City of Night (44 page)
He formed two fingers into a V and closed them with finality.
He looked worn out. The studded costume he wore seemed like a ponderous burden on him. His face dropped toward his hands. Dispassionately, lifelessly, he echoed: “I snipped those straps from the insides of his boots. I cut them off, I stamped on them, I spit on them, I—I—...” And then he shouted:
“
I pissed on them!”
His voice quavered, broke, halted. He turned his face away from me. His shoulders trembled as if in a sudden cold wind.
“So you see: power and strength—” he began weakly without finishing.
I sat next to him, where he had sunk onto the bed.
But is there anything you can say now to Neil?
It’s too late. It’s too late.
Through the open door of the bathroom I see a water-soaked bag on the floor.
CITY OF NIGHT
CHICAGO!
(San Francisco... the fog... the mourning wind... the discovered violence, hatred.... I fled California. San Francisco, which had lured me spuriously with its promise of renewed life, had withdraw that promise.)
Now it will be Chicago—that savage city like a black fortress erected against the blue of the sky, the blue of the lake.
And what have I come here to search for?
Something not yet clearly defined which has to do with the antithesis of Neil’s world.
And I’ll search again through the labyrinthine world I had found on Times Square, in downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Market Street...
I stayed in an apartment house on Dearborn next to the YMCA.... And nearby was the beach. And nearby is the hustling park.
On the beach (which is not so much a beach as a loop of sanded concrete along the lake—to get to which you walk through a subway tunnel—lights slanted on one side of the wall flashing like interrogation lights in your eyes—and you emerge, somehow guiltily, and see, through cracks in the cement, weeds and patches of grass struggling to emerge for one last breath of the expiring-summer air), I will meet a series of new faces which will be added to the hundreds that have already paraded through my life.
Near-autumn afternoons spent there waiting to be picked up. (Behind me, the outline of the wealthy Gold Coast: luxurious apartments glistening goldenly in the sun—resembling, for all their plush elegance, clean hospital wards: rows of giant apartment buildings like monsters ready to march snobbishly into the lake, their backs haughtily to the rest of the city as they huddle—healthy and muscular but still somehow afraid—close to each other as if for protection.)
Sometimes, at night, I’ll return there. Ghostly waves will seek out life, dashing against the shore (while teenagers swim bravely in the cold water, men fish, couples make love, tramps sleep along the expanse of cement ground).... And I wandered along the beach, idly, until someone spoke to me.
But, mostly—at night in that city—I will search the park between Dearborn and Clark: Chicago’s Pershing Square, without the almost-healthy indolence of Los Angeles.
This park where in the afternoons the city’s old and young vagrants serve their novitiate before the derelict jungles of the city.... They gather drearily here in bunches, frantic in the awareness that soon the weather will turn cold.
I watch and listen and join in.
A couple—“just in from L.A.”—drink wine to celebrate “two years on the wagon.” They offered me a drink from the bottle, and I celebrated with them. Behind us, a lame squirrel looked on quizzically, hobbled among the pigeons on the grass. A shabby, fat middle-aged woman said to her crony: “What good is A Beautiful Body?—it aint got me nothin,” as she shifted the hills of her spent flesh. A tramp tells me: “You don gotta worry, boy—youre still Young, still got good hustlin in you—it’s when you get my age—...” I stop listening, concentrate on a romance sprouting in tatters nearby. (An old man has called to an old woman: “Hey, hon, cummon over—I got somethin forya.” She is sitting with him now, as he produces a bottle of cheap wine—and they invade Heaven together, momentarily before the harsh hangover....) As I move away, one harpy in an overcoat grits her teeth and says to no one: “Moody woulda killed him if he’dda kep screwing with me—I mean to tell you, he woulduv.” A youngman lies on a bench, asleep, the sun directly in his eyes.
Vagrants bunched like birds over a worm: young vagrants playing “rummy”—which means dice or poker. Their eyes trained to remain on the dice while still watching out for the cops. Trying to defeat Time.... As the dice tumble to the walk, a woman, huddled over in a wined-up terror, whines from the wasteland of her memories: “My daddee was—... My daddee was—...” Seeing me stare at her, she sighs: “You believe me, dont you?” I nod yes.
I begin to feel a hint of what, in expiation, I must find in this city.
Through the night-sheltered park (as, in the breezy night, shadows grapple with each other on the gray walks), a queen completely painted like a woman, wearing a woman’s blouse and slacks, parades languidly but still unsurely—past the park-socialist shouting feverishly: “Jesus Christ—not Karl Marx—was the first socialist!”—and the tourist bus, full of middle-aged middle-classed ladies, roars away from the blasphemy as wellfed faces look back through the windows at the park in horrified Disbelief.
Hunting eyes outline the ledges of the park. Malehustlers assume that necessary tough veneer of hoods. After two in the morning, cars still go around the block to choose a paid partner from the stagline.
New in town (and in the waning summerdays, other faces have become familiar and stridently desperate), I splashed on the scene, going from morning to morning—in and out of the different cars that stopped after circling the block.... In and out of the different bars (Tommy’s where the bartender will pimp for you after hes made it with you; The Cavern, into a pit of malebodies crushed dancing).... Back and forth on the streets (Dearborn, Rush)—back to the park, the beach....
And these are some of the faces with which I’ll try to blot out the guilt-ridden memory of Neil:
The pale face of a youngman who hands me a written note that says: “I’ll pay you $10.” I turn to answer him. He shakes his head, indicating hes a deafmute.... And about 20 minutes later Im back in the park again.... The bony face of the man driving a car around the block, stopping before me. Wordlessly I get in. Wordlessly we make it.... The face of the man who took me to his house in Evanston
(and it was here that I had stopped on my way to New York, here that I had felt the restless compulsive anarchy those afternoons walking by the lake with my friend, now gone),
and afterwards I explored that lake by the University: The waves thrust themselves against the darkened beach. Pinpoints of cigarette lights reveal the standing forms. I make it there.... The face with swallowing eyes of the man who follows me out of the Cavern. “You dont have to do anything—just stand,” he says....
The faces of two youngmen I think at first are also hustling the park. One is a dancer. I score from both, separately, and the dancer gives me several telephone numbers. But I dont call them: The city—its streets, park, beach—invites me luringly.... The face of an oldish man in sandals—and he warns me against clipping him: “Thats
so
cheap!—so I must ask you: Please—dont—clip—me!”...
The perspiring face of the man who takes me to an Italian fair, where we’re surrounded by dark faces. And he mops his brow and says: “Well, it’s all right to
read
about teeming humanity—but to be
surrounded
by it!”—as he pushes his way anxiously out of the fair....
The calculating face of the man I think I’ll score from easily; who says: “Youre asking too much. I always smile at you guys, when youre new in town and it’s still summer. I just wait for winter—then I can get anyone for hardly anything!...”
And the sad face of the score who thanks me afterwards and sighs: “I guess I’ll never see you again. The nice ones just disappear—so quickly. It’s the mean ones (oh, I get so mad!) that keep coming back like we owe them a living!”
The faces drinking beer at the place of a queen whos picked me up—faces there of three youngmen picked up by the queen’s roommate. And released by the beer, the scene turns into a melée of bodies....
And the others not now remembered.
And that search to find some immediate redemptive something to expunge what was discovered in San Francisco took me to the mangled sights of Chicago’s hobo jungles.
Madison Street.
The enormous Kemper Insurance Building—a huge gray ugly building a block square along the river. Looming darkly. More than 40 stories high. A great bulwark, a fortress. A large square area windowless—Blind. Almost symbolically it turns its back arrogantly to the west side of Madison.
Cross the bridge.
And West Madison stretches in shabby tatters for blocks of leprous buildings. Networks of fire escapes cling to the crumbling walls like tenacious steel spiderwebs. Intertwined among the transient hotels and the harsh yellow-lighted bars are the missions. Each presents its scrubbed face to the stained desperate faces of the doomed tramps, waiting for the sermon and whatever else theyll get.
I pursued those streets as if hunting ghosts.
In one mission, a deacon-type athletic man, radiating health, shouts: “I got a friend in Jesus!”—while an old tramp, doubled over in a wrecked heap, experiences a religious (drunken-hungry) fit, howling: “Lord, Lord, Lord!”
Men outside pace the fetid street funereally, sleep under parked cars, trucks. I see a man roll onto the street, groaning, while the parade of wined-up zombies passes, ignoring him. Others stand like displaced sentinels; dismal mask-faces hanging lifeless outside of doorways.
Shadows huddle, drinking.
From the street, I looked up into the apartment buildings, into the naked windows of the tiny cubicle-rooms. More haggard faces peering blankly; skinny, maimed bodies of uncaring women in slips; men without shirts. All have the same look: the look of nolonger-questioning, resigned doom.
The world on its knees....
A beat-up old man before me chases a wine bottle along its course into the gutter. He yells at it: “Go on, damya—into the gutter whereya belong. I aint gonna touchya no more.”
Instantly, three men jump out of the shadows to retrieve the bottle. Discovering it empty, one smashes it on the filthy street.
I see the terrible cheated eyes.
Other ghosts to pursue through the bandaged jungles.
Beyond the tangle of the elevated, to State Street: carnival street: Tattoo joints; novelty shops (horror masks leering among rubber cobra snakes, masks less hideous than the human ones along the Madison doorways); arcades (“Parisian Movies,” “Chauffeur Photos,” “Art Films”). Tough girls shoot pool. Sailors stand on corners. Burlesque bars coax you with NO COVER NO MINIMUM. The Gayety Burlesque is featuring Teddy Bare and Borden’s Ice Cream.
A tall gaunt man hands me a pamphlet. ARE YOU BORN AGAIN?
And I followed the ghosts into the burlesque theater.
Blondes! redheads! brunettes!—lips liver-colored in the changing light; shouting Ah-haaaaa like cowboys; hands edging toward the hypnotic spot between the legs, resting there caressingly; hips momentarily magnetized, suddenly released, swinging sex around; kneeling.... Fingers teasingly exploring the breasts, playfully pinching them, coyly affecting looks of mock pain.... G-strings like phosphorescent badges etched across the thighs; spread legs radiating their unfulfilled invitation; breasts like searchlights, completely uncovered; apocalyptically revealed pink-crowned nipples, presented cupped in white hands like an offering to the hungry audience; breasts bouncing playfully, jiggling temptingly like white-jelly....
Night Train
from the jungle of exhibitionistic sex.... Hands at the back, naked breasts pointing Heavenward; tensed stomachs forming a tight “8”; legs arched open; fingers sliding into G-strings; thighs thrust out groaningly simulating orgasm.
Hungry unfulfilled eyes in the male audience, focused on the promised but unattainable....
Pursuing ghosts through Negro streets....
Under the elevated at 63rd and Cottage Grove: nearby: The Temple of Brotherly Love. A cross proclaims:
GOD’S CORNER.
And GOD’S CORNER is a tangled glob of steel tracks thundering with the roar of trains.... I see only Negro faces for blocks in that area. Jukeboxes shouting.... Vainly, the afternoon sun tries to pierce the tracks into the street
Wells.
Oak.
Franklin. Thirty-fifth.
Negro streets at night.
Past black faces staring through curtainless windows into the dark streets... Negroes swallowed by the merciful dark. Into the street—into torn porches—they escape out of tiny cramped rooms, the dark stairways like mazetunnels through the open doors.... A little Negro girl asks me derisively: “Hey, mister, ain I seen you on TV?” In the hot nightair, I feel the resentful stares. The silence explodes into laughter coming from somewhere within the crushed darkness.
Pursuing ghosts on Clark Street...
Panorama of ripped sights along the rows of ubiquitous loan shops, poolrooms, “bargain” centers, billiard halls, cheap moviehouses. Zombies in a ritualistic hungover imitation of life. Men staring dumbly at nothing. A body lies unnoticed in a heap by a doorway. An epileptic woman totters along the block.... Staring startled eyes. Mutilated harpies wobble along the street—past crippled bodies. A man beats a woman ruthlessly as the man’s two husky friends stand guard over the scene.