SEXIS WRONG

they did not in the courtroom, where they passed nudie magazines
from one to another, gingerly holding them between
thumb and forefinger with their eyes turned solemnly heavenward.
Though I had no connection with those magazines,
the charge against me was a conspiracy charge. A finding
that the magazines were obscene could send me up that
well-known creek without a badminton racket for a paddle.
A desk clerk at our motel whispered to me that our rooms had
been bugged. I am sure he told the truth, because he whispered
this from the next pillow, and by morning it was common
knowledge that my night had not been spent alone. Yes,
we were athletic, but not that athletic. Plus, my mail at home
was left at the doorstep, the content displayed blatantly on
He was the first homosexual
protagonist in fiction to be openly
gay and proud of it.
against a lamppost on a rainy night, as I saw it.
I had acquired a long, hard passion for the gay male of the
present and decided that he was what I wanted to write
about. Problem was, gay males were verboten in the current
publishing climate. The gay world wasn’t just a “twilight
world” anymore—it was darker than Sadie’s backside, as
someone used to say.
Our common travail notwithstanding, Milt and soon practically
every other publisher declined my overtures. They all
welcomed something from me in the heterosexual or lesbian
vein. Fresno publishers Sanford Aday and Wallace de Ortega
Maxey had recently been sentenced to twenty-five years
in prison for publishing obscene books—that is to say, gay
books, and tepid indeed, but the fact of their
homosexual themes in and of itself rendered
them obscene. Not even the bravest publishers
would risk venturing into that realm.
top of the envelopes, so I could understand that it had been
read.
The foreplay was over. I was on Mister Schoof’s bed, and he
misused me endlessly for four long months.
In the end, the forces of law and order did let me go, if reluctantly.
I was acquitted on a technicality, when the judge
tossed the conspiracy charge at the end of the trial (the only
charge in which I was named, you will recall). The others
were convicted, though those convictions were eventually
overturned.
Free, then, but my innocence was gone forever. I had been
screwed, and like any abused virgin, I felt sore and violated.
I came home from Sioux City with a burning resentment for
the callous disregard that had been displayed for what I considered
some pretty fundamental rights. There’s a reason the
Bill of Rights mentions freedom of speech up front: Without
that, the rest doesn’t amount to beans, does it?
And all had been for naught. One would suppose that, in part
at least, the indictment must have been intended to discourage
me from further activity in the paperback business. Ironically,
the result was exactly the opposite.
I’m not sure that, otherwise, I would have pursued a paperback-writing
career. Gloria had been a whim, really, but I had
no interest in writing of faux lesbians.
I was still hurting, however, and I felt practically compelled
to write at least one more book, to show Mister Schoof that
I was not intimidated. Besides, I quickly discovered I could
write a book a week, and get paid, too. Better than leaning
Still, I remained stubbornly convinced that there was a large
and untapped market for gay books. This was still five years
or so before the Stonewall uprising, but gays were already
coming out of their closets and dancing together in bars and
clubs. The scene was jumping. The love that dared not speak
its name was scribbling it on restroom walls:
“My mother made me a queer.”
“If I buy her the yarn, will she make me one?”
I wrote my gay novel, The Why Not, and cast it into the waters,
and who should fish it out but Earl Kemp? Prince that he
was, Earl didn’t even mind about my virginity. Anyway, I was
still a “gay paperback virgin,” which is what I started out to
tell you originally.
I will confess, The Why Not was not a great novel, but it got
good reviews (some of them may have been written by my
mother, though she denied it), and it sold well enough that Earl
welcomed more of the same. For an encore, I proposed a spy
spoof, and The Man From C.A.M.P. (by “Don Holliday”) charged
boldly into bookstores in 1966—and caused a sensation.
“The Man” was Jackie Holmes, who made a mockery of
every cliché regarding homosexuals. He was blonde, pretty,
and effeminate, but he was also tough as nails and could outfight,
outshoot, outrun the best of them. His white poodle,
Sophie, was trained to kill with her razor-sharp teeth. Best
of all, one could say that gay pride started with Jackie. He
was the first homosexual protagonist in fiction to be openly
gay and proud of it. Happily, he cemented the partnership
between Earl Kemp and myself, as well as a friendship that
has lasted until the present day, an unlikely coupling indeed,
as we have both agreed often.
228 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG