The Sexual Outlaw

by John Rechy

The mechanical rumble grows.

  1:28 P.M. Griffith Park. The Invasion.

  “MOVE TO THE MAIN ROAD. PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO THE MAIN ROAD!”

  “They've seen us,” the youngman blurts.

  “No,” Jim says. “The fuckers are just covering the whole park.”

  “Shit bastards!” the other says.

  He turns to face Jim lying beside him on the leaves. Jim faces him. “Fuck them,” Jim says. The youngman touches Jim's bare shoulder.

  Their bodies connect tightly. Listening to the distant clap of horses, they lie chest to chest.

  “They must be busting everybody,” the brown-haired youngman says.

  “Everybody they can find,” Jim says.

  Hands nestle in each other's groins.

  The dipping helicopter scatters the leaves.

  Bodies charged by the atmosphere of danger, they kiss.

  The amplified voice demands again: THIS IS THE POLICE! PROCEED TO THE MAIN ROAD! THIS IS-THE POLICE!”

  The brown-haired youngman is opening Jim's pants, Jim opens the other's. They're almost naked on the leaves. Jim's body mounts the other, mouths and cocks kissing.

  Whrmrhmrrrr! Whrrrrrrrrmrrrr!

  The sound recurs vengefully.

  This time they feel the blade-stirred breeze hot on their bare bodies. Quickly aroused, each takes the other's cock in his mouth.

  “EVERYONE PROCEED TO THE MAIN ROAD!”

  Hands sliding over beautiful flesh, tongues touching in moist tips, muscle-straining thighs pressed hard together, cocks aroused sliding up and down on sweat-moistened pubic hair … they come, their liquid cream smearing each other's stomach, cock, balls. “Oh, God!” And they continue pressing against each other as if to extend the orgasm.

  Now they lie quietly side by side in the cove, listening to the sounds of the invasion beyond.

  After minutes: “Should we try to go around the hill to the straight side?” Jim asks.

  “It's all quieting down—maybe it's cool now. Maybe we should just go up on the road to our cars.”

  They dress.

  “I'm not sure it's over,” Jim says.

  The other listens. “I don't hear anything. I'll take a chance on the road. Wanna come?”

  Jim pauses. “I'll go around the hill,” he says.

  They kiss again. They laugh—the reality is too difficult to accept. They are actually in danger—but for what?

  “Good luck.”

  “Good luck.”

  Jim weaves along the park's lower rough paths. Branches scratch his bare perspiring shoulders. After long, long minutes the steep descent is over. Now he has to go around, then over, another hill. He pauses. Then he begins to move toward the straight part of the park.

  Whrrrr!

  Jim can see the helicopter. He lies on the ground. Something pierces his leg. A glass? A broken branch? A branch—not a serious cut. But the blood pours out rich and red. He blocks it with dried leaves. He remains there until the helicopter rises into the sky, whirs away. Jim continues to climb, his body clamped by the unmoving heat. Now he's on a main path connecting bridle trails. He hears hooves. He starts to rush away. But this time it's only a man and a woman on horseback. “Hi!” they call to him.

  “Hi,” he answers.

  “You know what's happening on the other side of the park?” the woman asks him.

  Jim looks at her. He shakes his head, no. His world is totally invisible to them.

  As he moves now more slowly along the path, he encounters other straight couples hiking. In minutes he has entered a completely different world. Standing on a path, he looks out at the unthreatened straight section of the park. There are no red signs here.

  The sound of horses. This time he doesn't even start. Another man and a woman on horseback approach him. The retreating helicopter hovers momentarily overhead. But here there is no sense of danger. The man and the woman don't even look up at it. “Hi,” they call to Jim.

  This time he doesn't answer.

  On the main road in the straight area, Jim hitchhikes down the hill. A man he's been with in the gay section stops. On the car seat is one of the red signs. Jim reaches for it.

  “They used those weird signs to bust people in the gay area,” the man tells him. “Some kind of fire ordinance. I ran when I saw what was happening.”

  Jim tries to read the sign, the convoluted vague wording in the tiny letters: “… firebreak or fire road… motorcycle, motorscooter vehicle within any mountain fire district … special permit from the chief … obstruct the entrance … firebreak….”

  He throws the sign on the seat.

  Where the straight section of the park and the gay section clash in a “V,” Jim gets out. From here, he'll eventually hitchhike back to his car.

  3:54 P.M. Griffith Park. The Detention Compound.

  He sees: At the foot of the hill—deliberately at the entrance to the gay area—the cops have constructed a temporary detention compound. Giant barred cop buses, jeeps, squad cars, park gates form an enclosed camp. A busload of outlaws is being brought in. Unmarked police cars spew out other men, handcuffed.

  Then Jim thinks he sees the brown-haired youngman he was with minutes earlier. No, it's not him in the compound. Yes, it is— … No— … Jim remembers that the youngman, like him, was on probation; if they caught him emerging out of the brush and busted him, any infraction is a violation; the terms of his probation might have even crazily included staying out of the gay area of the park; they'd take him to jail— … Jim convinces himself it wasn't him, no. He tells himself it was almost over at the top of the road when they emerged from the trail. No, it wasn't him.

  In the compound, uniformed cops and vice cops in trunks and cutoffs are laughing. They have all returned down the hill. Apparently the invasion is over.

  Jim gets a ride up all the way to his car. Anxiously he hopes the car of the brown-haired youngman he was with will be gone—that would mean he got away.

  The car is still there.

  Jim's stomach knots.

  Racing, he drives back to the area of the compound, hoping to see the youngman. Some of the outlaws, booked at the compound, are now being released, walking back to their cars in disbanded squads. But not the brown-haired youngman.

  Jim waits across the road from the compound.

  The cops are dismantling the battle station.

  MIXED MEDIA 3

  39 CITED BY POLICE

  IN GRIFFITH PARK

  TRESPASSING DRIVE

  “Thirty-nine persons were taken into custody briefly Sunday at Griffith Park in a sweep of fire hazard areas.

  “The 39 were stopped by Los Angeles policemen, firemen, and park rangers and taken to a command post… where they were held until their names and addresses were taken….

  “Names of those cited will be presented to the city attorney's office for possible prosecution under city ordinances prohibiting trespassing into sections designated as hazardous.

  “All those taken into custody were adults, officers said. They could face penalties of up to one year in jail and a $500 fine…. Similar sweeps have been made at the park during the last few years, officials said.”

  —Los Angeles Times,

  October 1, 1973

  PARK SWEEP ‘BURNS’ L.A. GAYS

  “A Sunday afternoon police sweep of Hollywood's Griffith Park to enforce two fire hazard ordinances resulted in the arrest and detention … of several dozen gays.

  “By all accounts a full-scale military operation, with a command post, detention buses, jeeps, a helicopter, marked and unmarked cars, uniformed and vice police—and even a contingent of mounted cops—it was seen by … the gay community as a new harassment strategy.

  “The strike apparently concentrated on one section of the mammoth park—an area … known as a stamping ground for cruising and socializing gays. All those who were taken into custody could face penalties of up to one year in jail and a $500 fine ….

  “In contradiction
to the official LAPD explanation for the roundup … both the Fire Department and the Recreation and Parks Department denied they had requested the action or ‘designated an enforcement area.’ …

  “According to witnesses—some of them detained for two hours in a dusty compound just inside the park's main entrance … —the operation began at about 1 P.M.

  “All thought it unusual that vice officers took part in a fire hazard action…. [Witnesses] saw unmarked cars admitted to the compound and short- and long-haired young men emerge wearing everything from a T-shirt to bathing trunks and collegiate-style dress….

  “One [man] said that moments before he and a companion were arrested by uniformed policemen, ‘while we were sitting on a rock,’ two ‘plain-looking guys’ came up and asked him for a light…. He said he later saw the pair from his seat in one of the detention buses at the compound, ‘laughing and talking with uniformed police.’

  “… the spectacular sweep … was concentrated along the road where gays often park, socialize, or slip away into the brush….

  “Also seen at various locations in the ‘enforcement area’ were six mounted personnel, three of them … cops wearing blue jeans…. The other three … were park rangers, who, according to a park spokesman, ‘took no part in the arrests and were only there to guide policemen on the trails.’

  “A jeep with a man riding shotgun was also observed taking off from the compound….

  “[Another] witness indicated that the rangers were reluctant participants in the sweep. He said he and two friends were on a climbing expedition…. They saw two marked cars with people in the back, ‘obviously handcuffed because of the way they were sitting.’

  “He said that as he and his companions were making their climb on a steep ridge, they were repeatedly buzzed by a police helicopter…. ‘The 'copter hovered close, and over a loudspeaker someone told us to return to the main road.’ … He then said the helicopter… instructed them to get into back of [a] ranger's vehicle, ‘but one of the rangers kept motioning the helicopter away and shaking his head “no”.’

  “When at last an unmarked car drove up containing two plainclothes police, the witness continued, ‘a ranger got out of the station wagon and in an annoyed voice asked the cops, “Are you going to tell these three persons why they were being held here?”’

  “The three hikers were then told they were ‘in a restricted area’….

  “Taken with his companions to the maintenance area, the hiker observed ‘a full-scale field operation,’ including ‘some sort of camper vehicle where persons who may not have had ID's were being photographed, I think.’

  “… Inside a small shed … refreshments were being served to the police and other persons in plain dress…. He said three of the detained persons, ‘including one older, dignified-looking man who was obviously frightened,’ didn't have ID's, and expected to be taken to the Hollywood station to be booked.

  “He said two complaints were filed on him and his two companions.

  “[A witness] determined from talking to some of them that ‘gays were arrested even outside the restricted areas.’ He said, ‘One guy was picked up who was just sitting by his car reading’ and ‘another had just been strumming his guitar right out beside the main road when he was handcuffed and taken to the bus….’

  “… The [Los Angeles] Times, [accepting] without question … the official LAPD explanation for the roundup … reported only that 39 persons had been held ‘until their names and addresses were taken’ and made no mention of the ‘enforcement area’ or … of gays … detained.

  “… According to the first arrested witness, both buses in the maintenance (compound) area were ‘almost packed’…. Another witness … said he drove ‘on every road and I saw no cops anywhere else except in the gay area—not by the zoo, not by the merry-go-round, not anywhere, despite the fact that the last major fire in Griffith was near the zoo.’

  “Other observers asserted they had seen ‘straight couples …’ in posted areas who were ‘not molested’ by police.

  “… [A police captain] said vice officers had been used because of ‘a manpower shortage for such an operation’….

  He also said it was ‘ironic’ that so many arrested witnesses were reportedly handcuffed ‘when … I left whether or not a person would be handcuffed to the individual officer's discretion.’

  “… One witness also noted that when the operation apparently disbanded shortly after 4 P.M. ‘the remaining cops [at the command post] broke out a couple cases of cold beer and celebrated the end of their successful hunt.’”

  —Doug Sarff,

  The Advocate,

  October 24, 1973

  NOTE: The arrested men were charged with misdemeanors and fined. A few days later fire did erupt in Griffith Park. In a straight area.

  VOICE OVER: Imaginary Speech to Heterosexuals

  I IMAGINE that I speak to a group of assorted heterosexuals:

  Do you know how much we often distrust you? Even at times hate you. Not all of you, nor arbitrarily the way you hate us, if only because among you are our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, even sons and daughters.

  We have every reason to hate the men who take out on us their terror of facing themselves. Women who try to “save” us. Posturing males measuring each other's cocks by joking about us. The marauders your hatred turns loose in our areas. Your ignorance about us. Every reason to hate your heterosexual fascism. Your television, newspapers, magazines feeding us condescending crumbs. Your cops, the executors of your hatred, a hatred that kills even your own children; do you know that over half of child suicides are because of sexual identity?

  We live each moment of our lives with the stupid judgment of your psychiatrists (will they change unhappy heterosexuals to homosexuals?), your judges, lawyers, juries (who in one moment can wreck our lives forever), your priests, rabbis, ministers, preachers (making damn sure we'll experience an aspect of hell).

  What they do, you condone. What you condone, you do.

  Imagine this: Your heterosexuality is legislated against. Even a proposal of a sex encounter renders you a criminal. Every moment you try to connect sexually, you're threatened with prison. You sit in a bar, you ask a woman who's been smiling at you to make it with you at home. Busted for it, you may be jailed for years. If you're the woman and you accept, you'll be busted too and forced to register as a “sex offender” the rest of your life; you may be pulled out of your home and into a police lineup on the flimsiest reason. Imagine that your bars are raided. Cops pick you out at random, just for being there; they handcuff you, jail you— and you keep wondering, Why? Imagine you're at a party and ask someone, or accept someone's invitation, to go home and make it—the other turns out to be a cop infiltrating the party. Busted. Imagine you're making out in a car—and you're sentenced to prison for eight years. Not merely told to move on—but sentenced to prison for eight years. Will you stop being a heterosexual, or will your defiance flare?

  Imagine that any mad cop can call you sick; imagine that any quivering preacher, priest, rabbi can hound you from childhood for being “damned.”

  Will you stop being a heterosexual?

  Now in my speech to heterosexuals I focus on liberals:

  Why don't you support us like you do blacks, Chicanos, farmworkers? Do you know that there are constant mass roundups and beatings of homosexuals? That our civil rights are routinely violated every day? Do you know that one who says “faggot” also says “nigger,” “broad,” “chink,” “kike,” “spic"? We are the minority ostracized by both the right and the left.

  Not so, says a radical woman in the audience. “The S.L.A. condoned upfront gay relations.”

  Oh, sure—for women. And that's a male-heterosexual fantasy trip. Did they have one word of revolutionary doctrine about gay men? Were the men being encouraged to make it?

  And to the parents in the audience:

  One of your children, right at this very moment, may be struggling
to bring himself to tell you that he's gay. You love him—he knows that. But will you still love him when he tells you?—will you turn him into a stranger? Will you, as so many before you, throw him out?

  And to the straight blacks and Chicanos in the audience:

  Why do so many of you—who should know so well what it's like—oppose us while you wallow in transparent machismo? The evil that pursues us is the same evil that pursues you. It only begins with us. We provide a barometer for tomorrow's general repression. We're first— but you're next.

  “What makes a homosexual?” a nice lady or gentleman in the audience asks earnestly, trying-hard-to-understand.

  What makes a heterosexual? It's that relevant.

  “Does the sexual outlaw you've described oppose heterosexuality?” asks a man, forcing his voice low, low.

  If you think so, you've misunderstood entirely. He would not replace one restrictive tyranny for another— homosexual fascism for heterosexual fascism. He opposes only the totalitarian imposition of the heterosexual norm on him.

  Is he against love and relationships?

  No. He merely upholds the right to have sex with or without love, with one or with many. Within or outside marriage.

  I go on, anticipating:

  And how can you say that our sexual presence intrudes on your lives? Even when we have sex on the streets, we're invisible to you—you don't know we're there. (Just us and the cops, man.) Have you ever, once, seen us make out? And if occasionally we trespass into your garages to fuck (and even then you don't see us), what is that compared to how you've trespassed into our lives, trampled on them? What cops can we call to thwart that?

  Your hatred has thrust us out of your world and we have formed our own, unseen by you. You allowed us no “security” and now we live to question the props of yours. The impermanence you've pushed on us, we've converted from an aimless hell into, at best, a joyous promiscuity to confront you and question your "permanence.”

  Now I relent in my imaginary speech. Especially because I see in it some of my most beloved friends.