City of Night (Rechy, John)

  I laughed again.

  “Im not sure what I’d do—if you told me that—and I believed it,” I said. “Maybe youre right: Maybe I would run away.... I mean: that word—... ‘love,”’ and I had to pause before I could even bring myself to say it, and I smiled in order to emphasize that I wasnt taking the word seriously, “if such a thing exists as other than some sort of way-off thing, Way Out There, somewhere—if it exists more than as merely four letters—like ‘fuck,’” I said, trying to destroy the expected gravity of his answering words, to thwart it by anticipating it, “well, I dont really believe it.” The fact that with this man I can no longer resort to the street act of nconcern—and the intense sobriety after neardrunkenness—make me speak much more easily than I have before. “I guess the whole screwed-up world would have to change before I could feel that there was such a thing.” Laughing purposely now, I said: “And if there is such a thing as what you call ‘love,’ just the mention of it should send rockets into the sky.”

  “Be careful,” he warned, also laughing. “They may begin to do that outside at any moment. Then where would you be?” He added seriously: “But it doesnt have to be like that. No rockets. Just the absence of loneliness. Thats love enough. In fact, that can be the strongest kind of love.... When you dont believe it’s even possible, then you substitute sex. Life becomes what you fill in with between orgasms. And how long does an orgasm last? People—... people hunting different people every night—even someone they dont really want: They close their eyes, pretend it’s someone else.... The furtive, anonymous dumbshows in public toilets, in parks....”

  (And as I listened, I remembered—and I felt that strange, numb, helpless, cold fear when you realize you cant change the past—the first time someone had gone down on me in a public restroom. It had been on 42nd Street, in one of the all-night moviehouses. A man had stood smoking on the steps leading down to the toilet. Another had stood by the urinal. After I had finished pissing, I remained standing there with my pants still open, and the man near me approached me, reached quickly for me. The man on the stairs moved lower, watching; and I remember his face—the smiling mouth, and head nodding yes as the other knelt before me now. I remember the bursting excitement at the feel of the other’s mouth on my groin, an excitement doubled by the blazing look in the second one’s eyes; now tripled by the uncaring awareness of the imminent danger of the scene. It was over in a few frantic moments. The man before me stood up. I glance at him. And in that glance I see a look which somehow begs me to say something to him before I leave—something to acknowledge him as other than someone—a nameless anyone—who has merely executed furtively a desperate sexual act in a public toilet. I avoided the look. And he turned away from me quickly and fled. The man on the steps had remained standing there, now resuming his smoking, coldly.... I left the theater, I walked the lonely, crowded, electric streets, trying to forget the face which had turned toward me for acknowledgment after the great anonymous intimacy.... That had been at the beginning of a period in New York when, for days and nights, I hunted that fleeting contact, over and over, from theater to theater, park to park; rushing from one to another, not even coming, merely adding to the numbers. At the end of that period, I had masturbated ... feeling completely alone.)

  For a long time, Jeremy had remained silent. He seems to know instinctively when to retreat, or, rather, when to stand still: when he may have come too dangerously close, too soon. Now he asked me: “Have you been to New York?”

  “Twice,” I answered, still thinking of the electric island. “I never learned how to swim, though,” I said jokingly, “and each time I realized I was on an island, I panicked.”

  "Thats were I live,” he said. ”But that kind of island never bothered me. Just what I felt when I first went there—the feeling of being alone among so many people.”

  "I dont mind being alone,” I challenged him.

  “Then youre very rare—maybe very lucky,” he said. “Most people cant stand to be alone. Theyll do anything to avoid it.”

  “And you think I dont know that?” I asked him, resenting what I consider an implied accusation of coldness. In a way, I begin to interpret what is going on as a kind of battle between us—some secret, not-entirely-understood battle—at least, not understood by me, now. I fluctuate in my feelings toward him and his words. At the same time that he seems to be prying, he seems, too, to be reaching for something inside of me which, whether he is right or not, he feels may somehow release or liberate me. In preparation for the streets? For something else?

  "Im sure you do know it,” he said, “Im sure youve seen it.” After a short pause, he added as if to himself: “Yes, Im sure you can feel compassion. But it stops there.”

  Compassion! Yes, I knew that was true. There were those times when it ripped me, when I had to retreat from people, from their sadness—as I had done how many times? ... But perhaps thats what he means.... As an end within itself, when it became impotent pity, was compassion merely another subterfuge to grasp at, to resort to in guilt when we questioned ourselves?—so that we could move away more easily, telling ourselves we could do nothing else.... Beneath it, was there a sheet of ice which forced all feelings to stop there? (What had the Professor called it?—a flicker of compassion rising up to thaw the icy blanket of the heart, and smothered by the very ice it sought to melt.) Beyond those feelings of abstract compassion, have I merely posed at caring? Again out of that inherited fear?

  Faces of strangers return like ghosts out of the graveyard of my mind.’ I had a sudden feeling of having played a game of charades.

  And I felt, suddenly, in that keyed-up, manic mood, as if my heart had begun to listen—to something.

  For something.

  2

  “But you do want love,” Jeremy said.

  This time there was not the slightest note of a question. Hes so composed, so sure.

  And I think purposely: Only a short time earlier my legs straddled his shoulders. And at that thought I feel fully armed to cope with his words, aimed, Im sure now, at some kind of revelation of me. It is only their purpose which is to be determined.

  “I want to be wanted,” I corrected.

  “Oh, yes, I forgot.... Maybe because Ive stopped running away.”

  His words slapped at me. This time they resounded unequivocally with the petty, malicious put-down of so many of the others—and I slapped back viciously: “Now you run after?”

  “In a way,” he said, unperturbed by the clearly vicious intent of my words—and I have the feeling that he may have purposely exposed himself to them. "If you mean that what I do now, sexually, I do without inhibitions—that I can talk to the people I want instead of waiting to be spoken to—attaching no great symbolic significance to it, well, then, youre right.”

  “And you think it has a ‘great symbolic significance’ for me?” I asked him. I know that possibly, later, I’ll regret these words. Now, freed by the dormant effects of the liquor and the pills into heightened lucidity and rashness, I dont care. The feeling may not last. While it does, I must go on.

  “Yes,” he said, “as sure of it as you are.... Im sure youve thought you have a definite advantage of whatever kind over the people youve been with, because theyve wanted you, because theyve paid you—some sort of victory beyond the sex-experience, beyond the money. (But dont you need them just as badly?) ... Anyway,” he continued quickly, “I’d say that when you leave, I’ll be less lonely than you. No, not because of the role Ive played (that can be infinitely lonely, too—perhaps lonelier—certainly lonelier); but merely because of that very rejection of those symbols. And it’s not just on your side that the symbols take over and create the elaborate guilt-ridden defenses: The ‘scores’ who brag about what the hustler did back, about how they screwed him. The hustlers who brag about how the score didnt even get to touch them—they clipped him. All the legendary defenses—to be used against that lonely, lonely feeling of the lack of love—on both sides. ... An imitati
on of sharing.”

  I want to ask him why he paid me—why he went along with the one-sided sex—especially without my having asked for the money, especially because everything about him suggests desirability within that world. I feel certain now that he has purposely emphasized the giving of the money, given perhaps, at least in part, to underscore all these words—which he seems determined to speak, to me.

  Yet I can feel the gap between us broadening into a chasm as he attempts to come closer to me. Or is this his purpose?—does he want to broaden this gap?

  This scene.... This man’s words.... So completely incongruous before the Parade.... Still, I feel glued to this room as if all that is being spoken, while seeming incongruous, is somehow related to the ritual of the Carnival—mysteriously. And yet there are times when I cant tell how serious he is. Sometimes, when he speaks most gravely, he smiles immediately after, as if half-mocking himself, half-mocking me.

  “Anyway,” Jeremy had gone on, “all I meant when I said that I’d stopped running is that Im no longer afraid to give of myself.... On the other hand,” he added, looking at me directly, “Ive known people who have retreated into a symbolic mirror—in order to force themselves not to give.”

  The defensive narcissism, I thought, avoiding his look.... That self-love that implies a completeness within yourself—and yet implies a huge incompleteness—your devouring need of others to sustain each battered return to the Mirror.... You have Yourself—only!

  He seemed to be waiting for me to say something; and when I didnt—purposely silent—he continued: “I sometimes wonder,” and he aimed the words clearly at me, “if it isnt more difficult for some people to believe theyre loved than it is actually to love....”

  “Maybe,” I said cautiously, “people like that resort to finding in themselves what they cant find in others because they know what it’s all about; and when they run away from those who may claim to ‘love’ them, they do it because maybe theyre afraid of being duped again with another myth—of finding out that, like ‘God,’ theres no such thing. And is it really so strange,” I went on, “when you consider the world? After all, I didnt make it—neither did you. It made us.... Sure, as a kid,” I continued slowly, wondering if I really want to go on, “as a kid, I wanted to right the messed-up world—or at least try to, somehow. Then, like everyone else, I looked around, I found out. I found out that nothing justifies innocence. I saw that other lives werent much different. Like me, everyone else had been tossed out.”

  And: Yes, I thought, you become aware of a terrible imposed fate—fate, or whatever else you called it: “the beads” for Trudi—or whether it became an evil angel, as for Miss Destiny. For the Professor, ugliness—and for Skipper, paradoxically, it had been his physical beauty—as it might have been for Robbie.... Lance, searching out his guilt shaped by a “ghost”—in turn, himself, possibly haunting Dean.... For Sylvia and her son, it had been ... “love.”

  And as I thought that, and as I had been speaking, I knew how wrong I had been in thinking—so often, so many, many times—that I had sought out the world which now claimed me. No. Even outside that sheltered window, even then, that world had been waiting for me, scratching at the windowpanes, summoning me, tempting me by the very fact of its existence, like that tree in God’s primal garden.

  And I knew, too, why earlier I had been able—so easily, at last—to vindicate my father.... I had seen enough in that journey to know with certainty that the roots of rebellion went far, far beyond that. Beyond the father, beyond the mother. Far beyond childhood—and even birth. An alienation that began much earlier. From the very Beginning.... Something about the inherited unfairness—that nobody’s responsible but we’re all guilty. Something that has to do with destiny—and with so many other things: starting out with the legend about a God who cares—and the discovery of a paradise we were deprived of ... replaced by a prejudiced Heaven.... Something about the fact of death—of decay—of swiftly passing Youth: the knowledge that we’re sentenced to live out our deaths, slowly, as if on a prepared gallows.... And something about the fact that the heart is made to yearn for what the world cant give.... Yes, the seeds which were planted in childhood were already here, in the world.... It was something in the wind.

  “So, very early, I began to hate the world,” I went on; “to suspect everything—mainly ‘love’—and to try to become,” I added bitterly, “ ‘strong’—and maybe thats what you mean by ‘not giving’—by retreating to the Mirror.” I had avoided looking at him as I spoke. When I faced him finally, he was staring at me as if he, too, had felt all those futile emotions.

  But he said: “It’s strange that we should have to force ourselves not to love—or share, if you dont-like that other word—even force ourselves not to acknowledge that love is possible. And so we make the world even more rotten than it was when we discovered its rot; justifying ourselves by saying it’s the only way: Get tough. Or be swallowed by it. And we further that original alienation.... And by ‘rot’ I mean only all the things that repress and forbid—the rot created by people in order to keep themselves from facing the real horror—within themselves—the coldness, the lack of understanding—...”

  “And yet you cant understand rebellion—in disgust?” I interrupted, thinking of Chi-Chi, of Kathy. Skipper, Jocko.

  “Rebellion?” he said. “Or is there a point where it becomes surrender to the very rottenness youve rebelled from?”

  “Ive never leeched off anyone,” I said defensively, again feeling accused by his words. “It was always someone who wanted me. Ive never even spoken to anyone first,” I said pointedly. “And Ive never taken anything from anyone who didnt want to be taken from, who didnt already know the score.”

  “There isnt any difference, really, between the hunter and the hunted. The hunted makes himself available—usually passively, but available, nevertheless. Thats his way of hunting. ... Im sorry,” he said, relenting. “I just wanted to see you defend the very innocence youve probably set out to violate. ... You see,” he said, again smiling so that I cant tell how serious he is, “even the heart rebels—finally against its own anarchy. And thats the most powerful rebellion.”

  Cataclysmic bursts of sound from the streets draw me to them. I can shatter his sureness by walking out.

  “I want to be outside when it’s really swinging again,” I told him. “Just before the Parade.” But by the way hes looking at me, Im sure that he knows Im afraid of returning to the streets, afraid of the Carnival, the beginning all over again: the ritual—and because I am sure that he knows all this, and feeling that recurrent resentment, Im overwhelmed by a sudden compulsion to do what Im doing now: I draw his hand over my body so that it rests this time between my legs.

  “All the symbols,” he smiled—understanding again clearly, annoying me that nothing can shatter his composure. “No, it doesnt compromise me. Not at all.” It’s almost as if we’re dueling—but for what stakes? I wonder disturbingly. “You remind me of a youngman I loved very much,” he said. “He kept telling me he couldnt love me back the way he knew I did him. He told me that ultimately he’d want women only. Unwittingly, I hurt him. I finally believed that he actually wanted, very much, to get out of the life he’d been living with me. So I stopped seeing him. Then he called me up. He asked to come over. In bed, I could sense him becoming purposely cold. It was what he had plotted, to establish that I still wanted him, on his own terms. What he didnt know was that he didnt have to test anything about me. I would easily have told him-and proved to him—that I wanted him back. And all he had done was to compromise his own stance—his professed stance of indifference.... We say we hate the world,” he went on mockingly, “but we imitate it constantly: Weve got to make ours a battlefield, in which theres always a winner and a loser. But, really, the line isnt that definite.... Have you ever thought that in all those fleeting contacts in which you consider yourself the winner—have you ever thought that youre being used too—by those who want you now onl
y for something that doesnt last?”

  “No,” I answered sharply, wanting to stop the inevitable direction of his words, “Ive never thought that.”

  But once again I was thinking of Lance and Skipper, of Esmeralda Drake, the Professor, the fatman in that bar on Main Street.... “Who was the giver, who the taker?” the Professor had asked—and even as he eulogized them, he had discovered that it had been the voracious angels who had destroyed him. Yet Skipper (drunk somewhere in downtown Los Angeles ... remembering the deceptive past) had discovered that it was the scores who had swallowed him.... “Angel” and score like intimate enemies, each mortally wounded by the other, hating the other, needing the other. ... Is it possible that there is no real difference in the two roles? Is that something of what Jeremy is trying to point out?—that the common denominator is loneliness.... A momentary sharing of sex. And beyond that the infinite separation, the alienation.... Both give, both take.... All Or is it, rather, nothing?

  “I have a feeling,” Jeremy had gone on, slowly at first, as if again to test how far I’ll listen, “that sex isnt even sex any more for people like you. That you actually come to loathe it.”

  “Sure,” I aimed at him. "You saw it earlier.”

  “A compulsion to reach orgasm,” he accused me, “to get it over with. Not sex. Something else that youve got to cram your life with—some kind of revenge for what youre convinced is the lack of love.... But what a short rebellion which relies exclusively on how long you can look young! ... Afterwards,” came the inevitable words, “after the youth is played out—when youre ghosts, with painful memories of being young—when they no longer want you—what form will the rebellion take then?”