Fag Bashing '66

by Lawrence Livermore

	It was another one of those excruciatingly boring nights.  We'd already hung around the corner since it got dark, and now it was close to 11.  Nobody wanted to go home, but if we didn't think of something soon, guys would start drifting away.
	"Let's go downtown and beat up some queers," suggested someone.
	That was a novel idea.  We'd gone downtown and beat up people before, but never queers.  In fact most of us had never even seen a queer, at least not that we knew about.
	There were rumors about this old guy that ran the sporting goods store over on the highway, how he'd invite teenagers into the store after dark and give them beer and cigarettes and show them dirty movies and do stuff to them, but it was always just rumors, because no one would ever admit to actually having been there or seen any of these things.
	Since none of us knew any queers, and only had a vague idea of what they did that made them queer, it was kind of curious that we would hate and fear them so much.  Back in seventh or eighth grade the almost universal putdown among the boys had become some variation of "You're a cocksucker" or "Suck my dick."  Where did all these sexually repressed Catholic boys get such ideas?  Not from experience, I'm pretty sure; this obsession seemed like it had to be something almost primal.
	Or maybe they all had secret fantasies about the kinds of things they could do with members of their own sex, but were so horrified to find such thoughts running through their heads that they tried to draw attention away from themselves by accusing others of doing what they were afraid to dream about.
	That would probably be the standard psychological explanation, but I doubt it's that simple.  I can't speak for the other kids, because even though I hung out with them for a big part of my teenage years, I don't know much about what they thought or felt.  Opening up to your buddies about what you feel inside may be semi-trendy today, but in 1966 it would quickly get you branded as a fag.
	Not being able to talk about feelings tended to make you pretty confused about what you yourself felt.  If an idea seemed even a little weird, experience soon taught you to file it away somewhere where it wouldn't be likely to embarrass you by slipping out in some unguarded moment.  Come to think of it, we were always on guard, standing or sitting rigidly, eyes constantly darting around to see what others might be thinking of us, speaking or moving in only the broadest and most stylized gestures.  
	Most of it was aimed at making sure no one doubted how tough we were.  Maintaining that kind of image was especially difficult for a boy like me, who weighed all of 110 pounds, liked reading books, and thought studying Latin was fun.
	At least that's what I'd been like; as I got older I was pulled between the violently anti-intellectual bent of the gang I ran with and the stultifyingly complacent quasi-intellectualism of the school's "good kids."
	The gang won out almost completely.  Although I still read a fair number of books and was on speaking terms with a few of the alleged "brains," getting drunk, starting fights, and in general being a menace to society was not only more fun; it seemed a whole lot more honest.
	So here we were on a cloudy, muggy summer night.  I was a year out of high school and had already been kicked out of college for the first time.  My parents were close to giving up on me; they no longer bothered making comments about my hoodlum friends and why didn't I call up that nice girl who used to be friendly to me in 11th grade.  I was such a snarling, sullen mess that maybe they thought they'd better tread lightly around me.  They already knew, for example, that I'd been routinely carrying a gun when I went out on the streets, and when someone is in as bad a mood as I usually was and is armed, you don't go out of your way to irritate him.
	Really, I was a nice guy, sensitive as all get out, and full of crazy dreams, but that side of me was less and less visible, even to myself.  So I didn't have trouble joining in with the general consensus and muttering, "Yeah, let's go get those queers."
	If I'd been capable of being honest with myself, I'd have realized that my motives for going along with the crowd were mixed.  It's not that I had any problem with beating up innocent people Ñ my gang did it all the time Ñ but what really appealed to me was the idea of seeing some real queers and finding out what made them tick.  It was news to me that there was an area of downtown Detroit where queers would openly hang out, and I thought I'd better find out about this.  
	So it was at least partially a research mission for me.  The fact that some poor guy or guys might end up bloody or in the hospital didn't matter; I was like was one of those big game hunters who claims he goes out in the woods to blow away animals with his magnum because he loves nature so much.
	The fact was, I'd been having these thoughts...  Nothing real specific, or at least nothing I wanted to specifically admit, but ever since I was 13, I'd found myself at least as fascinated by other boys as I was by girls.  Since the whole thing was so far out of the purview of my experience, my imaginings never got much farther than thinking about cute boys with their clothes off, or maybe wondering what it would be like to see them jerking off.
	Once, in tenth grade, my best friend and I were sitting in the back row of the multi-purpose room watching one of those boring educational films they show you when the teachers can't think of anything else to do.  He started clowning around, and somehow things developed to where we were both jerking off.  I don't know how none of the other students noticed.  Maybe they did and were afraid to turn around and look, or maybe the movie was just real loud.  
	Anyway, since he was one of the boys I'd been most often having fantasies about, this was pretty exciting stuff for me.  I even got so brave as to suggest that we go a little further and jerk each other off.
	He stopped, looked at me, and said scornfully, "What are you, some kind of fag?"
	That gave me something to think about.  I didn't feel like a fag, and what I'd suggested didn't seem all that more far-fetched than what we were already doing, but if my best friend was wondering if I was a fag, I guessed I'd better be more careful about what I said or did.
	So the rest of high school passed in a mostly sexless and loveless rage, and by the time I found myself on that street corner in the summer of 1966, I no longer wondered whether I was queer or normal.  Everything that had happened for years led me to the conclusion that my feelings were shit, would only get me in trouble, and should be stomped out whenever possible.
	We drove downtown in two cars.  The low-hanging clouds of earlier had broken up, but had been replaced by the thicker and darker clouds of an approaching thunderstorm.  Occasionally the almost-full moon would slip out between them.  Under the silver light Detroit looked almost pretty; the orange glow on the eastern horizon where the blast furnaces were discharging their loads seemed festive rather than ominous.
	It must have been well past midnight when we arrived, but on the well-lit streets around West Grand Boulevard, things were hopping.  Detroit wasn't that big a night-life scene, but there were more people out and about here than you'd see in the middle of the day in many parts of the city.  There was a hint of excitement in the air, too, the kind you always get when you see crowds of people gathered for no apparent reason.
	Almost everybody wandering about on the sidewalks was male.  Most of them eyed us suspiciously and edged away if they sensed we were headed in their direction.  This took us by surprise; we had assumed that since we were such a handsome bunch of studs the queers would be all over us, "like flies on shit," one of the more poetic among us had promised.
	But you didn't survive being homosexual in mid-60s Detroit by being totally stupid, and obviously these guys knew better than to come anywhere near a gang of ten or twelve leather-jacketed louts who looked about as out of place as a construction worker in a tutu.  
	The more mean-spirited among us started cursing their bad luck; they were determined to get some queers no matter what, so they suggested we split up into smaller groups, and maybe have one guy lure an unsuspecting queer down an alley where the others would be waiting for him.  No one was willing to act as bait, though, and we stood arguing for a while about which one of us the queers would find the most attractive.
	I was trying to stay out of the discussion, fearing that I might be the one who got the nod, so when a couple of guys announced that they were hungry and were going to get something to eat first, I was glad to join them.  We left the others to their strategy session, and went in to a nearby all-night restaurant.
	The place was packed with a nearly all-male crowd.  Heads turned to s