Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  My professor didn’t come that day. Of course he phoned the next with a reasonable excuse. Of course I should have anticipated just such a hitch and explanation, but my need, though usually held in check or released only on imaginary beings, could, if turned on someone real, devour him. I had worshipped my teacher, I’d even forgiven him for not loving me—but now I hated him. I dreamed of revenge. In the past I’d been protected from humiliating rejection because I so seldom asked anything of anyone. The gods were my company; the lilac in flower embraced me; books did all the talking but only when I permitted the monologue to begin. They were transparent companions whose intentions were never in doubt. Gods, flowers, words—why, I could see right through them! Nor did they waver into or out of focus or leave even an inch of the surround blank. Whereas people batted thoughts and feelings like badminton birdies at you, a whir that might take you by surprise, that you might not even see but that you were expected to return until the air began to go white, the gods made no such demands. They propped themselves up on gold elbows and lazily turned their wide, smiling faces down on you. When their glance locked with yours their eyebeams lit up. In an instant you were they, they you, gods mortal and mortals divine, the mutual regard a reflecting pool into which everything substantial would soon melt and flow. When I was twelve, the year after I began my German classes, the boys I knew started playing a violent game called “Squirrel” (“Grab his nuts and run”). Guys who’d scarcely acknowledged me until now were suddenly thrashing, twisting muscles in my arms, their breath panting peanut butter right up into my face, my hands sliding over their silky skin just above the rough denim … and now his gleaming crotch buttons were pressing down on me as his knees burned into my biceps and I put off shouting “Uncle” one more second in order to inhale once again the terrible smell of his sweat. Or the light was dying and piles of burning leaves streaked the air with the smoky breath of the very earth. My hands were raw with cold, my nose was running, I was late for supper, my shirt was torn, but still I called him back again and again by shouting, “I’m not sorry. I just said that. I’m not sorry, I’m—” “Look, you little creep”—his voice was much lower, he was a year older, he came at me, really mad this time, I didn’t want his anger, just his body on top of me and his arms around me.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I suppose I never wondered where Blanche or Charles went at night; when it was convenient to do so, I still thought of the world as a well-arranged place where people did work that suited them and lived in houses appropriate to their tastes and needs. But once Blanche called us in the middle of an August night and my father, stepmother and I rushed to her aid. In the big Cadillac we breasted our way into unknown streets through the crowds of naked children playing in the tumult of water liberated from a fireplug (“Stop that!” I shouted silently at them, outraged and frightened. “That’s illegal!”). Past the stoops crowded with grownups playing cards and drinking wine. In one glaring doorway a woman stood, holding her diapered baby against her, a look of stoic indignation on her young face, a face one could imagine squeezing out tears without ever changing expression or softening the wide, fierce eyes, set jaw, everted lower lip. The smell of something delicious—charred meat, maybe, and maybe burning honey—filled the air. “Roll up your windows, for Chrissake, and lock the doors,” my father shouted at us. “Dammit, use your heads—don’t you know this place is dangerous as hell!” A bright miner’s lamp, glass globe containing a white fire devoid of blues and yellows, dangled from the roof of a vendor’s cart; he was selling food of some sort to children. Even through the closed windows I could hear the babble of festive, delirious radios. A seven-foot skinny man in spats, shades, an electric-green shantung suit and a flat-brimmed white beaver hat with a matching green band strolled in front of our car and patted our fender with elaborate mockery. “I’ll kill the bastard,” Dad shouted. “I swear I’ll kill that goddamn ape if he scratches my fender.” “Oh-h-h …” my stepmother sang on a high note I’d never heard before. “You’ll get us all killed. Honey, my heart.” The man, who my father told us was a “pimp” (whatever that might be), bowed to unheard applause, pulled his hat down over one eye like a Parisian and ambled on, letting us pass. We hurried up five flights of dirty, broken stairs, littered with empty pint bottles, bags of garbage and two dolls (both white, I noticed, and blond and mutilated), past landings and open doors, which gave me glimpses of men playing cards and, across the hall, a grandmother alone and asleep in an armchair with antimacassars. Her radio was playing that Negro music. Her brown cotton stockings had been rolled down below her black knees. Blanche we found wailing and shouting, “My baby, my baby!” as she hopped and danced in circles of pain around her daughter, whose hand, half lopped off, was spouting blood. My father gathered the girl up in his arms and we all rushed off to the emergency room of a hospital.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  Eric’s just so damned irresponsible with his finances. He makes enough. In case you don’t remember, he’s got a college degree. He does computer programming for a company in town. He just doesn’t know how to manage his money. Half the time he doesn’t record his debits, though I paddle his butt every time an overdraft notice comes in. It really pisses me off. I’ve never bounced a check in my life. Personally, I think that’s because when I was a kid, I got turned over my pop’s knee whenever I screwed up. Eric had never been disciplined a day in his life until he met me. The week after we moved out here, Eric’s car died and he needed another one to get back and forth to work. His credit is so bad that the bank wouldn’t finance him. Can’t say as I blame them. When I finally agreed to cosign for the loan, I made it clear it was one thing for him to screw up his own credit, but he was not going to mess with mine. I was real blunt about it. I told him if he was so much as one day late on a payment, just one day, I’d take a switch to him. He agreed. I thought this time he’d manage to be responsible. After five years together, I suppose I should have known better. Things went along pretty well for a couple of months. The new place is everything we’ve always wanted: out in the country, the upstairs half of an old farmhouse; no neighbors to speak of, except for the Pulaskis, a retired couple—our landlords—who live downstairs. We’ll be watching the place for them in the winter while they’re in Florida. Hell, there’s even room for my vegetable garden. I have to admit, I’ve been feeling pretty damned domestic. Then last Friday afternoon, Eric pulled into the driveway just as I was getting out of my car. Usually he gets home a half hour or so after me, so I figured something was up. He sounded real nonchalant when we walked in the door. That made me suspicious, especially after he hurried up the driveway ahead of me so he’d be the one getting the mail. I pretended to be busy while he sorted through the day’s delivery, mostly junk, but out of the corner of my eye I saw one of those yellow Insufficient Funds envelopes I’d learned to recognize from his earlier exploits. Eric paled and put the envelope in his pocket, but he didn’t say anything, just went back to the bedroom to get out of his work clothes. I could feel myself starting to get hot. I knew his car payment had been due that week, but I decided to wait and see what he’d do. I’d changed and was reheating the spaghetti sauce for dinner when Eric finally came back into the kitchen. He leaned up against the counter next to me.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  At a press conference, the chief of police—whose refrain for opposing hiring gay cops had been What-about-when-they-deal-with-boys?—offered to discuss sex—“tomorrow.” There was much joking about the cops and the hypocrisy exposed. “Since when does there have to be violence in order for sexual misconduct to occur? Many a child molester is a kindly old soul,” read a letter in the Los Angeles Times. Another: “Comforting to learn that the officers have been permitted to remain on duty—hopefully protecting us from gay bars, nude beaches, and massage parlors.” And: “For those of us liberals who wanted heterosexuals to have an opportunity to prove themselves worthy of public trust, this has been a sad year: … heterosexual sex scandals in the U.S. Congress … heterosexual sex scandals in the Los Angeles Police Department.” Amid the understandable glee in the gay community, there was much bitterness: Had 30 gay scoutmasters been allegedly involved with 6 teenage boys, would any police spokesman have insisted there was “no sex scandal”? Would the investigation have been conducted quietly? Would the accused still be employed instead of having been taken, handcuffed, to jail cells and released, if at all, on staggering bails? Would it have mattered that the boys had given their consent—might even have sought out the scoutmasters? That there had been no violence? That there were no outraged parents? No. The police would have generated the outrage, names and photographs would have been released, television cameras would have explored campgrounds for discarded bubblegum wrappers, cops would lecture against the gay menace. There would not have been a promised discussion of the sex scandal … “tomorrow”—it would have been discussed yesterday, today, and tomorrow and tomorrow. The reality was that straight cops were involved in the scandal. The matter had been exposed only because of the chance-taking of an obscure newspaper and a daring reporter. From news story to news story it was becoming clear that the legal charges against the men involved were fading fast. (Misdemeanor—not felony—charges were finally filed against 5 cops, now identified and ranging in age from twenty-four to thirty-four, for unlawful sexual intercourse and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. A one-year statute of limitations had precluded possible prosecution of any of the others; several were relieved of their duties, some suspended pending hearings, and one was totally cleared.) But the frantic hypocrisy of memorandums and rationalized bigotry, of frenzied speeches warning of the danger of gay police officers in dealing with children—that had been revealed.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  The figure presented an increase of 17.5% over 1974 figures.” —Los Angeles Times , January 7, 1976 “The Los Angeles City Attorney's … office now handles up to 500 gay-bar arrests a year, and many of them … involve offenses no more serious than patrons holding hands or dancing together.” —Los Angeles Times , Editorial, April 24, 1974 ELDERLY WOMAN RAPED, ROBBED “An elderly woman was raped and robbed in her West Hollywood apartment, police said. It was the 37th such incident in Los Angeles’ West Side since police began their search for the so-called West Side Rapist in November, 1974.” —Los Angeles Times , May 10, 1976 “We used to have to stake out in [a certain public] restroom—a lovely job, you can imagine. Talk about where have all the flowers gone, let me tell you. So we would have to make arrests down there, and one gay painted a sign on the wall—an arrow—and it said: ‘Vice Cops Watch Here.’ And it pointed up to a screen on the wall where, indeed, we would be concealed…. The L.A.P.D. has always maniacally prosecuted vice and victimless crimes far beyond what they have to do…. Well, the police will beat up anybody…. Let me tell you about reality…. If a guy [arrested] hits you, being a human being … you hit him back, only you don't hit him back once, you hit him back three times or four or five or however many it takes to get the rage out of your system, because you're a human being…. He knocks one tooth out, you knock all his teeth out…. Just life. So when a gay says: ‘Cops beat us up.

• From Escape (2007)

  “I really don’t care if Barbara’s upset with me,” I said to Tammy. “If she wants privacy when her babies are born, she can allow me the same.” Little did I know I’d launched a war. Tammy went to see Barbara at the clinic the next morning. She told her I didn’t want any of my sister wives coming to the birth of my babies and that I felt none of them had the right to invade my privacy. Exactly. Barbara was furious. She said the only reason she had private births was that Merril felt it was required in her situation but not for any of his other wives. What right did I have to say who could be present when my babies were born? Tammy came back intending to continue the argument from the night before. She said Barbara felt I was in outright rebellion and needed to be disciplined. Barbara said that if I was uncomfortable with just a few people in the delivery room, then she would ensure that many people were there as punishment. Once Merril sanctioned this, she said I’d have no right to object. A month later I heard Tammy paging me on the intercom. She said Cathleen, who was due to give birth any day, had gone to the clinic in Hildale. Merril wanted all the wives to come and visit her, but Tammy said she wasn’t going to give birth until the next day. When I got to the clinic I was surprised not to find anyone in the waiting room. One of the women who worked there approached me. “Oh, there you are. Everyone was wondering when you’d get here.” I didn’t understand what she meant at first. “They are back there in the delivery room.” Then it hit me. I’d been tricked. She led me back to a small room in the clinic. It was crammed with people staring at Cathleen, who was in anguished labor. Merril smiled when he saw the shock on my face. He offered me his chair, which was right next to Cathleen. I sat down because my head was spinning. I’d never witnessed another woman give birth and didn’t want to. I was eight months pregnant and terrified by what I was seeing. Cathleen was writhing in pain and grunting and groaning with each intense contraction. People looked at her with disdain. The small room was crammed with Merril and his six wives, plus five or six of his unmarried daughters. It was difficult for Aunt Lydia to move around because the room was so packed.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  All seven of us squeezed into my father’s Cadillac and rolled off into a chilly night gray-blue and streaked with the smell of burning wood. My stepmother, Mrs. Cork and Kevin and I were in the back seat; Peter was soon sleeping on his father’s shoulder up front, as my father drove. The dinner had left me bleak with rage. Something (books, perhaps) had given me a quite different idea of how people should talk and feed. I entertained fancy ideas about elegant behavior and cuisine and friendship. When I grew up I would always be frank, loving and generous. We’d feast on iced grapes and wine; we’d talk till dawn about the heart and listen to music. I don’t belong here, I shouted at them silently. I wanted to run through surf or speed off with a brilliant blond in a convertible or rhapsodize on a grand piano somewhere in Europe. Or I wanted the white and gold doors to open as my loving, true but not-yet-found friends came toward me, their gently smiling faces lit from below by candles on the cake. This longing for lovers and friends was so full within me that it could spill over at any provocation—from listening to my own piano rendition of a waltz, from looking at a reproduction of two lovers in kimonos and tall clogs under an umbrella shielding them from slanted lines of snow or from sensing a change of seasons (the first smell of spring in winter, say). Once, when I was Kevin’s age, I’d wanted my father to love me and take me away. I had sat night after night outside his bedroom door in the dark, crazy with fantasies of seducing him, eloping with him, covering him with kisses as we shot through space against a night field flowered with stars. But now I hated him and felt he was what I must run away from. To be sure, had he pulled the car off the highway right now and turned to say he loved me, I would have taken his hand and walked with him away from the stunned vehicle that creaked as it cooled, our only spoor the sparks flying from Dad’s cigar.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  In Boulder, Colorado, a university town with a reputation for easy-going liberalism, voters rejected by a 2-to-1 margin an ordinance that would have forbidden job discrimination against homosexuals…. “[In the fight in New York City] the Uniformed Fire Officers, in a $10,000 ad campaign, charged that it ‘would force an employer to hire a pervert… expose our children to the influence of sodomites … destroy the teamwork of the fire department … permit sodomites, perverts, and deviates to live and work where they choose.’ The archdiocese newspaper Catholic News called homosexuality ‘a menace to family life….’” — Newsweek , May 20, 1975 CHURCHES REVIEW ATTITUDE ON ‘GAYS’ “… The American Lutheran Church drew some fire recently when it was learned that a $2,000 grant was made to the gay caucus in its ranks…. Tor a major board of one of the country's major denominations to identify through its budget with an organization promoting blatant transgression of the revealed word of Cod is a sign of a sinking back to the level of official immorality …. ’” —Los Angeles Times , July 7, 1975 “A last and particularly important finding [based on a study of the effects of liberalized laws in certain states], given the present concern for crime control, was that 50% of the police reported that decriminalizing private homosexual behavior had allowed them to spend more time on serious crime….” —Los Angeles Times , Op-Ed Page, October 16, 1975 INTELLIGENCE UNIT RULES ELUDE POLICE PANELISTS “… The current 1975-76 PDID [Public Disorder Intelligence Division, a Los Angeles police division which gathers information on dissident groups and individuals] budget of $3.26 million pays for 91 sworn personnel and 15 civilians. This is nearly double the number of sworn personnel—52—assigned to robbery-homicide and compares with 44 assigned to burglary-auto theft, 63 to bunco-forgery, 144 to administrative narcotics, and 72 to administrative vice.” —Los Angeles Times , December 28, 1975 BURGLARIES ON RISE, D.A. SAYS “Substantial increases in burglaries during the last ten years in both the city and county of Los Angeles were reported…. In the city, the volume of burglaries climbed from 50,771 in 1965 to 67,799 in 1975. Last year 22.1% were solved.” —Los Angeles Times , December 5, 1975 HOMICIDES LEAD 3.6% JUMP IN LA. CRIME RATE “… Homicides in Los Angeles rose to 619—the first time murders had topped 600 for a year.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  He would not have considered it had Farnland not mentioned to him that his former apprentice ran PNB and would be interested in seeing some of Charles’s tape if it included parts of this new work. It was a blatant quid pro quo, Charles knew. Don’t say anything about fondling the little boys and he could have a chance to dance for PNB, which was not a great company, it was true, though it was a little better than he could otherwise reasonably hope for. But the knee, which had started to burn at the start of fall, now throbbed regularly. “Maybe you should take it easy. Lay off,” Farnland said with real human kindness in his voice. Charles watched Farnland’s hand rise just a little, like he meant to reach out for him. Charles shifted away at the thought of that touch, and Farnland’s hand fell back into place. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m more than fine. I’ll live.” “We can get Viktor to dance for you. It’s no problem. He’d probably love it. No need for you to make it worse just for a rehearsal.” Charles cleared his throat and stood a little taller. He summoned what heat he had left burning in him and bore down on the choreographer. “It’s mine,” he said. “I’ll dance it.” “You could have a long career, Charles. Teaching. Dancing isn’t the only thing.” The choreographer slapped Charles’s thigh with the back of his hand—“Think about it. Don’t be dumb. You know how many teachers end up gimps? And why?” “I’m doing your faggy little dance. Ease off.” Farnland wet his lips as though he had received something appetizing. Charles watched his eyes go glossy and distant. It was the same expression that came across Farnland’s face during rehearsals when he watched Viktor shadow Charles, learning the overly emotive choreography of the middle section. It was supposed to be drawn from The Four Temperaments but lacked that piece’s emotional reserve. On Viktor, Farnland’s choreography was hectic, scattered. On Charles, because he lacked Viktor’s speed, it had a certain gravitas. Or so Charles liked to think. But during rehearsal last week, he had looked up to see Farnland watching Viktor as he made some adjustments to the ending combination. That same distant, wantful gloss of the eyes, the subtle shifting of the lips as the music wound up to its slow conclusion. “Well, just remember, we’re all after the same thing.” “Right. Pathos .” “Fucker,” Farnland said, but then he smiled, showing Charles his teeth, gnarly and green-yellow. Charles smiled back. Pathos was what Farnland had called his “dumb number.” It was, he said often during rehearsal, art’s most noble pursuit. One evening, one of the other dancers had jokingly said, What about ethos? And Farnland, from a seated position, had flung a hard-shell water bottle at her head. Then he’d shouted them all down for ten minutes about making snide little remarks and the terrors of their generation.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Danny. VOICE OVER: Consenting Adults, Explorer Scout Girls, and Glittering Bisexuals VOICE OVER: Consenting Adults, Explorer Scout Girls, and Glittering Bisexuals 1 “J UDGMENT AFFIRMED .” With only two words, the Supreme Court said that homosexuals are not necessarily entitled to the right of privacy ensured by the Constitution. It did so tacitly by allowing to stand, without hearing, a decision of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia upholding a Virginia statute making homosexual acts between consenting adults, even in private, a crime punishable with up to three years' imprisonment and not less than one. The state has the overriding freedom to promote “morality and decency,” their honors declared, adding, “We cannot say that the statute offends the Bill of Rights.” The case was brought up by “John Doe” plaintiffs to test a statute declaring anal and oral sex a felony, whether in public or private. Because the statute did not differentiate between heterosexual and homosexual acts, the two-man majority on the Virginia court of three judges—one dissenting—clearly had to skirt the issue of concurrently barring such acts for heterosexuals. This it did gingerly by arguing that in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which the plaintiffs had used as their primary basis for argument and in which the Supreme Court struck down a statute forbidding the use of contraceptives, their decision had asserted the right of privacy only in marriage . So much for that. Now they could deal with homosexuals: “… since [homosexuality] is obviously no portion of marriage, home or family life,” the majority opinion thus ignored gay fathers, gay mothers, gay children, “the … question is whether there is any ground for barring Virginia from branding it as criminal. If a State determines that punishment therefor, even when committed in the home, is appropriate in the promotion of morality and decency, it is not for the courts to say that the State is not free to do so.… Fundamentally the State action is simply directed to the suppression of crime.…” “Moreover … the State is not required to show that moral delinquency actually results from homosexuality,” the judges somersaulted. “It is enough … to establish that the conduct is likely to end in a contribution to moral delinquency.… It would indeed be impracticable to prove the actuality of such a consequence,” they acknowledged, but, fuck it, “the law is not so exacting,” their honors snapped testily.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Lost jobs, broken families. Constant fear. Rage. A priest tries to organize a “Homosexuals Anonymous.” Thou may want to, but thou shalt not actually fuck or suck. It results immediately in a suicide attempt. Two adult males are followed by cops to a completely secluded dark area. After minutes, the cops flash lights into the car, pull the men out, beat them. Convicted of sodomy, the two are sentenced to eight years in prison. The Supreme Court refuses them a hearing. Cowardly punks crushed tightly in hot cars, hot knees touching hot knees in hateful intimacy, throw rocks, bottles, and refuse at cars in cruising areas. “Fags!” they scream, echoing the cops and looking forward to the night they will bring guns with them. Rage at law as criminal, doctors as perpetrators of sick myths. Religion as killer. Rage at the selective use of Biblical scripture to condone hatred. The only main minority never to receive even token acknowledgment on a major-party platform is the homosexual minority. Even the vague phrase “sexual preference” has been knocked out. “You are polluted and filthy, ” reads a pamphlet clrculated at gay gatherings by “Jesus people.” “You will not be gay in hell, but tormented far worse than in this life.” “Homosexual acts are inherently immoral, abnormal, perverted, disgraceful, degenerate, degrading, and criminal,” screeches an “Information Paper” issued by a Los Angeles Deputy Chief of Police for wide police and “constituent” circulation. The victim of a mugging becomes the criminal if he's gay. An easily claimed homosexual advance is an acceptable defense for murder: “1 beat the queer because he tried to make me, sir.” “KILL FAGS!”—words scratched on walls of Hollywood toilets. In this context the sexual outlaw flourishes. The pressures produce him, create his defiance. Knowing that each second his freedom may be ripped away arbitrarily, he lives fully at the brink. Promiscuity is his righteous form of revolution. No stricture—legal, medical, religious—will ever stop him. It will only harden his defiance. Neither sinful, criminal, nor sick—he knows that to try to force him not to be a homosexual is sinful, criminal, and sick—and as impossible as forcing a heterosexual not to be a heterosexual. Why is the homosexual hated? Since he is not a child molester nor a seducer of the unwilling, how does he threaten the straight world? He weakens the “moral fabric”? Did Michelangelo? Da Vinci? Socrates? Did Proust? Did Shakespeare with the sonnets? Did Tchaikovsky? Do we threaten survival of the species? We provide a stopgap against a dangerously burgeoning population. What is the real reason for the hatred? I pause in my talk to this mixed group. Soon I'll go on to define what I believe is the real “gay threat.” Now I look at the audience, and to the homosexuals here I want to say: “You have an untested insurrectionary power that can bring down their straight world.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  “Uh, Steve?” He was looking really nervous and tried to cover it by fiddling with the salt shaker. “Um, I had a little problem with the bank today. Nothing serious,” he said quickly, like he was trying to reassure me. “I took care of it already. But I figured I’d better tell you. You’re busy. We can talk about it later.” Eric was nodding a lot as he talked. As he finished he turned like he was going to walk back into the other room. He froze in midstep when I turned the sauce off and said, “I’m not busy at all. What’s up?” I think he recognized the chill in my voice. I was trying to keep my temper under control, even though I was relieved he was being man enough to admit having screwed up. Honesty is important to me, especially now that we have a home life together. But damn, I was mad at that boy. The week before he’d bought another fancy new video game. I was willing to bet money he hadn’t recorded the transaction, at least until it was too late. Eric hemmed and hawed around the topic, but he finally confessed to writing a bad check for the car payment because—you guessed it—he hadn’t recorded the other debit and a couple more besides. He’d suddenly remembered that morning, but by then it was too late. “I transferred the money from savings though,” he said, still nodding vigorously. “The bank said the payment is credited as of today, so it’s all taken care of. There’s nothing for you to worry about.” “But my credit record still shows a late payment on a loan I cosigned for,” I said coldly. “Well, yeah,” he blushed. “But like I said, I took care of it.” “Then there’s something else we need to take care of,” I said sternly. “What did I tell you would happen if you were late?” “Now Steve, th-there’s no cause to be hasty,” he stammered. His eyes were big as an owl’s. I could tell he was nervous, but I wasn’t in the mood to put up with any of his guff. Times like this, I really wish his father had done his job. “I’m not being hasty, boy,” I said. “I’m angry. And you’re going to get what’s coming to you. Go downstairs and get a switch from the poplar tree.” “Dammit, Steve! It’s just a car payment!” he fumed. “Yes, it is.” I said coldly. “One that you purchased using my credit, and now I’ve got a late payment on my record. I warned you, Eric. I told you what I’d do if this happened, but you didn’t pay one lick of attention. Now you go downstairs and get a switch, or so help me, boy, if I have get it myself, I’ll break it over your butt!”

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  VOICE OVER: Cops and Muggers VOICE OVER: Cops and Muggers W ITHOUT EXCEPTION , every cop who entraps or persecutes homosexuals, every judge who vindictively sentences them, every prosecuting attorney who pushes vengefully for gay convictions, every rabid police chief who rants against homosexuality—without exception each is to some extent at war with his own sexual fears, and those fears are very probably grounded in latent, self-hating homosexuality. The intensity of his unexplored self-doubts determines his danger to true law and order. The main reason for becoming a vice cop on the gay detail is one of suppressed sexuality. Often led by a bleating police chief, the vice cop becomes a tight member of a rival gang against homosexuals. Entrapment—illegal—is rampant and provides cops a sexual exorcism. They dress suggestively in outrageous clothes. Choosing their quarry very selectively, they offer money for sex. They entice cruising gays with overt sexual signals. In public places they fondle themselves. They can thus “pretend” for a short period to be what they fear they are. Instead of making it, they bust the submerged part of themselves. A midnight call from a friend: “I've been busted!—the guy propositioned me! Please get me out!” And you feel the surrogate horror—tonight it's not you. The recurrent assertion (included routinely in virtually every homosexual-arrest report) that cops are responding to “citizens' complaints” is belied by the recent findings of two Los Angeles students, now attorneys, that, out of the total of 646 primarily gay-oriented lewd-conduct arrests occurring in a period in summer, only two were based on “civilian” complaints—and both of those complaints were made by the same security officer in one department store. Policemen effectuated the rest of the busts, over 600 of which were by plainclothesmen or vice cops. Gay promiscuity is visible only to homosexuals and to the cops . Technically, one could bust a cop on a citizen's arrest for enticing and soliciting—creating the so-called “criminal lewd act” the cop ostensibly seeks to curb. That cops flagrantly entrap is underscored by two lawyers who in 1976 gave lie-detector tests to twelve men claiming entrapment under the sex-solicitation statute. Only two of those so arrested failed the test. When so much promiscuous gay sex does undeniably occur, why is entrapment used? Because the real objects of the cops' hatred are all homosexuals—not “criminal” acts. Anyone in a gay area is vulnerable. Every male homosexual lives under the constant threat of arbitrary arrest and a wrecked life.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  She turned it over to find an engraved return address. Mrs. J. J. Strasser Redmond Road South Orange, N.J. Why was Frekki writing to Rusty? She didn’t like this. She sat at the kitchen table for a while, considering her options. Maybe she should steam the envelope open, read the letter, then reglue the envelope. Suzanne had done that once with a letter to her parents from her sister, Dorrie, the one who’d been expelled by Mr. Royer. She’d run off with a guy her parents didn’t approve of, before she’d graduated from high school. Another option—she could open it, read it, then burn it, or hide it in her sock drawer the way she’d hidden the letter from Mike Monsky. But she wouldn’t want Rusty to do that to her. Rusty, who said trust was the single most important part of a relationship. “Remember that, Miri. If you can’t trust, you can’t love.” It was bad enough she’d hidden Mike Monsky’s letter. But that was, at least, addressed to her. This was different. Rusty would be home soon enough. Without Irene to cook for them, they’d been eating pizza, deli sandwiches or scrambled eggs for supper, but tonight they were going to have a roast chicken. Rusty had left instructions from Irene. Miri was to light the oven, season the chicken and put it in to roast. “You can’t go wrong with a roast chicken, baked potatoes and fresh carrots,” Irene told her before she’d left. She’d never tell Irene that Rusty had picked up Birds Eye frozen carrots instead of fresh. At six o’clock Miri heard the front door open and Rusty sang, “I’m home…” She came up the stairs and into the kitchen, where Miri was basting the chicken, per Irene’s instructions. “It smells good in here,” Rusty said, kicking off her shoes and getting out of her coat. She bent over and dropped a kiss on top of Miri’s head. Then she picked up the mail and riffled through it. Miri was almost afraid to watch. She opened Frekki’s note first. Her breathing changed as she read it. “What the hell is this?” “What?” Miri asked. “Did somebody die?” Rusty waved the note in front of Miri’s face. “You met him? You met Mike Monsky and you never told me.” “Mom, I—” “How could you keep such a secret from me? I’m your mother, for god’s sake. How could you betray me this way?” “Mom, I’d never—” “Don’t lie to me!” “I’m not lying. What does it say?” Rusty shoved the note at Miri, and she grabbed it, reading quickly. It said that Mike Monsky was in town and wanted to make a plan regarding their daughter, a plan that would include financial support and visiting rights. It said ever since Mike met Miri he’d been thinking about her. Frekki suggested they meet in the study of Rabbi Beiderman, who counsels many families in difficult situations. Rusty should also feel free to consult a lawyer.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  “You will be responsible!” I snapped. “Do you hear me, Eric?” Swish crack! “You will make your car payments on time,” Swish crack!! “And you will be responsible with your finances!” Swish crack!!! Each stroke raised a long, dark welt, the edges deeply defined and surrounded by a spiderweb of thin pink lines from the outer twigs. Eric howled with each stroke, his entire butt quickly flushing bright red as I blistered him from the top of his firm young ass to the tender skin where his thighs met his lower cheeks. Eric was hollering at the top of his lungs by then, pleading he’d had enough and promising he’d never do it again. He was being so loud I’d be surprised if Mr. Pulaski didn’t have to turn his hearing aid off. I knew how much that switch burned. Like I said, my pop made sure I got it when I needed it. But I still whipped that boy’s butt at least a dozen times more. By the time I was done, every inch of Eric’s backside glowed beet-red and looked like it was laced with bee stings. Eric was bawling his eyes out. But he really needed that whipping, and I damn well gave it to him. Eric didn’t even try to put his clothes on the rest of that night. He walked around naked, snuffling every once in a while and needing lots of hugs and reassurances of my affection. And when he went to bed right after dinner, I jerked him off while I rubbed some cream into his sore, hot butt and told him the matter was over, so he understood the discipline is part of how much I love him. The next day, Eric apologized again, this time sincerely, for the late payment. He sealed the deal with a blow job that damn near knocked me flat. Monday morning, he set up an automatic payroll deduction to take care of his car payment, though he said he plans to check it each month, just in case. Not the way I do things, but he finally appears to be learning to manage his finances in a way that works for him. Mr. Pulaski, well, he’s given us his permanent permission to cut as many switches as we need for me to keep my boy in line. Eric even thanked him, though he stood back out of the way of that cane when he did it. But they were both smiling. Like I said, Eric’s a good kid, he just needs his Dad to make sure he doesn’t step out of line. I’ll write again soon. Hope things are going well in your neck of the woods. Steve NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN Dale Chase

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  I walked across the road and stuck out my thumb, looking to catch a ride or two back into town. I’m never actually trying to go anywhere. I just like getting picked up by older men and taken for rides. It’s the most satisfying form of travel I know: a Daddy every day. PROFESSOR PAPI Randy Turk I don’t get this shit about the Daddy thing. I just don’t get it. A guy who’s way past fifty is considered sexy? Hot? Please. I don’t like it when a younger man calls me “Daddy” online. In fact, I get downright pissed off and block those guys from talking with me again. What’s up with their obsession with older guys? When I came out at nineteen, I wanted guys my age. Once my college roommate shot cum into my mouth, I knew I couldn’t go back to fucking my then-girlfriend. So, for forty years, I’ve been sucking cock and fucking ass. I still prefer guys my age, but most of my fuckbuddies are too busy having sex with guys young enough to be their grandsons. I find that too pervy. Besides, I’m an economics professor and I can’t afford the possibility of getting caught fucking a student. It’s gotten way too easy for a student to accuse a teacher of sexual harassment if he doesn’t get the grade he wants. Luckily, everyone knows I’m a hard-ass. It’s a good reputation to have—anytime a kid accuses me of handing out too low a grade, one look at the rest of his semester’s grades shows what a crybaby he is. It’s happened to me twice, but on both counts, I was in the right. Even the parents called to thank me for standing my ground. They admitted that their kids could be a bit arrogant. The other night when I logged onto this website, a guy—practically a kid, for god’s sake—IMed me hello. He was eighteen; his age was posted next to a shot of himself grinning like a blond banshee in front of a bathroom mirror. He looked like just another smug college student who’d coasted through high school without doing all of his homework. I was about to delete his hello so I could focus on a few emails when he typed, i heard about u. What the fuck had he heard about me? like what? I typed. let’s meet Who the fuck did he think he was? I decided not to answer. u don’t like being called daddy, right? Of course. I’d specified “no daddy chasers” in my profile. you got that right now leave me alone boy i don’t like it when older guys call me boy thats because you dont know whats good for you plus youre too young for me u just proved what everyone said about u on here

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  She said damn and hell and drank whiskey and had two moods—rage (she was always shouting at Kevin) and mock rage, an appealingly ardent sort of simmering, Virtue Stymied: “All right then, be gone with you,” she’d say, feisty and submissive, or “Of course you’ll be having another drink.” It was all playacting and intended to be viewed as such. She had “temperament” because she was Irish and had been trained as an opera singer. If she wandered into a room and found Kevin’s T-shirt balled and hurled in a chair, she’d start bellowing, “Kevin O’Malley Cork, get in here and get in here now. Look alive!” Nothing could restrain these outbursts, not even the knowledge that Kevin was out of earshot. Her arms would stiffen, her clenched fists would dig into her slim flanks and bunch up her dress, her nose would pale and her thin hair, the color of weathered bricks, would seem to go into shock and rise to reveal still more of her scalp. Because of her operatic training, her voice penetrated every corner of the house and had an alto after-hum that buzzed on in the round metal tabletop from Morocco. During the mornings she chain-smoked, drank coffee and sat around in a silk robe that revealed and highlighted her bony body. With her freckled face, devoid of makeup, rising above this slippery red sheen, she looked like an angry young man trapped in travesty as a practical joke. This couple, with their liquor and cigarettes and roguish, periodic spats, struck my stepmother as “cheap.” Or rather, the woman was cheap (men can’t be cheap). The husband, my father later decided, wasn’t “stable” (their money was by no means secure). Though they lived in a mansion with a swimming pool and antique furniture, they rented it, probably the furniture as well.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  They then rented and furnished an office to interview about one hundred fifty applicants, who were told their expenses would be paid on “gambling junkets.” The rest? “Yes, it's entirely up to you, honey,” an officer was quoted. The selected women were invited to a party; it would be to their benefit to be liked by the “gamblers” there, the deliberate message was conveyed. Now the cops rented a plush hotel suite, with bar, buffet, poker setups. They posed as gamblers and elevator operators and waited to spring on the “sexy hostesses” they had lured. Fifty-four women were arrested for soliciting. Subsequently, pointing out that it would be unlikely that a jury would be convinced there was no entrapment, the city attorney dropped all charges against the women. “An awful lot of effort for this,” he said about the wasteful operation. Finally the official silence surrounding the mugging I had witnessed is broken by a fierce letter to the Times from the police chief: “… The Times published an article [in which the writer stated that] eight days prior to publication [he] had come to the aid of a fellow citizen who had been attacked and robbed. As chief of police, let me publicly commend [him] for those efforts. “His article, however, so bitterly denounced police-officer conduct as to cause me to order an immediate investigation. The findings… resulted in the disciplining of two officers. “[The writer] and the victim encountered [the] two police officers en route to a fight-in-progress call. The officers continued on their way after advising [him] and the victim to report the occurrence to Hollywood area police headquarters. The judgment displayed by those officers was not in keeping with department standards. This explains why they were disciplined. “Curiously enough, [the writer] accepted their advice without serious protest.… If [he] merits the department's gratitude for his initial actions, I find him no less deserving of reproach for his extravagant charges of police indifference and apathy. “He and the victim waited thirty or more minutes before a desk officer was available to take the crime report.… To attribute that delay to officer rudeness, boredom, or disinterest is wholly unwarranted. “I imagine [he] … became [a] happier man on seeing his labors in print. Unfortunately, a multitude who read his story probably believed it. “[He] is a clever writer [of] artfully constructed phrases … employed in support of conclusions he obviously was determined to reach in impugning the competency of the many officers present. “… His arrival at the headquarters coincided precisely with a change of watch. The lobby was crowded with … officers going off duty or about to assume patrol duties. This unhappy condition accounts for the ‘many milling officers.’… “Now the desk officer he eventually talked with was also serving as equipment control officer.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  They were taken to a gray rectangular cop-fortress of a building. Both were fingerprinted and stripped. In defiance, Jim flexed his naked body. Later, the hickish cop took him into a room alone. “That guy wanted to give you head, right?” “No, man,” Jim said. “I saw it.” “Nothing happened.” “Why were you buttoning your pants on the path?” “Just noticed the top button was open.” “I saw him give you head.” The voice was becoming increasingly agitated. “You couldn't have, it didn't happen.” “It can go better for you if you— …” “Nothing happened,” Jim said. Then angrily, “Look, are you getting off on your lie?” Jim was booked, locked in a barred cell alone with a dirty toilet and two naked cots like iron skeletons. Only when he was bailed hours later did he learn the cop was charging them with a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison. Of all the times he might have been busted while making it in the park, it had occurred with terrible irony when nothing had happened. All they could prove to the judge who would hear the case, Jim's attorney decided, was that from the distance the cop had clumsily designated—twenty feet away from the enclosure—he could not possibly have seen what he claimed, Jim's cock inserted in the youngman's mouth, the placement of hands; the pants…. In court, they showed movies of the terrain. The judge shifted the trial to the park. There he saw the impossibility of the cop's statements. He also saw the sexhunters lurking. After eight months of court appearances, Jim and the youngman were convicted of a misdemeanor not requiring sex registration. They were fined six hundred and fifty dollars each. Nothing happened, Jim's mind kept challenging the reality. And even if it had! That same afternoon, he returned to the exact area of the park, and made it, over and over and over. MONTAGE: The City MONTAGE: The City L os A NGELES IS HAUNTED . By dead people, dead places. Pershing Square. Tanned derelicts, tanned preachers, tanned malehustlers, tanned innocent sinners, and powdered-white queens—all defied smog and the cops in old Pershing Square. Cone. Gone with the lazy indigent afternoons; banished by parking lots and cleared paths; no protective shadows. And no more sweet angelsisters and their picture of Christ bleeding wax. Oh, and no more Jenny-Lu bumping “Lord-uh” in heavenly orgasm under benign pubic-fringed palmtrees. No more Saint Moses with flowing white hair and admonitions of hell, tomorrow. Gone with Clifton's Cafeteria, across the street. A phosphorescent Hawaii of fake brooks and plastic neon palmtrees, and lei-ed ladies in Biblical drag, really—and, below, in The Garden, amid moaning organ music, a giant statue of Christ, meditating. Swept away with Angels’ Flight, the motored lift from a low street to a heavenly high one, where ubiquitous palm-trees waited as if to escort you even higher. Gone.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  26 batur iam meus dominus. At ille susceptum novicium famulum trahebat ad domum statimque illinc de primo limine proclamat : * Puellae, servum vobis pul- chelluni en ecce mercata perduxi." Sed illae puellae chorus erat cinaedorum, quae statim exultantes in gaudium, fracta et rauca et effeminata voce clamores 386 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VIII easily conject; for if you would thrust your nose in his tail you shall perceive how patient he is.” Thus the crier wittily mocked the old rascal; but he, perceiving his taunts and jests, waxed very angry, saying: ‘‘ Away, doting crier, thou deaf and dumb carrion, I pray the omnipotent and omniparent Syrian goddess, Saint Sabadius, Bellona with the Idaean mother, and Venus with her Adonis to strike out both thine eyes that with taunting mocks hast scoffed me in this sort. Dost thou think that I will put a goddess upon the back of any fierce beast, whereby her divine image should be thrown down on the ground, and so I, poor wretch, should be compelled (tearing my hair) to look for some physician to help her as she lies fallen?" When I heard him speak this, I thought with myself suddenly to leap up like a mad ass, to the intent he should not buy me, thinking me very fierce; but incontinently, like an eager buyer, he prevented my thought, and would lay down my price for me, even seventeen pence: then my master was glad, being weary of me, and receiving the money, delivered me by mine halter of straw to my new master, who was called Philebus. He carried his new servant home, and when he came to the door of the house, he called out his troop, saying: “Behold, my daughtes,! what a gentle servant I have bought for you." Yet were these daughters a band of lewd and naughty fellows, and at first they were marvellous glad, prattling and shouting for joy with their broken and harsh voices, like a troop of women, in discordant sounds, and 1 The feminine is ironically used for the effeminate crew of priests. So in the Attis poem of Catullus (LX1II) the ‘hero, after his emasculation, speaks of himself in the feminine gender. 385 27 LUCIUS APULEIUS absonos intollunt,rati scilicet vere quempiam hominem servulum ministerio suo paratum. Sed postquam non cervam pro virgine sed asinum pro homine succi- daneum videre, nare detorta magistrum suum varie cavillantur: non enim servum sed maritum illum scilicet sibi perduxisse: et * Heus" aiunt “Cave ne solus exedas tam bellum scilicet pullulum, sed nobis quoque tuis palumbulis nonnunquam im- pertias."