by John Rechy
October 15, 1976
NEW SEX CASE AT TWO POLICE DIVISIONS PROBED
“New allegations of sexual misconduct involving some of its officers are being investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department, the agency said in a cryptic statement…. Department rumors have circulated for weeks that some officers … set up an agreement with nurses at a local hospital for sexual favors…. Questions [include] whether money passed hands for the alleged sexual favors….”
—Los Angeles Times,
October 29, 1976
“It was on … a Sunday that … Taylor went to a party … a private fund-raiser … held in a gay bar…. Two friends arrived, and he and one friend moved to the bar to talk … but a Los Angeles Police Department vice officer [a “balding blond man of about 40”] later testified that Taylor and his friend kissed and fondled each other…. The blond officer and 3 other plainclothesmen … were augmented by 5 more plainclothes and 10 uniformed officers, and the arrests began.
“Taylor later testified that as the arrested men were handcuffed and led to a police van parked at the rear, he heard one officer call, ‘We've got room for two more.’ Another man, and then Taylor, were taken along, making a total of 21.
“His first reaction, he recalls, was to say, ‘You're kidding.’“
—Los Angeles Times,
March 25, 1974
CHIEF SUPPORTS THEM
GAY S.F. OFFICERS URGED TO ‘COME OUT OF CLOSET
“There are 20 homosexuals on the San Francisco Police Force, police chief Charles Gain says, urging them to ‘come out of the closet’ and show that gays can be good cops. He promised them his ‘full support.’”
—Los Angeles Times,
October 19, 1976
URGES TOLERANCE FOR INCURABLE’ GAYS….
“Vatican City (AP) …. Without discounting what the church considers the gravity of all homosexual acts, [the Vatican] … drew a distinction between homosexuals ‘whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or other similar causes’ and a second group ‘who are definitely such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be “incurable”….’
“It added that Scripture does ‘not permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.’”
—Los Angeles Times,
January 15, 1976
“Perhaps the greatest perversion of all is to use the Bible as a social weapon that harms, hurts, and dehumanizes.”
—Gerald A. LaRue,
U.S.C. School of Religion,
Los Angeles Times,
June 10, 1975
10:34 P.M. Greenstone Park.
NO MOON.
Jim passes the stone alcove, descends through ashen shadows toward the wall against the trees. He sits on the back of a concrete bench, his outline visible in the mute lamplight. A lean shadow floats by. Attractive, masculine. Jim spreads his legs wide. Two other men are lurking. The lean man—dark, angular, with a gypsy face, the most attractive of the three men Jim has lured—sits next to him on the back of the bench; he too spreads his legs, one knee touching Jim's. Another man squats before Jim. The sexual current rising, the third man bends before the lean one. Rhythmically the two kneeling suck the two sitting, Jim and the man next to him staring at each other.
Jim moves away, glancing back at the lean man, inviting him to follow. Jim waits against the wall near the water fountain. The lean goodlooking man approaches him. Gliding together, they kiss, erect exposed cocks pressed against each other. The other goes down on Jim. Inside the warm throat, Jim's cock grows full. Now the other stands for Jim to reciprocate. Jim bends and takes the other's cock in his mouth; he feels the round tight shaft slide past his lips, along his tongue, into his mouth. They alternate sucking each other, briefly each time, and kiss, as if to connect both cocks with both mouths.
Car lights flush the area, pulling shadows from the slain darkness.
The two separate in opposite directions. The car lights shift. Not the cops—only another hunter driving in.
Jim stands on the ledge of the concrete grotto. Motionless, like ebony statues, three men wait below against the wall. Nothing happens, no one moves for a seeming eternity. Four figures stand in the dark pool, Jim on the ledge as if commanding the traumatized hill. More moments pass. Nothing. Minutes. Nothing. Jim feels a stab of desperation. A man moves toward him from the path, climbs the ledge as if to approach him—and moves on. Still, nothing! Despair stabs more deeply. Another outlaw moves toward the alcove. The three others remain frozen. Jim stretches his body, touching his bare chest through the open vest. As the man climbs the ledge, his lips brush Jim's pants at the groin. Despair lifts. The lips press tightly against Jim's crotch.
Jim jumps off the ledge, onto the curving path, a tunnel through the trees. Stifled sighs. Matted leaves. Shadows of men wait. In recurring islands of lamplight, figures materialize for seconds. Men stand against trees, alone, in twos, threes.
To be seen clearly Jim pauses in a wing of yellow light. A man stands before him, his fingers spidering along the bare flesh of Jim's chest. Jim flexes exhibitionistically. Eyes adoring, the man stands back, jerking himself off silently staring at Jim's muscle-tensed body.
Jim moves farther along the path. A man in a leather jacket, shiny even in the dark, abruptly, suddenly, as if in a speeded-up film, kneels before Jim, opening Jim's pants, sucking his cock, hands pulling Jim's hips forward, to push the cock farther in, farther; he gags. Now one finger tries to penetrate Jim's ass. Jim jerks away immediately, pulls his cock out of the other's mouth, pushing him away, rejecting even the hint of penetration.
He moves deeper into the thick-treed area. Past others. And a muscular youngman. Both pause, wait. But each expects the other to advance first. Neither will. They walk away, not glancing back.
Jim returns to the concrete alcove. A youngman is already there, pressed against the shadows. Jim stands on the ledge, the other takes his cock in his mouth. Another man suddenly there squats sucking the youngman blowing Jim. Jim breaks away, the youngman follows him down the slope to the deserted concrete wall. The youngman offers his ass to Jim's erect cock. But Jim doesn't want to fuck, not now, doesn't want to chance ending the hunt in this area, even for a short while. He merely rubs his cock against the other's smooth buttocks while the other jerks off.
Jim drives to another side of the circular park, gets out, stands by the road. A car stops. The driver gets out. He tries to kiss Jim, to rub his body against his—but he is not attractive enough for that. Jim guides his head down, down. The man accepts his cock. Lights flash around the curving road. The cops? Another hunter?
The outlaw excitement demanding rashness, Jim holds the man's head at his groin. The man continues sucking hungrily as the carlights near. The car stops in the middle of the road, the driver watches.
Jim turns away, as if to enter his car. The others drive off. Again he stands by the road.
Another car. The driver is young, goodlooking. Yes. Jim crosses the road, ascends a short incline toward the playground there, deserted now. The youngman follows him.
A slide. A merry-go-round on the sand. A tangled jungle gym. Skeletons of children's games, somber in the night. Both men sit on the merry-go-round. They kiss. The merry-go-round moves slightly. Their hands explore, holding cocks, balls. The youngman leans over Jim's cock, sucking it. Jim's finger moves past the lightly furred balls, touching, then entering the knotted asshole. The other's tongue swirls about Jim's cock.
The merry-go-round begins to turn slowly.
11:48 P.M. Montana Street Hanson Avenue.
Hunters are scattering from the park in their cars. The soundless signal to shift the arena has been given. Now the placid residential district below the hilltop park will become, totally unaware of
its transformation, the center of this floating underground.
Until a year ago, there was an old unoccupied house on one of the corners, its yard cluttered with branchy trees and bushes. Late at night hunters congregated there in fleeting orgies. There were recurrent rousts by the cops; outlaws were lined outside, handcuffed.
Now cars are swirling around the block, stopping, moving on, U-turning. The more daring men get out, stand, walk along the sidewalks.
Jim waits outside his car in the parking lot next to a sleepy apartment house. Several cars drive around, drivers look at him for a signal. A car stops. A man calls out: “You hustling?”
“Yeah.” He wasn't, and this isn't hustling territory—but the man's words aroused the mysterious excitement to sell his body.
The man surprises him: “Sorry—but I'm not into paying.”
The man drives away angrily.
Another replaces him. Jim walks to the driver's window. The motor of the car continues to purr. Shirtless, too, his pants at his ankles, cock hard, the driver, goodlooking, reaches out to touch Jim's groin. Now he pulls out Jim's cock. Jim touches the other's bare chest, stretching cock. He would like this man to come home with him, but he will not commit himself to suggesting it. Through the window the man's mouth pulls Jim's cock expertly into the deepest part of the throat—the rash scene instantly over.
By mutual signal, they withdraw.
Now a very handsome dark youngman drives by in a mangled sportscar. “You got a place?” he asks Jim.
Jim is very attracted to him; he's glad he didn't go home with the other man. “Yeah—just a few minutes from here,” he says. But he won't ask him over, can't commit himself even now.
“Follow you there?”
“Sure.”
And so the night will end early, Jim thinks.
And long before the purgatorial dawn he avoids.
12:10 A.M. The Apartment.
Two beautiful male bodies lie side by side naked. They don't touch. Neither moves. Each looks straight ahead, away from the other. Used to being pursued, each waits for the other to advance first. Both are severely turned on, cocks rigid. Now they glance at each other, each wanting the other even more now. But they look away. Their cocks strain in isolation. Nothing.
Nothing.
Jim jumps off the bed, the other reaches for his clothes simultaneously. Looking away from each other, both dress hurriedly, each cut deeply by regret they did not connect.
VOICE OVER: Interview 2
I'M INTERVIEWED BY the editor of a radical gay newspaper.
I explain that I never set out to do “research” on my books. City of Night began as a letter I wrote in El Paso to a friend of mine, telling him my experiences during Mardi Gras. I wrote Numbers in a frenzy of three months after I returned to Los Angeles and spent every day in Griffith Park counting sexual encounters. I wrote This Day's Death (the only book of mine I dislike, and increasingly) after I was busted.
The interviewer remarks on the “pathos, despair, compulsion” in my books.
I say: “I feel there's an element of all those in gay life. Despair is very real—and it's not an indictment of the gay world to say so. Consider the imposed schizophrenia, wearing a mask, putting it on, taking it off….” And the imposed religious guilt! It was the basis for confession. You had to tell your “trespasses” to a faceless, whispering voice that kept insisting, “How many times did you commit that sin? How many times?” Locked in guilt even when you had no cause to feel guilty. After confession and fasting, came the Sunday-morning purification. Communion! You knelt to receive the wafer that was the precious body of Christ. It was all over so quickly, especially since there had been so much agony in confession and fasting! And you knew that soon, too soon, you'd be huddled kneeling guiltily in the darkness again before that mysterious little screened window of the confessional and addressing the faceless presence: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” Then you'll grow up feeling outraged and betrayed because there's no substitute for salvation.
The interviewer asks me about a section in my book The Fourth Angel in which a teenage girl says that “to survive you've got to learn not to feel, even if you have to teach yourself.” “To what extent,” he asks me, “do you feel you have had to do this in your own life to survive?”
Yes, on the streets I disguise my feelings, I play distant, tough, a role which attracts and alienates at the same time—as defensive, I suppose, as it is arrogant. I keep my two “selves” apart—the writer and the sexhunter; confusing when the boundaries meld. Like recently in Griffith Park when a man in the arena told me someone had written a book about me—called Numbers. A few days later he brought me a copy of my book, not knowing I had written it. He inscribed it: “To Johnny Rio—…” My character. Unfortunately, when he discovered subsequently who I was, he felt betrayed…. Oh, yes, and bodybuilding, coating myself with muscles, is a similar defense.
Now the interviewer evokes the hideous monster: “Do you think this is something you can continue to develop as you grow older, into middle age and old age?”
I answer staunchly: “I'll get better.” I say: “I think narcissism can be very healthy. Love of oneself, of one's body, is beautiful.” Yet what a commentary—and hangover from stifling religions—that we consider “humility” a virtue, and “vanity” a sin. With so much constantly putting us down—life by its very niggardly nature feeding us crumbs—why should we additionally put ourselves down, accept crumbs as our due? Why should we be commended for our humility when we uphold we're dreadful and not worthy of praise, and be condemned for our vanity when, we uphold that we are worthy of attention? And why two standards? Why should the intellectual manifestations-books, paintings, the other “art” forms—be acceptably exhibited, put out for display, but not the body? I spend hours, days, months, years on a book. I want it to be accepted, loved, admired, praised, sought. Why is my body different? I spend hours on it too. I don't find it strange to want to display it—and without “modesty”—and to have it accepted, loved, admired.
The interviewer: “Perhaps we can talk more about the hint of violence and toughness in your work and whether or not it's true of your own life.”
I say: “I do cultivate a certain tough appearance because it attracts people sexually, and I do equate sex with power. But I know the difference between that and the most negative aspect within the gay world—S & M.” I have evoked another gay demon: sadomasochism and its fierce psychic grip on the gay world. Yes, we're in a highly mined territory.
The interviewer's voice is agitated; he points out that he himself is not “into S & M.” And: “There can be a negativism.” But he verbalizes the most outrageous rationalization: “On the other hand I think pain can be an added dimension in a relationship.”
I say: “One can justify eating dirt by claiming it intensifies one's closeness to the earth…. There would be commendable honesty in the S & M world if someone would admit: ‘I want to be hurt and humiliated because I hate myself.’ The hypocrisy comes when one calls it love. I find the inflicting of pain or the inviting of pain repugnant. I love the rush of being submitted to sexually—but that's different from inflicting pain.”
The interviewer counters: “But don't you think it's possible in an ongoing relationship that pain—humiliation-can be an added dimension? I have no reason to disbelieve the people who have experienced it as such.”
I say: “I do disbelieve it. Entirely. Pain and humiliation have nothing to do with love.”
He asks me to speak about the “dynamic of hustling” in my own life.
Thankfully, I'm not evasive, as I was in an earlier interview. This time I'm true to the streets: “I have a fierce need to hustle.” Nostalgia tugs at me. I remember past times: We wore blue jeans, tight T-shirts. We were all so butch, man, and we were proud. But streethustling is fading in elegance and style. Then, we never approached anyone, just waited to be courted, yes. Now, tacky hustlers peer into all cars, call out at the men drivin
g around. Not all, of course, not all. “There's no rush like hustling,” I say. “Yet I'm aware that it's involved with repression.”
“You feel there's a conflict between your feelings about gay liberation and your attraction to the hustling world?” He asks me whether I think that hustling and S & M can be reconciled to some extent with gay liberation.
Hustling, perhaps; S & M, definitely not—though: “I would be dishonest if I said that there's love between the person who pays and the person paid.”
“Are you speaking only of yourself?” he asks me pointedly.
I answer: “About myself, but also about other hustlers. It's a brutal thing to hear hustlers talking about their clients in derisive terms, with so much contempt at times.” Yet there's a tendency on the part of the persons who pay to romanticize the hustler; they don't want to know what's involved, how the hustler views them; they're pitiful in their insistence that love can be bought. Look. Hustling is a loveless act. But there's no reason why sex shouldn't exist without love. The important matter is to purge sex of hatred, self-hatred or otherwise.
I go on to tell the interviewer that once I was jarred into viewing the possibility of reciprocal contempt: After paying me to express his own one-way desire for me, a man became moodily silent. Only to make him feel better, I said, “Have you ever hustled?”—extending to him—generously, I thought—my treasured experience. He snapped indignantly: “Never! I was raised in a very moral family!”
The interviewer asks me the question which recurs: “What sort of sexual experience have you had outside of hustling?”
I answer, like at other times, that I have three main trips—hustling, “numbers,” and mutual contacts with certain people; that I have explored the outline of relationships only very vaguely.
The interviewer asks me what I feel will happen in my life: “Do you feel a driving need for something else?”
