The Sexual Outlaw

by John Rechy

  He glances at his watch.

  He drives to the area of a costume bar on Oak Street. The bar caters to makebelieve motorcyclists, makebelieve construction workers with steel helmets, makebelieve cowboys, even makebelieve foresters. The bar itself doesn't thrive until after 2:00 in the morning, when it becomes an after-hours club. But nearby, in an abandoned garage, outlaws gather sporadically throughout the night.

  Two cars, single hunters in each, are parked before it.

  Anxious for his sexuality to be acknowledged, Jim gets out of his car. He waits before the crumbling garage. Its sides and back are cluttered with weeds, papers, cans, broken bottles. Barbed wire perhaps at one time meant to keep out the outlaws has been pushed back sternly, a tangle of iron and weeds. The site of orgies late at night is now a deserted battlefield. Across the street is another world, a clutter of apartments and small houses. The garage is flanked by empty weedy lots.

  Neither of the drivers of the two cars gets out. Still, Jim waits. Longer. One car drives away. The other driver remains seated. Jim walks by slowly. The man gives him no signal.

  Suddenly Jim returns to his car, drives around the block. When he returns, another car has joined the one still there. Again, Jim stands by the tangled barbed wire.

  A third car drives, pauses, drives on.

  Jim feels the brutal passing of time. Nothing is happening! It does not matter that earlier he was paid for sex, that he was abundantly desired in the park, does not matter that he has survived, triumphantly, season after seasons that have spewed others out of the demanding arena. The beautiful orgasm he shared in the park earlier with the muscular man—that does not matter either. It doesn't matter that he knows he could not have become less desirable in minutes, does not matter that Saturday's early-night hours are slow in certain areas in preparation for the late-night surfeit. It doesn't even matter that he has not encountered many hunters yet. No, none of that matters. What matters is the empty reality of these moments, wiping out past and future, each vacant minute a failed test stirring doubts.

  He flees the desolate garage. He drives past two subway tunnels and a back lot where hunters gather. No one there.

  Back to Greenstone.

  He curses the stoplights along the short distance. The anxiety to be desired—to be rendered alive—swells.

  Three cars are parked across the road from the concrete house in the park. At least three outlaws are here, and probably more. Jim parks hurriedly and walks into the stone grotto. No one there. He waits in the dirty light. A shadow materializes by the wall below him. Making himself further visible, Jim mounts the ledge overlooking the path. The shadow advances toward him. Desperate to end the sexless spell, Jim cups his own groin in signal—not yet even seeing what the advancing shadow looks like. The man moves closer, steps over the stone hedge. Jim's body strains. The shadow moves on, away.

  Another man passes, walks on too.

  Why!

  He evokes explanations stored from what some have told him about other times. “You look so hung up on yourself.” “I thought you were hustling.” (Though this is not hustling turf.) “I didn't think you'd be interested in me.” But no “reason” works, none contains the growing panic. Nothing short of the needed contact will lift the steely depression.

  He sees a man suddenly in the grotto with him. Jim removes his vest, stretches his bare torso. But this man too walks on. The icy stasis hardens.

  A new car parks on the arc across the road. Jim locates himself so that his body is highlighted. The driver of the car gets out. Jim sees him crossing the road, an attractive man with longish dark hair. In the grotto, the man looks closely at Jim. Jim touches his own groin. The man squats in the shadows. Warmth begins to course throughout Jim's body. Life! He unbuttons his pants, pulls out his cock, and brings it to the man's mouth. The man's lips part, and then, violent in its abruptness, the moment bursts—the man turns his head away swiftly rejecting Jim's cock, stands up, spits harshly, and rushes back to his car.

  Mysterious and powerful, the rejection brings Jim crashing. Suddenly he despises the beloved world of the hunt.

  He walks along the silent path, along ashy trees.

  A slender youngman approaches. Demanding contact, Jim opens his own fly, begins to work up his cock—but it won't respond. The youngman reaches out tentatively.

  “Touch me!” Jim's urgent whisper ricochets in the darkness.

  The youngman slides down, he takes Jim's cock in his mouth. Other shadows gather. One edges the tall youngman away and bends over Jim's cock. Jim pulls it out, moves it to another waiting mouth. The empty spell is broken.

  He feels resurrected.

  VOICE OVER: The Gay Parade

  IT WAS INDEPENDENCE DAY. Not only that, it was the 200th Fourth of July. In Los Angeles there would be as many parades, it seemed, as there are palmtrees hovering over this God-loved city. There would be the big parade down ritzy Wilshire Boulevard, but it would have to detour at Beverly Hills, which, snobbish even on the day of Democracy's birthday, had decreed its streets would not be clogged by rabble—and there would be local parades and celebrations, WASP ones in Pasadena, black ones in Watts, Chicano ones in East L.A. And the gay parade.

  The gay parade.

  How curiously radical that still sounded. Even ten years ago, a cop might bust you for holding same-gender hands in public. It all still seemed too far out for many—hadn't the dinosauric Los Angeles Herald-Examiner lamented editorially the week before that so horrendous a time had arrived as would permit—on independence day!—a parade of perverts?

  Of course the parade would be down Hollywood Boulevard. Where else but on the turf they've tried deviously with ordinances, openly with violence, to wrest from us year after year? Hollywood Boulevard. Site of how many gay battles fought cruising and hustling, being chased away by the envious cops, and returning to cruise and hustle, on the same corner, your favorite? Our street, conquered with how many busts for loitering and soliciting and trespassing? how many charges of lewd conduct? how many citations for, even, jaywalking? Bought with how many cop interrogations and trips to jail to be hassled, questioned, booked, held, charged? Oh, yes, bought, and paid for, yes, in symbolic lavender bloodbaths, this beautiful ugly street, with its butch army-surplus store for workers' boots and muscle shirts; dandy shops for glitter concerts and times when you want to show your supertrim build; the store displaying the ubiquitous statue of David, in two groin sizes; this street with its cartoon-vamp-style shop featuring superb sequined clothes just right for a drag ball; this Boulevard with its outdoor food stands ingeniously right for loitering, cruising, soliciting, hustling, jaywalking-to, and lewd conduct.

  Yes, we had fought dedicatedly and sometimes bitterly for this royal street, and now it was more symbolically ours than any other place in the world. And if they dig a cavern to replace it, we will cruise in it.

  The day is warm, and there's the atmosphere of a fair. Thousands of gays on the Boulevard wait festively for the parade, or form informal “parades” along the sidewalks-dozens of homosexuals holding hands openly, some dressed in colorful regalia, some subdued; for some the less clothes the better, exhibiting tanned bodies proclaiming our unabashed sexuality. And ever-loving Lesbians, some butcher than even the butch muscled men, some femmer than the manikins in the Frederick's of Hollywood windows; yes, and the older gays—homosexuals, phase!—are here, though not as many as one might hope for—not here, the older ones who still secretly cherish the ancient guilts, light symbolic nightly candles to Judy.

  The cruising today is furious but not serious. Furious because perhaps ninety per cent—a solid majority, for once—of the thousands here are gay, not serious because, after all, we have come to see our very own independence day parade. Still, I hope an occasional couple will slip, or has slipped, behind a wall or between buildings to do it, and I myself feel the revolutionary temptation. But this is not really that kind of day.

  The atmosphere veers toward euphoria, a euphor
ia that comes from pride in being open—even if your courage was bolstered only for this day and by the great numbers of us here. Well, what better day for this display than the Fourth? After all, we too were at the Boston Tea Party-one out of ten of us, or one out of six, depending on what Colonial Kinsey kept count.

  I would not march in the parade. I wanted an overview, wanted to move, listen, see, absorb it all—and, besides, I don't really like “joining” anything. Walking down the festive street, I felt a crazy mixture of pride and apprehension. Apprehension because I couldn't help remember past gay parades—the tacky floats populated with withering bikinied boys throwing kisses to the clouds, moldy gay leaders riding in chauffeured limousine convertibles, flanked by a squad of marching acolytes. Oh, I had longed then for the ostensible unity and dignity of the civil-rights parades, everyone simply marching and singing, no floats, no limousines, Martin Luther King walking with the people.

  God knows the first perceptible augury of this gay parade was grim. A gay gentleman renowed for his grindingly monstrous “taste” had days earlier arranged to register an elephant—an elephant—in a local hotel; one had to assume the elephant was gay. Television cameras had devoured the spectacle to spew it out later on their news screens, the elephant registering at the hotel to hail “Gay Pride Week” (proclaimed generously by the mayor, thank you, for gay accomplishments!). An elephant and gay pride. Yes'm, but how? Well, you see, you see, how can you take those fairies seriously?

  Then, absorbing the good atmosphere, tingling with fine vibrations—we were even being friendly to those we had no sexual interest in, we waved, smiled, said hello—I thought, So what if there is tackiness in the parade? Look at the Legion parades. Carefully, I explored my feelings, sensing a lurking demon; I found him, pushing me into that pitfall of all minorities, that we must not allow ourselves the freedom to be awful—and the implicit freedom to call whatever is awful “awful.”

  Here it comes!

  The gay parade!

  Even the most reactionary part of me needn't have feared. There was plenty of dignity, and, embarrassing to admit—man—I felt the itchy sentiment that signals real pride. Here you are, and here they are, and here we are. I remember Ma Joad's proud speech of the Okies' eventual triumph in “defeat.” We keep coming, she said, because we're the people. (I didn't even let interfere with my mood the bitter knowledge that many of those very same Okies had unleashed mean red-neck children and even cops to pillage our sexhunting grounds.)

  Waving banners evoking some of our best moments, the gay contingents march in happy disarray, no regimen* talized ranks for us, thanks. A group proclaims perhaps our finest day—the day of the Stonewall Inn riot. Students, young and happily defiant, chant, sing, hold hands, kiss. Even a contingent of straight supporters appears, predictably tiny but nevermind. Again the awareness occurs of what a radical happening this is within the context of only ten years ago. All those homosexuals, butch and femme, marching openly proclaiming:

  Two, four, six eight,

  Homosexuals are great!

  Three, five, seven, nine,

  Lesbians are really fine!

  Not smashing poetry, no, but sweet to the ear this gorgeous summer afternoon.

  Of course marchers cruised those on the sidewalks, and vice versa. Occasionally a group in the street would catch sight of someone particularly attractive on the sidelines, the word would pass, eyes would flank as if to a military eyes-right/left order, but happily. And wasn't that what it was all about? Freedom, freedom to be, do?

  Oh, there was tackiness all right—and why not? I asked the pursuing demon. Tackiness may be an element-wayward but there, and harmless—of the gay sensibility. There's that fucking elephant again, followed by a small faction of “the society of enlightened enthusiasts” of said elephant-loving gentleman.

  Fuck that—and ignore the fact of the gay leader on the goddamned convertible. Who cares when there's the beautiful, dazzling, simply fabulous, gorgeous, lavish, lovely, glamorous, scintillating, glittering, stunning Queen of the Long Beach Drag Ball and her princesses and she's seen you on the sidewalk and smiles and tells the princesses and blows a kiss at you at the very same moment that the bare-chested bodybuilder next to you is inching toward you while you inch, too, to touch thighs?

  Faces grim, cops assigned to escort the parade grind their motorcycles in angry commentary. They roar the dark machines threateningly close to the often-bare tapping feet of the spectators on the curbs. The only allies of the cops here today are the bellowing jesuspeople, pitiful scraggy zombies who leapt easily from acid bummers into Bible hallucinations. They shout the curses inked on their placards: “Homosexuals are Damned.” “Satan is the Homosexual god.”

  Everyone ignores them, as they ignore the cops.

  And then a moment's epiphany: Defendants enmeshed in the iron spiderweb of courts and idiotic laws—busted during a notorious gay bathhouse raid—march along the street: a woman chained to a man, each flanked and handcuffed to a gay man in cop uniform—a chilling spectacle, a reminder to how many spectators of their own arrests? Then the group pauses, and the two gay men playing cops turn to each other and embrace lovingly, and kiss. The roar of the real-cops' motorcycles boomed like shots, the drivers—faces drained—had understood but resisted the message that would have cost them thousands of dollars on a psychiatrist's couch.

  Then a touching group: A scattering of parents of gays.

  A part of the parade, gay motorcyclists, real bikers, cut snappy figures on the street with their machines. The butchest, dieselest, lady-dude God ever made—tattoo on bulging biceps—matches them turn for turn.

  Half a block more, and the parade will end. I felt a letdown. We had showed a part our numbers—and our colors—and everyone had felt, could not have helped but feel, the crackling energy, the electric charging pride. But now it will end. Along the block where the parade has already passed, others feeling the same urge to extend these bold moments rush impulsively into the street to join the parade.

  Uncoiling the tight tension, four cops attack one man. One cop jumps him—mounts him—two other cops wrench his arms, another aims a bully club at his legs, three others rush in to join the rampage. (Later the man will be busted and charged with interference and resisting arrest, but a series of photographs recording the cop actions will clear him and pave the way for his suit charging violation of his rights.)

  Other spectators attempt to join the parade.

  Instantly the cops are on them. Joyous laughter roars into anger along the sidewalks. Then: Shots! No—just firecrackers. Waiting, ready, dozens of anxious cops storm the Boulevard. Red lights on squad cars spin dementedly. Sirens whine shrilly. The outraged cops are finally making their statement against the bewildering spectacle they witnessed—homosexuals openly parading, men kissing men, women kissing women, and “cops” kissing “cops.” And so the cops pushed and shoved, just longing for a bashed head, a felled body—thrusting forward with their bully sticks held before them in transferred manhood, allowing no one to join the parade.

  They march, clearing the street. A throng of gays flanks them. “Pigs, pigs! Fucking pigs! Pigs! Shit pigs! Pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs!”

  The cops had blocked two streets, sealing off the parade route. It was the only gesture they could come up with to make their presence known, to reassert their hatred. Thirty cops on one side, thirty cops on the other. Sixty black-uniformed cops holding sixty wooden cocks protectively before them.

  Now twenty-five squad cars invade the gay turf, this gay battleground.

  Defiant gays mill before the lined cops. The remembered frustration of having to remain silent while cops hassled and insulted and threatened, cops secure because of their bully sticks, bully guns, bully chains—the bullying made possible because they know you can't answer back—it was that frustration that found its voice: “Huccome yawll standin there with yer cocks stickin up?” “Hey, why don't you suck a cock and then you won't have to hold that stick.” �
�Don't you remember me?—you danced with me last night at— …”

  Hands tightening on their sticks, the cops tensed perceptibly forward. What was happening? Weren't they the cops?—and L.A. cops, to boot! Nothing in their cop training—no, nothing in their lives—had prepared them for this. Gay men and women not afraid of them? Imagine! Gay men and women, and even an obviously straight woman, taunting them? Not only that, but questioning their masculinity. And it hurt. Oh, it hurt. After all, how much more clearly could they prove their masculinity? Hadn't they bashed the skulls of queers who resisted arrest, and even of those who didn't? How many handcuffs had they clicked smartly in raids on queer bars? And if the guy you said was groping the other guy wasn't really the right one, so what?—he probably groped or got groped yesterday. So nothing during those days of barracks intimacy, good days, buddy days, nothing in Police Academy had prepared them for this—not the showers, the recreation periods, the sweaty teams. Certainly nothing during the inspections by the chief of police, eyeing them from head to foot slowly—for flaws in their uniforms, of course—nothing had prepared them for this. Jesusgod, they were the cops, and those were the queers. Why then did it feel as if they— …? What the fuck was happening here?

  So they held their bully clubs.

  For a glaring moment seeing their drained faces, I felt-almost, almost, almost—a scent, almost a scent, of pity for them, those inheritors of the straight-world's hatred of homosexuals, a hatred exacerbating their self-doubts. But it wasn't even that simple. What myriad resentments, against the life they were forced to live, within their profession of paranoia, the locked boundaries of a cop's ugly world—what myriad resentments were aroused by the people whose worlds they could touch only as bullies?… But no. It was quickly drowned, that spark of pity for them, drowned in the memories of bashed heads and violence, in the graphic representation of their utmost lack of courage, the bully “courage” that depends on arbitrary authority, on a badge, only that; the greatest cowardice.