Numbers Page 5

  Johnny suddenly imagines the kid 15 years, say, from now: sitting dejectedly in one of the many gay bars in Hollywood (as dejectedly as he sat on the grass earlier), hating women, searching for men.

  He looks down at the woman he would have entered a few minutes ago. Her face is brutal.

  “Cummon, Johnny Rio,” she says, grinding against him.

  He moves away from her, her hands drop suddenly to her sides. He walks out.

  The kid is sitting desolately on the grass.

  “Are you through with Tina now, sir?” he asks Johnny.

  FOUR

  JOHNNY HAS GHOSTS TO PURSUE.

  Years ago, when he hitchhiked to Santa Monica from downtown Los Angeles, he’d ask whoever gave him a ride to let him off as close as possible to where Wilshire runs into the welcoming arms of a statue of Saint Monica on the strip of gaily flowered park, where old people sit on benches under the benign attention of solicitously hovering palmtrees.

  From there Johnny would walk across the bridge to the honky-tonk stretch of the pier. Calliope music (tunes squeezed out like smoke signals) floated in heavy puffs from the arcade. He would pass the curtained box where the gypsy woman told fortunes. Always tempted to go in, once he did—and dashed out quickly when her voice called through the flowered curtain, “Come in, come in, don’t stand there waiting for fate, which is: rushing!” . . . After walking the pier, he’d retrace his steps, heading toward the beach.

  The beach then seemed almost deliberately divided into fraternal, protective groups. The first few laps were taken over by heavily muscled men who got together ostensibly to work out with weights under the sun; clearly, though, they came to pose for each other (oiled gleaming bodies assuming poses the body rejects) and for the people who gathered, sometimes derisively, sometimes admiringly, as at a sideshow. From there, followed a kind of limbo of children, families, youngmen and women on the beach. Thinning out, they gave way to another distinct group: brown pulpy-skinned men and women drenched in perspiration, wearing loose trunks and bathing suits, perpetually playing a game in which a ball is struck with small paddles back and forth across a net. Beyond the private wire-enclosed courts, another limbo, and then a pocket of high-school and early-college students, many surfers, separated by a further limbo from the “gay” part of the beach.

  There, inevitably, Johnny would sit on the concrete ledge or lie on the sand or go to the male-bar or the hamburger stand—until someone spoke to him. Later, if he was still around or had made it near enough to come back—he’d walk through Pacific Ocean Park with all its carnival attractions and make-believe juxtaposed with the row of shabby bars catering to old sailors, arms such a tangle of tattoos they look like blue-and-red maps . . . past the blond mousy children roaming in tribes . . . past Lawrence Welk playing for The Folks; and Johnny would move on to Venice West, to the bar which attracted exiles of every breed: dikes, queens, hustlers, “heads,” even famous movie stars.

  It became a ritual for him—from Wilshire to Venice West—until, one summer, he moved into a fantastic old house a block or so from the beach. One of those flimsy old wooden two-story buildings that give the impression of actually swaying (a bony porch nervously attempting to “anchor” it to the sandy, tentative ground), it sheltered a squadron of vagrant youngmen.

  You didn’t check in, you didn’t ask for a room, you merely moved in. The mad old queen who owned the building and lived in it would look in on each new “occupant”; if he was “cute and butch,” he could stay—but she never made a pass at anyone. Its occupants changed so often you hardly knew who was living there at any particular time. There were hustlers, beach idlers, two or three bodybuilders. It was referred to as “the place” by its inhabitants. Although rent was cursorily mentioned from time to time by the queen (“Every boy should help his mother”), no one took it seriously; and no one ever paid. A skinny, wonderful, unbelievably swishy old man—who wore false eyelashes and a hat laden with artificial fruit—the queen had apparently said fuck it, opened all the rooms of her house, and left them open for the “cute and butch.”

  Periodically, something would set her off—a careless remark perhaps—and she’d threaten loudly: “Unless she starts getting more respect from the tenants around here, your mother’s really gonna start collecting rent!” Nobody believed her; they just kept away from her during her sulking times (“her periods”). After that, she’d quickly make up by announcing a house dinner for “the guests”; that meant she’d toil for hours like a witch over a cauldron of stew—” for my boys so they can go out, strong, healthy, well-fed, and make money to help their dear mothers.”

  Today, parking his car in a lot a few blocks away, Johnny will walk from Wilshire to Venice West: in a tribute to the Past.

  As soon as he reaches the narrow park and heads for the familiar bridge, he removes his shirt. He pulls his Levi’s very low, slung on his narrow hips.

  Just like he used to.

  But the gypsy woman on the pier is no longer there. The curtained box is sealed, boards crisscrossed in stark X’s. (Did she one day see her own future, dark, and just give up?) The calliope is silent.

  He walks on the beach.

  Where muscle beach had been, there is now a playground. Here and there some of the bodybuilders hang on intrepidly—not unlike the old-time denizens of Pershing Square in their raped park. True, even before he left, there were hints of the demise of this part of the beach. A scandal: Three white weightlifters were discovered shacked up with two Negro girls, aged 12 and 13. And something else: A house nearby, where bodybuilders and stray girls gathered, turned out to be a voyeurs’ delight, with spyholes in the walls. . . . And so the omnipresent enemy known as the City Authorities had waged a concerted drive To Rid The Beach Of Undesirables.

  Walking on, he sees that the members’ courts are still there. The same brown-leathery types feverishly beating the ball back and forth, back and forth.

  And in tight clusters—unchanged—are the frozen-blond teenage girls in bikinis; the yellow-colored, long-haired young boys like wet birds. Surfing boards propped against a wall like defiant shields.

  Now Johnny is on what had been the gay section of the beach. The bar and the hamburger stand are gone. Not even a trace of them—not even an outline on the ground. There is a concrete parking lot instead; to accommodate the cars, they’ve even narrowed the beach. Again like the denizens of Pershing Square and the bodybuilders of muscle beach, there are about a dozen homosexuals (scattered among the families and the children) still clinging tenaciously to their part of the beach.

  And so the City Authorities haven’t really won. The original squatters will return. Already the advance guard is restaking the territory. In the meantime, where are all the others? The people who laughed so loudly, so euphorically? Ghosts drowned in Johnny’s memory, who nevertheless wail to be remembered. People and places existing now like marks erased from paper. Where are they now?

  Somewhere.

  Another beach.

  They’ll come back.

  Johnny moves on.

  Even Pacific Ocean Park has felt the nearly fatal blow of the City Authorities. Desolate and sad. Like an abandoned movie set after the movie is completed. You have the feeling that if you go behind the restaurants and shops—most of them closed—you’ll find stilts supporting cardboard buildings.

  The scrimmed sky augments the feeling of desolation.

  Bewildered as if after a bitter battle that left few survivors, some of the old sailors and beach types still hang around; but their bars—the beat-up bars without doors, bars with only three walls—have disappeared. The cheap fried-shrimp and hot-dog counters are closed.

  Perhaps it’s only because it’s still early in the season, Johnny thinks. Perhaps in a few weeks—. . .

  But no.

  In the distance, beyond the beach, Johnny sees the enemy’s weapon—the hideous machines that have already swallowed, digested, and thrust out as dust so many familiar places. It’s Satu
rday, and even the machines rest now; but they sit there like monstrous dinosaurs, heads bent but ready to resume their fatal devastation, giant claws ready to scoop up the earth. Jagged outlines of demolished buildings create gutted craters. That portion of the city—a part of Santa Monica, a part of Venice West—looks as though it had been ravaged by bombs. Without searching it out, Johnny knows the building he lived in has been scooped up and turned to dust. (Where is the mad wonderful old queen with the fake eyelashes and the hat like a basket of fruit?)

  It will all be replaced with slick glassed rectangular “luxury” apartments, lined up uniformly like giants defying the ocean.

  Johnny walks on.

  The dark old Jews of Venice West still cling to their places on the rococo benches that face the row (still mostly there) of stores and kosher delicatessens. But Johnny can imagine the machines, now idle but waiting, scooping them up too, hauling those old people away—still sitting on their benches.

  Closed . . . the large building with thick columns, where messianic bearded men read fiery poems to the accompaniment of bongos.

  Turning away, Johnny looks futilely for the bar where he spent so many, many afternoons and nights. It doesn’t exist any more. Was it there?—where a new crackerbox building two short stories high has gone up? (Rooms identical, all glassed facing the ocean—the building is an insidious hint of what the whole beach will look like in a few years—if the City Authorities win the war.) . . . No, there’s not even a hint of where the bar was. (The laughter has been buried in the ocean; the wind wailed at its wake.)

  Suddenly Johnny wishes he’d parked nearby, so he could get in his car and leave this sad cemetery of memories. He wishes that instead of coming to the beach he had gone to see a writer friend who lives nearby in the canyon. He feels like someone who goes to church for a wedding and finds a funeral.

  But wait! Another encouraging sign. Out there on the pier—and milling about the walk in their smiling groups: the beautiful saintly-looking longhaired girls and bearded youngmen, decorated with beads and flowers and rainbow ponchos: lovely barefooted hippies, flower children. Soon they may help bring back a wild, loving sanity to the beach—if the Enemy doesn’t crush them.

  “Hey, Johnny! Hey, kid! Hey, man!” A man in yellow trunks is advancing toward him.

  Although he doesn’t recognize him, Johnny waves at him. “Hiyah, mano!” he calls.

  In a few seconds, the youngman is facing Johnny on the walk. About 28 years old, his hair blond and curly, he’s as tall as Johnny; but he looks much, much shorter because of his excessive muscles. His body, once undoubtedly goodlooking, is now so vastly distorted by the bulging pectorals and deltoids that he looks inflated. Broad as they are, his shoulders nevertheless sag under the weight of enormous biceps and forearms—arms held curved as if he were carrying two heavy buckets. Each hugely muscled leg is a parody of a Mae-West doll. All this makes his head look smaller than it should be. He has a handsome face—white teeth gleam starkly out of the dark tan; but his exaggerated body, calling shocked attention to itself, all but obscures the good looks.

  “Where ya been, kid?” he’s asking Johnny, who still can’t place him definitely. “Donya recognize your old buddy Danny?” He stands very straight, spreading his “lats” like batwings. “You don’t remember? From ‘the place’? You usedta live there too, remember?”

  At last Johnny remembers him. Much bigger now, he’s one of the two or three bodybuilders who stayed at the mad-queen’s house: always flexing their biceps, adopting a weird pose (a leg out and twisted, the toes pointed) to show off their thighs. Johnny remembers: Danny was always putting his arm about him warmly, always affectionately calling him “kid.” But they hadn’t been “buddies.” Johnny has never been “buddies” with anyone.

  “Oh, yeah, sure, mano, sure; I remember,” Johnny says, glad to see someone from those earlier years.

  “Gee, man, you sure look great!” Danny says, looking Johnny up and down. “You’ve got nice and husky—used to be kinda skinny, dinya? I bet you been workin out!” he says enthusiastically.

  “Yeah, yeah, man,” Johnny says, “but just to keep in shape—you know.” He’s embarrassed Danny may think he wants grotesque muscles like his. Abruptly silent, Danny is probably waiting for Johnny to comment on his appearance. So Johnny says: “You’ve gotten lots bigger; that’s why I didn’t recognize you at first.”

  Danny evidently takes that as a compliment. “Thirty pounds heavier!” he announces. “I got a 17½-inch neck now!” He strains it so that it flares from his ears toward his shoulders in a squat trapezoid.

  Obviously, he wants to impress Johnny; but Johnny can’t think of anything tactful to remark. “Gee,” is all he can bring himself to say. Danny shouldn’t be encouraged to work for an 18½-inch neck!

  “Hey, cummon, kid, let’s take a walk along the beach,” Danny says eagerly. “I wanna show you where the guys work out now.”

  The prospect doesn’t excite Johnny; but the thought of walking back alone now, with the memories that will be opened by each desolate strip of beach, pushes him to agree.

  “I always used to look at you and think, That kid’s got a real good frame on him—slender but real good,” Danny is saying as they walk along; he’s also twisting each wrist alternately, exercising his forearms. “Thirty more pounds and you’d really have a body and a half!” He takes a deep breath, his chest rolls out. “Yeah, just 30 more pounds—that’s all you’d need—and a good six-day-a-week lifting routine with heavy weights,” he proselytizes.

  Johnny imagines himself 30 pounds heavier: the slender sensuality coated over, the lean sexiness smothered, the panther grace turned bearish. Ugh, he thinks. “I don’t think I’d like to gain all that weight,” he says tactfully.

  Danny unflexes, as if Johnny’s words have punctured the bulky flesh. “Well, yeah,” he says dejectedly, “I guess maybe you’re right. Some people should carry a leaner body.”

  “Yeah,” says Johnny Rio, sorry if he’s hurt Danny.

  A girl is walking toward them. She’s not particularly pretty; in fact, Johnny would say she’s something of a mess; but Danny whoops: “Wow! Ain’t she sweet? Shake it! Wow!” He makes a complete turn, whistling after her.

  Slightly embarrassed, Johnny remains silent.

  A stretch of beach ahead, Danny announces excitedly: “Here’s the new queer beach, man!”

  Yes, definitely this will soon become an exclusively “gay” section, Johnny thinks. Groups of men, groups of women cluster tightly on the sand, staring at everyone who arrives. Instinctively Johnny looks to the side. Yes, already there’s a bar nearby.

  “I wonder if she’s a lez,” Danny is saying. He’s looking at a blond youngwoman lying alone several feet away. “She sure looks nice; but you never can tell, man—some queers look just like us.” He’s still ogling the girl as Johnny moves ahead.

  “Queers,” says Danny, catching up. “They hang out a lot where the guys work out. See that one over there? He’s just crazy about guys with big muscles. He hangs around always asking everyone what exercise is good for this or that, but you never see him touch a weight—no sir!”

  Johnny sees a very skinny man staring at them, the man Danny pointed out. Johnny is, of course, convinced the man is looking at him, not at Danny.

  “Then there’s this other one,” Danny is going on compulsively. “He talked to me the other day, wanted to take pictures of me—that’s all. Naked, you know. He’d pay, of course. . . . Queers,” he says as if it’s all beyond his comprehension. “He asked me did I have a buddy; he’d take duos—you know, two guys. Queers like that. I got his number at the pad. I told him maybe. You know—so what? Just stand there, get paid. He might ask us to make out like we’re wrestling—but so what? Guys wrestle. Doesn’t mean nothing. So I said yeah I’d keep it in mind. Say—. . .”

  Johnny deliberately changes the subject quickly. “Everything sure has changed around here,” he says.

  Danny merely
says yeah and goes on doggedly: “Lots of the guys here, they go for the three-B’s scene—you know, blowjob, bed, breakfast. Most of the guys in that weird house—where you and me stayed that summer—that’s how they made out.” He said that as if he had just found it out. Maybe he’s sounding Johnny out about his scene.

  Johnny says nothing.

  “But those fruits, man, I wouldn’t lettem touch me. I don’t have to. I’m doing real good in the movies. Bit parts—you know, gladiator pictures, stuff like that. And this Italian director—he might take me to Italy to make a flick there. Say, maybe you saw me in Bloodsuckers of the Moon versus the Crabmen of the Red Sea? A muscle-science-fiction-horror movie about the son of Hercules? With Rage Storm? (He’s a muscle gay—I mean guy.) Did you see me in it?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Johnny lies. “I did see it, mano! Jeez, you were great!”

  “Been making good bread in the movies,” Danny says proudly. “And I got a real swell pad. Right now, though, I’m on unemployment. In this weather, who wants to do anything but be in the sun?”

  “Right,” says Johnny absently, drenched in memories of the beach.

  “You know, it must be something about me that attracts the fruits,” Danny is returning relentlessly to the same subject. “I bet you attract ’em, too, kid, goodlooking like you are. Anyway, I was staying at the Y once, and this guy kept following me in the showers, wanting to cop my joint. Finally, I said, ‘Look, fag, I got nuthin against you; what you do is your own damn business; but I saw you in the showers on the third floor just a while ago, and here you are on this floor—. . . ‘” He caught himself too late. “See,” he tried to explain hastily, “the reason I was in the showers on both floors is that this guy had been bugging me; so I went to another floor.”