls....

  We left the girls at Silverlake and came back to the 1-2-3, where Miss Destiny, skyhigh, rushed at us shrieking, “You know whats the crazy matter with you, all of you? youre so dam gone on your own damselves you have to hang around queens to prove youre such fine dam studs, and the first dam cunt that shows, you go lapping after her like hot dam dawgs!” Then she cooled off right away and said drive her to Bixel Street, where someone (shes playing it mysterious like someone is turning her on free because shes such a gone queen) is laying all kinds of stuff on her. When we got to Bixel, it turns out Trudi’s daddy has paid for the stuff, including a tin of maryjane and rolls of bees, and hes asked Miss Destiny to take it to her place and Bring Everybody and theyll be up later and we’ll have a party. We rode back, and on Broadway the cop-patrol is driving meanly. Skipper put on his dark shades, Chuck lowered his widehat, I sank into the seat (the junk: the roust), and goddamned Miss Destiny waves at the cops—“Yoohoo, girls”—shes flying out of her gay head. Luckily they didnt hear her and they already had someone in back, so they went by with everyone-hating faces. Just as Skipper parked, Trudi’s daddy drives up in his tough stationwagon with Trudi behind him wrapped in—I swear—a fur stole—“Like Mae West,” she cooed.

  And we all went up to Miss Destiny’s.

  4

  Destiny’s place is two ugly tight rooms with naileddown windowshades and a head. You climb two narrow stairways and then make your way through a maze of cramped halls lighted just enough by greasy lightbulbs to reveal the cobwebs and the dirt—long narrow corridors like in the movie-serial when we were kids: And the Dragon Lady put Terry and the Pirates in a narrow hallway and she punched a button and the walls kept coming closer ... threatening to crrrrrrush! everyone to ... death!!

  Miss Destiny opened the door and turned on the light. The light screamed in our pupiled eyes, transforming the cobwebs on the ceiling into long nooselike shadows. Darling Dolly Dane was curled up on a couch, and Lola and a seedy-looking soldier were carrying on on another—this is the kitchen but it has two bed-couches. Lola hollers in her ugly man’s voice turn the fucking lights off. Put out thy own dam lights, as the stunning Desdemona said,” Miss Destiny answered. Both the soldier and Lola started adjusting their clothes, and Miss Destiny says arent they Too Much?—everyone here has seen boys and girls, and besides, all the world is a swinging stage!

  Now Lola goes into the other room, and in a few minutes, lo and behold! here she is back, in Japanese drag! posing at the door: kimono with beautiful colored butterflies—sandals —slanted eyes! and she is saying something like teeny-vosey which she says means kiss in Chinese—but the soldier (he playing the stud with her when we walked in) isnt paying her any more attention, and its obvious, the way hes looking, that hes a godown fruit serviceman—a not very attractive butch fruit whom Lola thought was a stud (and queens are fooled more often than they admit). Pissed off, Lola grabs the soldier’s cap, pushes it over his head, and very much like a rough man shoves him through the door: “You gotta make reveille, dear!”

  And while we’re turning on juice and joints and pills—Trudi’s fat daddy saying, “Come on boys, come on turn on” —palming all of us excitedly—the queens are changing into high drag in the other room—much more successfully than Lola. Now Trudi minces out in blacklace negligee, panties and brassiere (her chest taped to give her real-appearing cleavage under the falsies)—looking I have to say disturbingly real like one of those girls in the back pages of the scandal magazines that advertise those slinky gowns and underclothes with crazy names like tigerlily nightie and heaven-in-the boudoir panties and French-frivolity brassiere—and Darling Dolly Dane is all pink ruffles and queen-cuteness, and Miss Destiny (being more modest and more the regal type anyway) makes her entrance, last of course, in green satin eveningdress and fluffed out rair with golden sequins....

  Right after that, Buddy came in with a score. Miss Destiny says shes sorry but theyll have to use the head. The score is obviously disappointed. A few minutes later and we hear the score coughing spitting. Lola says acidly she despises amateurs and queers. Now they come out, and the score is not only disappointed but nervous, afraid of the scene. As he started toward the door, Trudi calls out, “Dont be nervous, dear—blame the beads!”—and Skipper is going to Talk to him—but Buddy said no he got all the bread himself—and: “Did you hear the square spitting, man? did you?—” indignantly “—Christ, and I only pretended to shoot!” Darling Dolly is doing an imitation strip, proud of her smooth girlskin and figure, and everytime she bumps (like the queen at the 1-2-3 earlier), she says, “Sssssssssssufferrrrrrrrr....” Trudi’s daddy is giggling almost hysterically now, opening drinks, passing pills, joints.

  Suddenly theres a racket outside the window, like someone throwing a bottle, and Miss Destiny says, “It’s that psycho bitch!” and pulls the shades from the nails and theres the sexhungry nympho in the next building hanging out the window in her halfslip and brassiere (and she isnt badlooking) saying whats going on we’re disturbing the peace. Her piece, giggles Trudi, smothering herself cozily in her stole. And Miss Destiny coos, “Come on over, dear, come on over,” to placate her, and the sexhungry woman almost jumps through the window—“I’ll be right over, hear?” “Hoddawg!” said Chuck, and this puts Miss Destiny on. In just a few minutes heres the nympho and says it’s so warm she’ll take off her blouse if you dont mind, and I mean she wasted no time. Appalled at such uncouth effrontery, Darling Dolly Dane, smoking elegantly, inhaled accidentally and almost choked.

  To top it all off for Miss Destiny, who was becoming Most Depressed, heres another queen at the door: Miss Bobbi, with a drunk who tries to sober up immediately, rejects the scene, turns to leave—but Skipper gets a chance to Talk to him. “Cool it, cholly,” is all Skipper said, and t
he man reached for his wallet nervously, hands the money to Skipper, and stumbles out hurriedly.

  Miss Bobbi says icily hand over the bread which rightly belongs to her. Skipper gave her a nofooling? look. Miss Bobbi says she brought the score here, after all! Skipper says who got it? Miss Bobbi says she was going to until Skipper came on so bigassedly. Skipper says the score would have clipped her, and you saw it, jack, the score gave the bread to him. Miss Bobbie swished out in a huff.

  In absolute depression, Miss Destiny flung herself on the couch crying oh no, “Miss Thing, what are we doing here?” —clinging to a Poor Pitiful Pearl doll on the couch—a sadeyed orphan doll—but everyone was talking and moving and no one paid her any attention. So she freshened up her makeup peering into a tiny stonestudded compact saying shes a mess, and please, to me, sit beside her, please! Then she imagined she saw Darling Dolly in the mirror making sex-eyes at me, and Miss Destiny says Well That Is The Limitl “Darling Dolly Dane is a common whore!” Miss Destiny almost-shouted at me and no one hears her but me, the radio turned on to one of those California night-stations with the smothered rock-n-roll sexmoans, “and all of you! especially you! are just bums! nogood lowlife hobos! who will end up! on Thunderbird! or worse than hobos: hypes! hopelessly hung up and cant get it!” and shes going on very unlike the gay Miss swinging Destiny. “And I! dont! know! what! Iamdoing! here! amongst all this: tuh-rash! I! Went!! To College!!! And Read Shakespeare!!!!”