Griffith Park Elegy

Al Lujan

 

 

 

 

If this story were a pile of bones, I would fracture them, pulverize them and scatter them across beautiful landscapes like the ashes of so many beautiful lovers. So intense and horrific was that afternoon that all I could really do is romanticize it, when all I should really do is let it go and not repeat what took place. Or what I believe took place. It disorients me.

I was in Griffith Park, in the heart of the City of Angels. Hanging out in a section referred to as the “meat market” where men young and old, rich and poor, gay and not gay, follow their instincts and their hard dicks like divining rods, through a series of dirt paths that wind, in and out, through the heavy brush. Most paths twist back onto each other or branch out into small clearings where men pose, pout and hold up the trees till coaxed into the moaning bushes. They circle through the maze in search of the Minotaur, sometimes finding him in the rustling plants. Other times what they find instead is an undercover cop busting them for obviousness.

That afternoon I marched to the topmost clearing with intent. Without distraction. It’s the second highest lookout in the park. It faces west across a field of dense, brown haze that blankets the basin, except for the shaggy heads of the sixty-foot palm trees that poke through here and there. That area ain’t too popular with the guys, although the bushes to the left and the bushes to the right are particularly squirrely. Wide open areas make these guys uncomfortable. Some would probably go into an agoraphobic coma were they caught without a bush to scurry about in.

The vista is accessible by a dirt road that connects from the east side. Park police off-road vehicles frequently tour the area, shooting pebbles into the foliage with those knobby tires they use to hug the hillsides. Scares the hell out of those bush queens with sex-offender histories. But not enough for them to actually leave. The vista is visible from the observatory on an adjacent peak. If you put a quarter into the binoculars and aim in the right direction…welcome to Los Angeles.

Me? Well, I’m an exhibitionist. I love the great wide, white sky, the fires of dusk and the risk of getting caught, as much as I love my fond memories of blood, mean teachers and the fist fights I’ve won.

I planted myself on one of the C-curved benches put here some forty or fifty years ago when this area was some hetero lover’s lane or tourist lookout before the observatory was built. Benches of wood and concrete, unpainted since the seventies, carved with symbols and initials. (T.D.+S.G.’63, EL HUERO CON LA PEE WEE CON SAFOS Y QUE, and I SUCK DICK 4 P.M. to 6 P.M. M thru F).

I sat at the foremost bench facing out. A bench where winos died drunk and lovers fell together entangled in arms, scarves and hair. A bench with a personality like mine. Quiet. Private. With a secret history in this part of town. There I sat with my legs spread and a look that said, “I’ve got less important things to do, only the serious need apply.”

My olive and black Pendleton was folded across the knee of my pants, pressed with origami-tight creases. Just like my T-shirt. Just like my boxers. I resisted dressing this way growing up in East L.A. Dressing like my brother, Flaco, and his pachuco homeboys from our block. They hung out in our garage since I can remember. Pants slung low, lowrider posters, Calle Diesiocho along with every members’ placa on the walls. A weight bench, beer cans and KRLA on a radio connected to a car battery. The smell of weed, sweat and anarchy in the barrio.

Now, my cholo-without-a-gang look worked me an angle on that hill. Unapproachable, rough trade, mean-dicked, risky challenge. The bold motherfuckers who cruised me knew they’d either be getting to blow a sadistic, gang-bangin’, drive-by Richard Ramirez maniaco or just be getting punked. Only the biggest freaks would conjure the nerve. The kind I could do anything to and who’d do anything I said. Like a Dockers-wearing CPA type who gave my shoes a real spit shine. A nervous, fey princess with fluffy hair whose hairbrush I broke smacking it across his bare butt. Or a tweak freak who tells me that I don’t need to use a rubber with him. Yeah, right.

Every once in a while I hook up with a man who turns the tables. But that Sunday afternoon was particularly quiet. I could hear birds and winged bugs nearby. The sounds of slurping and grunting, down the hill, were more than audible, they seemed amplified and exaggerated, like porno. I felt horny and impatient. I’d been up there for over two hours and no one made it up. Not even an obscured “pssssst” beckoned me for a blowjob in the bushes.

The sun was sinking into the grimy distance and I felt February on my face and hands. The salmon-colored streetlights that pacify the barrios and the ghettos were coming on in sheets across the horizon. I hit my flask to pacify the chills that were making my body jerk. I reconciled a fruitless afternoon of meditation. I stood and put my Pendleton on. Buttoned only the top button like a true vato loco. I turned to the path behind me to head for home. Home to call fuck buddies who would come to me, although that was not exactly what I was in the mood for when I planned that afternoon.

I looked back once more. Goose bumps covered my arms. The blood in my body felt cold and thin. A man was seated at the opposite end of the bench I’d just left. My heart was racing, for a couple of reasons. I thought about my options and said, “What the fuck?” I sat back down. The warmth that my body had left on the bench had dissipated. It was cold on the backs of my legs. In fact, the temperature had fallen considerably in the last couple of minutes.

We sat under the elongated shadow of an olive tree some twenty-five feet away. The fronds of the palm trees, just ahead, swayed and rustled in gusts of wind that I could not feel. The winds picked up clouds of dust from the paths leading down, obscuring them.

The impending dusk gave the stranger a dark, menacing feel. He sat quietly, staring ahead at the swirling, cherry-vanilla clouds that were changing shapes as fast as they were changing color. His profile was still and sharp like stone carving. His dark hair was pulled back into a tight braid down his back. He wore charcoal-colored Dickies with knife-like creases and a white T-shirt that was luminescent against his brown Aztec skin. A stray cholo on the hill. My lucky day.

He sat next to me, staring ahead; I dared him with my eyes. He had tattoos on his forearms, hands and neck. Blue-black letters and symbols. A portrait of some ruca and a spider web on his left elbow that, in prison, signifies that he killed a man while doing time. At the edge of his eye, a black indelible teardrop. This man was trouble and he was unraveling my upholstery. He was the number thirteen, black cats, burning crosses, bad luck personified. He had the quiet disposition of a seductive cult leader. He oozed: run and don’t look back. But I couldn’t. I wanted him.

My mother would sometimes tell me, “Mijo, el diablo is exactly who you want him to be. If you recognize him you must be in trouble with Diosito.” Then and there I finally understood what she was talking about. That evil ain’t just some white dude with a goatee and a tail. One could see that and run. Evil is in every nationality, in every religion, and every sexuality.

It was too late. This seduced fair Catholic wanted to capture that tattooed dirt-under-the-nails hard-drinking boyfriend-smacking welfare-check-stealing lying cheating demonio. I pressed my thigh against his. He didn’t move his away. Well, that’s all the encouragement I needed. His smell drove my hand. I reached over to feel his thigh. Without turning, he intercepted it and held it in his fist. I tried to pull back but he held tight. For the first time he turned to look at me and that’s when I freaked out. His eyes were black and shiny. I don’t just mean that he had dark eyes, I mean they were solid black and cold. His face showed no emotion. He was silent. My heart was absent in my chest. He pulled at my hand still in his grip. I resisted and then yielded. He leaned into me, I imagined, to tell me never to go where I’m not invited. He led my hand to his face and released it onto his smooth cheek. He pressed his hand onto mine and guided it across his cold lips. Now, I’ve made some fucked-up choices in my life. Gone against my better judgment plenty of times. But the fact that I resisted withdrawing my hand scared the hell out of me. He led my trembling hand to the back of his neck. With his free hand he did the same to me and pulled me into him as if to kiss me. That surprised me because prison trade never, never kiss on the mouth.

I tried to look away from those crazy eyes, at the darkening sky, but his strength had us face to face. He held my head and put his mouth on mine. His, our mouths suddenly warmed to fire-like temperatures. I was drunk with lust and horror. Euphoria tinged with a residue of uneasiness. The kind of uneasiness that makes most men impotent.

My ears were suddenly filled with high-volume moaning, sighing and gulps for air. The sounds our bodies make when excesses of pleasure and pain push language past mere words. Terrible, beautiful, animalistic music.

That’s what my ears heard. Within his violent kisses I felt his voice. Smooth and deep like silk boxers that give me erections as I walk. And that’s exactly what his voice was doing to me. He wasn’t necessarily saying anything. I can’t recall specific words. But events in my life were being narrated by our twisting tongues. He knew things about me. Things I’ve never told anyone.

He knew that I sat at my father’s bedside for three days as he rotted with cancer, and that just before he started that gasp for air that signaled the end, my father’s last words to me were: “You disappointed me.”

He knew that it was me who burned a swastika on the side of an old dead tree by my house with a butane torch I stole from school when I was ten. (I wasn’t being anti-Semitic. I didn’t understand what it meant. I had a crush on the only white guy at my school, and he had it on his pee chee folder. I wanted him to notice me.)

He knew the terror I felt later that night as the sky exploded in amber when the tree that smoldered quietly all day ignited.

He knew the shame I felt as a child when we would have to sleep on the floor during certain holidays so we wouldn’t be struck by random bullets coming from intoxicated, hot guns and how I prayed for God to make me an angel before dawn so that I could fly myself out of that barrio for good.

He knew that I reached around and felt my sharp shoulder blades protruding and that that’s all that they were. That I was simply a child testing the existence of God.

He knew that my lover, reeling with AIDS dementia, forgot that he was gay, that I was his lover, or even who I was, which allowed his family, with their high-priced lawyers, to lock me out of our home. And that after a while I just couldn’t fight them anymore. He died without me.

He knew these things about me. These profane ordeals in my life. And I still wanted him. My shirt was drenched with sweat that turned icy in that night that turned black while my eyes were closed. I pulled away unable to catch my breath. I tried to stand, to flee. I felt light-headed. The blood that supplies my brain with oxygen was pulsing in my lips and groin. He steadied me and pulled me back onto his lap. Before I could scream, I heard the ripping of the seam of my pants. He impaled me onto what felt like a knife, cold and hard like his lips started out, but soon it seared me inside. He sat there, motionless, with me on top kicking and flailing. No thrusting, no sounds, no more words.

With his mouth he punctured and gnawed on the back of my neck. I felt my spinal cord being sucked out of my neck and out of my ass. I prayed that the wetness that soaked my pants was my piss and not my blood mixed with his cum. He squeezed my torso to the point where things went black. Then a bright electric jolt shot through me with such force that my fingernails and nose shot blood into the dirt.

“Goddamn…that felt good.” Did I say that or did he?

I awoke sitting erect on that bench, my head thrown skyward. The sounds of sirens all around me. Intense hot breath enveloped my aching body. The violent suns that illuminated the black fog were in reality a series of palm trees engulfed in balls of flames. They surrounded me on all sides. Black ash snowed upon me and all I could do was sit there and cry.

All that I have left are burn scars, bad dreams and three cranberry-colored, crescent-shaped hickeys on the back of my neck that won’t go away no matter how hard I scrub. If you’d like me to show them to you, put on your hiking boots, bring your faith, and meet me at the park some sacred Sunday afternoon.