City of Night (19 page)

           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 sex-hungry nympho in the next building hanging out the window in her half slip 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 the 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 Limit!
“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!!!!”

           I whispered dont tell anyone, but me too.

           “Next youll be the Prince of Wales,” she says bitchily, glowering at Chuck and Buddy making up to the nympho, who was fanning herself with her slip now.

           And Miss Destiny goes on haughtily—sure of her ground: “Then—tell—me: if you read Shakespeare, Who Is Des-demona?” doubting it superiorly, giving me The Supreme Test: Shakespeare and his queenly he-roines who were first, remember, played by men.

           I answered (and remember the pills, the liquor, the mary-jane): “Desdemona was a swinging queen in the French Quarter who married a spadestud who dug her until a jealous pusher turned him on that his queen was making it with a studsailor, and the spade smothered the queen Desdemona and the heat came for him and he killed himself....”

           Miss Destiny stared at me a long while—not speaking. And as she was staring at me like that, Lola—who had gone to the head outside, Destiny’s being occupied—returned howling theres a man in the head outside and he aint got no pants! Miss Destiny sprang up, rushed at Darling Dolly Dane:

           “You dizzy silly cunt! you brought him here didnt you?”

           “Where else, Miss Destiny?” Darling Dolly Dane pleads helplessly, covering her face dramatically.

           “Go give him his pants!”

           “How can I, Destiny? I dont know where I
left
them!”

          
“Miss
Destiny!” Miss Destiny screamed.

          
“Miss
Destiny dammit!” Darling Dolly Dane shrieked back.

           “Here!” Miss Destiny rushes into the other room, comes back with a pair of pants (which turn out later to be Buddy’s, who is with the nympho in the other room), empties the pockets on the floor, tosses the pants at Darling Dolly Dane, shouting: “Throw them through the transom!”

           Darling Dolly rushes out whimpering.

           “Silly bitch,” says Miss Destiny, glaring at her when she returns giggling now the man must have thought the pants came from Heaven.

           Now Miss Destiny sat on the floor next to me. “You
do
know who Desdemona is!”

           Then again there was a long silence between us.

          
Suddenly!

           Suddenly, and strangely—strangely then but not so now: now, inevitably and very clearly like this: Something was released inside Miss Destiny and something established between us in that moment by the simple fact of the mutual knowledge of Desdemona: that something released and that something established which she had yearned for with others from person to person in this locked world—and trying always futilely before, had given up. And of course too it was the liquor, and rejection earlier smashing at her stomach like a huge powerful fist—and the pills pushing-pulling in opposite directions, jarring her—the memory too of the Real girls with whom three of us had gone earlier—and this importantly: the loneliness churning beneath that gay façade desperately every awake moment shouting to be spoken, to be therefore shared: released by something as small as this, the common knowledge of the sad sad tale of Desdemona—or maybe more accurately than released: say, erupting out of the depths of her consciousness, aroused by the earlier rejection, resulting in that rare fleeting contact made rarely somehow like a match struck in the dark for a breathless sputtering instant.... And so now, because of Desdemona and all this meant to Miss Destiny, and all the things set off from the knowledge, Miss Destiny blurted suddenly frantically:

          
“Oh, God!
... Sometimes when Im very high and sitting maybe at the 1-2-3, I imagine that an angel suddenly appears and stands on the balcony where the band is going—or maybe Im on Main Street or in Pershing Square—and the angel says, ‘All right, boys and girls, this is it, the world is ending, and Heaven or Hell will be to spend eternity just as you are now, in the same place among the same people—
Forever!’
And hearing this, Im terrified and I know suddenly what that means—and I start to run but I cant run fast enough for the evil angel, he sees me and stops me and Im Caught....”

          
(Like in the game of statues long ago and someone swung you round and round and you stayed frozen as you fell, and the angel is the swinger now....)

           And Miss Destiny went on desperately:

           “And I know it sounds crazy but I came here believing—no, not really Believing—but hoping maybe, maybe somehow crazily
hoping!
—that some producer would see me, think I was Real—Discover me!—make me a Big Star! and I would go to the dazzling premieres and Louella Hopper would interview me and we would stand in the spotlights and no one would ever know I wasnt Real—”

          
(That impossible strange something that will never happen....)

           And Miss Destiny rushes on feverishly:

           “And at night in bed drowning in the dark, I think tomorrow will be just like today—but I’ll be older—or I come unexpectedly on myself in a mirror or a reflection in a window, and it takes my breath:
Me!!
... And I think about my wedding and how Fabulous I’ll be—but I want to fly out of my skin! jump out! be someone else! so I can leave Miss Destiny far, far behind....”

          
(And Miss Destiny wakes up at night terrified by the knowledge of that strange impossibility, and the darkness screams Loneliness! and impossibility, whirling around us—and soon youll have to face the morning and yourself—the same, again....)

           In the other room someone yelled, and it was the nympho. I heard Chuck shouting Whoooooooppeeeee!!... and Darling Dolly shrieked: “Chuck, get
off!—thats
Buddy!” And Lola came out rushing yelling at no one, “Leave me alone! Im ugly! Im ugly!”—her face smeared grotesquely with paint and enormous tears—“Im ugly, Im ugleeeeeeeee!” and Trudi trying to soothe her with her fur stole—momentarily leaving Skipper, who is passed out drunk....

           “All this is going on,” Miss Destiny sighed, hugging the orphan doll, “and when tomorrow someone will maybe ask us, What did you do last night?—we’ll answer, Nothing.... And, oh, do you believe in God?” she asks me abruptly, and I answered it’s a cussword. “Oh, yes, my dear,” Miss Destiny said, “there
is
a God, and He is one hell of a joker. Just—look—” and she indicates her lovely green satin dress and then waves her hand over the entire room.
“Trapped!
... But one day, in the most lavish drag youve evuh seen—heels! and gown! and beads! and spangled earrings!—Im going to storm heaven and protest!
Here I am!!!!!
I’ll yell—and I’ll shake my beads at Him.... And God will cringe!”

           Now Miss Destiny leans toward me and I can smell the sweet liquor and the sweet... lost... perfume—and with a franticness that only abysmal loneliness can produce, she whispered.

          
“Marry me please, dear!”

        
5

           I was out in the street with the jazzcat from New York wearing dark shades who had somehow turned up later at Destiny’s. And Los Angeles was- dreary in the earlyhours with the sidewalks wet where theyve just watered them and the purplish haze of the early morning. And he asked me which way I was going. That way, I said. Me too, he said. And we walked through the streets.

           Then somewhere a bell began to sound, and I looked up instinctively at the sky....
One day that bell will sound and Miss Destiny’s evil angel will appear!...

           I left Los Angeles without seeing Miss Destiny after that night. And I went to San Diego, briefly.

           And I returned to Los Angeles.

           A few of the people I had known were gone—even in that short time—back to the Midwest or to Times Square, or had been busted, or moved to Coffee Andy’s in Hollywood, or gone to Golden Miami. They had disappeared, one day: One day youre here and thats fine, and the next day your gone and thats fine too, and someone has that very day come in to take your place whatever it might have been.

           Chuck was still here, boots and widehat. And Skipper... And Trudi still blaming it on the beads...

           I asked Chuck about Miss Destiny, one night, when we were again at the 1-2-3, but this time it was quiet. Not even the jukebox was playing. Everyone was broke. Not a single score. Even the pushers hung dismally inside the bar.

           Chuck said he hadnt seen Miss Destiny in a long time, she had just disappeared. Somewhere. “Man, she was a gone queen,” he said, pushing his cowboy hat back in a kind of tribute to Miss Destiny.

           I asked him did she have her Fabulous Wedding.

           “Oh, sure, man, I did not go though—someone tole me about it, she had it out in Hollywood, man, in this real Fine pad, an I heard she akchoolly dressed like a bride, man—she married some studhustler from See-a-dal, and it musta been a real Fine bash, if I re-call Miss Destinée right....”

           Then he went on to tell me he had a job washing dishes for a few days but he quit and how some score has promised to put him in some malehouse in Hollywood where hell make at least $50 a day.

           Later I saw Pauline (and now the jukebox was playing the song which I will always think of as part of LA.:
For Your Love
—and the sad throaty sounds of Ed Townsend meaning it), whom (Pauline) I had met before I left, having found Miss Destiny’s warning that first night in the park was justified: Pauline coming on Big with how she would have her own beautyshop in a few weeks and whoever she dug would have it Made and Made Big.