I still don’t quite understand how it all happened so rapidly, but it did. Whenever anyone was on the prowl for sex, my gas station was the place to head.
“Need a trick for tonight?” someone would say. “Well, go see Scotty Bowers at Richfield Gas on Hollywood Boulevard. He’ll set you up.”
These folks included creative types, executives, and technicians. The majority of the men who sought male partners were in the makeup, wardrobe, or hairdressing departments, but there were also production designers, art directors, set decorators, dialogue directors, casting people, and writers. Some were gay, some straight, and some bisexual. Most of the technicians who worked with heavy equipment in the lighting, camera, grips, sound, construction, and transportation departments were straight and in search of the perfect young lady. Well, I could help them out, too. I began to cater to all tastes, all sorts, all interests.
The queens were the most demanding. A straight guy would merely ask for a blonde or a brunette or a girl with a cute figure or big tits or one who was good at some specific sexual technique like giving a fantastic blow job, but gay guys were a lot choosier. They not only wanted someone tall or blonde or very good-looking, he also had to be suntanned or hairy or smooth or muscular. He had to have a big cock, be circumcised or uncircumcised, have big feet, long toes, hairy toes, blue eyes, long hair, or whatever. The list could go on and on. And you know what? I was able to provide them with precisely what they wanted. Soon enough such a varied and eclectic group of people were flocking to the gas station to get their name into my little black book of contacts, or “tricks,” that I was able to get anyone the person of their dreams. My little book listed only names and numbers. I wanted things to remain discreet. Everything that people liked, including the type of person they wanted to do it with, was committed to memory. I kept all those details in my mind, safely hidden from view.
Most of the folks who made themselves available for tricking were very average, ordinary people. The majority of them were unmarried. Few, if any, of them were starstruck. If I arranged a trick for a guy or a girl with a major movie star or celebrity they invariably couldn’t care less. They were in it only for a quick trick and a bit of cash. Money was tight in those days. Young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five would do anything to earn some extra cash.
Eventually, lesbians also began dropping in. I could get them exactly what they wanted, too. Word quickly spread within the lesbian community and I managed to make them all happy. As an aside, I must admit that I was disturbed about the way square, bigoted, and homophobic members of society nastily referred to a lesbian as a dyke. Many people simply tossed the derogatory word around with the express purpose of humiliating, criticizing, and demeaning certain women. At first I disliked the term but I eventually had to get used to it, especially when I heard it being used so often in conversation among members of the gay and lesbian community itself. “Dyke” seemed to be as commonly used as “queen.”
When it came to my own sexual liaisons, I was always more than happy to pocket the tip that anyone offered me for a night of sex. But I never charged for my matchmaking services when hooking up other people. I would set up the trick and then the two of them went off together and money changed hands between them. It was only fair. My operation—if you want to call it that—was not a prostitution ring. I was simply providing a service to those who wanted it and, as recorded history has shown, throughout the ages there has always been a need for good, old-fashioned, high-quality sex. As I’ve said before, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I never thought so and I still don’t.
Everyone I chose to introduce to my gas station customers was someone I knew from my circle of contacts. They were people I trusted, and it was a circle that widened all the time. I never took in total unknowns from the street. I was wary of anybody who simply walked in and offered himself or herself as someone “for hire.” Those in my black book were all young, honest people who, in the vast majority of cases, really needed the money that a little fun in the sack could provide. There were thousands of young guys and women who found themselves at loose ends after the war. Some were looking for jobs while others were trying to get started in new careers. Many were earning pittances as waiters, waitresses, barmaids, and the like. As far as I was concerned I was doing them all a favor.
I was very fond of tricking people myself, and could always make good use of the twenty bucks that was handed over to me afterward. I jumped at the opportunity to go off with either a man or a woman who was attractive and who wanted to make whoopee with me, just as long as it didn’t interfere with my normal working hours.
I was blessed with a very healthy sexual appetite. I wanted sex every day. I was proud of my dick and I was happy to share it. Not once did I ever have trouble getting an erection and I always came. Always. I was proud of the size of my load, too, even after I had already come two or three times earlier on the same day or evening. I was blessed with a great sexual constitution. Why hide it?
During my years at the gas station I would invariably spend the night with someone, either male or female, often not even going home to Betty and my daughter Donna. I was beginning to live a very gypsylike lifestyle. I would be out all night sleeping in a different bed, then go home, do my laundry, change my clothes, make sure my two girls had everything they needed, throw a sandwich together, and then head back to the gas station for my evening shift.
AFTER THREE OR FOUR months working at the gas station I began to establish contact with many of my old Hollywood friends from my boot camp days, as well as those I had met during a month-long series of flings while on shore leave in 1944. Among them were Cary Grant and Randolph Scott. I saw Marion Davies—William Randolph Hearst’s girlfriend—again. And I looked up many others with whom I had earlier been sexually involved. These included two wonderfully talented guys by the names of Sydney Guilaroff and Edwin B. Willis. Both men are unknown today but back then they were legends in their profession. Syd was the chief hairstylist at MGM from 1934 until the late 1970s. His hair styles graced stars like Greta Garbo, Greer Garson, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Hedy Lamarr, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Lena Horne, Grace Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Kathryn Grayson, Ann-Margret, Marilyn Monroe, Claudette Colbert, Lucille Ball, and Judy Garland. He was the one who gave Judy her lovely braids in The Wizard of Oz. He had the distinction of making legal history in the United States by becoming the first unmarried man allowed to adopt a child when he became the legal father to a one-year-old boy he named Jon, after one of his favorite actresses, Joan Crawford. Later he adopted a second son, Eugene, named after his late father. The behind-the-scenes stories he would tell made it seem like nobody is as close to an actor as his or her hair stylist and makeup artist. Sydney could keep me engrossed for hours with his stories.
Ed Willis was another MGM man, one of the top set decorators in Hollywood. During a career that spanned thirty-five years and over six hundred films he picked up no less than eight Academy Awards, including for Somebody Up There Likes Me, Julius Caesar, The Bad and the Beautiful, An American in Paris, Little Women, The Yearling, and Gaslight. Ed was very fond of me, primarily, I think, because I had been a Marine. He had been a Marine, too, in World War I. Although openly gay to gay men, he never publicly admitted it, and he always looked and behaved as though he were straight. He once told me that he had found it very difficult being in the Marines and had cultivated a very masculine image to avoid harassment.
Another guy in town who had an absolute passion for Marines was the composer and lyricist Cole Porter, the man responsible for writing the hit musicals Anything Goes, Silk Stockings, Can-Can, and Kiss Me Kate, as well as some of America’s best loved songs such as “Night And Day,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “In the Still of the Night,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “Just One of Those Things,” “Easy To Love,” “What Is This Thing Called Love?,” and “De-Lovely.” Cole was married to divorcée Linda Thomas from 1919 until
her death in 1954 but it was a marriage of convenience, or what in those days was sometimes referred to as a “professional marriage.” Cole was openly gay and undeniably promiscuous. He never made any attempt to hide it. I don’t remember exactly when he called me out of the blue at the gas station one evening. He said he’d heard that I knew a lot of Marines and asked me if I could come over to his place with two or three of them at around midnight on the following Saturday night. He didn’t beat around the bush. He knew I had been a Marine myself and he wanted me to bring a few buddies around. Short and sweet. I knew exactly what he wanted and I was only too happy to oblige. I did have other plans for the upcoming Saturday evening but I cancelled everything. I mean, after all, this was the legendary Cole Porter, for crying out loud.
Porter was renting a home with a large secluded pool just off Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood. It was owned by my old friend Bill Haines, whom I’d first met during my boot camp days back in 1942. When I arrived at Porter’s place on that Saturday night with three ex-Marines a party was already in progress. There wasn’t a woman in sight. Porter was probably in his late forties or early fifties at the time. Most of his guests were younger men, one more strikingly handsome than the next. Linda, Porter’s wife, was not there (I later learned that the couple lived apart most of the time). The lower portion of Porter’s right leg had been amputated because of a horse riding accident on the East Coast. He was in constant pain and found it difficult to get around, relying mainly on crutches.
I soon learned that Cole’s passion was oral sex. He could easily suck off twenty guys, one after the other. And he always swallowed. There are many people, both male and female, who really enjoy the taste of semen. Porter was one of them. On one later occasion I took about nine of my best-looking young guys over to his place and he sucked off every single one of them in no time. Boom, boom, boom and it was all over.
Over the years I fixed him up with many tricks and he valued my friendship. In some odd sort of a way he eventually looked upon me as a sort of confidant. The ceaseless pain in his leg turned him into a bit of a recluse. Cole shared a lot of his innermost dreams, desires, and fears with me. He was insecure and uncertain about a lot of his friends, often suspecting them of maintaining a friendship purely because of his fame. He wanted so much to be liked simply for who he was. He was especially introspective after he and I had indulged in a night of sex. Cole loved to suck me off and then have me fondle him until he reached his own orgasm.
One day he asked me to help him find out how his closest clique of so-called allies really felt about him. The plan was that he would throw a dinner party at his home, offering an ideal opportunity for him to find out what he wanted to know. He invited a group of twelve or fourteen people comprised of married couples and single men and women, all of whom had known him for a long time. I was one of them.
Cole’s home was opulently furnished. He had a huge dining room table that could easily seat all the guests with room to spare. He asked me to come over in the afternoon and help with the preparations for the dinner and for his exercise in plumbing the true depths his friends’ love and loyalty. To achieve this he intended to hide and eavesdrop on them. But how to do it? The plan we came up with was to cover the dining room table not with a conventional tablecloth but with three large white bed sheets. We laid out the sheets and then covered them up with flowers, place settings, tableware, glassware, and other accoutrements to conceal the pleats in the sheets. The sheets were made to hang very low over the sides of the table, reaching right down to the floor. No one could see anything underneath the table, where there was room enough for someone to hide undetected. It was arranged that when the guests arrived that evening they would be welcomed by the butler, who would show them into the drawing room for drinks prior to dinner. Apologies would be made by the butler at the front door for Cole’s absence. Each guest was to be informed that Cole was a little overworked, that he was feeling tired, and would join us all at the table later for dinner.
While we chatted over cocktails the large doors to the dining room remained closed. Unseen by his guests, just prior to dinner, Cole secretly hobbled into the dining room through another door and crawled beneath the table. Squatting as comfortably as he could, he positioned himself so that he could overhear everything that would be said around the table. Then the butler threw open the doors between the dining room and the drawing room. He cleared his throat and announced that Cole was still not feeling well but that, as dinner was ready, we should take our seats around the table and that Cole would join us in time for dessert.
By then everyone was suitably loaded, happy, hungry, and more than ready to sit down and dine, despite the absence of the host. Nameplates indicated where everybody was to be seated. I was placed at the left center of the table and as soon as I sat down, Cole, unseen beneath the table, inched himself over by my feet. The food was brought in and we began to eat. By prior arrangement Cole and I had figured out a complex system whereby he would pinch me or touch me on the ankle or calf if anyone spoke about him. Depending on how and where he touched me I would enter the conversation and try to elicit more details from the person speaking. If he wanted me to encourage someone to expand on what was being said about him he would only have to touch me on my knee and I would try to throw the discussion open to all those present. From his invisible place on the floor Cole was directing nothing less than an inquisition into the loyalty of his friends. As the wine flowed inhibitions and discretions were cast aside and everybody talked quite a lot about their host.
Most of the remarks were complimentary. There was much praise for him. But every now and then a critical or bitchy remark would be made. Needless to say, Cole remained under the table, taking it all in. By the time dessert was served he had still not made an appearance, but by then nobody cared. For Cole it turned out to be a most revealing evening. His only complaint as I woke up in bed beside him the following morning was that he was suffering from excruciating pain in the stump of his leg from crouching beneath that table for almost two hours. I no longer remember what judgments or opinions he made about his guests that night. The fact that I cannot recall the details is not only because so much time has passed since that evening, but because secrets and seclusion were typical of Cole. But despite his insecurities and doubts I always found him to be an easygoing kind of guy. However, even though he confided in me, I don’t think I ever really fully understood him. I don’t think anyone did.
For whatever reason, people have always found me easy to trust. I guess I’m a good listener, and I always take people on their own terms. Maybe some of that comes from being exposed to quite a wide variety of people at an early age. I was an adventurous kid in a big city.
5
Big City
After we left the farm in Illinois we spent a few months in Joliet, where Dad was working at the Stateville Penitentiary. But it wasn’t long before he and Momma decided to get a divorce. In 1933, me, Momma, Donald, and Phyllis moved to Chicago, which was probably the most exciting metropolitan area in America at the time. It had undergone major reconstruction and development since the Great Fire of 1871. Streetcars clanged everywhere. New buildings pierced the skyline downtown and on the wide boulevard that snaked along the shore of Lake Michigan. Although we were still in the throes of the Depression, and money was as tight as anywhere else in the country, in the Windy City life crackled in all its infinite variety. Yes, there were breadlines and soup kitchens and beggars, but in addition to all the hardships that everyone endured many folks still managed to eke out a living and some even found cause to laugh and to look on the bright side of things. Chicago was a great place for an inquisitive, healthy young fellow like me to begin to discover big-city life. We took up residence in a small apartment on Oakwood Boulevard near Thirty-ninth Street, which was in a relatively poor neighborhood in the South Side.
Our new home was barely big enough for the four of us. Don and I shared a bedroom, tinier than anything we had before. Phy
llis and Momma shared an equally cramped room. Don and I kept our secondhand bikes chained up downstairs in the dimly lit lobby of the building. The hallways were stuffy and moldy and a timer turned the lights off after ten minutes. A rickety staircase led up to our apartment, where Momma took on work as a seamstress. She also found piecemeal employment outside as a cleaning lady or by doing sewing and baking for people in their private homes.
We kids were enrolled at Oakenwald Elementary School on South Lake Park Street. I adapted quickly enough, but I was itching to help Momma bring in an extra dime or two. I couldn’t stand seeing the way she had to slave away to support us. I really wanted to go out and find some kind of work of my own to augment her income. That’s when I discovered my entrepreneurial side. A few weeks after arriving in the city I got myself a part-time job delivering and selling newspapers. This job allowed me to visit many areas in and around Chicago, some very wealthy, and others not at all. I carried the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Herald Times, each of which sold for two cents. The profit margin for me was so small that I had to sell at least a dozen papers before I made a single penny. But I was thrilled to be earning something. I worked hard at it every single day after I got out of school. I would race Don home on my bike, forego lunch, hurriedly finish my homework, and set out on my beat. I was good at what I did. I sold a lot of newspapers and soon I began including the Saturday Evening Post in my inventory. This bumped up my profits but it was hardly enough to help Momma buy the groceries we needed so I expanded my activities. I saved up a little bit of cash and invested in a shoe-shine box, brushes, and shoe polish, making my services available as a combination newspaper deliverer and shoe-shine boy.
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