City of Night (10 page)

           Yet with that childhood-tampered ego poised flimsily on a structure as wavering and ephemeral as that of the streets (and a further irony: that it was only here that I could be surfeited, if anywhere), it needed more and more reassurance, in numbers: a search for reassurance which at times would backfire sharply—insidiously wounding that devouring narcissism.

           In a bar with two men from out of town who have come to explore, on vacation, this make-out world of Times Square, I agree to meet them later at their hotel room in the East 20s. When I got there that night—and after I had knocked loudly several times—the door opened cautiously on a dark room. One of the men peeked out, said, hurriedly in order to close the door quickly: “Im sorry but weve got someone else now; lets make it tomorrow.”

           But there were others to feed that quickly starved craving.

           In theater balconies; the act sometimes executed in the last rows, or along the dark stairways.... In movie heads—while someone watched out for an intruder; body fusing with mouth hurriedly—momentarily stifling that sense of crushing aloneness that the world manifests each desperate moment of the day—and which only the liberation of Orgasm seemed then to be able to vanquish, if only momentarily.... Behind the statue in Bryant park; figures silhouetted uncaringly in the unstoppable moments....

           Still, for me, there were those days of returning to what had once constituted periods of relative calmness, in my earlier years, when—to Escape!—I would read greedily.... Now, at that library on Fifth Avenue, I would try often to shut my ears to the echoes of that world roaring outside, immediately beyond these very walls. Again, I would read for hours. And this would be a part of the recurring pattern, when impulsively I would get a job, leave the streets, return to those books to which I had fled as a child. But because there would always be, too, that boiling excitement to be in that world which had brought me here—and, equally, the powerful childhood obsession with guilt which threatened at times to smother me—emotionally I was constantly on a seesaw.

           And I began to sense that this journey away from a remote childhood window was a kind of rebellion against an innocence which nothing in the world justified.

           In the library one night as I sit in the reading room surrounded by serene-masked people like relics from a distant world, a handsome youngman said hello to me. He sat at the same table. Noticing that he kept smiling and looking at me—at the same time that I felt his leg sliding against mine—I left Sharply, I resented that youngman. His gesture had an implied attraction within the world of mutually interested men. While I could easily hang out with other youngmen hustling the same streets (although, since Pete, I seldom did for more than a few minutes, preferring to be alone), with them there was a knowledge—verbally proclaimed—that we were hunting scores, not each other. With this youngman just now, there had been the indication that he felt he could attract me to him as clearly as he had been attracted to me....

           The youngman followed me outside. As I cut across Bryant Park, I heard his steps quicken to approach me.

           “I’d—like to meet you,” he said, the last words hurried as if he had rehearsed the sentence in order to be able to speak it.

           “Im going to go eat now,” I said, avoiding even looking at him.

           “All right if I sit with you and just talk?” he asked me. He was masculine in appearance, in actions. He could not have been over 20. But already there was a steady, revealing gaze in his eyes.

           We went to a cafeteria. As we sat there, he told me he was a student at a college, he lived with his parents. On weekends he worked at the library.... Throughout his conversation, there were subtle references to the homosexual scene, which I didnt acknowledge.... Afterwards, for about an hour, talking easily, we walked along the river.

           “I’d like to go to bed with you,” he said bluntly. “We could rent a room somewhere.”

           Remembering Pete with a sense of utter helplessness, and surprising myself because of the gentleness with which I answered this youngman, I said:

           “Youve got me all wrong.”

           In the following days (on this unfloating island with that life that never sleeps—in this city that seems to generate its energy from all the small, sleepy towns of America, sapped by this huge lodestone: the fugitives lured here by an emotional insomnia: gathered into like or complementary groups: in this dazzling disdainfully heaven-piercing city), in those following days, I discovered Third Avenue, the East 50s, in the early morning, where figures camped flagrantly in the streets in a parody stagline; the languid “Hi” floating into the dark, the feigned unconcern of the subsequent shrug when you dont stop....

           And there was Howard Thomson’s restaurant on 8th Street in the near-dawn hours. They gathered then for the one last opportunity before the rising sun expelled them, bringing the Sunday families out for breakfast

           I discovered the bars: on the west side, the east side, in the Village; one in Queens—appropriately—where males danced with males, holding each other intimately, male leading, male following—and it was in that bar that I first saw flagrantly painted men congregate and where a queen boy-girl camped openly with a cop.... But because most of those bars attracted large numbers of youngmen who went there to meet others like themselves for a mutual, nightlong, unpaid, sexsharing—or for the prospect of an “affair”—the bars made me nervous, then; and, largely, I avoided them.

          
The restlessness welled insatiable inside me
.

           I discovered the jungle of Central Park—between the 60s and 70s, on the west side. In the afternoons, Sundays especially, a parade of hunters prowled that area—or they would sit or lie on the grass waiting for that day’s contact. Even in the brilliant white blaze of newyork sun, it was possible to make it, right there, in the tree-secluded areas.

           At night they sat along the benches, in the fringes of the park. Or they strolled with their leashed dogs along the walks.... The more courageous ones penetrated the park, around the lake, near a little hill: hoods, hobos, hustlers, homosexuals. Hunting. Young teenage gangs lurk threatening among the trees. Occasionally the cops come by, almost timidly, in pairs, flashing their lights; and the rustling of bushes precedes the quick scurrying of feet along the paths.

           Unexpectedly at night you may come upon scenes of crushed intimacy along the dark twisting lanes. In the eery mottled light of a distant lamp, a shadow lies on his stomach on the grasspatched ground, another straddles him: ignoring the danger of detection in the last moments of exiled excitement....

          
In Central Park—as a rainstorm approached (the dark clouds crashing in the black sky which seemed to be lowering, ripped occasionally by the lightning)—once, one night in that park, aware of an unbearable exploding excitement within me mixed with unexplainable sudden panic, I stood against a tree and in frantic succession—and without even coming—I let seven night figures go down on me. And when, finally, the rain came pouring, I walked in it, soaked, as if the water would wash away whatever had caused the desperate night-experience
.

        
THE PROFESSOR: The Flight of the Angels

        
1

           THE MAN IN BED—STARING AT me appraisingly—was enormous. In one hand he held a pastel-blue cigarette—poised, daintily between two puffed fingers. He brings the cigarette studiedly to his mouth and blows out a shapeless cloud of uninhaled smoke. He looks crazily like a pink-faced genie emerging from the smoke. The other hand held a tape-measure, which is partly wrapped about his sagging fat neck.... Hes somewhere in his 60s. His head is shaved completely. Huge dark eyes bulge behind thick glasses, like the crazy eyes painted on the glasses children wear on Halloween.

           Beside me, in this well-furnished apartment, stands a young malenurse, who has brought me here from Times Square. He is perhaps 28, coldly blond, with a very pale face—a premature Oldness, a bitter knowingness. He acts like a haughty movie butler who feels superior to the guests. Even on the street when he approached me, he had looked at me with unconcealed contempt; lighting a cigarette as we walked here, not offering me one.

           Scattered about the floor are manuscripts, books, magazines. The room is cluttered with statues, unhung paintings, vases with withered flowers. There was a large ugly German beer mug on a mantle.

           Now the malenurse is looking at the old man—waiting, I knew, for some sign of approbation or displeasure from him.

           After long moments of staring at me, unwinding the tape-measure, winding it again, puffing elegantly on the pastel-blue cigarette, the old man, propped halfway up in the hospital bed, said finally:

           “Well!” And his fleshy face shaped a smile—molded as if on pink clay. “Im not one bit disappointed,” he announced grandly. “But then I never am—thanks to Larry here,” acknowledging the malenurse. “Larry knows my subtlest moods, my changing (oh, so changing!) tastes—and hes only been with me—how long, Larry?”

           The malenurse answers quickly: “Four months, Professor.”

           “Ah, yes, of course, four months!” The man in bed goes on: “It’s unfortunate that the world doesnt recognize talent like Larry’s openly. Larry would be an Enormous Success. But then there are many things the world doesnt recognize. Yes.... Fine, Larry, now, if youll excuse us—” The malenurse walks out, almost brushing my shoulder, without looking at me.

           “My dear youngman,” the old man announces, “you are about to join the ranks of: My Angels!”

        
2

           “Now, sit near me,” he said. “Yes, do bring that chair over. Not that one: the other one, it’s more comfortable, and I want you to be Comfortable.... Careful, now—my manuscripts. Push them aside, child—neatly, neatly—I was looking through some things before you came.” Sighing deeply, he waves a chubby hand over the room, indicating the books and manuscripts littering the floor. “They are: Relics—from another life!... Now, first of all, let me explain some exterior situations: You see me here, now, in this hospital bed, where Ive been for months and months; Suffice it to say: an Eternity! An automobile struck me—and it would have been Poetic Justice, yes, if I could say I had been hit by a gigantic truck—driven by a young handsome truckdriver, who knelt to gather my shattered heap of flesh (you see: I say ‘shattered heap of flesh’—I am frank with myself: Life wrecks all illusions—but you will find that out later), and to whom—had it been just such a handsome young truckdriver, though the very instrument of my infirmity—I would owe my life: There would have been something extravagantly Sexual—” He affected a slight tremor. “—about being struck by a truck—ummm—Well!... But, oh, the perversity of life: no such magnificent luck. It was no such earthangel who ran into me: but—ah, perversity, dear boy, keep it in mind: Perversity!—I was hit by a nervous, high-strung, skinny, homely, ineffectual, simpering oldmaid from Oklahoma, vainly trying to compete with our own glorious system of cabs! Not that I have anything against Oklahoma. As you will learn, I have some fond memories of—But that comes later.... And so it has taken all those months. This frail mechanism (if I may be allowed the indiscretion of referring to myself as ‘frail’—ha, ha—but I speak only relatively)—this frail mechanism called the body has refused to heal. In other words, the hip bone is no longer connected to the—How does that song go?... Anyway, you see me now rigged up in a 20th-century torture—not entirely unlike those used by the Inquisitors of old.... But do bring your chair closer, youngman—I want to hear every word you say, every phrase.... You will notice I have a hearing aid—which at times I feel must indeed be connected to an electronic god, who whispers all kinds of naughty electronic gossip to me. And, sometimes, alas! falls deadly silent... But you see, I am a bit of a poet, and you will understand—later, because I hope you will become my angel. (Robbie, forgive me,
forgive me!
)” He entreated Heaven. He draped the tape-measure loosely about his chest, released it momentarily, and let it lie limp along his body. I noticed a little red wire clamp marking a certain spot on the measure. “My dear boy,” he explained, “Robbie is my Guardian Angel—about whom you must hear—but later—perhaps in another interview, a precious interview—because I am also a philosopher. The poet stands in awe of life, and the philosopher penetrates it—and I do both. And life, my dear, dear young angel, is a long series of Interviews. And so: On With The Terms, to plunge, as in epic poetry,
in medias res
.... Lets dispense with the—uh—matter of—funds. Larry, I can suppose—uh—met you on one of our numerous streets, and so I take it you are—uh—seeking—(how did one street angel put it to me not too long ago? Oh, yes:)—bread: a fitting designation for funds, reduced, in the manner of the streets, to The Essential:... bread. I will give you (this is always a rather touchy subject, and so I have established a fixed fee)—$7.50 an hour, and if a fraction of an hour, the full amount All right?... Very good, thats Marvelous! And you will come to see me as often as—” His voice broke, he stares at the red mark on the tape-measure. “—as often,” he finished sighingly, “as the interviews shall last...” He reaches for a Kleenex, also pastel-colored, and touches his nose delicately. “Very well, then.... Im looking forward to knowing All About You my novice angel. Angel!” He puckered his lips and threw me a kiss. “I am all love, my dear boy—every inch (and there are, oh, so many!), every thought, every sigh—all Love: Love, dear child, which is, indeed, God!... Now do move closer. Yes. Now on with our First Interview!—the most important, really—in which we will get to know each other—in which we will turn a searchlight on the wonder of our mutual lives—ignoring momentarily the ugliness, of which—” he said sadly “—of which—there is—so much.... Ah, life—that vast plain of—what?... Like a cold card dealer, God deals out our destinies: It was mine to be born ugly.... But let me, now—by way of establishing an Important Contact with you—let me tell you, now, about The Angels....”