by John Rechy
The appeal of the costume is such that some gay men will go only with another in full regalia, in effect to make it with the costume. (It is possible for an S & M scene to include no real sexual contact, the body surrendered to the fetish, nudity shunned with an almost Victorian prudery.) In a leather bar with its oppressive props and its black-costumed males, there is a collective aesthetic ugliness.
The extremes to which this world appeals are indicated by the emergence of a bar fashioned as a torture dungeon. A heavy prison steel door guards its entrance (a double horror when one considers the real prison sadism of Attica). Inside the dimlit bar are a torture rack, shackles for “slaves,” whips, electric prods (another double horror, evocative of Southern sheriffs), handcuffs, a ceiling hung over with military boots. A Halloween party drew leather-bedecked “masters” and their “slaves”—pitiful, ugly, hooded, manacled creatures led on harnesses. Another ugly extreme of S & M is the burgeoning of a “group” calling itself the F.F.A. (Fist Fuckers of America).
Why is S & M so powerful in the gay world? Given the crushing pressures and hatred from the outside world, wouldn't homosexuals move determinedly away from pain and humiliation? To the contrary, it is precisely because of the demons of religious, psychological, and legal repression that S & M thrives.
The roots of this ritual are in the humiliation of gay children by heterosexuals. No gay child can totally escape the self-hatred powerfully implanted in his early years. When he reveals gay tendencies, he is humiliated, even physically tortured—called “queer,” “faggot,” “cock-sucker”—choice Christian names with which gay children are baptized. His homosexuality is inevitably branded with guilt. Carried into adulthood, that imposed guilt may easily push him into S & M in punishment and humiliation for his “evil.” If he becomes an “S,” he will pitifully imitate the very bully who perhaps taunted him. The ritual of S & M embraces the straight world's judgment, debasement, hatred, and contempt of and for the homosexual.
In the gay world—where, as in the world of other minorities, there is a dangerous, but understandable, reticence to criticize anything within it—the very subject of S & M is charged with emotionalism. Some gay groups will not even allow critical discussion of it. In an interview with the editor of a gay-liberation newspaper, my negative remarks about S & M were heavily edited and in instances omitted. A university group recently presented a two-hour symposium on the joys of slavery—during its gay-liberation week!
Even outside homosexual circles, gay S & M is defended by nouveau chic heterosexuals. Because, apparently, we have reached a time when it is fashionable to accept anything, no matter how destructive, as long as it qualifies— in the clinging phrase of the prehistoric sixties—as “far out.” Reactionary to put down fascism. I hear, increasingly, intellectualized defenses of Manson, even of Hitler. From there the defense of S & M is easy. We are not confounded by the paradox of opposing (correctly) police S & M and government S & M in genocide and yet supporting its charade. We find it difficult even to differentiate between speaking out against what is destructive, though willing, and legislating against it—no mutual consenting sex act should be outlawed. But the right must be held to decry what is destructive, in one's own sexual, social, or racial group, or in another's.
Not a subject to be shunned, S & M should be of primary internal concern within the homosexual world; a subject to be explored thoroughly and honestly.
When it is discussed, it is often defended as a lifestyle; even by those who claim too emphatically not to participate in it; even by those who put down “queens” and “sissies” (and most leather gays do so, loudly) for hurting our image. (Ironically, it is a notorious truth that mass arrests of transvestites almost inevitably result in rough, heavy punching out of the cops, whereas a mass raid in a leather bar will result in meek surrender, by both “M” ‘s and “S” ‘s.)
Is S & M simply another gay lifestyle?—like hustling, transvestism, promiscuity?
Substitute the homosexual in an S & M relationship with another minority: A black playing white red-neck sheriff uses electric prods on another black and calls him a “dirty nigger.” A “lifestyle” to be applauded by blacks overcoming white humiliation? A Jew tortures another in a charade of concentration camp. A “lifestyle” to be supported and endorsed by other Jews decimated by genocide? (Significantly, the language of S & M is often racist—the usage of “nigger”—and it also uses “fag”—is not rare.)
Apologists for and adherents of S & M present three main arguments. The first, now a cliché, is that S & M merely imitates nature. There are always the weak, and there are always the strong. The ritual of S & M imitates, and therefore respects, nature. True enough, of a certain nature—but is it a desirable imitation? It belies man's basic evolutionary struggle—to overcome nature's destructiveness, from the exterior manifestation of floods and earthquakes to the interior ones of rape and murder.
The second argument—made by proponents—is that, no, S & M does not involve hatred; “it involves a new dimension of love.” No, S & M does not involve pain; “it involves a new sensation of pleasure.” No, S & M does not alienate its participants; “it brings two people much closer in a sharing of pain.”
In the very necessity to invert terms—to defend pain by saying it isn't pain, to defend hatred by calling it love—is an implicit judgment—that if there is pain, if there is hatred, then there is destruction, because pain and hatred are negative by definition. So call it love! One supports the inversion in a sophistic argument that acknowledges, more than anything else, the destruction involved.
(It is true that few experiences bring people closer together than shared pain—closer to each other, yes, when the pain is uninvited, but not to the inflictor of the pain.)
An additional—and significant—confusion in terms occurs in that, for most, “S & M” means “sadist and masochist” whereas for some it means “slave and master”— a “sadist-slave,” therefore, and a “masochist-master.”
The third argument—and perhaps the most subtle rationalization in support of S & M—is that the fantasy absorbs the potentially destructive reality. This implies that if homosexuals did not indulge in rites of mimed violence with each other, the real violence might be thrust out on unwilling gay, or possibly straight, victims. That is antithetical to gay S & M. It is consent that defines it. The slave must by gay, and willing, even pleading, to accept “punishment” for desiring homosexual sex acts. Thus, the gay “master” “makes” the willing gay “slave” beg for humiliation in order to be allowed a homosexual contact. Here, the enactment of the fantasy is the reality, the object in the ritual, not a sublimation for “real” violence. What is being sublimated are the reasons for one homosexual to want to play at humiliating another.
S & M adherents claim that theirs is the only faction in the gay world that is not “sexist” or “ageist” since it puts at least as much emphasis on performance as on looks and youth. “Leather” articles and guidebooks—usually written, significantly, by older, perhaps not terribly attractive homosexuals—propound this theory recurrently. Although it is true that performance is important in gay S & M, as important as the fetish-uniform, the theory is far from being strictly true. As in all of the gay world, youth and beauty are badges. Additionally, there are at least as many young “masters” and older “slaves” as there are older “masters” and younger “slaves.” Any weekend evening in a leather bar will confirm this. True, idealized stories in magazines often make the “master” slightly older—but not old; and always, always super-masculine, super tough-goodlooking, an extension of the “coach” figure, say. But even assuming, for examination, the vaunted myth, one arrives at the paradoxical conclusion that the relative (and “relative” must be emphasized) exception to the gay world's “ageism” is a negative one, a grotesquerie by S & M of the classic Grecian relationship between the older “teacher” and the younger “pupil,” the latter enriched by the former's experience and knowledge. In
S & M, the myth of the “older master” and the “younger slave” calls for the re-enacting of a charade—thoroughly ageist against the young—of cruel punishing “father” and guilt-ridden, punished “son”—a sadly real dynamic not uncommon among gay children.
Beyond those dynamics and others discussed later, there is a very real physical danger in S & M. Though most of it is soft core, more fantasy than actuality, involving the charade of pain, even the little that is real is too much. In orgiastic frenzy the acting may catch fire. Ritual whippings, beatings, and kickings, even when “controlled” and consensual may, though very rarely do, draw real blood.
Fist-fucking is more talked about than performed, like so much of S & M. It nevertheless unquestionably does occur, and with increasing frequency. A gay S & M magazine recently gave lovingly detailed instructions on how to perform this act. Near the end of the article the author added, almost parenthetically, the exhortation to “be careful,” because: “Rough action can perforate the walls of the rectum and cause death.”
Defended stupidly by blind gay apologists who uphold that there is no physical danger because the body is made to “adjust” to such an assault, this activity has already resulted in death and permanent crippling.
Explore the dynamics of gay S & M: Playing “straight,” the “S” humiliates and even tortures the “M” for being “queer.” But since the “S” is himself a homosexual, too, he is transferring his feelings of self-contempt for his own homosexuality onto the cowering “M,” who turns himself willingly into what gay-haters have called him. Now one homosexual uses, and the other begs for, the straight world's words of hatred:
“Queer!”
“Fag!”
“Cocksucker!”
In effect, the “S” says, “You are the queer now, not me, and I'll punish you for it, just as I was punished for it—and I'll call you the names others would call me, and have called me.” It is not surprising that numbers of “S” ‘s will easily play the “M”—"turnabout is fair play” is one of the clichés of the S & M world.
(A paradoxical, sad spectacle often occurs outside leather bars: Two heavily leathered homosexuals walking to their cars to get together later in an orgy of simulated humiliation encounter a carload of gay-hating punks who yell: “Queers!” “Fags!”—the very same terms one of these homosexuals may soon be using on the other.)
Chilling proof of the self-hatred at the core of S & M is the existence of a gay bar—constructed to evoke a police headquarters station—which openly solicits gay patrons to dress in cop uniforms. (A further irony is that it is owned in part by a gay social-psychologist, ubiquitous “spokesman” for gay freedom, and denouncer of cop actions!) Thus the cop—the primary symbol of external hatred of gays, executor of the straight world's repressive laws—is celebrated here in imitation by the victims themselves, wearing their oppressors’ uniforms, replete with handcuffs! The ugly story goes that several of the clients of that bar are “real, off duty cops,” coming there to act out, now courted by gays, their very real hatred of homosexuals. Whether there is any substance to that, just its breathless repetition attests to a profound gay self-contempt in that faction.
Here and there, actually begin to appear “brown shirts”—now in imitation of the Nazis, who exterminated homosexuals before they began on Jews. (An S & M publication recently carried—and subsequently deleted—an ad for the National Socialist League—complete with swastika and eagle—though at least one leather club has refused its literature.)
No, I am not a stranger to the world of violent sexual power. I am not speaking from a rarefied distance, but from within. I have worn the leather costume, have felt the surge at humiliating another. Once, I was no stranger to the props of S & M—yes, the belts, thrusting boots, straps for restraint. An admission not easily made, but necessary, so I can speak from experience. And I still feel the great rush when another submits. But I want to explore thoroughly what is really at play; and, knowing that much of what is called S & M is not, to separate and differentiate between the feeling of power implicit in virtually all sex relations, and the substitution of sex for pain, the humiliation of real S & M— to purge myself, because of my very real self-love, of the need for externalized hatred and contempt, thrust onto another.
Yes—and I believe in the freedom to destroy oneself, and to allow oneself to be destroyed. I uphold the right of suicide. But I believe in the need for full awareness that one is destroying oneself or another, no matter how willingly. I believe in the necessity of exploring the real, not the rationalized, world of S & M.
I believe that the energy produced by this hatred turned inward dissipates the revolutionary energy. Redirected, refunneled, that inward anger would be converted into creative rage against the real enemies from without.
The conclusion is inescapable. The motivation of the “M”—as well as of the "S” — is self-hatred. There is no “S” in such gay relationships. The whimpering “masochist” and the “tough” posturing “sadist” are, in reality, only two masochists groveling in self-hatred.
Gay S & M is the straight world's most despicable legacy.
859 P.M. The Baths.
ON THE STREET, he touches his arms, round, full, hard.
His need for the outlaw world fluctuates. Sometimes, like others within it, he stays away for days, even weeks. Sometimes he makes it only once a day, or once every other day, with one or perhaps only two persons, three. Other times he will sexhunt for many contacts, but only from Friday to Saturday, say, or only on Saturday, or only one night, one afternoon. There are times when he will have all his encounters at home, his or another's. Other times, like this swelling weekend, he commits himself entirely to the extreme hunt. He knows these fluctuations, variations, and modifications are so for the other outlaws too because he will see the same ones recurrently in the same shifting arenas, then not at all for long.
He will store memories of this abundant weekend for the dreaded, strange times when the hunt turns indifferently cruel against him.
To get into the gay baths throughout the city, you must be a member. To be a member—and some clubs screen out only the already-rejected old, the very unattractive—you merely pay dues. Jim will go to one of the most popular in the city.
Wordlessly the attendant hands him a towel and a basket for his possessions, a key to a locker. Jim undresses in an empty room, puts his clothes in the assigned locker, and he looks admiringly at his nude body in a full-length mirror.
Towel wrapped around his middle, he passes the television room. Other toweled men, a few, the more subdued, sit pretending to be watching the screen.
Jim walks on. His room—small, with a cot—will be one of many along dim corridors. Nude figures prowl. Bodies lie on cots in the cubicles, doors open. Naked men stand in doorways, playing with their cocks. Someone enters a cubicle. A door closes, another opens. Jim moves on to the orgy room.
Within dim lights, naked bodies toss and squirm in one groaning mass, heads, feet, hands, buttocks bob occasionally out of the sea of flesh. The bodies could be crushing each other soundlessly. Only occasional moans rise out of the amyl-tinged air. Jim has barely entered the room when several hands are pulling him into the twisting flesh. He had not expected this many hunters—perhaps a dozen. The mass of flesh stirs, changing shapes.
Jim leaves the room. The showers are better lighted. He can be special. Four men are here. Jim moves along splashing hot water to the end of the row, alone. An attractive man glides through the misty steam toward him. The man edges his ass closer to Jim's cock. The man Jim really wants has not come over, is merely looking at him through alternately clearing, thickening pools of steam. The man near Jim touches his ass to Jim's rising cock. Now the man Jim wants approaches—reaches for Jim's flushed cock— and guides it into the ass of the other man. Jim pushes it in. The man who guided Jim's prick into the other now turns his own lubricated ass to him. Pulling it out of the one, Jim enters the other. The first man he fucked now pr
esses against Jim's buttocks, attempting to spread them with his fingers, to enter him. But Jim has never been fucked and he pushes the probing fingers and the eager cock away. The man now presses his ass against the cock of the man Jim is fucking. Two others watch the sandwiched bodies. The man being fucked by Jim and fucking the other, turns his mouth to Jim's, which opens. Out of the mist, other hands float from one body to the next, fingers and lips brushing entered orifices; moving from limb to limb.
Abruptly Jim pulls away before coming. At the opposite end of the room, he turns the water on fullblast. Cold. Cold water shreds the steaming clouds.
He returns to the corridors. Naked now, without a towel about his middle. In his cubicle he lies on his cot, the slightly ajar door opens wide. He closes his eyes while a mouth sucks him. His eyes remain closed. Another mouth. Jim pushes two heads away. He opens his eyes.
A handsome man with short-cropped beard stands at the door, motioning with his cock. Jim motions back. This time they close the door. Jim wants the man to blow him first, and the man wants Jim to do it first. They separate quickly.
