What’s Happening? Read online

  The last flight of stairs led through a short hall out to the front door. Metal mailboxes, green with time, were set in the wall on the right. Lidded garbage cans, like squat sentinels, formed ranks on the left. Laura drummed her fingers across the lids as she walked to the front door. She stood on the one-step stoop, her head craning to view first one end of the street, then the other. The door, shutting behind her, nudged her out into the street a bit further.

  The street was silent, deserted, filled with harsh shadows. The dismal pattern was relieved by the inverted V of light falling from the eye of a street lamp on the corner. The lamp was bent over, as if wilted from long years of suffering noise-filled days and friendless, lingering nights. Drizzle, floating on a slight breeze, passed in diagonal patterns through the beam of light. The street was coated with a slick that reflected the street light in a wavy line that reached toward Laura.

  Befuddled, Laura sat dejectedly on the stoop next to a covered garbage can. The can was coated with a film of mist, but Laura ignored the wetness as she rested her weary head on it. She bit her lip hard, feeling a scream rushing up her throat.

  A car passed and stopped on the corner for a red light. Through the steamy back window Laura watched the shadowy forms of the driver and his passenger; diffused red images kissed. The light changed, the wet tires rolled with a sucking, hissing noise, and the car turned the corner and disappeared. The street was again deserted. Feeling deserted like the street, Laura looked toward Sheridan Square to the left. The bright lights of Jim Atkin’s Food Shop and the other shops on Sheridan Square which were still open, flared through the mist, hazily belying the time.

  “Hey, pal, could you have a heart on an old veteran,” begged a disheveled figure who emerged out of the shadows across the street, tottering toward Laura. “I need a dime … that’s all, only a dime.”

  The drunk slurred his words as he stood in front of her, his hand stretched out imploringly. Laura smelled cheap, sweet wine floating on the air about him. He swayed, staggered, then caught his balance again. Laura was now further confused. She felt sorry for him, but she hadn’t enough money to buy drinks for him.

  “No, I’m sorry. I don’t …”

  “Ohhh …,” he wailed with drunken discovery, “excuse me, sweetheart.” He smiled, his beaten, bearded face wrinkling like a prune. His head lolled to the side involuntarily. “I didn’t know what you were.” His hand groped into his back pocket; he lost his balance momentarily. “Wanna drink some good wine?” His torso swayed forward and back as his feet remained planted on the same spot.

  “C’mon, go away. I don’t want any crap,” Laura snapped nervously, her mouth twitching. “Come on, leave me alone.”

  “What’s a matter, … you don’t like my company?” he asked with a vicious snicker. “Whatta ya think, you’re too good, hanh, baby? … too sophisticated?” He leaned forward, a sneer on his face.

  Laura felt trapped. She leaned back, but there was no room, the door being closed behind her.

  “Ahhh … get the fuck out of here, you God damn wino,” she yelped frightenedly, jumping up. She bolted toward Sheridan Square where she knew there should be people and safety. After the first few steps, she slowed her pace to a shuffle, trying to appear calm, her eyes straining to the sides to see if the drunk was following as she made her way toward the lights.

  “Hey, come back here you little trollop,” yelled the tramp in a hoarse, wine-destroyed voice, as he remained in the same spot.

  “You son-of-a-bitch.” Laura dug an empty food tin out of a garbage can, wheeled and hurled it with all her hurt power. “I’ll give you trollop, you bum.”

  The can caromed off the sidewalk in a series of bounces, its clatter hollowly resounding between the buildings. It rolled to a stop against the curb. Laura turned and continued walking, looking back only once to see the tramp zigzagging toward the far corner, muttering unquietly. He leaned against the street lamp as Laura turned into the Square.

  Most of the streets leading to the Square were sepulchral, disturbed only occasionally by passing cars or hollow footsteps. It was Tuesday night, and over New York somber silence prevailed. Yet Sheridan Square was ablaze with neon lights from food shops that stayed open until very late. There was always someone who couldn’t sleep in the quiet night wandering around the Village until the early morning.

  Laura crossed the Square, meandered past the myriad of now darkened shops lining West Fourth Street and halted at the Avenue of the Americas. Despite the passage of time since its name-change, most New Yorkers still called this Sixth Avenue. She stood at the curb gazing up and down the empty avenue. The Waverly Cinema marquee was dark. Large, illuminated numerals depicting the time on the side of a building near Eighth Street read “3:15.” A cab filled with noisy men pulled out of Third Street. The striptease joints were still open.

  Laura stepped determinedly toward the Club Lisa. A covey of young men from Uptown walked ahead of her, talking loudly. They argued whether to go home or go into one more club first. They cupped their eyes against the large picturewindow in front of one of the strip joints, peered in for a few minutes, then passed on. Laura, out of curiosity, stopped to peer through the window. A bleach-blonde woman was shuffling around the stage in an Arabian-type dancing outfit, complete with concealed zippers.

  “Ey … you, … up da dock, … beat it,” threatened the doorman. He looked sneaky and cruel and was festooned with a garrish maroon-and-gold uniform hat and coat over shabby grey trousers and scuffed shoes.

  Laura moved on. Ahead, another doorman automatically opened the door of his club for the passing men.

  “Step right in,” he called, “no cover, no minimum. New show just started.”

  A brassy singing voice filtered through the opened doorway. The Uptowners continued walking and the doorman at a third club held his door open.

  “Come on in … beautiful girls … all-girl review … ya get some hot stuff here.” The doorman fluttered his eyebrows evilly.

  Laura turned at the corner of MacDougal Street and climbed the steps of the Club Lisa.

  The Club Lisa had the stale look and smell of any cheap beer-joint. Despite the time, it was fairly crowded. People lined the bar. Big squares of mirror covered the wall over the half-oval bar, reflecting yellow fluorescent border lights. Bottles of cheap whiskey on shelves behind the bar were lit from behind with white bulbs. Lining the wall opposite the bar was a small checkbooth for coats, a few tables at which some people were sitting, and a cigarette machine. Over the door of the checkroom was a sign: “Not Responsible Unless Checked.” A partition separated the bar and the tables from a back room which contained wooden booths, a jukebox blaring brassy music, and a dance floor. Several couples were dancing. At the very back, the entranceways to the rest rooms were cloaked from the view of the patrons by partitions fabricated from dark, thick, floor-to-ceiling drapes. The matron, required by law in ladies rest rooms, sat outside the entrance to the rest room near the jukebox.

  “Hi, Laura, … what’s happening?” asked a little figure with a D.A. hair wave standing at the bar. D.A. stood for Duck’s Ass. It was so called because the short hair at the back of the head swept together in the fashion of a duck’s tail-feathers. The person addressing Laura wore pegged pants, a black shirt open at the neck, and tasselled loafers. This was apparently a man, but underneath the rough, black shirt were the breasts of a woman, neglected yet immutable.

  “Hi, Phil,” Laura answered eagerly, glad for the opportunity to speak with someone. “Nothing much happening with me … How about you?”

  “Nothing to shout about,” replied Phil, her high voice intoned hard and tough. “I’m waiting here for Billie. You know Billie, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure. Give me a beer, Sonny,” Laura called to the bartender.

  Laura sat on the stool next to Phil, took a cigarette from Phil’s pack on the bar, lit up, and blew the smoke from puffed, uninhaling cheeks. She twisted on the revolving stool and faced the b
ack room.

  One couple was now dancing, swaying with the music, rotating their kissing pelvises synchronously in a steady rhythm. The dancers both wore men’s pants. One had dark kinky hair and a shirt and tie. The other had straight, slickeddown black hair and wore a red sweater with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. They twirled and faced Laura—the male role of the couple was played by a kinky-haired “butch” Lesbian; the female, a saccharin-faced “faggot” in a red sweater. Challenging and oblivious contentment comingled on their cheek-to-cheek faces.

  The countenances surrounding the tables in the booths around the dance floor were strange, petite, feminine featured, completely pale for lack of make-up, unnaturally twisted into callous sneers. The Lesbians were gathered, as if assembling their forces for a fight to the finish, at any moment, with the men and the world that had somehow disappointed and betrayed them. Most of the Lesbians wore their hair cut short, almost to a man’s length. They wore men’s clothing, intending to make themselves look like tough punks. Their naturally wider hips, however, gave them a pear-shaped appearance. Some Lesbians, however, wore feminine-styled hair, and looked normal to all outward appearances. They were different, though; they only dated male-like females.

  “Today’s my birthday, Laura,” Phil commented, re-capturing Laura’s attention. Phil was a small woman, tiny in proportion.

  “Hey, that’s great. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.” She looked like a fourteen-year-old boy.

  A waitress dressed in skirt and blouse walked up to the bar to fill an order.

  “Hi, Jo, what’s happening?” Phil asked the waitress. “You want to meet me here tomorrow and get drunk for my birthday?”

  “Sure.” The waitress’s mouth revealed overly jutting, crooked teeth. She lifted the tray of drinks and turned toward the back room. Two fellows standing by the doorway of the partition grinned and softly remarked to her as she walked to the back. They were two guys from Uptown getting a big charge from the Lesbians. They were so convinced of the reality of their own world, they failed to realize some things are not funny to some people.

  “C’mon sweet, smile,” taunted one of the two Uptowners as the waitress returned to the bar. Her eyes flew to the side of their sockets, riveting on him angrily. Her face set hard, hatred flaring from her nostrils.

  “Hey, man, dig this chick that just walked in,” Phil remarked to Laura, twisting to look at an attractive girl who had just entered the club with a male date.

  The girl was draped in a clinging, tight, light-blue dress. She and her date were well-groomed Uptowners. Their faces were unusual in this club. They hesitated at the door, looking around, and then, spying the back room, walked to the back and slid into a booth. Lesbians twisted around to look at them as they passed, many admiring the girl.

  Unlike the conventional rites in which male approaches female, or vice versa, all formality is disregarded by the sexually abnormal. Perhaps it is the almost maddening need to be loved and appreciated which drives the emotionally upset person toward others with such frenzy, and allows imbalanced people to fuse together on contact. Besides a groping, grasping, impulsive reaching toward each other, they hold each other with frenzied passion and flare up at each other with equally uncontrolable impulse.

  “Aw, fuck her,” remarked Billie, who had just arrived at the Club to meet Phil. Billie stood glaring from the girl to Phil and back again, while Phil continued gazing at the new girl. Billie was a “fem” Lesbian, in women’s slacks and a sweater, her hair worn long. Her face, though made up, was hard-featured.

  “That’s what I’d like to do,” Phil replied smilingly.

  “Oh, you would, hanh? I’ll tear every bone out of your head,” Billie threatened menacingly.

  “You will like shit.”

  They glared at each other angrily.

  “Hey, come on. She was only kidding,” Laura interposed in defense of Phil.

  Billie glanced to Laura momentarily, then back to Phil. A smirk twitched her face. She shrugged off her anger. Billie had entered with and was standing next to a tall, dark, somewhat heavy-set, pimply-skinned man.

  “Hi Frank. How’re you doing?” Phil asked the man.

  “Hello, dears, … and what are you up to tonight?” he asked in a purposefully sing-song fashion. He rolled his shoulders inside a heavily padded, tough-guy jacket.

  “I’m going to rip this little bastard in two.” Billie pointed to Phil. “She’s eyeing that chick in the back room.”

  “Why not? She’s a nice-looking chick. But I’d rather have you, baby,” he said grasping Billie’s wrist and pulling her toward himself. He put his arms around her waist and lifted her into the air. “I don’t care what the hell you broads think you are, you’re broads to me and I’d go to bed with every one of you. Say, … that’s not a bad idea.” He fluttered his eyebrows in licentious reflection. Billie was grimacing in his bear hug. Frank let her loose and she dropped onto her feet.

  “You couldn’t take it, Frank,” remarked Phil.

  “It’d be a hell of a lot of fun trying.” He burst out in laughter, watching for the girls to appreciate his remark. All the girls laughed with him.

  “You’re going to get your fucking false teeth knocked back into your throat if you don’t shut up,” boomed the waitress’s voice as she passed the two Uptowners standing at the partition door.

  The entire club silenced ominously. All heads turned menacingly toward the two men—the intruders—whose presence was known and barely tolerated by the Lesbians. The men began nervously chatting with each other, wishing to be inconspicuous. The waitress looked at them with contempt, then turned to the bar. The Lesbians’ interest lingered a moment longer then returned to their friends and drinks.

  A wide-hipped girl in men’s clothing entered the bar. Had she been dressed in women’s clothing, she would have appeared heavy. In men’s clothing she resembled a penguin, earth bound. Some horrible madness drives vain woman to this ludicrous appearance. Two ferns with long hair and women’s clothing, and make-up entered with the earth bound one. One of the two fems was a tan Negro. The butch Lesbian removed her windbreaker and threw it brusquely on the counter of the checking booth.

  “You didn’t take a check,” called the girl behind the counter. “Hey …”

  The butch ignored her and walked toward the back room.

  “You didn’t take your coat check,” the checkroom girl yelled again.

  The butch sat at a booth with her fems. The coat-check girl’s eyes widened with anger at the public affront. She threw open the door of the coat room and swooped into the back room, butch’s coat in her hand.

  “Here …,” she yelled throwing the coat high into the air.

  The coat floated upward, downward, landing on the floor at the feet of its owner, who jumped with surprise. The butch glared at the checkroom girl, then bent forward and picked up the coat, putting it on a chair next to her. She continued to glare at the coat-check girl, who in turn stared boldly back. It was a standoff. The checkroom girl pivoted and walked back to the checkroom.

  “Hey, Omar …,” a tall Negro yelled as he stood next to one of the tables on the bar side of the partition.

  Omar was another Negro, sitting dead drunk at the table, his head resting on the table top. Omar’s arms hung limply from his shoulders, his hands touching the sawdusted floor. He wore a western-type hat, the wide brim bent beneath his inert head. Long strands of hair stuck out from under the sweat band. He wore boots, and his pants were tucked inside them.

  “Hey Omar,” his friend yelled again, pounding the drunk on the back to wake him. “Come on, man, … you can’t pull a sick in here, … come on.”

  Omar picked up his head from the table. It moved slowly through the air to an upright position, continued backward and bounced against the partition with a dull thud. A long whisp of hair hung down the center of his face and touched his nose. He forced his eyelids open half way but they struggled to close again. Two little cir
cles of blue peered out dully, unfocused. Omar glimpsed at his friend, tried a feeble smile, then the eyelids clamped down again.

  “Hey, come on …” Omar’s friend started to pound Omar’s chest. It sounded as if he were pounding a side of dead beef. “Come on, man … come on.” He became annoyed and hit Omar harder. Omar’s body started to ease forward; the weight of his head came into force again. His head crashed solidly and bounced on the table top. “Come on now, man.” He put his hands under Omar’s armpits, lifting him on to his feet. Omar stood erect, his friend balancing his swaying body, then pushing Omar toward the door.

  The coat-check girl was talking to a woman about thirty-five years old, dressed in men’s clothing, with a streak of silver dyed into the front of her man-styled hair. They watched unconcerned as the two men stumbled out. The friend dragged Omar down the steps and pushed him toward Eighth Street and coffee. The Lesbians at the checkroom turned and continued their conversation.

  Laura was now dancing in the back room with another girl. Her dancing partner, Lucille, who was called Lou, danced Laura toward the jukebox. Suddenly, Laura was pulled behind the jukebox on the opposite side of the drapes shielding the women’s rest room. Lou encircled her arms around Laura’s waist, pulled Laura close, and leaned forward to kiss her. Laura jerked her head back. Lucille was persistent, following Laura’s head with her own, trying to find Laura’s lips. Finally, she grasped Laura’s head between her two hands and pressed her lips against the small mouth. Laura stared perplexedly, terrified, over Lucille’s shoulder. She suffered Lucille’s arms, not knowing what to do, not sure if she should rebuff her. After all, someone cared for, desired her. Even this was better than the hollow emptiness.

  “Hey, man, that Laura really swings after all. See her swapping spit with Lucille back there,” Billie remarked, watching Laura and Lucille from the bar. “She’s a pretty fair chick, you know what I mean, … a little mousy, but nice.”

  “You son-of-a-bitch,” said Phil half joking. “I’ll cut you into little pieces if you start that kind of crap.” Phil, Billie and Frank laughed together. The music ended and Laura and Lucille walked back toward the bar.