'Did I tell you how I made the cop on the beat?
He's the vigilante, the watchman out where I live. Every time he sees the light on in my room, he comes in for a shot of rum. Well, about five nights ago he caught me when I was drunk and horny, and one thing led to another and I ended up showing him how the cow ate the cabbage. . .
.
'So the night after I make him I was walking by the beer joint on the corner and he comes out borracho and says, 'Have a drink.' I said, 'I don't want a drink,' So he takes out his pistola and says, 'Have a drink.' I proceeded to take his pistola away from him, and he goes into the beer joint to phone for reinforcements. So I had to go in and rip the phone off the wall. Now they're billing me for the phone. When I got back to my room, which is on the ground floor, he had written
'El Puto Gringo' on the window with soap. So, instead of wiping it off, I left it there. It pays to advertise.'
The drinks kept coming. Allerton went to the W.C. and got in a conversation at the bar when he returned. Guidry was accusing Hyman of being queer and pretending not to be. Lee was trying to explain to Guidry that Hyman wasn't really queer, and Guidry said to him, 'He's queer and you aren't, Lee. You just go around pretending you're queer to get in on the act.'
'Who wants to get in on your tired old act?' Lee said. He saw Allerton at the bar talking to John Dume
Dume belonged to a small clique of queers who made their headquarters in a beer joint on Campeche called The Green Lantern. Dume himself was not an obvious queer, but the other Green Lantern boys were screaming fags who would not have been welcome at the Ship Ahoy.
Lee walked over to the bar and started talking to the bartender. He thought, 'I hope Dume tells him about me.' Lee felt uncomfortable in dramatic 'something-I-have-to-tell-you' routines and he knew, from unnerving experience, the difficulties of a casual come-on: 'I'm queer, you know, by the way.' Sometimes they don't hear right and yell, 'What?' Or you toss in: 'If you were as queer as I am.' The other yawns and changes the subject, and you don't know whether he understood or not.
The bartender was saying, 'She asks me why I drink. What can I tell her? I don't know why. Why did you have the monkey on your back? Do you know why? There isn't any why, but try to explain that to someone like Jerri. Try to explain that to any woman.' Lee nodded sympathetically. 'She says to me, why don't you get more sleep and eat better? She don't understand and I can't explain it. Nobody can explain it.'
The bartender moved away to wait on some customers. Dume came over to Lee. 'How do you like this character?' he said, indicating Allerton with a wave of his beer bottle. Allerton was across the room talking to Mary and a chess player from Peru. 'He comes to me and says, 'I thought you were one of the Green Lantern boys.' So I said, 'Well, I am.' He wants me to take him around to some of the gay places here.'
Lee and Allerton went to see Cocteau's Orpheus. In the dark theater Lee could feel his body pull towards Allerton, an amoeboid protoplasmic projection, straining with a blind worm hunger to enter the other's body, to breathe with his lungs, see with his eyes, learn the feel of his viscera and genitals. Allerton shifted in his seat. Lee felt a sharp twinge, a strain or dislocation of the spirit. His eyes ached. He took off his glasses and ran his hand over his closed eyes.
When they left the theater, Lee felt exhausted. He fumbled and bumped into things. His voice was toneless with strain. He put his hand up to his head from time to time, an awkward, involuntary gesture of pain. 'I need a drink,' he said. He pointed to a bar across the street. 'There,' he said.
He sat down in a booth and ordered a double tequila. Allerton ordered rum and Coke. Lee drank the tequila straight down, listening down into himself for the effect. He ordered another.
'What did you think of the picture?' Lee asked.
'Enjoyed parts of it.'
'Yes.' Lee nodded, pursing his lips and looking down into his empty glass. 'So did I.' He pronounced the words very carefully, like an elocution teacher.
'He always gets some innaresting effects.' Lee laughed. Euphoria was spreading from his stomach. He drank half the second tequila. 'The innaresting thing about Cocteau is his ability to bring the myth alive in modern terms.'
'Ain't it the truth?' said Allerton.
They went to a Russian restaurant for dinner. Lee looked through the menu. 'By the way,' he said, 'the law was in putting the bite on the Ship Ahoy again. Vice squad. Two hundred pesos. I can see them in the station house after a hard day shaking down citizens of the Federal District.
One cop says, 'Ah, Gonzalez, you should see what I got today. Oh la la, such a bite!'
''Aah, you shook down a puto queer for two pesetas in a bus station crapper. We know you, Hernandez, and your cheap tricks. You're the cheapest cop inna Federal District.''
Lee waved to the waiter. 'Hey, Jack. Dos martinis, much dry. Seco. And dos plates Sheeshka Babe. Sabe?n
The waiter nodded. 'That's two dry martinis and two orders of shish kebab. Right, gentlemen?'
'Solid, Pops. . . . So how was your evening with Dume?'
'We went to several bars full of queers. One place a character asked me to dance and propositioned me.'
'Take him up?'
'No.'
'Dume is a nice fellow.'
Allerton smiled. 'Yes, but he is not a person I would confide too much in. That is, anything I wanted to keep private.'
'You refer to a specific indiscretion?'
