City of Night (30 page)

           “Man,” hes saying, his eyes shifting scanning the street for a prospect, “you know what Im gonna do tonight? Im gonna find me a rich queer and clip him for every coin—I mean, Im gonna leave him pantless!... But, see, I aint been here too long—and I dont know the scene too good yet. So, see, what I’d dig: I’d dig finding some swinging cat wholl help me clip the queer—you know—take him to a dark street—or some cool pad youre Sure of....”

           I know what hes leading to, even before he says:

           “You wanna help me?... See, one of us picks him up. Both of us jump him—split the bread. You make it much better that way.” Typically, hes talking tough—impressing himself—but he needs someone to give him courage: another’s rashness spurring him on to the action.... I havent answered him. For some reason, I dislike him.

           “My name is Dean,” he was going on now, extending his hand, trying to be friends. “I just got into town a few days ago, like I say. I hitchhiked—that cocksucker that gave me a ride, he laid some bread on me,” he boasts, “and he told me all about this scene.” Despite the masculine street-hood exterior, the tough jive-sounds, there is something vaguely, subtly soft emerging about him. “But, shit, man,” he says, “you know what Im gonna do, man, when I really get to pinning this scene, man? Im gonna find me a real rich queer so I wont have to hassle it, man. Hell, man, I been sleeping sometimes in the flix, until they kick me out—and, man, I dont dig that scene. It’s hoomilating!... And, see, if that queer aint rich enough, man, I’ll meet another one through him....” He goes on Bigly like that Then: “Whattayasay, man? You wanna help me tumble a fruit?”

           For a terrible moment, I felt a soul-corroding temptation, but quickly stifling that disturbing flash of excitement at the prospect of violence, I said no to this boy next to me.

           He shrugged, moved away. I saw him talking to another youngman hustling the street. That other youngman looks interested. Together, they walk along the Boulevard, turn toward Selma.

           I wonder what will happen tonight on that street.

           And that season, which—lulling me with the false Highness—I had thought would be largely a period of drifting and blotting from my mind all thoughts beyond Today, became, instead, a time that would lead me through a series of self-discoveries, culminating in violence outside of San Francisco.

        
LANCE: The Ghost of Esmeralda Drake III

           IN THAT SHADOWED WORLD OF DIM bars characterized by nervous gestures, furtive looks, masked Loneliness—the World of the Gay Bars—over which the image of an intensely adoring Mother hovers nebulously like a figure created by the clouds of smoke—in that world, Lance O’Hara had sparkled in its cloudy heaven: A Legend. True—although he had been a part of the world of glittering moviedreams—Lance had never Made It Big, and you will not remember his name among the enchanted moviecredits.

           He had been a chorus boy at first, later a dancing partner for the Goddesses of the Screen. Nevertheless, in his world—That World—Lance had been a Star: “the greatest beauty in Hollywood,” the most Desired and sought after.... From the beginning, Lance O’Hara (secure in his own desirability, which was recognized and whispered about, longed for enviously or wantingly even among The Stars) had valiantly dropped the mask: He desired young males like himself, and he admitted it openly.

           About him, in the fringes of that world which Lance had ruled unquestionably—and sometimes mercilessly with the disdain of those who know that beauty rules anarchy—the “extras” had existed to carry his legend into the bars—because that world of bars, extending like an underground from New York to Hollywood with fugitive stops in other cities, is a world of whisperers deliciously recording each conquest, each new skirmish of its stars—but, also... a chorus waiting eagerly in the wings to enter and announce a new Downfall.

           And it waits to be alerted of an imminent Fall.

           Off Hollywood Boulevard—in a pseudo-New-Orleans decor of grillwork and French posters, draped scarlet velvet, dusty winebottles—the gay world of Hollywood finds its headquarters at the Splendide bar: In the subdued amber and pink lights, friendly to its overwhelming, if imposed, guilt, it finds its haven; in its members, it finds its fleeting nightlong meaning
(the unsatisfied hunger, the hurried goodbyes after sexual intimacy...).
Among its patrons are the Young, the good-looking, the masculine—the sought-after—and, too, the effeminate flutterers posing like languid young ladies, usually imitating the current flatchested heroines of the Screen but not resorting to the hints of drag employed by the much more courageous downtown Los Angeles queens.

           It was at the Splendide that I first heard of Lance O’Hara.

           Next to me at the bar sits a blondhaired effeminate fairy talking to a thin dark youngman.

           “Guess
who
is back in town?” asked the blond one, answering himself: “Lance!”

           “Lance O’Hara?” said the dark one, pretending nonchalance. “I didnt even know he was
gone!”
He sipped his drink studiedly.

           “Well,” said the blond one, propping an elbow on the bar, hand dangling loosely from the wrist like a tulip, “he
did
go to New York. He was going to do a Show—but—” He shrugged his skinny shoulders, glancing nervously around. It’s almost the desperate hour and he hasnt made a conquest for Tonight. “Well, you know about Lance’s ‘shows’—they never seem to get Produced any more.... I heard hes working again at one of the studios—but
not
as an actor.”

           “How does he look?” asks the other, his head like a swivel, his eyes searching the bar. (When two homosexuals who have no Sexual interest in each other talk in a bar, they seldom look at each other—their eyes scan the bar for a new, Available anyone.) “I havent seen him in years! I thought he’d—Retired!”

           “Youre exaggerating. We went to his house last summer—remember?—when he acted like he didnt want to see anyone. Anyway, he looks Awful!” he said gleefully. “Youd never believe he’d been the Raving Beauty. Hes simply oh-ful!”

           “Really?” said the dark-haired fairy, intensely interested now. He touched his face as if to feel if the skin is still smooth. In this world, more than in any other, Youth is a badge; Beauty a treasure.

           “He might be coming in tonight—and then you can see for yourself.”

           “I heard he doesnt go to the bars any more.”

           “Well, he
does!
... Oh, look, theres Teddy, (I think hes very cute, dont you?) Teddy! Teddy! (But too femme for me, I like them butch.) Teddy!”

           “You take what you can get, honey.”

           “Dont be bitchy. I dont notice anyone cruising you—” and then in a lisping whisper, “—and look at that number near me, hes been staring a hole through me.”

           “How interesting: a new hole.”

           And the blond one squeezed like a snake through the thick crowd, to a tight little group, where Teddy obviously was; and hisses: “How
are you?
... Guess whos back in Hollywood?
Lance!
”

           “Lance O’Hara?”

                                “Hes back from New York?”

“That bastard!”          “How does he look?”

           “Hes a
Mess!
”

           “Well, it’s about time!”

           And so the chorus, alerted now, prepares At Last to announce the Fall of Lance O’Hara—“prepares,” because Lance, in the waiting eyes of the whisperers, had not yet become Ridiculous.

           And for the chorus to claim its victory, the God must admit his fall....

           It was through the vindictive whispering chorus that I heard, soon after, of Esmeralda Drake III.

           “I saw Lance the other night, and it’s True: He looks Awful,” a fairy I was with said at the Ivy bar. A small group huddles by the unlit fireplace. “And you know what I heard?”

           A long, long pause....“That Esmeralda Drake is dead!

           “Esmeralda Drake the Third!” someone corrected.

           “Yes—I forgot: The Third!”

           “Well, it’s no wonder: She was at least 100 years old!”

           “Older!”

           “Dont exaggerate.”

           “Figure it out: She admitted to being over 60....”

           Then the group disbanded like birds fleeing a nest, and the invoked shadow of Lance blends into the other shadows.

           “Theres Lance!”

           He stood at the draped door of the Splendide as if undecided whether to come in. He was an imposing figure: tall, slender, broad-shouldered. But I couldnt see his face from where I sat.

           “It
is
Lance!” another fairy at the bar said.

           “How does he look?”

           Impatiently: “I cant tell any more than you can till he comes in!”

           “Lets go talk to him And See.”

           They hurried toward the shadow entering the bar. I can see him better now. From the distance—despite the damning whispers I had heard—he was an extraordinarily handsome youngman: black wavy hair, thick arched eyebrows, features perfectly molded.... He acknowledged only cursorily the two fairies who had rushed-gushed toward him—leaving them indignantly widemouthed as he passed through the crowd, briefly greeting the constantly turned curious faces of the many there who knew or recognized him. He made his way to the far end of the bar at the back of the room, and sat there alone.

           Despite his handsomeness, he looked somehow like a ghost—or, rather (and it could have been the mellow light which bathed him), like someone who is haunted.

        
2

           At the Splendide again.

           This time I was with Chick and Jamey, whom I had met just a few minutes earlier on the Boulevard. They had come on with that bulldozer approach of the type who believes firmly that everyone—almost anyone—can be made. And they asked me to have dinner with them. By then I had already been in Hollywood long enough to be pegged as one of the many Hollywood drifters who fall into this world out of at least announced convenience, not strictly “belonging” to it—yet... I say “announced convenience” and “yet” only to be fair to that world, because in it most active members are convinced that eventually those unreciprocating vagrants and wanderers into their world will cross the sexual boundary that separates them now—and they wait almost vengefully for the crossing of that line—to the Other Side—
their
side.... So Chick and Jamey asked me to have dinner with them, and I told them I didnt have any money, which was untrue, and they sighed, and Chick said: “We know, we know—weve all read the script many times.”...

           Chick is possibly in his middle 30s—would be almost-fat but squeezes his waist mercilessly so that he is like a caricature of Mae West. Jamey is younger. Tonight he is wearing a cowboy hat and boots, and because hes quite effeminate, despite the costume and the pose, at best he looks like a slightly masculine cowgirl.

           “I heard something really delicious about Lance,” Jamey said. “I heard that Lance—the beautiful Lance who wouldnt
dream
of falling in love—remember, Chick?—well, hes Flipped! Hes in love with this young kid.... Can you imagine, Chick? Lance—in
love?
”

           “Frankly, no—I dont believe it. I think it’s just gossip,” said Chick, “though I will say—as much as Ive always adored Lance and still do and everyone knows it—I will say it might be the best thing that ever happened to him.”

           I remember the poised man I had seen that previous night—who had sat alone and walked out by himself a few minutes later—and even without knowing him, I couldnt imagine his being in love.

           “And have you heard about Esmeralda Drake the Third?” Jamey said.

           “Well, what about her?”

           Jamey said: “I heard shes dead.”

           “Why, I just saw her the other day,” Chick said. “She was hobbling along the street with her cane. If shes dead, she got run over, I bet.... Which reminds me: I went to this queen’s funeral once, and they had dressed her in drag!”

           “Youre too much!” protested Jamey.

           “It’s the truth. That was how she wanted to go: dress, high heels, gloves. It was in her will.” Then: “This kid you say Lance flipped over—do you know him?”

           “Oh, yes!” squealed Jamey. “And everybody’s had him. Hes one of the Hollywood Boulevard tramps—... Oh!” He covered his mouth naughtily, the cowboy hat almost falling off. “Excuse me, baby,” he said, patting my arm, “I forgot we just—uh—met
you
on the Boulevard,” and he grinned treacherously. “Anyway, the kid is a tramp!... Why, Chick, didnt you and I try to pick him up one night—at Coffee Andy’s?... Or was it you with me? We bought him a hamburger, then he left. Why, his name is Dean—Dean something.... No, you werent with me. I was with Rick that night, I remember. Rick liked him, I didnt.... Anyway,” he repeated, “this Dean is a tramp.”

           Dean? Dean.... I remember that name.

           “I dont believe it about Lance,” says Chick, with touching loyalty. “Youre just being bitchy, Jamey. Lance may not be as Young as he was, but hes still too special.”

           “All I can say,” said Jamey, “is that he certainly had his day.”

           “Babe,” Chick said to me now, “Lance was the handsomest boy in Hollywood.”

           “
I
never thought he was
that
good,” said Jamey.

           “He was,” says Chick staunchly, explaining to me: “He had them all scratching at his door. He was in the movies—we all were, then—he wasnt a Star, but everyone knew him. Why, he had an affair with Pierce Flint—the big moviestar. And Pierce loved Lance so much that when Lance left him, Pierce got married—
to a woman!
... Thats when Lance met Esmeralda Drake the Third.”