The Sexual Outlaw

by John Rechy

  We're fighting on two fronts—one on the streets, the other inside.

  And is the abundant sex ever enough?

  No. But that is part of the joy: a hunt that goes on endlessly like the infinitely burgeoning sum of a geometric progression.

  “Ended” before its summation.

  Precisely! Without summation.

  What of men reduced to shadows, shadows reduced to mouths in alleys and parks? Jim uses many people—like the man who confronted him earlier in the parking lot; Jim doesn't want them, merely wants them to want him.

  He needs them as much as they need him, at times. And Jim does reciprocate—with those he desires; and with all, he's honest, he doesn't use subterfuge. The equation is, finally, even.

  A mutual using.… What of the aspect of contempt you've acknowledged in hustling, and implied in one-way sex? Then why not S & M?

  Because hustling and unreciprocated sex do not by definition include hatred. The argument is definitely not against sex without love, no, not at all, but against the substitution of hatred, which includes self-hatred, for sex. Even if affection is totally absent from hustling—the act of getting paid or paying does not, like S & M, rely on hatred and “torture.” The impact of hustling on the gay world is very limited, its “problems” may have more to do with prostitution than with gay identity; but S & M holds a strong reactionary power over gay freedom.

  Souls still hunting in the mist at 4:00 in the morning. Bodies crushed anonymously in garages, on porches.

  Revolutionary sex. The profligate sharing. And the beautiful choreography of the hunt. The silent dance.

  And the instant alienation after sex.

  Inherited attitudes, indoctrinated guilt.

  Is it ever enough?

  You asked that.

  Nothing is enough, the saboteur insists. Depression when the hunt pauses, just pauses. Your worth in the balance every moment, 100 triumphs wiped out by 1 rejection, stirring a purgatory of doubts, a hell. Sacrificed relationships. Sex always an ending, never a beginning. Times when you long for 1 instead of 20—will they become times when you long for 20 but never for only 1? Orgies that may— …

  But don't have to!

  … —cancel the possibility of love, the proliferation of promiscuity becoming a total lifestyle— …

  Or an additional experience. The joyful high that only an abundance of sex can bring.

  And a suicidal low when it fails…. Promiscuity alienating us from any other possibility, limiting us to one—…

  One and many…. You said “us”!

  … —sex only in groups, only with many, not ever, ever one to one—…

  But still, at times, one to one.

  … —and if so, mostly fragile connections. To enact fantasies— …

  Merely dreamt by others.

  … —thus to cancel identities. Always the possibility of a soulless reduction of bodies to limbs and orifices—all limbs, any orifice.

  Orgies and relationships, both. Sex and love—one without the other, one with the other. Desire and love. Desire or love. AH possibilities. That is the goal of the street revolution…. And now the outlaw strikes: And to destroy you, the saboteur.

  With that, the saboteur attacks: Perhaps it will turn out that what you—we—call righteous revolution will be the straight world's ultimate revenge. Promiscuity as total deadend. A loveless sacrifice of all human contact. The ultimate in non-feeling and alienation.

  You're wrong, the outlaw answers softly. Promiscuity is our noble revolt.

  Prove it.

  Only this way: Remove the outside pressures. Remove the imposed guilt. Then we'll find out. Then we can view our own homosexual world as we make it, not as the straight world's hatred forces it to be. Let that happen, and then we'll find out.

  I resolve the clashing contradictions by joining the sexhunt in the streets.

  11:44 P.M. The Tunnel Near Sutton. Hollywood Boulevard. Selma. Santa Monica Boulevard. Terrace Circle, Bierce Place, Greenstone Park.

  JIM IS ABOUT TO get out of his car to explore the tunnel near Sutton when he hears a familiar tapping coming from across the street. In his exposed apartment, the old, old, emaciated man, naked, is again rapping on the window like a used phantom. Jim drives away. Standing by the tunnel is the same man he made it with Friday—or last night.

  Upper Hollywood Boulevard. Outlaws line the street as he walks it. “What's goin on?” “Cooling it, man.” “Lot of pigs out.” … Often, like now on this street, Jim deliberately summons up memories, ghosts evoked at random from the sexual mortuary of his mind. Sometimes he remembers faces. Bodies. Even names. He knows he will remember, always, the accusing man earlier in the parking lot.

  Jim goes back to his car, drives around Selma, to determine its vibrations before he gets out to walk, perhaps to hustle. Suddenly, in his rear-view mirror, he sees a car stop abruptly, motor left running just feet away from a young hustler standing on a corner. Four doors fly open, and five men jump out, kicking and punching the lone hustler. Jim makes a swift U-turn. Two other hustlers on the street rush toward the scene. The five attackers jump laughing into their car and, lights turned off, speed away. Jim and the two others lean over the dazed hustler.

  “I'll take you to the hospital,” Jim offers.

  The kid spits blood, but straightens up. “No, no, I'm okay,” he insists, checking himself out. “Besides, the cops might hassle me there.”

  Jim knows he's right; and despite the savage intentions, the attackers didn't have enough time to hurt him seriously.

  “Just—uh—give me a lift to Gardner, okay?” he asks Jim.

  In the car, the kid says, “Fucking shits.”

  Jim experiences the same rage he feels at the marauding cops. He drops the kid off before a run-down apartment house. “Sure you're okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks, thanks.”

  Driving away, Jim glances at the blood on the passenger seat. In all his years on the streets, through all the different phases of his street life—he has never felt more acutely the presence of violence and hate in the sexual arena.

  Now he needs to wash away his rage. He drives to Santa Monica Boulevard. Near Andy's Coffee Shop he and a handsome man begin the slow choreography. Finally the two are together around the corner. Yes, Jim will go home with this man, he knows. Yes, and that will end this weekend, yes, and the hunt, he thinks suddenly, and, yes, that's okay.

  “What are you into?” the man asks.

  Jim feels a hint of disappointment; that question often indicates the search for something specialized. Or the man might be a vice cop.

  “Depends. You?” Jim is deliberately evasive.

  “Heavy S & M,” the man answers.

  Jim rejects it.

  “Too bad, you look tough.” The man crosses the street toward a mean-looking motorcyclist leaning sulkily on his bike. In minutes, the two roar off together.

  On the corner, Jim sticks out his thumb, hitchhiking. For long minutes, no one stops. Doubts peck at him. But here's a car now. “You hustling?” the man asks Jim as they drive away.

  Jim sizes up the man, attractive; certainly not into paying. “No, I'm not hustling.”

  “Too bad, I like only hustlers,” the man says.

  Jim gets out at Fairfax. He feels an increasingly empty aching. He hitchhikes back to Highland. Gets another ride back to Fairfax. Nothing. Back on Highland, he returns to his car and drives to the area of the costume bars.

  No one in the alleys now.

  Terrace Circle. A few cars cruise the blocks of pretty houses and new condominiums. Jim wants a close connection beyond what he's experienced all day today. He sees no one here he really wants.

  Moments later he's standing on upper Santa Monica Boulevard near a strip of gaybars. Just standing. Not hitchhiking. A man stops his car; he's not especially attractive—ordinary. But Jim gets in, to push time.

  “God, you've got a beautiful body! How old are you?”

  Jim's heart fr
eezes.

  The man guesses—way below Jim's actual age.

  The warmth flows.

  Jim let the man blow him in the car for moments.

  On Santa Monica Boulevard he walks back to his car. The restiveness grows. He drives back to Selma. Tonight this beloved street is being raided by ugliness: Two cops are frisking three hustlers, the spectacle framed harshly by the icy lights of the squad car.

  Motherfuckers. Jim drives along Sunset Boulevard.

  The hunt. Sunday night's hunt different from Saturday's, but almost as heavy, with the fresher waves of hunters who will be off tomorrow instead of Saturday. And Monday's hunt is different from Sunday's. Tuesday's, subdued. Wednesday's different from Thursday's, and Thursday's different from Friday's. The varying but unstopping cycle of sex in the city of lost angels, paused only once each day—vengefully—at dawn.

  The Bierce Place garages. Two hunters draped in the darkness under a stairway. As Jim walks along the deserted alley, a car drives along the intersecting street. It stops. Jim waits. He hears a door open, close. The memory of the violent scene on Selma alerts his body for quick motion. Footsteps. He sees a shirtless man.

  The same muscleman he left flexing in the bushes and then again earlier in the bar! And there he is posing again in the dark, expecting Jim to “reciprocate” in kind. Jesus, Jim thinks, we're practically lovers! … For a moment, he considers pulling out his cock in overt invitation of sex; the other will then approach, and then they'll make it, yes, at home. But, no, that's clearly not the other's trip.

  Driving to another dark alley. No one here, but within minutes the soundless dark may explode with moaning shadows.

  Near Sutton, the man still guards his tunnel. Parking on another street, to avoid the old man rapping on the window, Jim walks into the gray cavity of the tunnel. But there is another man there too, and Jim moves away.

  At Greenstone, several cars are parked in the concrete arc. Many hunters in the arena.

  As Jim crosses the street toward the stone grotto, he sees the kid he made it with last night—Steve; they exchanged phone numbers, came so close. They both stop suddenly, facing each other. For a moment they seem about to smile, even to speak. They move slightly closer. Then simultaneously they turn from each other, walking away quickly in opposite directions.

  VOICE OVER: Attack!

  I SIT PARKED in my car in Greenstone Park. It's past midnight. I'm alone, these moments. The tide of hunters has flowed elsewhere for now. Soon, cars will drive up, and the hunt will resume as always.

  I feel the presence of the night. So strange to be alone here now. When the hunt is raging, the darkness doesn't hang ominously on the trees, and you don't wonder how many shouts of loneliness the quiet stifles. You don't notice—…

  A car is driving up the curve of the road, its lights carve sliding shadows out of the darkness before I see it. It passes mine slowly—two men in it—and then parks parallel to mine a few feet away in the concrete arc. Both men look at me and smile. Instinctively I start my car and begin to back up; I'm not sure why, because it isn't rare for hunters to cruise in pairs. The two look wrong, like plainclothes cops, relentlessly drab despite mustaches. If they are cops, they'll hassle me, ask me for I.D.; what are you doing here?—don't you know this is a queer park? I back my car up farther. Smiling even more broadly at me, the driver opens the door to get out. He's out of the car, a burly man in a sweater. Now they'll flash a light, badges, nag me with questions, knowing all along why I'm here.

  Suddenly reality alters. The burly man is running at me with a bully club! His hateful face is frozen in a smile. I hear crazy broken laughter. The man on the passenger side has rushed out with his own raised menacing club. And he too is laughing loudly, the sound insane and roaring.

  In a moment of thundering comprehension, I realize that I may be murdered by gay-haters who periodically raid sex areas. It has happened in this very park.

  I continue backing up my car as quickly as I can on the one-way circle. But I can't maneuver fast enough in reverse in the declining arc. The two strange laughing forms, clubs poised to shatter windows and me, advance closer. In the cold flood of my headlights, they look like giant puppets raging out of control. The bodies thrust murderously toward me in striding gaits, elongated shadows askew and ugly. My car almost cascades down the side of the hill. I brake abruptly.

  The evil dancing forms are almost on me. Smashed windows, bones— …!

  The decision is made without thought. Only these moments, focused tightly in threatening closeup of them and me, exist. I shift the gears into forward, gun the engine, and plunge toward the bounding puppet forms. Will they try to jump my car? I dash forward. Don't let me run them down!—let them jump aside! No, not the crush of bones and spattering flesh!

  I force myself to look straight ahead. I hear—feel— metal-tipped sticks crash savagely on the rear of my car.

  Breathing again, but with a vision of gaping violence branded on my mind, I rush out of the park. But what of the other sexhunters who will soon be cruising this invaded area?

  In a phone booth on the boulevard, I call the cops. Where did this happen? Silence when I answer; the cop knows it's a gay park. As soon as available, he'll send someone to talk to me where I am. No, not to me—to the park; that's where the threat is. The steely voice insists that I wait at the booth. Half an hour. Nothing. I realize he's not going to send anyone. I drive back to the park; maybe he sent the squad car there. No. I call again from the same booth. Okay, he'll send someone to where I am.

  Fifteen minutes later a squad car arrives. Where did this happen? I tell them. They look hostilely at me. I insist they go there. Okay, follow them there and show them where the attack occurred. I return to my car, make a U-turn. When I reach the park—a familiar area suddenly turned ugly—the cops are flashing lights cursorily. I park where I was earlier, to wait for them to take my report, get a description, see the deep dents on my car.

  Instead, reality is again challenged—as it will be still again in a few moments: The cop car makes a sharp U-turn into the wrong way of the one-way road and drives out of the park. I'm alone again in the menaced area.

  I drive down the road, and—impossible!—at the bottom I'm intercepted by the car of the same two laughing men. Both spring out again with their raised clubs. I reverse, swerve around, and thrust my car dangerously into the boulevard. I drive to Western, where for weeks cops in twenty-four-hour shifts have been patrolling massage parlors in order to close them down. Can't leave their posts, a cop tells me. Besides, no crime actually happened!

  I call the watch commander at police headquarters. Busy, a cop tells me; what's wrong? I tell him about the dual attack. I tell him that the maniacal men are still prowling the area.

  A cold voice accuses from the telephone: “What were you doing in a queer park at midnight?”

  1:06 A.M. Outside the Tool Bar.

  THE ABRUPT, SEVERED encounter with the youngman he was with last night, even “worked out” with, sent Jim moodily out of the park; he drove to the area of the costume bars.

  Outside the Tool Bar, a man is standing by a motorcycle. Jim is attracted to him, despite the hint of a leather costume; he knows that does not necessarily mean the person is into S & M. Jim moves into a narrow corridor between a locked office building and an unfinished house. The motorcyclist follows him. “You wanna get fucked?” he asks him in a low voice.

  “No.” Jim begins to move away.

  “I do—by you.”

  “I would,” Jim says, “but not out here.” Not an overt invitation, this is his way of suggesting an encounter at home, without committing himself.

  “No, let's do it here,” the man insists. He begins to unbuckle his pants. Now he reaches over and squeezes Jim's nipples, tightly.

  Suddenly turned off by the gesture, Jim pushes the man away.

  Back on the main street, Jim sees a car about to park on a perpendicular side. But, seeing Jim, the driver makes a U-turn to
intercept him as he crosses the street. Pausing at the intersection, motor running, he lets his hand dangle over the side of the car. Jim walks up to the window. In the back of the car another man, drunk or stoned, lies sleeping. The driver blows Jim briefly through the car window.

  Jim resumes walking. Across the street an attractive man pauses. Jim waits, the man waits. Neither crosses to the other's side. Stalemate. Not even looking back, each walks away from the other.

  Jim moves to a side street. In a darkened lot a man squats, mouth open ready to take a cock, any cock; an old desperate ugly man. Jim retreats from the huddled shadow.

  Jim is in the yard of the unfinished house. A man is groping him clumsily. Now the man grabs Jim's hand and tries to force it on his cock, to have Jim play with him. But Jim is not attracted to him and he pulls his hand forcefully away. “You don't do anything back, huh?—well, fuck it! You're not that goddam good!” Instant enemies, they split.

  Abandoned in the shadows, Jim remembers the angry man in the lot earlier. Then he thinks of Steve—the young bodybuilder he saw again minutes earlier in Greenstone. Yes, he would have gone with him again. If they had talked—…

  1:23 A.M. Outside the Turf Bar. A Parking Lot. The Alley.

  Still “Sunday night.”

  The bar at the corner will soon close, like the others. Already it's spilling outlaws into the night. The hot, hot spell may be about to break, there is the hint of a breeze. Dead palmtree leaves rustle. Mist is rising.

  Shirtless, Jim goes to the cubicle in back of the locked building on the dark lot. Under the smashed lightbulb like a gaping mouth of shattered teeth, a cluster of men are pressed grayly. Jim walks on.

  He sees a man leaning against a van. Pants down around his knees, shirtless, he's playing with himself. Jim walks through the thickening haze. The man calls to him in a whispery voice. Inside the van, both men lie on the floor. The man is goodlooking, tall. He removes Jim's clothes and his own.