City of Night (51 page)

           Reluctantly I join the hordes of other nightpeople, stark in the reality of Morning, their features as if erased by the sun from the bloodless faces, more stark in juxtaposition with the sleepfed faces of the others, the morningpeople: the many, infinitely many, varieties of “tourists.”

           And in that sun, it will begin again, trying to fill the nothing with something—
with anything!
—which this time is God Damn It this:

           Sonny said: “See, you go and tell him—over there, see (and, man, I seen his wallet and that score is loaded!)—and tell him Sandy-Vee wants to see him, and when he comes outside, you come with him and shove him toward the stairs and me and my buddy’ll grab his ass, and if he dont come across nice, we’ll take it and break the bread in three.” His childface looks pervertedly demonic—like a fallen angel’s—as he whispers the plotted violence—his look reflected by the darkhaired youngman beside him who, that other violent afternoon, had taken Sonny with me to Sylvia’s boarded-up bar.

           The score was drunk, sitting at Les Petits bar; and responding to the howling anarchy, and challenged by the world implied by Sonny’s plotting words, I said to the score: “Sandy-Vee, outside, she wants to talk to you,” and he got up smiling and looked blearily through the door of the bar, past Angel Face making starved mouth-love to the mike; and the drunk score looked into the courtyard leading past the shadowed steps of balconies to Sandy-Vee’s bar, and he started to come outside with me, placing his arm around my shoulder warmly as if we were two sudden comrades; and he saw the two moving out and looked at me sadly and sighed and understood sadly through the liquor and said: “You run along yourself, son, and you tell Sandy-Vee I’ll see her later, hear?”

           And I sighed too in relief, as the two outside prowled waiting.

           Friday.

          
The Parade of Hermes... patron of wanderers ruling over the restless flocks, over the travelers from America’s grinding cities; nightmessenger bringing the news of the approaching Tuesday....

           Although my wallet was loaded, I knew suddenly I had to clip someone again as urgently as some men need to come sometimes—for nothing better to do, the way old women knit. The jaded man from Houston in the tawdry pink Cadillac (with the jaded younger man with the face like a blubbery mask—rather, like a fish long out of water—and the tall lanky dancer, just as male-jaded) said: “Join us for breakfast?”

           And we did go to the Bourbon House, but it was jammed—and so we went, instead, directly to the motel, and I had expected money, but no one said anything, so I used this as my excuse.

           We drank and drank on the bed—and I still felt sober—still deadly Sober even when the three jaded figures seemed to swirl in one enormous, composite, gobbling mouth about me.

           All three exhausted from the liquor, out—I went through fishface’s pockets first, and counting the money carefully, I took only half—then the others, and I took just half. Then I lay down on the floor—because I didnt want to be near them—and almost-slept and woke up and woke them, in the diamond-clear afternoon.

           Then!

           Laughing, Smiling, Being Happy, they rode me into town through the coldblazing sun and the knowledge of myself, with the clipped money in the pocket of my levis; and fishface looked through his wallet and said, “I been robbed.” And I said: “Youve got to be awful careful of that during the carnival, theres lots of thieves around.”

           I got off at the Y. And I saw the statue of General Lee surveying Lee Circle, arms crossed, disapproving.

           I saluted him.

           And I thought he must still be looking at me reprimandingly through the window of the Y as the hot-water steam mushroomed about me, protecting.

           Saturday.

          
The Parade of Iris.... Rainbow floats weirdly illuminated, passing in papier-mâchéd splendor....

           And still I was sober—despite the maryjane, the pills, the beer, the whiskey; still alertly conscious, feeling at times a parodoxically turbulent calmness, perhaps like the stillness of a stormcloud waiting for a bolt of lightning to release the pent-up rain. Torrents of expectation and alarm rage inside me at the prospect of Mardi Gras, now only two days away.

           The queens would be bitchy like petulant children to each other that day in the bars because the vice patrol had made them cut their hair, they looked so much like women and thats against the law If Youre Not—and so, Dejectedly, with short hair, they must face The World; and feeling their female stances somewhat compromised—unfairly—by that short, short hair, theyre arguing rhetorically over which queen would have which of us at her pad that night.

           Betti (who was Benny in Nebraska) said I was her new husband, and Vicki and Salli (Victor and Steve, respectively, in Atlanta) grabbed Sonny and Jocko and said: “Well, honey, these are
our
husbands.”

           And as the queens began to dish each other, myself and the two other “husbands” felt ourselves so Goddamned absurdly Masculine—because, remember, queens always say they want Men—and we kept on studiedly digging a cute young girl nearby—because youre supposed to want real girls only... for “love.” But, oh, oh, soon Sonny has drifted away, looking for the two momentarily lost scores hes been going around with; and Jocko left—and Im standing outside on the street.

           I saw a tiny rag-doll Miss Ange waving at me asking was I looking for A Pad To Sleep?

           She had short hair.

           And I began to laugh so uncontrollably, right there on the street, that she swished away in understandable indignation.

           Suddenly I felt vastly repentant—and very, very sad.

           Very sad, sitting in the Coffee House at the French Market, sitting thinking strangely obsessively of the lady-tourists dragging their husbands depressingly along Royal Street (Roo Rowyall), hunting for gay antiques and pralines that are Clean, and feeling, myself, Hugely Bitter that they wouldnt give a royal damn if they knew that only minutes earlier the plainclothes had warned me—as they were warning all the others on the streets (the jails being crowded)—if I was still in town, theyd bust me for novisiblelegalmeansofsupport.

           Sunday. The parades canceled.

          
It snowed today in New Orleans for the first time in more than 20 years,
I wrote my mother.

           A little boy—his features Youngly real in the icy white glare—rushed excitedly into the street from somewhere to gather the mysterious snow, his face turned questioningly to the Sky.

           And the snow fell in white plumes.

           Like a million tiny diamonds it covered the cemetery in back of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

           And everyone, even Us, looked pink and real in the white light.

           And if it had snowed longer, it might have killed some of the cockroaches. For a few hours, this rotten city was purified.

          
Someone even threw a snowball!

           The snow melted in quilted brown patches, it rained, there was slush. The sun came out with renewed cold fury.

           Monday.

          
The Parade of Proteus, who can assume any shape, any form, will pass tonight in a flaming snake of torches. Whiterobed mummers, ghosts of ghosts.... And at midnight, Mardi Gras begins....

           Negro children somersault along the street for Tips. Stray Dixieland bands become more numerous. Spasm bands sprout.... And this birthplace of Jazz is now shaking and rolling, twisting, to the new sounds of our ravenous time.

           Through the open doors of the welcoming nightclubs on Bourbon (aggressive hawkers like recruiting sergeants luring the tourists with unfulfilled promises), you hear the drum-dominated, subterranean sounds of take-it-off music from the vast neighborhood of sexless sex.

           In the cramped rooms, the smoke-choked apartments, the old, old houses, into the patios, the parties are impromptu and laughter reigns over the city like a reckless deity.

           And the afternoon has already aged into grayish yellow, the shadows are lengthening to pull down the night. And soon even that fading light wearies. Stars appear cautiously in the wings of dark. The gray darkness reaches insidiously soothingly for its anxious children.

           In the swelling cankerous crowds, men and women in the streets drink out of giant hurricane glasses from O’Malley’s bar, tilting the glasses to capture each drop, seemingly toasting the faint moon which has already appeared in her own sequined drag.... And the cops continue intrepidly, pointlessly, vengefully to scour the city, nailing the youngmen who look like vagrants—and who, as the cops stop to interrogate someone else, can dart into the crowded streets, escaping before their absence is discovered.

           Past the Cathedral, obliviously, swelling groups snakedance dizzily through the weird streets and alleys. And in the rushing night, the Cathedral—its nebulous spires trying more urgently to fade into Heaven—girds itself stonily for the masked revelers who will soon appear.... And gray, as if preparatory to mourning, donning the night’s dark shroud, it waits—frozen, austere, ashen—for its own redemptive day:

           Ash Wednesday.

           Near the French Market is an enormous chicken and rooster coop. Earlier, I had stood before the wire, watching in fascination as the roosters sliced frantically at the air, feathers like sparks of many-colored fire.... Suddenly, one jumped above the others, clawing directly before me, urgently at the wired cage.

           Remembering that now as if I were standing before that cage again, one thought thundered in my mind:

          
I’ll go to the airport right now, I’ll get a plane, I’ll fly out of this city!

           But already, night has inundated New Orleans.

           The mob frenzy is like an epidemic out of control, claiming more victims each darkening moment. I squeeze through the revelers, and I feel myself once again exploding with excitement. I move from bar to bar, from drink to drink, from person to person—pushed along by that excitement which I know is suspended precariously over a threatening chasm of despair. But if I can go on!—hectically!—if I can retain my equilibrium on this level of excitement, of liquored sobriety!—then the swallowing void, though already yawning, can be avoided.

           Night races toward midnight.

           “Let’s ball!” A woman’s arm curls tightly about my waist, whirls me around.... Someone blows a shrill whistle at me, its paper body unfurling suddenly like a rigid-spined worm, tipped with tiny fluttering feathers quivering tensely, mockingly before my face.

           Rattles shake like at a children’s party out of control. Noises blast their way into silence, into a blare outlasting sound. Drums, voices, laughter! A raging hurricane lashing at the city. A symphony gone mad.

           Stray costumes appear.

           A band of red-dressed men and women in black-tentacled masks dance prematurely in the maddened street—red like flashing rubies crushed together, angry flames burning insanely bright before turning into smoke. Redly.... Roses pressed against each other in screaming shapes of red, red shrieking red. And like a flock of startled red-winged bats, the group disbands in separate scarlet bodies caracoling along the streets to join other screaming groups.

           Confetti like colored snow pours from the balconies, quickly stirred by shifting, stamping feet.... Streamers float, curl gracefully, are carried aloft by the winter night-breeze—suspire in the air as if reluctant to be trampled on along the littered streets.

           Midnight!

           The revelers sweep into the streets like tumblers into an arena.

          
Mardi Gras!

        
CHI-CHI: Hey, World!

        
1

           AS IF THE DOOR—THE ONLY DOOR—to an insane asylum had suddenly been thrust open, the crowds rocketed along the streets, flowed in currents, chose sides; howled the purple laughter; pushed, screamed, shouted, shrieked, roared—crushed against each other in a jigsaw puzzle of unfitting colored pieces.

           Whistles, horns!

           A churning, violently tossing ocean of angry cacophonous sounds. Multikeyed laughter erupting in unison like a fire-bursting sky rocket scattering a diffusion of burning sparks into the streets. Over the broken noises, momentarily the scream of a woman threatens hysteria, reaches its strident plateau, breaks, veers from its panicked course, becomes a longly sustained joyous laughing, reverting jarringly into an ear-knifing sirenshriek. Floating to the surface of that raging storm of erratic sounds, the beat of bongos underscores the streetmadness as if somewhere a spontaneous parade has begun.

           Having waited in their rooms for this magic witching hour to convert them into women to the full extent of drag, the queens are the first to appear in costume. Most of the others will wait until the morning. But the queens have already come out anxiously like prisoners fleeing a jail.

           Through the crowds, I spot Miss Ange—self-conscious about her short, short hair, which undauntedly she has arranged in minuscule ringlets over her forehead. In a green-flowered hoop skirt and a wide yellow straw hat—her dress so wide that she shrieks in annoyance when someone threatens to crush it—which keeps her screaming over and over—today she is Scarlett O’Hara.... Desdemona and Drusilla Duncan, standing under the yellowish umbrella of a streetlight, For The Whole World To See, are in twin outfits of the fast, vampish 20s—their hair, too, in helpless ringlets—and they carry cigarette holders pointed carefully into the air in order to avoid poking some sympathetic someone.... Shimmying recklessly on the street, legs thrashing, looking like an alarm clock jangling insistently out of control, Whorina is a Woman of the Night—in a studded shiny red dress: a vision, at last, of her stifled impossible dreams from the graveyard hours when she knows, inside, that she was meant to be, every bit, a Woman.... And Sandy-Vee, in mesh stockings, bustle like a pinned rose—a chorus girl—has left her bar to display herself as A Celebrity. A handsome youngman in tuxedo and cummerbund escorts her Proudly.... Another queen, Cinderella, shakes a long metallic wand—gold streamers attached—at the tourists, as if to banish them from her sight forever.