WHORES, QUEERS AND OTHERS by Philip Barrows

Author:Philip Barrows
Format: mobi
Publisher: Olympia Press

31

IN THE NEXT TEN YEARS, I TALKED WITH at least five thousand homosexuals. I suppose I should explain just what or who, I mean by that word. First of all, I do not agree with many homos, queens, fairies, fags, faggots, queers, gay guys—or whatever epithet you use—that every man is a latent homosexual and would be an active one if he met the right guy at the right time in the right place. While there is undoubtedly some love for members of his own sex in every man—what a hell if there were not—I don't consider that homosexual. Nor do I apply the word to those who may have “fooled around” with other males before the age of marriage, when drunk or during periods of sexual segregation in colleges, prisons, the armed forces, etc.

I mean only those who physically, socially, and financially have the opportunity to have sex with normally attractive women yet prefer men more than 10% of the time. I allow this 10% “margin of error” because many normal men occasionally have sex with a queer just for “kicks.” But, would he do it more than 10% of the time if he had complete freedom of choice and no danger of anyone's knowing about it? Many married upright-citizen parent friends of mine would fail this test.

What causes this preference? Even after four years of psychoanalysis I glimpse the answers only momentarily and vaguely as in a drifting fog or the haunting memory of dream fragments. Perhaps in the accumulation of these ruinous incidents you can discern, as archeologists do, some pattern which led me to this point. Or, a better comparison might well be with those doctors who diagnose diseases from smears of shit.

My mother sent my father to meet me at the boat and drive me home, but I wasn't in any hurry to get back in her clutches. I had the whole long summer stretching ahead of me in Maine, and wanted to collect some happy memories to take up there. During dinner in New York, I explained that I had to go down to Washington for a week or so to wind up some projects I'd been working on and submit my final reports.

He believed me, overawed, perhaps, by the photos I'd sent home from time to time which showed me talking to ambassadors at embassy receptions. He was much older than I had remembered, and completely ill-at-ease. He wasn't interested in my cocktail-party chitchat, and yet he had nothing to say himself. He'd kissed me on the lips when he met me—disgusting habit that his father has, too—and there was love and care in his eyes, but we had nothing to say to each other. If I'd been honest with him, it would only have hurt him. When he dropped me off at Penn Station, he made me take a hundred dollars—

“Just in case you run short! Take it! Remember, you can always ask me for more if you need any help!” It was the only way he could express his love.

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