Full Service (10 page)

In 1938, at the age of fifteen, I started high school at Tilden Technical School at the corner of Union and Forty-seventh streets, not too far away from the notorious Chicago stockyards. Things would remain much the same for me for the next three and a half years. The Depression continued its throttling hold on society. I pursued my double life at night, accumulating experiences, perspectives, and cash. Within a year war came to Europe and my newspaper sales skyrocketed. Don finally found himself a girlfriend. In time, he, Phyllis, and I gave Momma a secondhand radio that I had bought for a few dollars at a pawnshop downtown for her birthday. With it she listened to all her favorite music, especially the big bands and shows like
The Shadow, The Burns and Allen Show,
and the
Mercury Theater on the Air,
including the famous 1938 Halloween broadcast of Orson Welles’s production of “The War of the Worlds.” Life went on, and few of us could foresee what was coming.

T
he Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor gave America an enormous jolt. The only positive thing that came out of the unexpected offensive was the fact that the country was grabbed by the scruff of its neck and forcibly yanked out of its long Depression. We hardly knew what hit us but employment shot up overnight as industry speedily swung into action to create the machinery of war. When we kids gathered around Momma’s radio to listen to a scratchy broadcast of President Roosevelt talking about the bombing of the U.S. Pacific Fleet we were not sure what to do. But clearly everyone was being swept into the conflict. Just a couple of weeks after hostilities began I rushed over to my best buddy Bill Nall’s house.

Bill was as straight as an arrow. He was a red-blooded, all-American male, but to help him make ends meet I occasionally fixed him up with gay or straight tricks. Like all of us, he needed extra cash. Both of us became caught up in the pervasive spirit of patriotism, eager to join in the fray against the enemy. So one day we headed for the nearest recruiting station and, despite Momma’s tearful objections, we signed up. In January 1942 I waved good-bye to my family and a handful of friends who slowly diminished in size as they stood on the platform while my train chugged out of Union Station. I was eighteen years of age, bound for boot camp in San Diego, California.

What really appealed to Bill and me was the potential excitement of frontline action. We were anxious to fight so we had joined the branch of the service that would best fulfill our ambitions, the Marine Corps. Marine recruits were paid $50 a month for serving, but I didn’t find this figure very enticing. After all, I was already earning close to that kind of money during my ventures around town. So I opted for something that paid more. I decided to become a Marine Paratrooper. Jumping out of aircraft was deemed such a difficult, dangerous, and demanding occupation that we were paid an extra $50 a month. I didn’t care about the dangers. I just wanted that extra fifty bucks. As the train rumbled across the Great Plains and the prairies toward the west my excitement grew. I was leaving the state of Illinois for the first time in my life and a great adventure lay ahead. With mounting eagerness I looked forward to my twelve weeks of military training.

The Paratroopers were a brand-new, highly specialized unit of the United States Marine Corps. They were being honed for a crucial task. As I understood it, their primary purpose was to be dropped from the air to what was known as the Burma Road, a strategically important seven-hundred-mile stretch of roadway cut through the mountainous jungle linking Burma and China. It had fallen into Japanese hands after they invaded the Burmese mainland. In support of troops from the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, the objective of the Paratroopers was to wrest the road from Japanese control and to reopen critical Allied supply lines.

When boot camp got underway I was so enamored with the handsome pose I struck in uniform that I had a picture taken of myself and sent it to Momma. I think she kept that photo on her dresser for the rest of her life. As an ex–farm boy I had a good, lean, hard body. I felt very comfortable in my own skin. I had brown hair and blue eyes, I stood about five feet ten, and was happy with my physique. A lot of my sexual partners, both male and female, praised my looks but inwardly I didn’t feel anything special about myself. As far as I was concerned I was just a regular, clean-cut, all-American boy.

Training was tough and made me fitter than I had ever been. A few weeks elapsed before we were ready to be sent to sea to engage in combat. The Pacific War was raging. All we knew was that our first objective would be to attack a number of Japanese-occupied islands. Needless to say, like most of the other guys, I was nervous about what was coming. How on earth were we Paratroopers going to jump onto those fortified islands that we were hoping to take from the Japanese? Because there weren’t any airfields near the islands, we would have to be put ashore by landing craft. Once we got onto the islands how were we going to get off them? A million questions haunted me but I guess, like all the other three thousand young men who had become Marine Paratroopers, I tried to dismiss such thoughts from my mind. What was the point of thinking about it? What was the sense in contemplating failure or capture or death? So, for the time being, we resolved to play as hard as we could before we went into battle. With few exceptions, we had one primary objective in mind: to screw ourselves silly.

As we had some time before being shipped out, a group of us got a weekend pass and decided to take a trip up the coast to visit Los Angeles. After all, the City of Angels was home to Hollywood, the film industry, and all those glamorous movie stars I had admired as a kid. In addition to looking for a little carnal action the prospect of catching even the briefest glimpse of one of those sexy actresses was enough of a reason for me to make the pilgrimage. The only way for us to get there was to hitchhike. Dozens of guys were always standing on the side of the road thumbing rides. Fortunately, folks were only too happy to help out. You never had to wait long to be offered a ride, especially if you were in uniform. The vistas of the glimmering Pacific Ocean were breathtaking as we made our way northward. Halfway up the coast we passed the Del Mar Racetrack, a famous venue renowned for its high stakes horse racing. Back in those days the road between San Diego and Los Angeles hugged the coast all the way, unlike today when traffic speeds along the 405 freeway slightly inland. As we drove by the grandstands, parking lot, and wide, sweeping racetrack I noticed that the place seemed desolate. And then we passed a big hand-painted sign that announced
OWNED & OPERATED BY BING CROSBY & PAT O
’
BRIEN
.
SORRY
,
WE ARE CLOSED DURING THE WAR
.
WE WILL REOPEN WHEN HOSTILITIES ARE OVER
.

My heart skipped quite a few beats as I caught my first sight of the famous Hollywoodland sign perched high on Mount Lee in the Hollywood Hills overlooking L.A. After being dropped off in Hollywood we each decided to go our own way. Unfortunately, I didn’t see anyone famous as I did the traditional pub crawl through the dives and dens of Hollywood and the Sunset Strip. Aside from being underage, I was a confirmed teetotaler, so I didn’t go there to drink. No, what I was looking for that Saturday evening as I prowled Hollywood Boulevard was whatever sexual diversion I could find. With twelve long weeks of boot camp training behind me I was as horny as hell. I was ready to fuck anyone. But nothing happened. Yes, there was the odd hooker here and there, but no starlets ready for action. No glamorous actresses dying to get me into bed with them. Then, just as I was about to give up and look elsewhere, a car horn sounded. I looked over to the boulevard and saw a dark, good-looking guy in his early forties waving from behind the wheel of a fancy convertible. I had no idea who he was so I kept on walking. The horn sounded again.

“Hey, over there!” I heard him shout.

I looked over at the convertible again. Yes, no doubt about it. It was definitely me that he was waving at.

“Excuse me,” he called. “May I ask you something?”

Me?
I thought.
What could he want?
I wandered over to the edge of the sidewalk where he had stopped his car. I noticed that he was immaculately dressed.
A real dandy,
I thought. He asked whether I was lost. I was going to respond but before I could he stretched over and opened the passenger door for me. Then it hit me. Of course. I was being picked up. He introduced himself to me as Jack. As we pulled away and merged into traffic he came out with the frank admission that he had been cruising the boulevard in search of a trick. Being the car culture city that it is, Los Angeles has always been the quintessential cruising capital of the world.

“I haven’t seen you around before,” he said. “You cut quite a figure in that uniform of yours, you know.”

I was flattered but didn’t really know what to say so I just sat back and let whatever was going to happen play itself out. Excitement mounted as we drove down Hollywood Boulevard, passing famous landmarks such as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the Egyptian Theatre. We drove all the way over to Jack’s place in an area called Los Feliz. As soon as we arrived he started pawing me. In no time we stripped off our clothes. After an hour or two of oral and anal sex we sat, pretty well exhausted, in his elegant bedroom. Clearly, this was a man who had taste. And money. Lots of it. He told me his real name was John Kelly and that he had been born in Australia. He said he was a costume designer in the film industry and went by the professional name of Orry-Kelly. Had I heard about him? I was embarrassed to say no, I hadn’t. Well, never mind, he assured me. And then he began to rattle off the names of some of the pictures he had worked on. These included the 1933 version of
42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, Gold Diggers of 1937, Hollywood Hotel,
and classics like
Dark Victory; The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex; All This, and Heaven Too; The Maltese Falcon; Kings Row; Now, Voyager;
and, the production he was working on at the time of our meeting, a little movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman called
Casablanca.
(In later years he would be recognized for the excellence of his craft by winning no less than three Academy Awards.)

Jack knew a lot of people in town and over the next few weekends I got passes from camp and made my way up to L.A. to meet many of them. I began to turn a lot of tricks during those brief getaways and the money I was making from them came in handy. There I was, an unsophisticated farm boy from Illinois, suddenly immersed in the highest circles of Hollywood’s creative society. It was amazing.
This is all right,
I thought. I could get used to this lifestyle. Daunted though I may have been, I nevertheless seemed to fit right in. I went with the flow and saw a different guy every time I went up to L.A. Each was more influential, more famous, and richer than the last. The degree of sexual frankness was a real eye-opener. Anything and everything were regarded as the norm. Nothing was too outrageous. I attended innumerable expensive, classy orgies where the participants were all wealthy, famous, and sophisticated. And every one paid me very well for my services.

This was my first glimpse into a whole other world. I was also learning a completely new language, one that embraced the terminologies and slang words in vogue in the gay world at that time. A gay man was playfully referred to as a “jelly bean.” A man who had a preference for oral sex, especially if he had the inclination to suck on another man’s dick until he ejaculated in his mouth, was referred to as being “on the stem.” A guy who had a smaller than average penis was often amusingly dismissed as a “PTM,” which stood for “princess tiny meat.”

“Oh, don’t bother with her,” someone would say. “She’s PTM.”

Men who were obviously effeminate and who worked in department stores, especially in the ladies’ departments, were called “ribbon queens.”

“Queen” was a particularly popular word. It was most often used to describe an openly homosexual and more mature man, rather than a youngster in his teens. Although originally intended as a derogatory term for someone who was gay, no one really seemed to mind it. In fact, mature gay men were quite content to refer to one another as queens. Younger gay men, especially teenagers or those in their early twenties, were simply called “twinkies.” An older man who preferred a twinkie as a sexual partner was called a “twinkie queen.”

One of the queens that I was introduced to by Jack, or Orry-Kelly if you prefer, was William Haines. We all called him Bill. He was a dark, sensuous, good-looking forty-two-year-old guy from Virginia who had enjoyed a very successful career as a movie actor, at one point having been the country’s number-one male box office draw. Surprisingly, he had given up acting in the thirties to become an interior designer and decorator. Rumor had it that when he was still acting he had stormed out of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer mogul Louis B. Mayer’s office when he insisted that Bill give up his relationship with his male lover, Jimmie Shields, because if the public heard about his homosexuality it would have generated bad publicity for the studio.

“My happiness with Jimmie is more important than my career in your lousy motion pictures, Mr. Mayer,” Bill is reputed to have said. Well, that put a swift end to his acting career. His new life as a designer blossomed and soon Bill was at the top of the heap of interior designers in Hollywood.

One weekend Bill and Jimmie were invited to go up the coast to spend a weekend at Hearst Castle, the legendary retreat of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. They accepted the invitation provided, they told Hearst, they could bring me along with them. Hearst agreed, so, armed with another weekend pass, I rushed up to L.A. and off we went to Hearst’s splendid home in Bill’s brand new Lincoln.