Numbers

  Johnny can “see” the party (just as he could see the room the man who picked him up earlier would have taken him to). It will be in an enormous old house—once elegant—in a rapidly deteriorating neighborhood; the palmtrees will be yellow. The shades drawn, the lights dim. Queens in drag: makeup, high-heels, sequins . . . like colorful ghosts. And very-masculine-looking, very-masculine-acting youngmen picked up from the streets and bars and outside the U.S.O. and in the Greyhound bus-station will strike overtly “butch” poses on couches and chairs, as if completely indifferent to the scene (“I-came-here-for-free-drinks-and-food, manl”). And incongruous, well-dressed men, rich and not-so-rich voyeurs, will expect all kinds of orgiastic spectacles, which may or may not happen. . . . All permeated by the odor of marijuana. . . . And later a queen (drunk or high) will make a pass at the wrong youngman (drunk or high) in front of his friends (drunk or high), and he’ll hit her to assert his “indifference”; and a queen will threaten to scratch another’s eyes out for carrying on with the number she herself wants; someone will burst into the restroom at an inopportune time (“Excuse me, Miss Mae, I didn’t know you were brushing your teeth!”); and one of the queens and/or the well-dressed men will discover a wristwatch gone, a wallet picked. . . .

  “I’m waiting for an R.S.V.P., honey, which means: Will You Come?” says the queen.

  “Sure, sure,” Johnny says. “But not right now. I’ll see you in the park. Later.” He walks away.

  The queen stays behind, evidently annoyed—but only for a short while: When Johnny is leaving Pershing Square a few minutes later, he sees her talking to two youngmen with close-cropped hair, obvious servicemen though in civilian clothes.

  Something has saddened Johnny immensely.

  Of course, he had known all along he would do it. (Is this why I came back to Los Angeles?) It was just a matter of determining when—although why he should hesitate, he didn’t really know. When he did do it, he did it on impulse—right after leaving Pershing Square.

  He saw a telephone booth, went in, searched his pockets for the right change, couldn’t find it, stepped out abruptly before a well-dressed man walking by, and actually said, “Buddy, could you spare a dime?” Quickly, the man gave it to him and in evident disbelief remained staring at Johnny, who is already back in the booth.

  “Johnny who?” said the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Rio. Johnny Rio. Is this Tom?”

  “Yes.” Pause. “Where are you, Johnny?”

  “In L.A.!” He said that as if the announcement were a present.

  Pause. “No!”

  “Sure. I got here—. . . just now,” Johnny lies.

  “But where are you?”

  “Downtown.” And because of what that might imply, he adds: “I got lost on the freeway.”

  “You have a car?”

  “Sure! And I can be over in a few minutes.”

  “You know how to get here?” said Tom.

  “Sure,” said Johnny, feeling warm—and somewhat cocky: like a person who knows he’s loved.

  He drives up Sunset Boulevard, perhaps a third of the way toward Hollywood. How often—in the last months before he left Los Angeles—had he ridden, walked, hitchhiked these same blocks!

  He made me feel like a prince, he thinks.

  Now he turns into one of those side streets that lead into shady, crooked, peaceful lanes and hilly landscapes, all heavily treed, into an old, attractive section of the city: sturdy two-story houses perched on hills like fat satisfied wealthy ladies looking down on the newly arrived.

  Tom’s house. Johnny parks. Remembers:

  I met him one night when I was hitchhiking on Wilshire, by Westlake Park. I had been in Hollywood earlier. The night was very hot. He told me later he had driven by me, had seen me, wanted to stop—but he was in the inside lane, other cars were in the outer. So he turned as soon as he could shift lanes—anxiously because he was afraid someone else would pick me up—but I was still there (only a few minutes had passed), and he offered me a ride.

  Johnny had nowhere specific to go that night—which was no different from other nights—or days. Working only occasionally—once even three weeks in a row—but mostly not, he had become accustomed to diving daily into one of the many rivers of the city’s life and letting it carry him along. So when Tom invited him to come to his home and take a swim in the pool, Johnny gladly accepted. Later Tom told him he had thought he was so young that that’s why he didn’t try to come on with him as they sat by the pool that evening, Johnny Rio in borrowed trunks much too large for him. Tom had thought Johnny was perhaps 18—which he wasn’t; he was older.

  Tom didn’t come on with him until late that night, and this is how it happened: Johnny remained in trunks, Tom dressed; and they sat watching television. Then it was that Johnny reached out rashly for Tom’s hand—sure of Tom’s interest—and put it on his own—Johnny’s—thigh. Tom did the rest, and Johnny lay back.

  An architect then in his late 30’s, Tom had intense dark eyes and a fine, intelligent face. He kept his body slender by swimming daily in the pool added incongruously to the proud old house.

  From that first night, Tom made Johnny feel like a prince. Johnny saw a lot of him—but he saw others too. Thinking he did so only because of what those others gave him (so did Johnny), Tom was very generous with him—he took him to eat, gave him money to spend, bought him presents (including a handsome silver identification bracelet engraved with Johnny’s name). One weekend, after Johnny had admitted liking filet mignon, they had it three times a day.

  When Johnny, guarding his freedom, resisted moving in with him, Tom nevertheless set aside a room for him in his home: “This is your room, whenever you want it,” he told him. He also paid Johnny’s rent in the hotel downtown where he stayed. Tom even offered to send him to school so he could: “learn-a-trade” . . . not knowing that Johnny had finished high school, had made straight A’s in math, and was much smarter than he sometimes pretended to be: often slurring words and using bad grammar in the required style of the street hustler.

  In return, Tom asked nothing of him except that he let him make love to his body. Johnny let him: Tom licked every inch of Johnny’s body, and Johnny came in his mouth—sometimes several times a day. On weekend mornings Tom would go into “Johnny’s room” silently and wake him up by kissing his body lightly all over.

  Still, Johnny kept seeing other people who gave him money.

  Now it isn’t that Johnny was insensitive to others’ feelings. (In fact even in hustling he tried not to hurt anyone: If he mentioned money to someone who was affronted by being sized up as a payer—though Johnny didn’t make this mistake often; he was usually instinctively positive who’d pay—he’d try to right the situation something like this: “Oh, gee, mano,” using the hip Mexican appellation, “I knew you weren’t the paying kind; I just mentioned it to you so you wouldn’t waste your time—and if I didn’t really God’s-truth need the bread, I’d make it with you just for crazy.”) What some might call insensitivity was, rather, a condition arising from the fact that Johnny’s needs were so enormous: In those Los Angeles years, he longed, craved, needed to be admired, wanted, adored (and he was—abundantly); and as the symbol of his sexual power he “chose” (or perhaps it chose him) the act of men paying him to love his body without his reciprocating.

  Knowing or sensing or tolerating all this, Tom still continued to treat him like a prince.

  Finally, Johnny saw what may have been a vision of his own corruption. Returning to his rented room one afternoon (to take a shower before meeting Tom for dinner)—a ten-dollar bill crumpled in his pocket (given to him earlier by someone he immediately forgot)—he looked in the mirror to dazzle himself with his smile; and he saw, instead, a depraved distortion of himself. He washed his face, looked again in the mirror. Once again, he was the Johnny he liked so much to look at.

  Soon after that—three years ago—he returned to Laredo. That was on a gray Los Angeles
morning before the mist had lifted as much as it ever does. Johnny said so long to Tom, explaining only that he was very confused. (He didn’t tell anyone else he was leaving. For those others he was only a body.) He returned to Laredo by Greyhound bus, just as he had left.

  During the next few months, Tom telephoned him long distance very often—once five times in a single day. He wrote him many letters. He sent him money (each month, for more than a year), a subscription to a Los Angeles newspaper, and many other presents. Johnny wrote him back at least once a week. He told him how well he was doing working for his father’s brother; that he would soon be moving into an apartment alone (he was staying temporarily with his mother); he also told him that here in his hometown he was keeping entirely to himself: which was true.

  After about a year, Tom’s calls dwindled, then stopped; the letters waned, they stopped. The money stopped too.

  He made me feel like a prince, Johnny remembers. He rings the bell of the two-story house and smiles: prepared to be greeted.

  “Hello, Johnny,” says Tom, at the door.

  “Hello, Tom.”

  “Come in.”

  Johnny walks through the door.

  He sits on the couch in the living room; everything here is as it was.

  Tom sits on a low chair. “Well, what brings you back to Los Angeles?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” Johnny says truthfully. “I’m trying to find out.”

  “Well, maybe a drink will help?”

  “No, thanks,” says Johnny.

  “And where have you been all these years?”

  “In Laredo,” says Johnny. “You know that. You used to call me.”

  “Of course,” says Tom. “You were staying with your mother; then you moved out. And how is your mother?”

  “Fine and dandy,” says Johnny.

  A long, long, long pause.

  “And what do you do there, in Laredo?” asks Tom.

  “I wrote you. My uncle. I’ve got an uncle there—my father’s brother; he’s finally got his business going big. I take care of his figures for him—inventory, stuff like that; I do it in the evening at home. That way, I keep away from people. I’ve wanted to be alone—till now. My uncle understood. And I was always good at numbers.”

  “Were you?” asks Tom.

  “I’ve even saved money,” Johnny says hurriedly, “and I just bought this crazy new car. It’s got a wooden steering wheel, wooden paneling—and—. . . Well, you’ll have to see it.”

  “I want to; it sounds nice,” says Tom. His eyes are dark on Johnny when Johnny suddenly looks up from cupped hands. Tom quickly averts his glance.

  Abruptly, Johnny stands up. “I’ve been weightlifting,” he says. “On a split routine—that means I exercise different parts of my body on different days—and I never skip a session,” he goes on nervously. “I’ve even quit smoking, and—. . .” Impulsively, he removes his shirt, revealing his chest, which he knows tapers impressively from broad shoulders to narrow waist. He flexes.

  “My, you have got muscular,” says Tom. “You used to be flat as a board.”

  “Yeah—but I’m still slender as a—. . .” He was about to say “tiger,” which is what Tom used to call him when he was about to lick Johnny’s body. “. . .—slender as a panther,” he finished.

  Tom has looked away.

  Almost sheepishly Johnny puts his shirt on again; he even buttons the second button from the neck, which he usually leaves open.

  “Can I see the room I used to stay in?”

  Tom doesn’t move at first, then he gets up. “Of course.”

  They walk upstairs.

  “It’s completely different,” says Johnny, looking at the room.

  “Yes, I had the furniture changed—all of it. About—. . . about two years ago.” Then he says: “A friend of mine—. . . He stays here sometimes.”

  “In this room?” Johnny asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” says Johnny.

  They go downstairs.

  “But you are all right?” asks Tom.

  “Yes, oh, yes, sure, great!” Again, their eyes meet. Again, Tom looks away. “How long will you be staying?” he asks.

  “Exactly ten days,” Johnny answers quickly.

  “That’s nice,” says Tom. “It isn’t too hot yet; the weather’s been good. You have a good tan already.”

  “Yes, I like the sun.”

  “I remember.”

  “I’d better go now,” says Johnny.

  Tom gets up quickly. “Well, it was fine to see you again.”

  They walk to the door.

  Is there really someone else? Has he really turned off on me? Johnny wonders. Or (he glances at the possibility for the first time ever!) is it that I hurt him so bad before?

  “Goodbye, Johnny,” says Tom, a dark shadow against the door.

  “Goodbye.”

  “Johnny,” Tom calls, “good luck.”

  “Thanks,” Johnny says. He walks to his new, shiny car—a symbol that he no longer needs other people’s money.

  He used to treat me like a fucking prince, Johnny remembers.

  THREE

  IT’S NOT YET 9:00.

  He’ll go to Main Street, find someone who’ll want him a lot (perversely, he can’t help thinking: maybe the man I walked away from this afternoon)—or go to a party; on weekends there are always many like the queen’s he rejected.

  He parks his car on Broadway. An enormous loneliness is choking him. And so: Will it all be the same? Just as it was before? he wonders. Those three years I was away—what have they meant then? Didn’t I learn anything from the time I lived here? (Often he thought of the crowded incidents of those years as battles he survived.) Yes, I have; I know I’ve learned a lot.

  He walks along Broadway, on his way to Main Street.

  At the corner of 7th Street, a white-haired Negro woman with a face wrinkled like a raisin is prophesying the world’s end—for tomorrow. Do or die, she’s really calling it close, Johnny thinks, admiring her gambling spirit: Tomorrow, if she’s wrong, she may be out of the preaching business; in fact, she’ll be out either way! Curiously, she lacks passion. A black Bible open in one hand, the other hand raised, she’s saying (not shouting it, not crying, not howling it)—just simply saying:

  “We awll doomed—we awll go tomorrow.”

  She’s pitifully failed to attract even a small gathering. People passing ignore her. (What if she turned out to be right? At the very moment of the eruption, the holocaust, the explosion, the judgment, would they say: “My God—the woman on the corner of 7th!—she was right!”?) Touched by her aloneness at this moment (how sad if she really believes it’s going to happen tomorrow), Johnny stands and listens for a few moments. But the woman seems unaware of him, of anyone else.

  “We awll doomed.”

  Johnny walks away.

  Lights scurrying like electrified mice, a bright movie marquee proclaims that the theater is:

  ALL NIGHT *** ALL NIGHT *** ALL NIGHT ***

  Two technicolor hits. And Smoking In The Balcony. It’s open all night, and there’s a balcony. Johnny knows—just as anyone who has hung out in gay bars knows—what that means. The hunting shadows in the dark . . . the frantic moving in and out of the toilet.

  He buys a ticket.

  But he doesn’t go to the balcony. He sits under the dark dome of the theater on the lower floor.

  On the screen a loony woman is offering to pray for everyone’s soul. (Johnny thinks: We awll doomed, we awll doomed. He’s trying to follow the movie, but his mind keeps slipping away like a fly; he forces his attention to return.) A man is getting beaten up severely. (Johnny’s mind slides away again. The awareness that he’s in an all-night theater with a large balcony is making him feel tense; almost, ironically, like when he was a kid and applied for a job as usher—and then impulsively turned it down.) A ball of fire is cascading down a hill toward what must be a used-car cemetery; the sound is very, very loud—
as if the technicolor, being so bright, has burst into sound.

  The balcony. So near.

  Johnny tells himself insistently he doesn’t want to go upstairs.

  But already he’s gotten up, already he’s pushing the door to the lobby—and he pauses at the candy stand, buys an Almond Joy (pointing to it under the counter because he can’t bring himself to say the campy name); but he knows all this is just a matter of marking time, because: already he’s walking up the stairs. But he stops suddenly . . . pauses . . . descends—starts hurriedly to walk toward the exit, decides not to leave, and goes down the stairs toward the head instead.

  Quite probably this theater once housed elaborate productions—vaudeville, perhaps even opera. Its men’s lounge has all the tattered elegance of such a house—carpets (large chunks missing; like an uncompleted jigsaw puzzle), stuffed chairs (lopsided lumps where the coils threaten to spring through), even a statue-lamp of a naked woman (she’s so old-fashioned-looking that she appears curiously clothed). Beyond—the door open—is the fluorescent-lighted restroom.

  A man sitting smoking idly in the lounge stares at Johnny as he walks by. Another man is making—probably only pretending to make—a call in the phone booth; he also looks at Johnny.

  In the restroom, Johnny stands before the urinal; but he can’t pee.

  Even before he hears footsteps, he knows that one of the two men—or both—will soon be here. And here’s one: standing only one urinal away from him. In his anxiety the man has even forgotten to pretend he’s standing there for any purpose other than to see Johnny’s prick; he hasn’t even opened his fly in the charade of pissing. What he’s doing is staring down at Johnny’s cock, Johnny can see, although he’s not looking directly at the man; no, not at all, is looking, instead, slightly up—to indicate what the man probably already knows from just having seen the way he swaggered past him, the way he stands there with his shoulders so defiantly squared: that he has no interest in him, that whatever interest exists is his in Johnny. Still looking up, Johnny nevertheless allows his eyes to shift slightly toward the side where the man is standing. He sees the man looking down in abject fascination, licking his lips.