Full Service (15 page)

When some queens were arrested, especially if they were loaded with booze, they would kid around with the arresting officers by jokingly saying, “Jail? You’re going to send me to jail? With all those lovely men in there? Oh, I’d
love
that.
Take
me. Handcuff me. Arrest me. Throw me in there,
please
!”

The arresting officers weren’t always amused by this lightheartedness, and the fines would be doubled.

At the conclusion of the war a handful of Los Angeles lawyers made their living exclusively off queens, lesbians, and anyone else who had anything to do with the gay world. It was a lucrative business defending them. All their energies were devoted to arguing their cases in court. Two attorneys in particular handled most of the cases: Harry Weiss and Sheldon Andelson. Weiss’s trademark was a large white panama hat that he always wore, no matter where or when. Because he was so effective in getting guys off the hook, he was known by the nickname of “Mr. Fix It.” Both Weiss and Andelson were gay and were hardworking champions of the early gay rights movement in the city. In fact, Harry Weiss himself owned about three or four gay bars in town.

I first met Harry just after the war when he was living with his mother just beyond Western Avenue, off Santa Monica Boulevard. He had a lover by the name of Glenn McMann. They eventually moved up to Argyle and Franklin. Harry finally ended up living on Tower Road in Beverly Hills, in a palatial house, replete with an elevator that connected the upstairs rooms with the entertainment area downstairs. It also had an enormous bar, where I worked for him on a number of occasions. Harry was smart. He was cunning. He was determined to never lose a case. He had a bunch of runners working for him: people who ran errands, delivering messages, picking up packages, that sort of thing. He often employed a brilliant gambit. He got his runners to track down the two arresting police officers who were due to appear in court to testify against the defendant (Harry’s client). The runners would diligently track the officers down before they went to court and subtly slip each of them an envelope containing a typewritten note asking them to please avoid appearing in court, plus $500 in cash. Police officers didn’t earn much in those days, and $500 was an awful lot of money. Harry never signed the note or included his business card with the cash so that if the arresting officers ever thought of pressing charges against him for obstructing justice no one could ever prove that the money or the note came from him. Usually on the day of the trial the officers would simply not show up in court. When the trial got underway and the prosecuting attorney or the judge called for them as witnesses they were nowhere to be seen. When asked where they were the judge would be informed that they were suddenly called out on another important assignment or that they were in the process of apprehending a criminal somewhere. The judge would angrily retort, “Couldn’t make it to court, eh? Well, stop wasting my time! Case dismissed!” I was in the public gallery one day when the judge dismissed no less than fourteen separate cases simply because the cops had been paid off by Harry Weiss.

The vice squad continued to hound, victimize, and harass people who dared overstep the line of what society and the law regarded as normal or acceptable behavior. I was by no means immune to their persistent pursuits. During that time of my life, I was still young with a lean, firm, muscular body, so a photographer friend of mine by the name of Lenny Robertson took three sets of pictures of me having sex with three gorgeous young girls. The pictures were shot in Lenny’s bedroom. Each set depicted me with a different girl. One set showed me with a dazzling Oriental beauty, one with a stunning black lady, and one with a lovely white girl with blonde hair. It was during the days when nudie pictures were hard to come by and when pornographic images—whether of the soft- or hard-core variety—were virtually unobtainable. Lenny knew there was a healthy market for explicit porn so why not make a few bucks out of it? He photographed the images so that my face was never distinguishable. You could clearly see every other part of my anatomy but never my face. I was photographed having intercourse with the women in various positions, with my head buried in their crotches performing cunnilingus on them, with my face smothered by their boobs, kissing them, in the sixty-nine position, doggie style, you name it. Fortunately I had no tattoos, moles, or bodily markings that could be used to identify me. Lenny sold the pictures to mutual friends and to people we knew for ten dollars a set. I never saw a cent from the sales but it didn’t matter. I was happy to oblige.

One day the vice squad dropped in to see me at the gas station and produced the photographs. They were always prowling around, always suspicious. They often drove past the station at night, obviously curious as to why there were so many cars and young people around, especially when other gas stations in the area were much quieter than mine.

“This you?” they asked, showing me the photographs.

“Nope,” I said. “Never seen them in my life.”

Because my face was not visible, they could not physically identify me and pin anything on me. So, reluctantly, they left. Lenny Robertson, on the other hand, managed to avoid a jail sentence but had to pay a steep fine for taking and selling the pictures. The whole thing was a travesty, a farce, a mockery of what went on in the world. We did no harm. We polluted no minds. We just showed three beautiful females doing what comes naturally with a male; what was criminal about that?

Not all law enforcement officers were the enemy. I had a good customer at the gas station who was a member of the traffic department of the LAPD. His name was Officer Calvin someone-or-other but we all called him Cal. He was a big muscular guy who lived in a rooming house just up the road from the gas station. He was always working out, lifting weights, jogging around the block, getting into shape. He was in his midtwenties, mild-mannered, soft-spoken, and not your typical cop. He used to come down to the station sometimes and hang around with the other young guys. The problem was that he wasn’t too bright. He never spotted a gay man in a crowd. Even if one or two of the guys were limp-wristed and lisped, he wouldn’t pick up on it. We all liked Cal. He had a pretty Italian girlfriend who lived across the street from him. He had never managed to take her to bed and thought that she was still a virgin. I used to kid him about it.

“When’re you going to make love to her, Cal?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” he would say. “Not yet. She’s still pure, buddy, and I ain’t gonna do nothin’ until she says she wants it or until we’re married.”

But I knew otherwise. I had been fixing up tricks for her for a long time; blow jobs, hand jobs, straight intercourse, whatever. She did it all. My trailer in the backyard had seen a lot of her.

Cal rode a nice Harley-Davidson motorcycle for the traffic department and he was very proud of it. Every now and again he would bring it down to the station for some gas or to give it a wash and polish. One night he was in the service bay cleaning and buffing it to a gleaming finish. He was off duty and dressed in casual clothes. All of a sudden three or four guys from the vice squad walked into the office at the station and the head honcho said to me, “Okay, now listen, pal, we’ve spent the last two nights on the roof of the bowling alley next to the motel across the street watching this joint and we just can’t figure out why so many cars pull in here compared to other gas stations in the area. What’s going on? You fellas up to somethin’?”

Apparently they had been watching the gas station for a couple of weeks already and could not figure out why the place was so popular.

“This is Monday night,” the cop said, “and no other gas station in Hollywood is as busy as this one. They’ve all got good pump attendants and their prices are the same as yours, yet they get maybe one or two cars every half hour. Here you sometimes get as many ten or fifteen. What’s the deal? What’s goin’ on?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I guess we just give good service.”

This irritated the cop. He walked right up to me and thrust his face into mine.

“Are you hiding somethin’ from us, pal? You up to no good?”

I just shrugged and pointed to Cal cleaning his motorcycle in the service bay.

“Ask him,” I said. “He’s LAPD. He should know.”

So the vice squad marched over and questioned Cal, but he couldn’t tell them anything. He was so unobservant and unaware of what was going on that he had absolutely no idea what I was up to, even when I had people slipping in and out of the trailer in the backyard. He merely told them that Richfield Gas was a real fun place to pop into and spend a while. He said there were always a lot of guys with their girlfriends around to talk to, that most of them knew about the latest sports scores and the current music scene and that the place was harmless enough. He said young folks just gathered there because it was convenient, always open till late, and people had got used to meeting and hanging out there. It was all innocent enough, he assured them. I’m not sure what the vice squad made of what he told them but they left. The kid was utterly clueless about what was really going on. And just as well, because I had a lesbian trio in one bedroom of the trailer that night and a gay guy sucking the dick of one of my Marine buddies in the other.

The demise of the vice squad was a long time coming.

To tell the happy ending to the story, we have to briefly fast-forward to 1972. A lawyer friend of mine by the name of Burt Pines was campaigning to become Los Angeles city attorney. Pines was straight, married, and had two kids but he was sympathetic to the gay rights movement.

Another good friend of mine, a very wealthy gay guy by the name of Lloyd Rigler, for whom I had set up innumerable tricks over the years, was very respectful of Burt Pines’s efforts to secure better conditions for the gay community.

One day Lloyd approached Burt and said, “Burt, I’ll help with the financing of your election campaign on one condition.”

“And what’s that?” Pines asked.

“That if you’re elected into office the first thing you’ll do is pull the LAPD’s vice squad off the backs of the queens.”

“Why?” Pines wanted to know.

“Just to leave the poor goddamned queens alone,” Lloyd answered. “They’ve suffered enough from the squad over the years. Just let ’em be, that’s all I ask. Jesus, they’re not doing any harm. They just want to live, and love, and
make
love, and lead a life just like everybody else, that’s all.”

Pines looked at Lloyd, thrust out his hand, and they shook.

“Agreed,” said Pines.

The 1972 city election results securely put Burt Pines into office as Los Angeles city attorney and, almost overnight, the nefarious vice squad quietly pulled back from the gay scene, never again to torment the queens. As the great tide of the civil rights movement swept the country it never reared its ugly head in the gay community again, instead concentrating almost exclusively on busting drug and crime rings.

As an aside, Lloyd Rigler had a partner by the name of Lawrence Deutsch. They were extremely happy together but Lawrence was a chain-smoker. Sadly, in 1977 he died of lung cancer. Lloyd became a lost and lonely man. He couldn’t stop grieving. On many occasions I tried to pull him out of his depression, simply because I could see he was wasting away. One day I had an idea. I knew a very nice, good-looking guy by the name of Steve Davis. He had hung around the gas station in the early days. He wasn’t exactly bright but he was attractive, in good shape, and a decent person. He wasn’t ambitious and had never really made anything of himself. He eked out a meager living by mowing lawns, polishing cars, and washing windows. So I took Steve over to Lloyd’s home for a drink one evening. And that did it. Lloyd was instantly smitten with Steve.

As Lloyd was much older than Steve he took him under his wing, mothered him, and eventually invited him to move in. Well, it wasn’t long before Steve was wearing fancy clothes from chic Beverly Hills boutiques and driving an expensive sports car. Lloyd was so head over heels enamored with Steve that he would do anything he asked of him. It turned out that what Steve really wanted to do was to go to Nashville, Tennessee, and become a country and western singer. So dear old gullible Lloyd threw millions of dollars at the project, encouraging Steve to foster his dreams. Steve eventually built a big recording studio in Nashville but, needless to say, he wasn’t that talented at singing. In time, the aging Lloyd Rigler acquired a very fine apartment directly across the road from the Pierre Hotel on Central Park in New York City, the Hotel Royal Tahitien in Tahiti, as well as a big ranch in Central California. When Lloyd died Steve inherited all of it. From then on he simply lived like a king—or a queen, if you like—for the rest of his life. He never had another care in the world.

Over the years it was always interesting to see how many older guys struck up long-term relationships with the younger men I introduced them to. Often, what began as a one-night trick ended up as a long and loving relationship. On the other hand, some queens just got taken for a ride. I’ve known older gay men who had a young trick for a night and then, before you knew it, the younger guy had moved in with him. The queen would get back to me and say, “You know, Scotty, that kid you sent over really loves me. We’ve been together for months now. I paid him twenty bucks that first night and now he never even asks me for money. I guess that means he loves me.”

I would simply remind him that since he had already spent about $150,000 on the kid by buying him a brand-new Mercedes sports car, a Rolex watch, and a complete new wardrobe, naturally he wasn’t going to ask for money! And it certainly didn’t mean that the young man loved him. He simply knew where his bread was buttered. There were, of course, many exceptions to this kind of situation, but you’d be surprised at how often it happened.