In the City of Shy Hunters (75 page)

The Hell's Angels are laughing and clapping, hollering to me.

* * *

ON THE CORNER
of First Avenue, I am back up Hippodrome Standing, People on their stoops, on the sidewalk, are shouting at me and waving, A cabbie puts on his brakes, skids to a stop. The white stallion does not shy away. He gallops faster and faster. My arms out horizontal, I am vertical. I go into a Single Vault; my red Converse tennis shoes splash onto pavement; then I flip myself back up and over into a Double Vault.

At Second Avenue, the light is flashing yellow, but the white stallion knows, and we go through. Horns honking everywhere.

Just as the light turns red, all at once—abracadabra!—the white stallion leaps totally over a Checker cab, and I reach up and count coup on the traffic light.

Complete acceptance of whatever the Divine sets in your path.

God is anything that stands in your way.

The lucid compulsion to move him the fuck out of the way.

Fatum
.

Whether you fight it, cop an attitude, fuck it, or fall in love with it, you're still going to die.

We're all just in our bodies for a moment in our life. Such a brave and lovely act it is to let the body celebrate.

Past the men's shelter, under the garage on the corner of Third and Bowery, hundreds of black men, brown men, some white men, the trickled-down welfare queens in designer jeans, Ronald Reagan's faceless mass waiting for handouts, are standing, waiting for a chance, for a break, for a hand up, for a fix, a cigarette, just to be seen, for redemption. Praying for truth.

When you throw out darkness, I yell, And there is no place for darkness, I yell, The light is unrelenting and darkness is everywhere.

You've got to deliver yourself from your concept of God, I yell.

Those who would hunt a man, I yell, Need to remember that a jungle also contains those who hunt the hunters.

But it's not the truth.

I ride past the men's shelter, only silence; on all of East Third Street, only silence.

The men stare up at me: Teddy Roosevelt, white man on a white horse.

One guy—in a red T-shirt with white letters that say
YOU CAN'T IMAGINE HOW BIG IT IS
—steps out into the street and raises his hand, Sahara Desert palm up and out. Flying by, I slap the open palm of my hand to his hand, and he yells, Go, girl!

On Bowery, the white stallion knows, and we lean right, almost all the way over, and the white stallion heads upstream.

I do a Reverse Crupper to Backward Stand in the Saddle.

The white stallion turns east on East Fifth Street and this street is odd. Against the traffic.

You get to know the cracks in the sidewalk, the star on the manhole cover, the smell of certain doorjambs, the fountains, the curbs, the
WALK
/
DON
'
T WALKS
, the stoops and garbage cans; you get to know the puddles, the pothole where the city repaired the sewer line.

Past the old service station and the Senior Citizen Housing built in '86, past Mother's Sound Stages and the slobbering Doberman in the window. Past 205 East Fifth Street. On the street where I lived.

Horse hooves clack-clack, I'm riding the Stallion of Love, past the garbage cans, past my windows, my Art Family dressed to the nines, hanging out my windows, all waving cocktails and cigarettes, elbow elbow, wrist wrist wrist. Past Fifth Street Videoland, past the stoop, past the rectangle of earth and the beautiful blooming cherry tree. In all the world, bursts of fuchsia blooms in August.

Past Fish Bar, past our table in the corner by the window. The light on First Avenue is green, and we charge right through the Village View housing project with its windy sidewalks all cul-de-sacs like in suburbs, right on Avenue A, gallop past the Pyramid.

Two blue shiny beetle cops on brown horses right behind me.

Weapons drawn. In hot pursuit. Speeding light, darkness, speeding light. Sirens. Flashing cop-car lights.

At the corner of Fourth Street and Avenue A, there are people everywhere, sitting and lying on the sidewalks holding their bruised and bloody heads, their broken arms, their busted ribs. Cop cars' red and white flash. On the telephone wires sits a line of black crows. People are handcuffed together around the lampposts. You can smell the blood, the guns, the testosterone. A man on his belly is lying in a bloody puddle, his hands handcuffed behind his back.

Some cop is yelling at me over a loudspeaker.

Hippodrome Stand, I'm doing the Twist, the Jerk, the Mashed Potatoes, the Boogaloo, the Surf, the Swim, the Dance of the Wounded Male.

The power of the dance is to dance with God. The only way out is in.

I kick my red Converse tennis shoes off, pull down my cutoff jeans.

In all the world, this distracted globe, I'm buck naked, cock and balls bouncing up and down, original, pure, red-blooded American boy, high enough to think I am New York, out there in the spotlight.

Nowhere. Now here.

Something from nothing.

How this started—I don't know how all this started.

The stallion's mane is parted in the middle. I'm holding on to the saddle horn for dear life.

I've got a maiden to save.

Arms out like a bird, I'm flying past the corner of Sixth Street and Avenue B.

The whole world is applauding. A fucking standing ovation.

But it's not the truth.

The Pentagon is not applauding, the Vatican is not applauding, Cardinal O'Henry is not applauding, Ronald Reagan and Nancy are not applauding.

The cops are not applauding. In their steel-blue eyes, in their tiny Catholic hearts, I am the enemy.

It is this way. They are correct.

At the corner of Seventh Street and Avenue B, it's Dog Shit Park. It's police cars and ambulances. It's paddywagons and SWAT teams. It's flashing lights and sirens. It's an arsenal.

Every weapon, every gun, pointed at me.

All daring and courage, all iron resistance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.

Then the moment.

All at once, just like that, before I know it, the Stallion of Love is over the barricaded wrought-iron fence of Dog Shit Park. One solid silent leap.

Frozen moments in time.

Only silence, in all of New York City, all of Dog Shot Park, in all of the known universe, only silence, only mystery.

See you in Life Café! I yell.

The open palm of my hand is against the beaded blue horizontal and the beaded red vertical of the buckskin bag. I am holding on for dear life.

The road is red. I am headed south.

I am why birds like to fly so much.

Gerónimo!

ONLY THE WIND
in the English elms: sigh and sway and scratch. The sky going blue. The soft warm wind of sunrise.

The space in between is the Dance of the Wounded Male.

In all the world, as far as I can see, all of Manhattan, all of the known universe, even the cops step out with their left leg, and the leg collapses under them and every person falls a bit, catches themselves, then leans their bodies forward, swaying out their hips, swaying and straightening their backs with the power of their shoulders, then step with their right legs, raising themselves to their full height, swaying their hips out. They drag their left leg next to their right.

We are all wounded. Sexually haunted.

So silent. The morning light is pink and orange in the blue. The wind is all around us, lips at our ears. The elm leaves shake back and forth, back and forth, catching light.

The Stallion of Love jumps through the gold loop.

In all the world, as far as I can see, all of the known universe, even the cops, waving their arms like swans or serpents.

Silence, only silence. This is the point. Right here, at sunrise, the still point in the turning world, when even the cops are dancing the Dance of the Wounded Male.

Then it happens, just the way Fiona said.

All at once, just like that—abracadabra!—as far as I can see, the whole world, every person in the whole world, even the cops, starts to sing how their hearts are inside them, the way my heart is inside me too, on fire the way the morning is, longing for things that probably won't come, and sad because we know they probably won't.

Yet still foolish enough to wish.

But most of all clear and smooth and beautiful.

FIONA THROWS OFF
her red plastic shower curtain. She is glowing white marble. Her bushel of black hair. Fiona's red lips have a life all their own. The gap between her front teeth.

Never seen so much leather on one chick in all my life.

In her hand, in her open palm, Fiona is holding the bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol. She is walking Spanish.

Perfect, just perfect.

The Stallion of Love, Going Slack flat out, I lean forward in the saddle, reach down, scoop Fiona up.

Fiona's in the saddle. I'm riding double, behind, holding on to her, my arms around her waist.

All of us all male and female, all of us all one thing.

My hands on Fiona's shoulders, I push myself to standing, let go, put my arms out wide. Fiona stands up too, my arms are around her waist until she has her balance.

Fiona puts her arms out, both hands, her index and her fuck-you fingers sticking up.

I put my arms out too.

Double Hippodrome Stand, heading north, away from Dog Shit Park.

At the tunnel, Fiona and I crouch down. The Stallion of Love gallops into the dark hole. Fiona's breath in, her breath out. My breath. The stallion's breath. The stallion's horseshoes against the railroad ties, the gravel, the iron rails, are all that we can hear.

The stallion knows the way exactly.

A whistle blows. A car alarm. Up ahead, there's a bright light. The bright light is a locomotive iron horse, a one-eyed monster blowing steam, headed right for us.

But it's not the truth.

The bright light is not a monster. It's the end of the tunnel.

Ahead of us is the road is red. Ahead of us Crummy Dog is trying to outrace two rabbits.

Fiona's smile is so big her scar is bleeding. She puts the Extra Strength Tylenol in my open palm.

Complete acceptance of whatever the Divine puts in your path, Fiona says. A neurotransmitter, Gamma something or other, Fiona says. Opens up the part of the brain that is directly connected to the Divine.

I'll tell you something, so you'll know.

My eyes look down at the substance of myself.

Charlie's buckskin bag around my neck, the beaded blue horizontals, the red verticals.

In my hands, my open palms, the cure:

My lovely erect pink penis.

Ocelot skin and a cherry blossom.

It is this way.

A kind of fuck-you-motherfucker joy.

It's the truth.

I promise.

First published in the United States of America by Grove Press,
841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003

First published in Great Britain in 2001 by Atlantic Books,
an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd

Copyright © Tom Spanbauer 2001

The moral right of Tom Spanbauer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

1 903809 06 1

E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 761 8

Printed in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent

Atlantic Books

An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd

29 Adam & Eve Mews

London W8 6UG