The Sexual Outlaw

by John Rechy

  Jim removed his own clothes. He put on the jockstrap, looked at himself, put on the ripped pants, and he looked at himself, then put on the boots—only those were slightly large—and he stared at himself, then put on the vest, and stared, and then the denim jacket and stared at himself— multiplied poses from every angle, a room of glossy pictures. Responding to the images, his cock strained against the fabric of the tight jeans, the engorged head under the jock-covered cock almost emerging from the tear at one thigh.

  On the bed, the man continued for moments looking at the figures in the magazine. Suddenly he glanced up at Jim, and inhaled.

  “Stud.”

  Jim stood relaxed before him, the first pose. The man leaned back. Jim flexed, the second pose. The man's eyes blinked, entrapping each image, like the closing shutter of a camera. The soft voice resumed. “A man, a beautiful man, rough, a man, and he knows it, and I'll worship his muscular body, his manhood, a man's body, idolize it, and he knows it, beautiful stud, and he knows it.”

  Jim's moves were slow, choreographed carefully in the mirror. Now he advanced toward the man.

  Too quickly!

  The man's voice cautioned:

  “But he won't let me touch him, not yet, just let me look at him, worship him at a distance.”

  Jim moved back.

  “Stud.”

  In the mirror across the room Jim saw himself, the fantasy framed. He basked in sexual power, his power to personify the cherished fantasy in this fusing of two dreams.

  The pages of the magazine turned. The model removes his clothes. Jim held the denim jacket over his bare shoulder, the vest off for now, to be replaced. He dropped the denim jacket, put on the vest; stood loosely, stretched, flexed, relaxed.

  “Ignoring me and staring at himself while I stare at him, and he knows I idolize him, he knows it.”

  Jim unbuckled the belt.

  “Tempting me, tantalizing me—… Slowly, slowly.” From the bed, the man edged toward Jim. Jim moved back a step.

  “Making me long for him, knowing how he looks.”

  Jim raised one booted foot onto the bed. The man's hand glided toward it. Jim did not withdraw. The man's hand clasped the boot, an anchor in the swimming fantasy.

  “Stud.”

  Jim withdrew his foot. Now he opened the top button of the pants. The man's head inched toward the concealed groin. Again Jim moved back.

  “Making me wait, seeing himself so beautiful, so masculine.”

  Jim opened another button. The top of the jockstrap was stark and white against his brown flesh. He allowed the pants to open in a V. Two triangles of tanned flesh flanked the full pouch. The man turned to another page in the magazine. Jim reached out and drew the man's head forward, not roughly, no, importantly not roughly, but slowly. The head surrendered easily to the jock-covered groin.

  “Lick it.” Even those words, Jim spoke with careful softness.

  The man's tongue gradually moistened the elastic material. The cock expanded under it and pushed at the edges.

  Moving back from the man's rapt eyes, Jim raised his foot, propping it on the bed. The man removed one boot, then the other, the socks, the pants.

  Jim stood naked except for the vest, the jockstrap.

  “Stud.”

  “Lick it.”

  The man's tongue outlined the straining column under the material. Jim glanced at the mirror and saw the man, reproduced with him in the amber glass, burrow his head into the covered groin. Hard, flushed red, the head of Jim's cock slipped out of the pouch. Before the man's tongue could touch it, Jim pushed his cock slowly back into the pouch.

  “Not letting me touch it until he's ready, just looking in the mirror, knowing how much I want him.”

  Jim saw his own reflection pull the man's head slowly forward, directing the mouth to suck the erect cock stretching the elastic cloth. The material was so moist that the flesh was visible through it. The man sucked the cloth-covered cock, stroking it in his throat and with his lips, back and forth, back and forth, rhythmically.

  “Pull the strap off with your mouth,” Jim told the man. Not a blunt exhortation, the words were Spoken in the subdued tone that matched the slow rhythms, consistent with the choreography of his sensual dream.

  The man's teeth and lips drew the strap down. It clung loosely to Jim's thighs, then slid over his feet. The man bent. Jim raised his foot, the strap on the tip of it. The man removed the strap with his mouth.

  Leaning back on the bed, the man held the strap against his lips, kissing the portion that had enclosed Jim's cock. Then he held the strap in his hand.

  Slowly, Jim guided the man's head to his groin, held it there for moments, inches away.

  “Now he'll let me, what I've longed for, and he'll be looking into the mirror, looking beautiful and manly, and he knows it.”

  “Suck me,” Jim said. Even the command was calm.

  The man's sucking was cadenced, a long stroke, a shorter one, a long one, a short one, matching the rhythmic thrusts of Jim's arched body.

  The man turned to the last page of the magazine.

  “Stud”

  Jim removed the leather vest and stood over the man.

  The man looked up at him. One hand touched the magazine, the other worked its fingers over Jim's cock, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

  In the framed mirror, Jim saw his own cum spill in slow arcking spurts as the man directed the white liquid onto his clothed body, on the jockstrap, on his face, on his lips, over the open magazine, and on the photograph in it of a muscular man standing naked over a clothed man surrounded in bed by magazines of photographs of muscular nude bodies.

  3:46 A.M. Terrace Circle.

  No, Jim does not want to go with him again. He prefers to leave the memory perfect.

  The outlaws scattered from Albertson Avenue have fled to Terrace Circle, a residential district of neatly decorated, attractive houses. Perhaps half the residents—more than that—in these six or seven blocks are gay.

  Along leafy ledges, men walk the dark streets. Even the sound of loud footsteps is out of place, disconnected. A lighted window; a man on the lawn stands staring into it at a naked man inside.

  A man before the open door of his house calls out to Jim: “Wanna come in? Me and my roommate are getting people together for an orgy. Can't start till we have ten. You'll be the seventh.”

  “Why ten?” Jim asks.

  “Less than that's too little, more's a mess,” the man answers.

  Jim shakes his head, not turned on by the prospect of a strict orgy. A car parks next to him. Jim stands in the middle of the block. The driver shifts to the passenger side of his car. His head strains out the window toward Jim. Jim moves closer.

  Suddenly there's the motion that announces cops in the area. The lingering becomes hurried, like a slightly speeded-up movie seen earlier in slow-motion. Forms slide into garages, others move into cars, cars desert the area, doors of houses open here and there, sheltering the threatened outlaws.

  And here they are, lights flashing, two squad cars. Four cops rush out, gathering men at random; they'll question them here or take them to the station for “investigation.”

  Quickly, the man in the car by Jim opens the door for him, Jim gets in; the man drives a few blocks away. He parks. “We're safe now,” he says.

  Anger wrenches Jim at the thought of the attacking cops. This time his cock hardens immediately when the man bends over it.

  Minutes later, back on Terrace Circle, the cops are gone, and new men and cars are cruising the area.

  Driving away, Jim avoids glancing at his watch.

  4:12 A.M. Greenstone Park.

  Speeding! He drives into the park, to end the night's hunt.

  He walks along the dark path. Past hunters, shadows among the trees.

  He returns to his car and drives down the hill.

  Before dawn.

  VOICE OVER: Cops and Muggers

  WITHOUT EXCEPTION, every
cop who entraps or persecutes homosexuals, every judge who vindictively sentences them, every prosecuting attorney who pushes vengefully for gay convictions, every rabid police chief who rants against homosexuality—without exception each is to some extent at war with his own sexual fears, and those fears are very probably grounded in latent, self-hating homosexuality. The intensity of his unexplored self-doubts determines his danger to true law and order.

  The main reason for becoming a vice cop on the gay detail is one of suppressed sexuality. Often led by a bleating police chief, the vice cop becomes a tight member of a rival gang against homosexuals.

  Entrapment—illegal—is rampant and provides cops a sexual exorcism. They dress suggestively in outrageous clothes. Choosing their quarry very selectively, they offer money for sex. They entice cruising gays with overt sexual signals. In public places they fondle themselves. They can thus “pretend” for a short period to be what they fear they are. Instead of making it, they bust the submerged part of themselves.

  A midnight call from a friend: “I've been busted!—the guy propositioned me! Please get me out!” And you feel the surrogate horror—tonight it's not you.

  The recurrent assertion (included routinely in virtually every homosexual-arrest report) that cops are responding to “citizens' complaints” is belied by the recent findings of two Los Angeles students, now attorneys, that, out of the total of 646 primarily gay-oriented lewd-conduct arrests occurring in a period in summer, only two were based on “civilian” complaints—and both of those complaints were made by the same security officer in one department store. Policemen effectuated the rest of the busts, over 600 of which were by plainclothesmen or vice cops. Gay promiscuity is visible only to homosexuals and to the cops.

  Technically, one could bust a cop on a citizen's arrest for enticing and soliciting—creating the so-called “criminal lewd act” the cop ostensibly seeks to curb. That cops flagrantly entrap is underscored by two lawyers who in 1976 gave lie-detector tests to twelve men claiming entrapment under the sex-solicitation statute. Only two of those so arrested failed the test. When so much promiscuous gay sex does undeniably occur, why is entrapment used? Because the real objects of the cops' hatred are all homosexuals—not “criminal” acts. Anyone in a gay area is vulnerable.

  Every male homosexual lives under the constant threat of arbitrary arrest and a wrecked life. Available space in a cop vehicle—a factor as circumstantial as that may determine whether or not a man's future is mangled. Gay publications advertise insurance against arrest; homosexuals make sure they have change with them at all times for emergency jail calls. The anxiety this creates—not knowing whether one will return home with a partner, harming no one, or end up in jail—is a prime factor of the gay experience and results in rebellious promiscuity.

  Two attorneys knowledgeable in the field estimate that in Los Angeles County alone approximately two-hundred men are arrested each month on lewd-conduct charges; this results in the dreaded, life-usurping, permanent registration with the police—as a “sex offender.” One hundred more men are arrested monthly on gay-prostitution charges. (In a bow to capitalistic enterprise, male prostitution is not considered a registerable sex offense, but free, mutual solicitation is.)

  A man is in a bar, another sits next to him, smiles. “Hi.” “Hi.” Knees touch. “Wanna get together?” “Okay.” Outside, the first man is confronted by another man; both the man who invited him and the one approaching are cops. “You're under arrest!”—and the nightmare begins. Handcuffs. You see the despising face that smiled and encouraged earlier. Jail doors lock. Found guilty of lewd conduct, you'll have to register as a sex offender—all because you accepted an invitation to sex!

  At best, to arrest anyone for suggesting or agreeing to a sexual contact, or for having one, is insane; at worst, it's criminal. Homosexuality is not a victimless crime—the homosexual is the victim, the cop the criminal.

  A man sits in a gay bar with his sister, whom he's finally told about his sex life. He's happy, she's accepted it lovingly; she had wanted to see his world, and now they're celebrating their new closeness. A vice cop mistakes her from behind for a drag queen and pulls her roughly back by the hair. The brother protests. Cops batter him to the floor. The seriously beaten man is jailed. “Resisting lawful arrest,” the cops claim.

  A youngman is in a small town outside LA. Lonely. He's never made it with a man before, but wants to. A man offers him a ride. He gets into the car. The man is fondling himself, the youngman answers. You're busted. The judge threatens to hold you incommunicado for three months—for “psychiatric examination,” insisting that all homosexuals are insane.

  Lights flash in a bar. Outrageously dressed men identify themselves as cops. Handcuffs snap on whoever is near. A cop dangles one more set of handcuffs. “You!” he chooses at random. And you become a “sex offender” for life.

  Each time a chief of police rants in public against homosexuals, he unleashes a wave of lunatic attackers into known gay areas. Murderers, muggers, robbers raid homosexual areas with weapons. Cops, who systematically harass cruising gays, pointedly ignore calls for help in menaced areas. (Early in 1976, the Internal Affairs Division of the Los Angeles Police Department was quietly investigating a matter that could turn against them: At least one off-duty cop was reputedly beating up homosexuals in Hollywood.) Why, then, do homosexuals continue summoning the police to report crime with homosexual overtones? Because there is in all of us, gay and straight, that indoctrination which makes us continue to demand that cops be the good guys, no matter how often they prove otherwise.

  A man is cruising. Two men drive by and call him a “fucking queer.” Through their window, you swing at one angrily. They turn out to be vice cops, and you're charged with assaulting an officer.

  A report written by a vice cop in an arrest charging two men with a felonious oral-copulation contact punishable by up to ten years in prison was challenged by the defense on the basis that from the position he located himself (on a winding, heavily treed path at least twenty feet away from a branch-sheltered alcove where he placed the two defendants), he could not have possibly witnessed the details he so heatedly described in his report. Excerpts:

  “… Officer observed X standing on the trail. X had no shirt on and his pants were around his ankles and his right hand was on the shoulder of def Y. Def Y was on both knees directly in front of def X. Def X's penis was inserted in the mouth of def Y. Y was moving his head back and forth in a back and forth motion with his eyes closed.…”

  In a tiny theater attracting gays, a cop screams: “Roundup time!” Six cops go on a rampage knocking men to the floor.

  A man in a public restroom sees another playing suggestively with himself. He answers the signal. Another man rushes in, knocks the first to the ground. You're busted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison because you have a previous record and the judge says you're a “menace.”

  A youngman in prison on a “sex charge” sits before shifting slides of nude men on a screen. Each time he becomes aroused, he feels the nausea-wrenching pain of “therapy.”

  Imagine the horror of living with that constant fear, those threats. Imagine being forbidden by law to seek out a sexual partner. Imagine that—and you begin to understand the promiscuous rage of the sexual outlaw.

  Each time a homosexual is arrested, law and order suffers.

  In a city in which, in 1975, homicides rose over 600 for the first time—an increase of 17.5% over 1974—the Los Angeles Police Department was still able in 1976 to spare 103 men and over $100,000 to raid a gay bathhouse! Only 22.1% of all burglaries reported in 1974 were solved; yet, according to a 1974 Los Angeles Times account, the City Attorney's office was handling up to 500 gay-bar arrests yearly, many of those involving men merely holding hands or dancing together!

  And: In the same area of Los Angeles where thirty-one lewd conduct arrests were made in one year—in one theater—a psychopath has raped and murdered at least nine terrified
helpless old lone women.

  And: In Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, where vice arrests are routine, a maniac has slashed the throats of at least nine men.

  It becomes clear that apart from providing cops a negative psychological outlet for their sexual frustrations, easy gay arrests, harassment, entrapment, and convictions— legally sanctioned sadism—disguise police inability to control violence. Boosted by the smashed lives of homosexuals, statistics blur murders, rapes, muggings, robbery. (A well-known attorney claims to have found indications that, in one heavily gay area, the police may have removed stalls between urinals in a public restroom in order to provide easier contact between males, and thereby increase arrests.)

  Conceivably to sustain this blurring of serious crime, a barrage of cop public relations promotion is aimed at stirring up sexual demons in the general public, to convince them to accept the staggering waste of manpower and money. (Cops even use costly helicopters against cruising homosexuals!)

  In a long, expensive trial, and on conflicting testimony that in any other case would have brought a dismissal of charges, a deputy mayor—who testified, with the corrobora-tion of the city's respected mayor, that he was investigating complaints of gay harassment by vice cops—was convicted by a Los Angeles jury of “lewd conduct” in a tiny porno theater. In one of the highest violent-crime areas in the city, six vice cops “just happened” to be in that minuscule theater that night. Thus a man who was ably serving the community was forced to resign. Officially he became a “sex offender”—destroyed by the careless testimony of a man who will spend a portion of his life “pretending” in toilets to solicit sexual encounters.

  Without realizing it, the people who support this cop-vendetta do so at the expense of their own security. They are duped—deliberately, calculatedly, callously—to condone real violence, crime which will turn viciously on them.