The Sexual Outlaw

by John Rechy

  As the war went, it was a victory for the gay side. Despite the gay excesses, the police action had been so absurd that it drowned every other consideration. There was no public support for the action; none—not even from the conservative provinces. The cops had aroused citizen indignation. Gays had stuck with gays.

  Soon after, during a televised news conference, a visibly unnerved chief of police proclaimed that he would, once and for all, define the difference between homosexuals and heterosexuals. As psychiatrists, sociologists, psychologists, and laymen—homosexual and heterosexual—waited for the ultimate revelation, the chief—converting his arms into “wings” and fluttering his “tail”—did a baffling imitation of a “heterosexual bird” mating in a nest, and then of a “heterosexual (sic) bird” mating in the nest but this time saying, “Slam, bam, thank you, sir.” The difference still remains blurred.

  Of course there were major casualties on the gay front. Despite dismissed charges, some of the defendants lost their jobs; others were alienated disastrously from their families, who had seen their faces captured by the cop-alerted TV cameras. Identification information had been gathered by the police on all the men at the bathhouse, license numbers had been recorded; for what present and future harassment? Soon after, the token gay “legislative aide” to a councilwoman who in a heavily gay district had overtly courted—and received—homosexual votes was dismissed because he was “too involved” in gay causes, including criticism of the bathhouse raid.

  And—the worst casualties—the four remaining defendants prosecuted on trumped-up charges would become political scapegoats caught in the barbed wire of courts and hearings.

  “Now I know how Hitler did it,” one of the arrested “slaves” said, with an amount of unconscious irony—the analogy was apt since Hitler had rehearsed on homosexuals; but was the speaker aware also of the paradox of the leather contingent's overtones of fascism, and of its acceptance, at least tacitly, of “brown-shirt” uniforms in its bars?

  “The only real pain inflicted at the bathhouse was by the cops,” said a busted “slave.” True enough, if pain is only physical. But was he ignoring the psychic damage inflicted by all humiliation?

  “The raid radicalized me,” said an arrested “master.” But had it? And if so, had it others?

  Had the experience of real jail and real handcuffs revealed the dynamite buried in gay S & M? Did a purging reality invade the posturing “masters” when they were converted into real slaves by the very cops they often imitate?—in dreadful “machochism,” as one writer recently put it. Did they recognize the real enemy—the cops, not ourselves? The gay men dressed as cops at the auction—how did they feel about the enemy's uniform after being handcuffed and called queer by real cops? Would the gay “cop bar” still teem with black-uniformed cop-imitators? Would the makebelieve prison cell at the bathhouse affront both charading “masters” and “slaves” now that they had experienced the real one?

  Would the “real prison door” of the popular gay leather bar (and the owner had been among those arrested) still be opened and closed by gay men unaffected by the repulsive symbol—when so many homosexuals are behind actual prison doors?

  Did the contradiction glare of saying, “Give us liberty” while enchaining our own in fantasy humiliation? Did “masters” and “slaves” realize that to want to wear handcuffs is as wounding as to want to enchain another— whether either desire emanates from the cops or from gays?

  Was there an awareness that there is too much of real, uninvited pain, too much of hatred, oppression, enslavement, much too much, to add to it even in playacting?

  It was a time for asking those questions, at the same time that one underscored emphatically the leather faction's right to hold their ugly willing auctions; a time too to point out that that faction is not representative of the gay world, that one could and should support the bathhouse defendants against police sadism without condoning the paradox of a slave auction even in announced support of gay freedom (any more than one would logically condone the charade of lynching to support a black cause or an imitation concentration camp to assert Jewish pride).

  Yes, and it was a time for questioning oneself anew. For facing one's still-lingering fascination with that world. (Because in a period of my life I am not proud of—and no outsider even now to the beckoning “power” within S & M—I acted in an interlude with a man who begged for the humiliation I only too gladly provided, and afterwards he confessed he had found in me a surrogate for the man who had punished him in the concentration camp he had been incarcerated in as a boy. His story real or fantasy? It doesn't matter. The hateful image had scorched.)

  And it was a time to emphasize that the true “radical-ization” of the leather faction would come—if it came at all—only when the counter-revolutionary energy expended in even fantasy rage against our own and ourselves would be diverted into combating the real oppression, the real oppressors—and seeing that combat in the context of all the hungry evils that devour other minorities.

  Were any of those questions being asked by the “masters” and “slaves”? Were any connections being perceived? Perhaps. Perhaps, among some of those arrested. Perhaps, hopefully.

  Outwardly nothing changed. The prison door of the thriving S & M bar constructed to evoke a torture dungeon opened and closed nightly, just as before, as gay patrons entered and exited, unconcerned; and the “costume” bar, owned in part by the ubiquitous gay-liberationist, still saw gay men dressed as cops, posing in ludicrous imitation-authority and threat. The magazine that had spawned the auction still displayed photographs of costumed “torture,” its classified ads still pled for “humiliation.”

  And the cops? Did they see that they had busted a charade of their own very real brutality? Did they face their leering fears? And, assaulted by citizen outrage at the waste, did they alter their priorities to focus on the muggings, robberies, rapes—one every thirty minutes, it was estimated—and murders that pillage this city?

  No.

  The wasteful vendetta continued. Cops would lurk in bars to entrap homosexuals. Because courts might conceivably determine that a bar is “semi-private”—and therefore beyond the purview of the public-solicitation law—vice cops would solicit inside a bar and then reiterate the proposition outside, thus rendering it “public.” Sixty cops would break up a peaceful gay parade on Hollywood Boulevard. Systematically they would wait in gay cruising areas to pursue homosexuals, stop them, and cite them on trumped-up traffic violations. At least a dozen cops would rush absurdly into a small gay bar—and on a ruse that they had received a complaint that two men there were drunk, would arrest one bartender for having no identification (it was in his car outside, but they would not allow him to retrieve it), another bartender for serving the allegedly drunk men, and the two “drunk” men—who were given no sobriety test. A gay newspaper would report that, in a period of four days, 15 gay arrests were made each day in one tiny corner of Hollywood. On another street, squad cars would parade up and down the blocks, loudspeakers demanding that certain circling cars leave the area. More squad cars would actually blockade a street cruised by gays after the bars close, stopping everyone walking through or driving, whether or not he lived there. Turned-up squad-car loudspeakers would still be used to insult homosexuals.

  Nightly, a small army of cops—up to eight cars jamming and blocking a single block to question as few as four hustlers—would pursue homosexuals on one single street.

  And still unfound as of that time, and along with countless other killers, attackers, robbers, and muggers, was the brutal rapist-murderer of at least ten terrified lone old women, within blocks of each other in one small section of the city.

  Postscript

  Early in December 1976, the city attorney's office requested that all criminal charges be dismissed against the five Los Angeles cops accused of statutory rape with teenage Explorer Scout girls. The motion was granted. No hearing, no witnesses, no bubble-gum wrappers as evidenc
e. A terse statement from an assistant city attorney stated: “Evidence uncovered since the filing of these cases has persuaded us that the defendants’ guilt [sic] cannot be established beyond a reasonable doubt. Several key witnesses have declined to cooperate with the prosecution.” Given the circumstances that had grudgingly been allowed to surface (consent on the part of the girls, no force involved), this was a proper decision.

  One would have unqualifiedly hailed the dismissal as a victory for sexual sanity had not, just a few days later, a judge ruled in a preliminary hearing that the four gay-bathhouse-raid defendants would stand trial on charges of “pandering” (procuring another person for prostitution). No matter, here, that consent was involved—and among adults in a private gathering; no matter that the “slaves” would not be friendly witnesses either. Parallel situations between the cop defendants and the gay defendants had produced opposite results—and the double standard glared.

  With what rage had the prosecuting attorney waged his fight to bind the defendants over for trial: The paraphernalia confiscated at the auction was flaunted in evidence— the manacles, wooden stock, studded collar, riding crop, cat-o'-nine-tails, leather shackles, paddle, rings and clamps for parts of the body, leg chains—all the nasty “toys” of S & M with which some homosexuals play self-hating charades. The objects had no bearing on the charges; but their presence in the courtroom was meant to stir the same bigotry the cops had sought to create in their televised spectacle of the raid.

  At first the judge had seemed almost sympathetic to the defendants. He observed that, during three days’ testimony, no connection with pimping had been made. He summarily dismissed the testimony of one cloudy cop who kept consulting a police transcript. He defended laughter as salutary. He criticized the prosecution for not providing the defense with copies of the transcript of a crucial tape secretly recorded by the cops at the auction.

  As the prosecutor fought ferociously to bring the case to trial, it was obvious that much more was at stake than the four defendants.

  Why, think of the police chief for whom this operation had been so dear!—and now he was making noises about running for governor. Think of the one hundred brave men in blue, and the helicopters, the cop whose tooth got knocked out, the cameras, the buses, the command post! And think of those thousands of dollars poured into the daring raid on the gay bathhouse.

  Okay, so maybe you were raped, robbed, or mugged on the night of the raid because the cops were out busting homosexuals. We got the fucking perverts! So what if each “slave” knew he didn't have to do anything he didn't want to, didn't even have to go with whoever bid for him? Yes, a lot of consent, as the police spokesman had pointed out in the matter of the cops and the underage girls. None of that mattered, here. We got the fucking queers! All four of them. (Sure, we wanted to get a hundred, busted forty, had to settle for four. But we got ‘em!)

  The cops, the district and city attorney's offices (hadn't both had representatives at the raid, in effect condoning it?) had looked, at best, ridiculous after the bathhouse bust, and citizens angered by the squander in the jungle-city had let them know it. Now, to vindicate the wasteful homophobia, ran the demented logic, more money must be poured into the trial of four random martyrs. Additional waste would justify waste!

  As much as half a million dollars, estimates indicated, might ultimately be spent to bring three male homosexuals and one woman to trial on gauzy “sex” charges.

  Up to $125,000 per defendant!

  To many, that smacked of very, very expensive legal “pandering”—at the expense of non-consenting adult taxpayers.

  At one point during the hearing, the prosecutor had raged about “the perverse sexual inclinations of those people.”

  There it was. No statutory violation was being prosecuted here. No; not S & M—even the charges of “pandering” had come as a strained afterthought. The purpose of the raid, the preliminary hearing, and the upcoming trial was, and would be, the continuing stirring up of hatred against all homosexuals by zeroing in on its most vulnerable faction.

  11:26 P.M. The Parking Lot Outside the Tuff Bar.

  THE ALLEY AND THE lot are deserted for now. But Jim gets out.

  As he moves into the darkness, he notices that on the street beyond the alley and the lot, the chrome of parked cars reflects cold silver shafts. He stops. He sees distant street lights. Chalky dull halos, they dirty the dark. He notices the shapes of buildings carved into the night. Short and dark rectangles; and he sees the rigid lines of sidewalks connecting with the distant street. Half a block away, in a small building two windows are lit. He looks up at the highest one, on the third story. Its shade is only three-quarters drawn. From the lower quarter, a rectangle of blue-white light glows. A siren's wail funnels into a shrill peak on a street, then uncoils, dissipates, re-forms into fragments of sound from the lighted window. “… that's it.” Laughter. “Rock-a-bye-baby.” Then the light from the window is smothered along with the electronic voices and laughter. On the main street a car won't start. He can't see it, it's parked behind a darkened flowershop, its back exit cluttered with gutted boxes and frayed string. He hears the motor of the stalled car as it grasps for ignited connection. His attention hinges on the gasping sound. The motor starts. He listens for the slide of tires driving away. Nothing. The car motor stops. He walks along the alley. White, crumbling plaster creates a dirty brown map on the wall of a building. The building cuts a rectangular angle into the edge of the lot and the alley. He touches the plaster, but not the peeling part. The stone feels cold. He takes two steps, pauses again. Unlighted blind windows of houses face the streets. He looks down. Dark parallelograms, shadows, fall on the ground doubling the darkness. In the lot, the dirt—except where a car has spilled a blot of oil—is the color of the concrete sidewalks. With one foot, he shifts a portion of dirt from side to side on the ground. Then he moves on.

  Now there are overlapping triangles of hunters throughout the lot.

  It is a moment in the hunt when the outlaws are all unmoving, waiting in the night like frozen sentinels. A mute chorus near walls, against cars, trucks; just standing. Soon one among them will stir, then another, and the spell will be broken.

  Booming, a total shock in the stirless dark silence, a voice hammers angry words: “I wanna say something to you—… Yeah, you, showing off without a shirt!”

  Jim faces a drunkenly swaying youngman. Not particularly attractive, the type he would not reciprocate with. Depression crowds the youngman's thin face. Jim doesn't recognize him even vaguely.

  “Hey, what the—…?” Jim whispers. But even the whispered words assault the rigid silence.

  “You make yourself available,” the drunken voice goes on tearing at the silence of the paused choreography. The shadows do not move, the spell locked. “You walk around showing off your body. You didn't even touch me, just wanted me to lick your body. Well, I have a body too!”

  Jim still doesn't remember this man. One of so many he's been with, and forgotten. But he knows himself well enough to say—softly—to the man, “I didn't force you.”

  “Just lay there, wouldn't even touch me—…” the man pours out desolately.

  The two, and their words, seem encased in the dark.

  “I didn't force you,” Jim repeats, even more softly, trying not to violate further the stagnant quiet. How many rejections have goaded this assault? What surrogate horrors is he embodying for this unattractive youngman?

  “Didn't it matter to you that I needed to be touched too?” The man's voice is relenting. The commanding quiet powerfully resists the spilling emotion.

  “I didn't force you.”

  “Afterwards I felt—…” The voice chokes. “Don't you ever touch anyone back?” The hurt eyes implore.

  Jim looks at him. How can he tell him the truth?—yes, with some I reciprocate, those I desire back, but with others, like you, I don't. He knows the answer the man wants, and he forms it: “No, I never reciprocate.”

&
nbsp; The man sighs.

  Jim stares after him as the man staggers into the alley. In an unwelcome moment the ugly carnage of the sexhunt gapes at Jim—his part in it.

  Released finally, the shadows stir. An erratic wind rustles the sun-dried leaves of palmtrees beyond the lot.

  VOICE OVER: Contradictions, Ambivalences, and Considerations

  THE JOY OF promiscuity.

  And the pain.

  Ecstatic freedom and release.

  Loneliness, desolation.

  A glorious adventure that, always at the brink, stops even time.

  Panic, frenzy, fear.

  Ambivalences and contradictions. The outlaw faces the saboteur.

  The purgatorial moments, the saboteur announces. The stasis at dawn—the entrapping dawn, remember?—the time to be avoided in the cycle of the sexhunt. Why such a purgatory of questions in an experience so liberating?

  A hateful obeisance paid—beyond present control—to the powerful straight world that digs its talons deep, deep when we are most vulnerable—and continues to try, every moment, with stupid encyclicals, laws, denunciations. Yes, a hateful obeisance to imposed guilt.

  What kind of revolution is it that ends when one looks old, at least for most? What kind of revolution is it in which some of the revolutionaries must look beautiful? What kind of revolution is it in which the revolutionaries slaughter each other, in the sexual arenas and in the ritual of S & M?