The Sexual Outlaw

by John Rechy

  It may be that overall—and with marked exceptions—the gay minority cares less for its own, does less for its own, than any other minority.

  That may be in large part because what holds other minorities together—ready identification, familial ties—is absent from the gay minority: It is very easy, and tempting, to “pass.” (A homosexual psychiatrist claims the “gay problem” would be resolved instantly if overnight all homosexuals turned a definite, defining color.) Unlike blacks, say, who have black fathers, black mothers, black sisters, black brothers, the homosexual is gay in total isolation in his family. He is often cast out when he is “discovered.” There is this additional factor: Since his is a minority defined by its sexual preference, the gay energy flows into two areas—the revolution of the sexhunt and the revolution against bigotry.

  Fear of rejection, at the root of so much of gay isolation, alienates us from each other and often makes us mean. Threatened by rejection by the straight world of parents, friends, teachers, the gay child finds fear of detection a factor in his early life; he hates what creates it, his homosexuality. Even as a “liberated” adult, that nailed fear may fester to infect every contact, wound every possibility. Attracted to each other, we often turn away in fear. We have intimate relations one moment and the next day well cross the street to avoid each other, in fear. We often use each other in misdirected anger, even hatred. Fear of threatened taunts on our “masculinity” pushes us to become posturing studs in fascist uniforms. Xeroxed pseudo-"butch” conformity.

  We want to marry. We long for one true lover. Wrong? No—if one wants that. But one should not have to marry or have only one lover.

  Adopt children? Well, we might be better parents than some.

  Join the army? Become cops! Support the rancid institutions that have slaughtered us?

  Join the churches that have crucified us?

  Revolutions are thwarted when the threatened established order hands out crumbs. So they may well “allow” us to many, join their armies, become cops and church members. But they won't let us fuck.

  Trying to be straighter than straight in our lifestyles is a form of self-hatred.

  Yes, there is much in the gay world that demands critical exploration. But hardly a word of criticism is heard about those tendencies that just may weaken us as surely as outside pressures; not a word from gay newspapers or magazines; not a word—at least not a public word—from ever-ready gay “spokesmen,” one under each palmtree in Los Angeles. For a gay person to criticize any aspect of the gay world is to expose himself to howls of wrath and betrayal. Because of that, a “serious” gay newspaper carries an approving cartoon on fistfucking—but refuses to run a news item on the fact that this increasing activity has caused maiming and death. A magazine prints a glossary of “symbols"—colored handkerchiefs, single earrings, keys, all displayed to indicate desired sexual positions and acts—but doesn't point out that these symbols may obviate even the few exploratory words we might otherwise exchange to discover each other, in sex, yes, but also, at least at times, beyond sex; extending rather than limiting possibilities.

  Allowing no interior criticism of the gay world, we invite a deceptive lulling that disastrously drains us by assuring us that all is fine, fine. We prefer not to face that when we weaken ourselves through lack of introspection, we strengthen the real enemy. Then the handcuffs snap on our wrists and the sticks bash our skulls.

  Straight expectations clash with gay realities, and the result may be a vision of hell. The glorious abundance of the sexhunt becomes the murderous anxiety to feel sexually tested every moment of the search—glorious when you “win,” suicidal when you “lose.” The obsession with youth and appearance which makes us beautiful can make us desperate. (Old homosexuals wasted—we cast away even the heroic fighters who “came out” when it was really courageous; we have no tradition of respect.) The anxiety about being busted at any moment augments our sense of instability in every area of our lives—the profession prepared for for years may be shut away in an instant. Our obsession with fantasy, often our escape in childhood, may render us invisible to each other's reality. The fulfilling freedom of orgies may, in the exclusive extreme, cancel out love, the dark side of cruising freezing all tenderness.

  And the most grotesque—heavily rationalized—reflection of the heterosexual world's hatred of the gay, is the proliferation of sadomasochism.

  Sadly, it is not true that we homosexuals no longer hate ourselves or each other. Many—and increasingly more and more—do not. Many still do. And most just less.

  7:16 P.M. Hollywood Boulevard. Selma.

  HE ATE IN A restaurant. He sat moodily alone.

  Suddenly, he needs to hustle, or merely to be offered sexmoney, whether or not he actually goes. Perhaps he'll just walk those streets, storing admiration, to answer the hideous questioning that erupts in the still times, cold islands of no action; storing remarks and solicitations to be called forth when desolation freezes despite the stunning triumphs. He remembers one night when no connection worked—a desolate night which still wounds him and by which he measures the terror of others. The questioning horror burst when a beautiful youngman who had been cruising him broke the standstill between them by moving off with someone else. Jim was left alone on the street in terror. It was the very next day that, counting rigorously, he made it with 22 people in one afternoon in Griffith Park, not once coming, not once reciprocating, determined to cancel out—which he didn't and still cannot—that arid night.

  Hollywood Boulevard. The hot, still night is inviting tribes of hunters to the grimy street.

  Past warm, inviting glances, Jim turns off the boulevard, to Selma. He loves this ugly street. Each time he enters it, the awareness that he continues to thrive on it years after others would be through, washes him anew with sensational pleasure. Although when he first returned— …

  FLASHBACK: Selma. Ten Years Ago.

  After moody years of seclusion, away from the streets and Los Angeles, experiencing, deliberately alone, the transition from youngman to man, working out compulsively, changing the tightly slender kid he had been to the muscular man he would become, not realizing that he was preparing his return, challenging time, the enemy of his breed of outlaw: his shirt open—and later he would leave it off entirely on warm days, nights—he returned to Selma. Despite his mirror's approval, he felt terror. This was the street where he would pass or fail the exacting test—the selling again of his body. Not quite dark yet, the night lurked within the smog. He saw the others on this street, the very young hustlers, careless in their tacky beautiful youth….

  An obvious sexbuyer, a man in a new long car was already cruising him. Yes! Jim felt warmth like a reprieve from execution. The man stopped ahead. Jim could hear his own heart. The driver of the car looked back at him. Slowly, Jim walked toward the stopped car—as he had done years ago on this very street. Years ago. The man leaned over, to lower the passenger-side window, to speak to Jim. And to look at him better? Years ago!… What if he realizes I'm not as young as he may have thought at first? What if he drives away? The man motioned to him.

  Overwhelmed suddenly by terror, Jim ran away, losing himself in the crowded boulevard, time roaring at him.

  Midway down the block, he stopped.

  “I haven't seen a body like yours in a long time,” a man walking up to him told him. “How much do you go for?”

  Reprieve. Jim touched his own body, breathing.

  7:23 P.M. Selma.

  “What's happenin?” The blond hustler is standing on the steps of the Baptist church. A deep tan reveals the tiny wrinkles at his eyes, like scratches.

  “Not much—with you?” Jim answers. Pauses.

  “Making it, making it.” Looking away from each other, even as they stand together on the steps, tanned survivors in a tough world, they glance at the parade of cars. “Hot tonight,” the blond hustler says.

  “Yeah, it's a hot night,” Jim echoes. Silence. This is perhaps the long
est they have stood together.

  The blond hustler says: “I don't think I've ever seen you with a shirt—always showing off, huh?”

  “Got to,” Jim says. But he knows the other hustler has seen him with a shirt, often.

  “Let's see what you look like. Try mine.” The blond hustler removes his tanktop, hands it to Jim. The shirt is moist with perspiration. For moments both stand shirtless. They glance at each other, laugh—look along the street. Jim slips on the sweaty shirt, very aware of the other's sensual body odor. The blond hustler looks at Jim. “You really fill it out.”

  “So do you,” Jim hears himself say. They laugh, look away again.

  Jim's cock begins to strain. He can see the other's straining too.

  His own sweat on the other's shirt, Jim removes it slowly. The blond hustler holds the shirt, flings it over his shoulder, his head turning toward it, as if to touch his mouth to it. Then he slips it on. Silent moments. They look at each other. The smiles freeze. Then they both laugh—and move on.

  As Jim walks away, he feels longing clash with anger.

  Standing by the telephone booth—and the telephone is ringing—Jim sees a man he's gone with many times before. Seeing Jim, the man begins to make a U-turn. Jim takes a few steps away, around the corner, to avoid the man. But then he waits there. The man drives up to him.

  Athletic, like a highschool coach, the man calls out, “Hi.”

  It's always the same; each time the man pretends—and Jim goes along with the charade—that this is the first time they've met. And each time he goes with him, Jim promises himself he never will again.

  “Hi.” Jim stands by the open window, but he's preparing an excuse to walk away.

  “Hustling?” the man asks.

  “Uh—…” Jim pauses. He starts to turn away. “Yeah.” He faces the man.

  “How much?”

  “Thirty dollars,” Jim answers, higher than usual—to court the man's saying no, he tells himself. Or because he knows the extent of the man's desire.

  “Okay,” the man agrees.

  Jim waits a few seconds before getting into the car.

  7:45 P.M. A House in the Hills.

  As always, the man pays Jim before they enter the airy, comfortable house. Beyond a windowed wall, the city is a smashed jigsaw puzzle.

  In the bedroom, the man immediately breaks a popper of amyl nitrite. Jim inhales. Sex implodes. The man holds the crushed ampule urgently to his own nose, as if to smother in the powerful fumes.

  The ritual begins, and Jim surrenders to the part of him he hates. The man kneels before him.

  “Master!” the man's hoarse voice pleads.

  Reeling scenes, spat words, rushing sensations, clashing emotions: The man groveling at Jim's boots, tongue washing them…. The man's face pressed down by one boot…. Jim lifting the eager head, bringing it harshly against his groin…. The man pulling at Jim's belt with his teeth, sucking the tip, which Jim holds as if it were a long, menacing cock…. Another ampule of amyl…. The man's exhortations: “Piss on me! Spit on me!”…. Gurgling…. Swallowing, pausing to swallow…. “Master 1” The man's hands pinioned behind…. The liquid splashing on the man's face, on his chest…. The belt…. The boots…. Jim's rough hands directing the head….

  Jim's cum spurts on the man's protruding tongue. The man's body writhes. Jim rubs his smeared cock over the other's rapt face. Groaning, the man comes into his own hands. “I love you!” he blurts out at Jim.

  8:30 P.M. Selma.

  Never again, Jim tells himself. The sight of a cruising cop car—hating faces staring out the window—and the evoked memory of the cops raiding the park earlier—that, and even more the memory of the brown-haired kid he was with then—all increase his overwhelming rage at himself for having acted—again—in another's nightmare of hatred.

  “How much?” a man calls out bluntly to him through the open window of his car.

  “Twenty.” He's sure the man isn't a cop. “And I don't do anything,” he adds.

  “What do you mean?” the man asks indignantly. “Oh, hell,” he understands; “you mean you expect me to pay you just to lay back and let me suck your prick? Go fuck yourself in front of a mirror!”

  Jim laughs, welcoming the laughter, which soothes somewhat the raw memory of the earlier scene.

  VOICE OVER: S & M

  “We too murt love.”

  –Miss Destiny, 1977

  THE PROLIFERATION OF sadomasochism is the major internal threat to gay freedom, comparable only in destructiveness to the impact of repressive laws and persecution by cops. The basis of both is the same: self-hatred.

  The hard-core of S & M is relatively small—perhaps tiny—in proportion to the vast gay world—and much of S & M is soft-core fantasy. Nevertheless its grip on the gay world—by reverberation, and perhaps more psychically than physically—is fiercely strong.

  (It is important to differentiate between consenting gay S & M and the imposed, uninvited S & M of police chiefs, cops, prosecuting attorneys, judges, and “straight” gay-haters stalking sexual arenas. Gay S & M—and this must be emphasized—is a willing activity, not to be legislated against. In it, both the “S” and the “M” agree mutually to participate. There is no force to join, there is no outside seduction. Participants generally agree beforehand on how “heavy” the activity will be. Few “S” ‘s will go any further than actually allowed by the “M,” who is therefore still in control. These important considerations totally separate homosexual S & M—without vindicating it—from the legally sanctioned and protected, imposed S & M of cops and other gay-haters. In the area of the latter, a totally unwelcome invasionary force is thrust on unwilling, non-consenting, uncontrolling, arbitrarily chosen victims. Much of gay S & M is strictly playacting. The legally encouraged, official cop-kind—stagnant from sexual repression—always deals in very real, life-crushing brutality.

  (It is important, too, to point out that much of what is assumed to be S & M is not. Members of “bike” clubs— among whom there often occurs a definite sense of camaraderie rare in other segments of the gay world—are all arbitrarily linked to the leather world because of similar costumes; here, the props may be more functional than symbolic, even when also symbolic. Still others who wear the full leather regalia, often do so merely to provide a lead-in to a certain fantasy of, say, making it with a “tough motorcyclist”—or other “super-macho” figure—depending on the costume. The sex then may range from the power-oriented to the loving, even gentle; it is not contingent on pain or gay-humiliation and is therefore outside the penumbra of S & M. Indeed, it is the ability to act out fantasies that enriches the gay sexual experience at some of its best.

  (One must point out also that gay S & M observes definite boundaries of time and place for its enactment; it does not spill over into unwilling arenas of “reality.” Actors, clerks, hairdressers, truckdrivers, teachers, salesmen, even ministers—the whole spectrum of professions— these participants in gay S & M lead lives no different from those of any other segment; like actors in a play, performing only on stage—stepping out of their roles once the play is over. With the exception of the tiny knot of full-time “spokesmen” for S & M—constantly issuing bombastic manifestoes and styleless treatises on the joys of masterhood and slavehood—most participants in gay S & M do not proselytize. The bars catering to this activity are known, the arenas defined.)

  The manifestations of the growth and power of S & M in the gay world are many: Gay leather bars are jammed nightly from Los Angeles to New York. Classified columns in gay publications are cluttered with exhortations for “masters” and “slaves”–and for humiliation. (“MOTOR-CYCLE GANG captures a bike thief and gives him the punishment he deserves—whips, chains, the ultimate degra-dation! Wow! One-hour cassette,” shouts an advertisement in the politically conservative gay newspaper, The Advocate.) A significant part of the content of gay magazines is taken over by advertisements for “toys”—a revealing euphemism, evoking childh
ood, for implements of “torture”: steel clamps, branding irons, whips, straps, even handcuffs. The recurrence of S & M in gay pornography is underscored by a gay filmmaker who points out: “Every porno flick, no matter how lyrically it deals with gay love, has to have at least one S & M scene to make it, even if the only way you can get it in is to have two guys beating each other up in the neighboring room.”

  Increasingly, gay bathhouses feature at least one room constructed to evoke a dungeon, or a jail cell, replete with chains. The catalogue of one of the most popular gay publishers uses a man in Nazi costume to advertise a film: “… the boots, the belts, and the leather!” it screeches. Some gay magazine shops sell handcuffs (this perhaps primary symbol of gay oppression by straights has become the standard prop of S & M!). A layout in a non-S & M magazine features photographs of naked men in stocks (the implements used in even less enlightened times to punish homosexuals are now flaunted in “celebration"). S & M publications relish, in articles, stories, and photographs, the mimed torturing of “slaves” by “masters.”

  (I am speaking, throughout, about gay S & M. Manifestations of widespread heterosexual S & M—which may have similar dynamics—abound. Indeed, a cursory glance at S & M publications in any pornography shop—or a glance at straight classified columns listing items pleading for “humiliation”—would lead one to conclude that the occurrence of heterosexual S & M far, far exceeds that of gay S & M—although the numbers may be equivalent when proportions are designated.)

  The costume of S & M is unindividualistically standard. Stiff, posturing clients in leather bars often resemble mannequins manufactured, with varying degrees of attention, from one iron mold. The costume is total fantasy, having virtually no discernible context in reality; there is nowhere else one would wear it other than to a gay leather gathering—as specialized, say, as a space suit. Black is the dominant color: black leather vest and/or jacket and/or shirt, black chaps, black cap, dark sunglasses, black gloves, black belts crisscrossed at various parts of the body. (In effect, a costume of death—an effect corroborated by an article on necrophilia in an S & M magazine: As if the ultimate celebration of S & M were death.) Chains, straps, and bradded silvery studs on the leather paradoxically evoke the profuse use of necklaces and sequins on satin by transvestites. Keys, one earring, color-print handkerchiefs, worn on this or that side, the latter with this or that degree of exposure, are messages of varying degrees of dominance or passivity. (Confusion often results because these signals change from place to place.)