Hunt David - Magician's Tale The Read online

  One

  The Sun is about to set. I check myself in the mirror — glowing eyes, dark brows, small triangular face, medium-length dark hair parted on the side. I brush down some wisps so they fall across my forehead, then dress to go out — black T-shirt, jeans, black leather jacket, sneakers, Contax camera around my neck.

  I wear black to blend in. My hope is that by dressing dark and with my face half concealed by my hair, I can slink along the streets, barely seen, covertly stealing images.

  I pause at my living room window. Dusk is magic time, the sky still faintly lit. Streetlamps are on and lights glow from windows, making the city look mysterious and serene. The view's so spectacular it's hard to tear myself away: North Beach, Telegraph Hill, the Bay Bridge sharply defined, all still, silent, glowing behind the glass.

  I move to my telescope, set the crosshairs on a penthouse terrace just below Coit Tower. The image is so clear I feel I can touch it if I reach out. Garden chairs, pots overflowing with geraniums, sliding glass doors leading to an art-filled living room behind. No lights on inside. The Judge must be working late. I know him well. I have no lover now.

  I take another moment to take in the view. I'd like to stay, watch the sky turn black, perhaps wait until the lights come on in that living room across the valley. But it's time to go out; I have an appointment with a friend.

  It's chilly tonight. I turn the collar of my jacket up, peer around. A cable car is poised at the top of Lombard. Tourists disembark to descend the famous crooked street. I enter the park in front of my building, named for George Sterling, poet of the city. He composed some good lines, was eloquent on the fog, wrote "its touch is kind," described San Francisco as this "cool gray city of love." He also wrote: "At the end of our streets are stars." Not bad. Unfortunately, Sterling was no Carl Sandberg, but then San Francisco isn't a "city of big shoulders" either.

  I pause by the Alice Marble Tennis Courts, turn to look back at my building, slender in the dusk. I make out lights in some of the apartments and the glow of a Japanese paper lantern in mine. I shrug, cross the park, look for the young bearded homeless guy who sometimes sleeps amidst the bushes. Failing to find him, I take the stairs that descend the steep western slope of Russian Hill.

  Polk Street

  : It's quiet, residential at its upper end, but as I stride south it takes on a different character. Apartment buildings give way to stores and restaurants, then, slowly, block by block, to sleaze.

  Around California Street

  they begin to appear — the crazed, the addicts, the dispossessed. Sad, sick, broken, they perch on the sidewalk beside signs and cups, or slouch within doorways against glossy garbage bags filled with their possessions.

  I pass a cadaverous old movie house, a trio of junk shops, a metaphysical bookstore, cheap Chinese restaurants, funky hotels and saloons, sleazy erotic boutiques and adult-film rental joints. The strip here, called, sometimes affectionately, more often disparagingly, Polk Gulch, intersects with alleys bearing the names of beautiful trees: Fern, Hemlock, Myrtle, Olive, Willow.

  In these passageways I observe young men poised alone against the sides of buildings, others lingering in small groups, twos and threes. There's a glow about them, a force field of energy. Hustlers of different races, objects of desire, they stand still, silent, awaiting clients.

  I've been roaming this neighborhood since the beginning of the summer, always at night, always armed with my Contax. Those first weeks I didn't take pictures, preferring simply to look, explore, make my presence known. As I picked out probable subjects they too began to notice me. Spotting my camera, they gave me a name, Bug, short for Shutterbug. I disliked it but pretended I didn't, since a street name here connotes acceptance.

  "Hey, it's Bug. She's on the street." Word flashes down the Gulch as if by semaphore.

  Some also note my affliction.

  "You blind, girl?" a scrawny, tattooed kid bellowed at me yesterday as I staggered along on one of my rare daylight excursions. "What's with the shades, Bug? Drugged out?" Then, when I ignored him: "Think you're a fuckin' star?"

  I know better than to respond to taunts, a lesson I learned painfully on school playgrounds years ago. But to those who become my friends, I cheerfully reveal my handicap.

  I'm an achromat, which means I'm completely color-blind.

  The correct name for the malady is autosomal recessive achromatopsia. It's rare; I doubt there're five thousand of us in the U.S. I lack cone function in my retinas and thus cannot see colors. My visual acuity is poor, though better than most complete achromats. My biggest problem is photophobia, the reason that in daylight I must wear heavy dark red wraparound shades. Outside, on a bright sun-filled San Francisco afternoon, the rods in my eyes become saturated, the world goes white, I become lost in a dazzling blizzard — a sensation, I'm told, close to what vision normals experience as snow blindness.

  But there are advantages. One is aesthetic — seeing the world uniquely in terms of gray tones instead of hues. Another is good night vision. In darkness, I like to think I can see like a cat.

  I'm searching for Tim. He called this afternoon, said he needed to talk. There was urgency in his voice, perhaps even fear. I offered to meet him at once, but he said he had to see someone first. We agreed to meet at his spot on Hemlock Alley at seven then go up to the Richmond for dinner since he didn't think he'd feel like hanging around the Gulch.

  It's 7:10 now and I see no sign of him as I occupy his niche beside the Dumpster. The brick wall behind me, against which I've photographed him many times, is thickly layered with graffiti — names, symbols, dates, obscenities, most fading, a few freshly applied. I wait as the traffic thins out on Polk, but few passersby peer down the alley. It's still too early for the chicken hawks.

  Tim and I met when I started taking pictures here. Of all the street people I've come to know these last months, he's the only one I think of as a real friend. He doesn't know it yet but he's also on his way to becoming the central actor in my project. All my best shots frame him — alone, surrounded by others, or on the periphery of a group. As for formal portraits, his are the strongest. It's his eyes, I think, so large and luminous, and the fine shape of his chin and jaw that make the camera love him. He's got the cheekbones of a Greek god, the unruly hair of a savage. Whether pouting in his niche against the graffiti-scarred wall or posing bare to the waist on Angel Island with the city gleaming white behind, he emerges as a splendid modern ephebe — urban warrior, heroic, fragile, seductive. Yes, the camera loves him. The photographer loves him too.

  Seven-thirty, getting cold, not a typical October night. Where are you, Tim?

  He claims he's twenty, but barely looks seventeen, perfect disproof of the adage that a life of vice will mark your face. His unsullied beauty is his capital. Creamy of skin, fair of cheek, he's the eternal adolescent of his clients' dreams. He tells me he intends to work the street a few more years, save his money and retire. He pauses, then confides he's already got fifty thousand dollars stashed. When I stare at him in disbelief, he shows me the smile of a sphinx. Surely if you have that much, I tell him, it's time to quit right now.

  Gently he shakes his head, "Not yet, Kay. I still enjoy it. The people." He laughs. "Well, most of them. The adventure too, not knowing what'll happen, who I'll meet. It's like an addiction — the money being, being desired so much, people pay big-time just to touch me. And it's fun playing diamond-in-the-rough." He shows me his sweetest grin, "Or rhinestone, as the case may be."

  Clever boy!

  Yet even as I'm appalled by his casual disregard for my warnings — that sooner or later he'll fall into the clutches of a sociopath or be infected with HIV — I'm still begu
iled by his glamour. Street hustler as psychic explorer — that has emerged as my theme. In my pictures I want to capture the lives of those who, by offering their bodies to danger and to lust, risk all and by so doing achieve a kind of stature.

  "So," I ask him, "when you retire what will you do?"

  "Live the good life," he says softly. He's got it all figured out. He'll move down to Mexico, a town called San Miguel de Allende. Already, he tells me, he's picked out the house.

  "Yo! You there! You for sale?"

  It's Tim's friend Crawford, a lean, blond Minnesotan hunk who somehow manages to maintain a permanent tan.

  Crawf beams. "You really look hot there, Bug. If I had some bucks I'd buy you in a flash."

  Hustler's banter... Yet to be thirty-five and female and told one is attractive in a milieu where maleness and youth are the sole components of allure — I'm flattered.

  "Waiting for Tim," I tell him.

  "Saw him last night. Not since."

  "If you do, tell him I'm here, okay?"

  Crawf nods, smiles, tells me again how hot I look, then saunters off like a panther.

  In fact, I've discovered, hustlers sometimes do purchase one another's services. Tim says it's fun to play the john once in a while, and that he's always flattered when another street kid wants to pay him for sex. When that happens, he tells me, street etiquette requires he approach the kid a few days later and reciprocate.

  It's a quarter to eight and I'm getting impatient. I've never known Tim to be late. I decide to cruise the Gulch awhile, then check back. I slide over to the intersection, turn the corner, become part of the stream.

  Silver-haired businessmen hauling briefcases, sweaty evening joggers in Lycra workout suits, frugal shoppers, doting couples, apprehensive tourists — we all run the gauntlet here, never certain what the street people will do.

  An old Asian lady, Mao-era haircut and crazed eyes, gesticulates angrily at my camera. Stepping toward a storefront to avoid her, I nearly trip over a street vendor in swami position presiding over a display of flashlight batteries and tattered paperbacks. "Watch it, Bub!"

  Is he mispronouncing my streetname, or does he think I'm a guy? No matter, I hurry on.

  Nearly everyone here under twenty-five displays a piercing. I note ringed eyebrows, lips, tacked tongues. If this is what they show, I wonder, what baubles must dangle beneath their clothes?

  I'm fascinated by the hustling scene, though it was fear and revulsion that originally drew me. Last spring, Maddy Yamada, my photography coach, suggested I get out of the studio, go into the street, start photographing what I feared. Struck by her advice, I realized that for years I feared the Gulch... and so decided to take it on.

  At first I didn't know what I was after. It's easy and glib to document commercial sex. But on the Gulch, I became aware those early weeks, there were more interesting images to be captured. Meeting hustlers, I discovered unexpected qualities — gentleness, courage, love of adventure, even a desire to heal — which gave the lie to the view that those who sell their bodies must be desperate or hold themselves cheap.

  With Maddy's help, her critiques of my proof sheets, I begin to sharpen my vision. It wasn't, I understood, just the hustlers I should shoot, but the reactions to them in other strollers' eyes. Not just apprehension or fear... also cunning, avarice, lust. So, I asked myself: Who here really are the stalkers and the prey? And I thought: Perhaps with my camera I'll find out.

  I spot Knob at the corner of Polk and Bush. He's talking to a middle-aged bald guy in a cashmere turtleneck. Knob's nearly thirty, old for the Gulch, sports a goatee, has close-cropped hair and a husky fireplug build. Tonight he wears tight jeans, dark T-shirt, leather vest. Occasionally, I've heard, he'll do a session himself, but more often he acts as broker, negotiating deals for kids whom chicken hawks, fearful of jailbait, are too timid to approach.

  Knob gestures, Baldy nods, the conversation appears intense. Then Baldy thrusts something into Knob's hand and moves away, casting down his eyes as I approach.

  "Knob!"

  "Bug!" Knob furtively sticks whatever into his pocket.

  I figure I've been witness to a drug deal.

  "Negotiating?"

  Knob sneers. "Cheap guy. To cheap to close."

  "What'd he want?"

  "The usual." Knob turns away. He's wary of me, thinks I'm a do-goober, perhaps even an undercover cop.

  I change the subject: "Seen Tim?"

  He shakes his head.

  "Well, if you do..."

  He makes an imaginary pistol with his hand, aims it at me, squeezes off a shot and winks.

  Eight-fifteen. Tim's more than an hour late. I'm worried — he's never stood me up before. I go to a pay phone outside the Wing Mai, call up my answering machine. No messages. Perhaps he lucked into a score. He couldn't have forgotten; his tone was too urgent. I feel something's wrong, but can't wait longer. I'm cold and hungry. I decide to get something to eat.

  Two blocks south there's a Korean barbecue place I like, but tonight the smell out of the Wing Mai is good. I peer through the window, spot Alyson sitting with Doreen. The tables are linoleum and the lighting's fluorescent, which hurts my eyes, but the girls are fun. I slip on a pair of shades, enter, present myself.

  "Hey, Bug!" Doreen gestures me to a chair. "We'll have a real girlie dinner now."

  They're pecking with chopsticks at a whole cooked bass. I summon the waiter, order a bowl of hot-and-sour soup. As usual Alyson and Doreen are dressed hot. They have slim figures, nice breasts, wear makeup. In most ways they're more feminine than I.

  "How're tricks," I ask.

  Doreen moans. "You want war stories?" She the more ironic of the two. She and Alyson refer to one another as 'mates', room together, ply the same trade. I've been in their room at the Hampshire Arms — one huge bed, dirty windows, overstuffed closets, jumbles of clothes on the chairs. They rarely take clients home, prefer to perform out or, as a last resort, in cars. The clients don't mistake them for women. She-males, girls-with-cocks, are what they want.

  "There was this john two nights ago."

  "Monday, Doreen," Alyson corrects.

  "Whatever. It was a scene"

  She describes an equestrian scenario they performed in a grand house on Tiburon Island: Pony saddles, reins, horsetails, the works.

  "See, we're supposed to be mares," Alyson explains.

  "The props were pretty good."

  "The john was the stallion?"

  They smile, exchange a look.

  "More like a gelding," Dorene retorts.

  Such stories fascinate me. I'm full of questions. Was it apparent that the Tiburon man had enacted the scene before, or did he strike them as a novice? And where did he get all those elaborate props?

  My queries confuse them. They're not interested in the hows. It's the experience they savor, entering a client's madness, his fantasy.

  "Actually, he was fine," Alyson concedes.

  "If you like dead horse meat," Doreen adds.

  Alyson breaks up. We share a sweet cooked banana dish for dessert. I ask if they've seen Tim.

  "Yeah, yesterday," Doreen says. "He had attitude."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Like he was on the warpath or something. He pranced."

  Alyson laughs. "That's what we did Monday — oh, Lord! we pranced! Till our tails switched up and down. 'Not side to side,' the john kept saying. Should have seen him, Bug — he was practically in tears. 'You're not flicking flies off your rumps, girls. You're horny horsies!' Eventually we got it right, made him happy."

  Ten p.m. I decide to go home. I'd like to stay, perhaps take a few pictures, but because of the cold there's little going on. Also I'm feeling low. I thought Tim needed me, that confidences would be received. I was looking forward to playing the role of stand-in mom, since, until now, he and I have been mostly an older sister / kid brother routine. He's rarely spoken of his family, mentioning only that they live back east and are estranged exce
pt for an outcast gay uncle in New York. Tim is decent, loyal, soft-spoken. I'm sure there's an explanation, but I can't help but feel stood-up.

  As I walk toward the Bay, I recognize a sports car, a silver Mercedes 600 SL, patrolling Polk. The driver guns his engine. He's a hawk, I know, one of the rich ones who often hang around. The car's flamboyant but the occupant thinks he's invisible in darkness behind the glass.

  One little-known fact about the color-blind: We can see through most camouflage. In World War II we were used as bombardiers, and many of us are good at spotting birds and snakes whose coloring conceals. The reason, of course, is that we're not distracted by color, concentrating instead on tonal values and shapes. So, I'm able to make out the man in the Mercedes, not clearly but well enough to recognize him. It's Baldy, the guy I saw talking earlier with Knob.

  Then, as he drives by, gunning his engine again to show off his power, I catch a glimpse of his profile and from that understand more: I've not only seen him before, I've surreptitiously photographed him several times. I didn't recognize him at first because he wasn't wearing his toupee.

  I shiver as I climb the Chestnut Street

  steps. It's windy on Russian Hill. Too late now to safely venture across Sterling Park, so I follow Chestnut, turn right on Hyde, pass the crooked block of Lombard on my way up to Greenwich beside the cable car tracks and the endless cable that rumbles beneath the street.

  My building's at the crest. Constructed in the 1920's, slim and elegant, it offers some of the city's finest views. The rent's high; I sacrificed to live here, but have never regretted it. If by some fluke I should someday strike it rich, I'll probably buy a few things but I won't move.

  I let myself in through the gilded grille door, step into the elevator cab, push the button for the ninth floor. For me it's early. I adore the night; no photophobia, colors mean little, I don't feel caged in and my vision's at its best. I needn't blink, rarely have to squint. Horizons are limitless. It's a world of grays, a world I can roam and understand.