VOICE OVER:    Contradictions, Ambivalences, and Considerations

THE JOY OF promiscuity.

And the pain.

Ecstatic freedom and release.

Loneliness, desolation.

A glorious adventure that, always at the brink, stops even time.

Panic, frenzy, fear.

Ambivalences and contradictions. The outlaw faces the saboteur.

The purgatorial moments, the saboteur announces. The stasis at dawn—the entrapping dawn, remember?—the time to be avoided in the cycle of the sexhunt. Why such a purgatory of questions in an experience so liberating?

A hateful obeisance paid—beyond present control—to the powerful straight world that digs its talons deep, deep when we are most vulnerable—and continues to try, every moment, with stupid encyclicals, laws, denunciations. Yes, a hateful obeisance to imposed guilt.

What kind of revolution is it that ends when one looks old, at least for most? What kind of revolution is it in which some of the revolutionaries must look beautiful? What kind of revolution is it in which the revolutionaries slaughter each other, in the sexual arenas and in the ritual of S & M?

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 freezes.

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.