by John Rechy
“You've got the best body I've seen in a long time,” the youngman tells Jim.
Suddenly everything is all right again. In the bushes with this youngman, Jim feels the outlaw joy return in a swelling tide.
4:04 P.M. The Movie Arcade.
As he drove out of the park, the vague rejection faded even more. He keeps telling himself that, yes, of course, the two men in the arena wanted him in a three-way, and that's why—… Still, there are blisters to soothe.
He goes to a magazine store off Hollywood Boulevard. In the back is a darkened movie arcade.
Now wearing Levi's and boots, but still shirtless, Jim moves idly past magazines exhibiting naked bright-colored sexflesh, giant organs and orifices, like mangled fish in distorting closeup. Instantly, he feels a man's eyes on him. Jim pauses at a rack as if to leaf through a magazine. Squatting, the man reaches for one on a lower rack. For moments his mouth pauses before Jim's groin.
Jim walks to the back of the twilit arcade. Cubicles like confessionals house porno movies; for one or two quarters each few minutes, a grainy reel flashes writhing images on a tiny individual screen inches from the viewer. Some cubicles are vacant. Others contain two or three people bunched together—no film running. Along the walls three or four men just stand. Others wander among the booths and aisles.
Jim enters a vacant booth. Waits. The man who followed him blows him. Another man watches. Jim pulls his own cock away from the squatting man, holding it out for the other to suck too. But the other wants only to watch.
Moans rise over the rough metallic whirring of old, old projectors.
A goodlooking man squeezes into the same booth. The squatting man alternates between sucking Jim and the other. Over the head bobbing on their cocks, the two standing stare at each other untouching.
MIXED MEDIA 2
“Four San Francisco teenagers recently got the surprise of their young lives. Tooling around in their souped-up car looking for a little fun, they spotted two homosexuals leaving … a well-known gay bar. The youths roared to a stop, jumped out of their car and began to push the homosexuals around. Suddenly a brawny band … lit into them.… The teenagers fled into the night, only to return ten minutes later, begging for their car. ‘Look, man, we don't want no trouble.’
“The group they most assuredly did not want trouble with was the Lavender Panthers, a stiff-wristed team of gay vigilantes who have taken to the streets … to protect their confreres against just such attacks.… The basic band numbers 21 homosexuals.… Besides their goal of halting the attacks, the Lavender Panthers want to gainsay the popular notion that all homosexuals are ‘sissies, cowards, and pansies’ who will do nothing when attacked.”
—Time,
October 8, 1973
“In re issue of hiring homosexuals as police officers.… Homosexuals have a corrosive influence … they attempt to entice normal individuals to engage in perverted practices.… they prefer individual pursuit of professions and hobbies, whereas the heterosexual is team-oriented in both work and play.…
“In a recent court case … the court states, ‘Members of the police force must be above suspicion of violating the laws that they must uphold.’”
—Excerpt of memorandum from a deputy chief of police of the L.A. Police Department to a police captain,
December 12, 1974
L.A. POLICEMAN
CITED IN ASSAULT
COMPLAINT BY D.A.
“A Los Angeles policeman was named Thursday in an assault-with-a-deadly weapon complaint… in the shooting of a private investigator.”
—Los Angeles Times,
May 14, 1976
OFFICER CHARGED
ANEW IN BEATING
OF CYCLIST, 28
“Charges that a Los Angeles policeman beat a suspect so badly he lost his left eye were refiled Tuesday after the case against him had been dismissed when a fellow officer regarded as a key prosecution witness failed to appear in court.”
—Los Angeles Times,
March 31, 1976
MURDERS RAISE QUESTION
ABOUT OFFICERS' CONDUCT
ILLEGAL ARMS,
INTRIGUE MARK
SLAYING CASE
“A double murder trial in San Bernardino [California] County has raised serious questions about the conduct of federal, state, and local law enforcement officers.”
—Los Angeles Times,
May 31, 1976
LONG BEACH TO
CHARGE SOME
POLICE IN SPREE
“Misdemeanor charges will be filed against some of the Long Beach police officers involved in a drunken spree during which civilians were attacked.…”
—Los Angeles Times,
April 23, 1976
LONG BEACH ORDERS INQUIRY
ON SUSPENDED THEFT PROBE
COUNCIL TELLS 2 OFFICIALS
TO LOOK INTO CHARGES THAT
POLICE HALTED THE EFFORT
WHEN IT LED TO CITY HALL
—Los Angeles Times,
June 30, 1976
SAN DIEGO POLICE
OFFICER CONVICTED
“A veteran police officer was convicted Friday of receiving stolen property and of conspiracy.”
—Los Angeles Times,
March 27, 1976
LAPD CMTICIZED FOR GIVING
TOO MANY OFFICERS
HIGH EVALUATIONS
“The Los Angeles Police Department has been criticized by the City Personnel Department for grading too many of its top officers ‘excellent’ and ‘outstanding’ and far too few as ‘satisfactory.’”
—Los Angeles Times,
June 14, 1976
POLICE DISHONESTY CALLED ‘EXTENSIVE’
—Los Angeles Times,
December 29, 1972
LA. CRIME THREE TIMES HIGHER THAN REPORTED,
U.S. SURVEY SAYS
“Washington.—Crime ran nearly three times higher in Los Angeles in 1972 than the number of violations reported to the police, according to a survey conducted for a justice department unit.”
—Los Angeles Times,
April 15, 1975
COPS HAVE A BALL AT THE BALL
“At least nine persons … were arrested at a big Los Angeles drag ball… —the largest number of arrests and the most police activity at such an event in Los Angeles since the early fifties … all for lewd conduct.
“[One of the arrested], wearing an elaborate drag costume, came to the ball by taxi, and on his arrival a plainclothes vice officer opened the door,… paid the sizable cab fare, and then another plainclothesman opened the … door for him. [The arrested man] was under the impression the two men who had been so helpful were employees of the ball and, when he found himself a quarter short on admission, … asked one of them if he might borrow a quarter until he could get one from a friend inside.… One of the men gave him the quarter, asking, ‘What's in it for me later?’ [The arrested man replied,] ‘We can work something out.’ [He] was promptly handcuffed and arrested for prostitution.”
—The Advocate,
December 20, 1972
[Same year and month:]
COUNTY HOMICIDES SOAR AT
ALL-TIME ANNUAL HIGH
NEARLY 1000 RECORDED DURING 1972
“… the Los Angeles Police Department logged the 500th killing in the city, the first time that figure has been reached in one year.”
—Los Angeles Times,
December 13, 1972
SERIOUS FLAWS
IN INVESTIGATIONS
OF CRIME FOUND
“Serious shortcomings in the criminal investigation process of police and sheriff's departments throughout the country were found in a two-year Rand Corporation study released … by the Justice Department.…
“Among its major findings were:
“—Substantially more than half of all serious crimes receive no more than superficial attention from investigators.…”
—Los Angeles Times,
February 14, 1976
&nbs
p; “A San Bernardino [California] Appellate Court upheld the convictions of two young men [aged 23 and 21] for kissing in public. The court called [their] behavior ‘lewd and dissolute.’ The pair were arrested at a freeway rest stop.… Defense attorneys argued unsuccessfully that the law was ‘unconstitutionally vague’ and that similar conduct by a man and a woman would not have resulted in arrest and conviction. The defendants were… ordered to register as sex offenders.… Officers [had] observed them kissing for an hour and forty minutes.”
—Los Angeles Times,
September 12, 1976
“‘At some points during the night, it's absolutely ludicrous,’ said a vice squad officer [speaking about male and female San Francisco street hustlers]. ‘The only people on the streets are them and us.’”
—Los Angeles Times,
January 5, 1977
LAW PROVIDES
LESS PENALTY
FOR MORE HARM
“It wasn't easy, but California legislators have managed to create a law which, depending on the inclination of prosecutors, would mean that the more you injure a person, the less you will be punished.”
—Los Angeles Times,
February 14, 1976
“… Under SB 42 [a bill altering California's indeterminate sentencing procedures] fixed sentences will be applied to all crimes, except those that carry the death penalty or a life term.
“…The first class [of sentences] covers terms of 16 months to two or three years, for crimes such as attempted robbery, assault on a peace officer, forgery, grand theft and many more.
“The second class involves terms of two, three or four years and includes felonies such as robbery, perjury, arson, voluntary manslaughter, sodomy.…”
—Los Angeles Times,
November 18, 1976
“‘It is unfair to label homosexuality in and of itself a mental illness,’ says Dr. Judd Marmor,… candidate for the American Psychiatric Association Presidency.… ‘Psychiatrists are not immune to the prejudices of their culture.’”
—Time,
April 1, 1974
“With no one important [romantically] at the moment, Marisa [Berenson] has … turned to the untouchables. ‘I, for one, have become a big fan of homosexuals.… So also [is] her friend Loulou de la Falaise, designer St. Laurent's creative assistant and a member of Normandy's petite noblesse. ‘I've become a fag moll really,’ she laughs. ‘There's nothing more fun than fags.’”
—Newsweek,
August 27, 1973
“You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots.”
—Written reason given by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to an Australian male homosexual for denying him a visa as the legal spouse of a U.S. citizen, 1976
DOCTORS VOTE TO CUT STIGMA OF DEVIATION
“Washington (AP).—The American Psychiatric Association said Monday that a mail referendum by its membership had upheld the decision to remove homosexuality from [its] list of mental disorders.
“At its regular meeting [on] December 15 [1973], the association's board ruled that homosexuality could no longer be listed as a mental disorder and urged that homosexuals be given the same civil rights protection guaranteed other citizens.”
—Los Angeles Times,
April 9, 1974
5:02 P.M. Hollywood Boulevard. Selma.
BEHIND THE THIN shroud of smog, the California sun scorches coldly white. Hollywood Boulevard is crowded with tribes of outlaws—hustlers, sexhunters, queens.
Jim hugs each desiring glance on his shirtless body. Leaving the movie arcade earlier, he suddenly needed to sell his body.
“What's happenin?”
The blond hustler stands outside the Gold Cup Coffee Shop.
“Not much-with you?”
“Making it, making it.”
The announcement of continuing survival.
Smiling, they separate. Ignoring a man who looks too much like a cop, Jim moves on to Selma.
He stands studying that terribly unextraordinary-look-ing street.
So much of his life, here. So many memories. They surface like ghosts. Ghosts.…
The man who dialed numbers on his telephone while lying on the floor, Jim standing over him; the man dialing, hanging up, dialing again—then speaking hoarsely into the receiver: “Right this minute, I'm lying on the floor, and this muscular hustler is going to jerk off on me, and he'll force me to eat his hot cum—and—and— … Oh, oh!” The phone dropped on the cradle. Later Jim asked him, “You always call your friends when you're making it?” “Friends!” the man said. “Oh, no, I just dial at random until I reach anyone!”
And the gentle man who wanted to send Jim to school.
And the tough young kid with bulging arms; he drove a defiant, jacked-up car. He looked like a hustler himself, but he bought hustlers. He cuddled in his car with Jim, and came.
And the impeccable little man who merely wanted to massage Jim's body, and offered him more if he “fell asleep.”
And the man who— …
So many others, remembered, forgotten, remembered. Nights. Mornings. Afternoons.
And one particularly desolate night.
FLASHBACK: Christmas Eve. Two Years Ago. Selma.
A cold Texas-dusty night. To crush memories, Jim was hustling. The wind flung palmtree leaves on the streets. The day had been fiercely orange.
A man in a car kept circling the block, not stopping. Finally he parked a few feet away from Jim, got out, and approached him as if to study him better. They spoke for a few seconds, making arrangements. They drove to the man's home. What happened, Jim doesn't know—but it festers like a permanent cut.
Suddenly, after leaving the room for a short while—and before he had even touched Jim—the man returned and said he had just a found a note from the man he worked for to pick him up in a few minutes. As strange as that, as abrupt. Jim felt an iron-fisted depression. The man gave him half the agreed amount of money—“for wasting your time”—and drove him back to the palm-littered streets. Moments later, when Jim had almost managed to force himself to believe the man's strange story, he saw the same man circling the block.
5.08 P.M. Selma.
Jim speaks briefly to hustlers he recognizes; they warn him about cops or “weirdos” on the street today. Two other shirtless hustlers sit on the steps of the Baptist church. As he passes the phone booth on the corner, he hears it ring. Curious, he answers it.
The voice asks: “How big is your cock?”
Jim laughs, hangs up.
A prissy, slightly effeminate old man with a pampered hairdo and impossibly even white teeth has parked a few feet ahead and is standing on the sidewalk staring at Jim. Jim touches his own chest. The man moves over to him: “What a beautiful body you have!” Jim feels a delicious warmth. “And thank God you're a man and not one of those skinny boys,” the little man goes on. Because that stirred the specter of aging—though a compliment—Jim's warmth decreases slightly, returns fully when the man continues: “Too few masculine men are left. Oh, what a body! I adore muscles!”
They agree on twenty dollars, and that Jim will “do nothing.” The man's name is Roo. He was once a chorus boy—“singing, dancing, camping”—oh, long, long ago “when Hollywood was really Hollywood!” Now he gives singing lessons.
5:25 P.M. Roo's Home.
A neat, inexpensive house—a piano draped with an old-fashioned fringed shawl, flower-embroidered. A photograph on it, a small bronze statue.
In the equally ordered bedroom, Roo asks Jim to put on a posing strap. “Like in the really sexy magazines, before they had to show everything!”
Jim does.
“Beautiful!” the man applauds.
For Jim, nothing further would be needed. Roo paid him even before they got here, is now admiring his body. Jim could leave now, fully satisfied by this scene. But he knows Roo wants more.
There's a loud knock on the front door.
“How rude!” Roo closes the bedroom door behind him.
Jim hears excited talk:
A rough voice: “Listen to me, Roo, I need twenty bucks right away. Now, dammit, I need it bad, and I'm in a hurry, Roo!”
Roo's voice is deliberately controlled—but tinged with agitation, and fear: “No, no! I don't have any money. And I have someone with me,” he warns.
“Dammit, Roo!” The voice gets rougher.
“I said no!”
“You wanna blow me? I got a few minutes; you wanna blow me for the twenty bucks?”
“I told you, I'm with someone— …”
“Roo—… Motherfucker— …”
“All right. I'll give you a check. They'll cash it at that corner store.”
“And give me some cigarettes, I'm outta cigarettes.”
“All right, all right—just go away. Please!” A few seconds later: “Here.”
The door slams.
Flushed, Roo returns to Jim in the bedroom.
“You're gorgeous,” Roo resumes, his breathing slightly uneven. He kneels before Jim. “Shut your eyes, don't look at me.” Jim closes his eyes. He feels Roo's suddenly toothless mouth on his cock.
Jim didn't come. Roo came secretly, trying to disguise even his quickened breathing.
Jim goes to the shower, the water harsh and cold on his body. Through, he stands wrapped in a towel; stands by the living room door looking at Roo's skinny form at the piano. Now Jim sees the photograph—a faded picture of an old white-haired woman—and the bronzed object—bronzed baby shoes tarnished with age.
The tiny, shriveled, used form of Roo sits at the piano and sings—beautifully—an old romantic song.
VOICE OVER: Hustlers, Clients, and Eminent Psychiatrists
