Do homosexual males consciously seek danger?
In Manhattan they go by names like the Eagle's Nest, the Spike, the Mine Shaft and the Anvil. In San Francisco they are called the Brig and the Ambush. They are all homosexual "leather" bars that cater to macho style and sadomasochistic taste. Along with some bathhouses, sex-gadget shops, magazines and private clubs, they make an increasingly visible subculture in the gay world. That leather fringe is now also visible on movie screens, as the backdrop for a film that has been denounced and picketed by homosexuals: William Friedkin's Cruising, the story of a gay murderer in New York City.
Some patrons of the leather bars do not seem to mind Friedkin's deadpan, nonjudgmental look at their world; hundreds of them hired on as extras and played themselves onscreen. "The most positive benefit of Cruising," says one extra, "would be for it to make gay men examine their promiscuity, the areas they frequent, the type of sex they seek out, even the thrill of danger. The life we save may be our own."
But other homosexuals remain touchy about the idea that gays consciously seek danger. They insist that only between 1% and 5% of homosexuals lean toward leather. Says Charles Brydon, co-director of the National Gay Task Force: "There just is not any evidence that gays are into S-M any more than straights are." Though they admit that activities at the bars are remarkably exotic, gays insist that the possibility of bringing home a dangerous sex partner is remote.
Despite these disclaimers, homosexual homicides are frequent—and often gruesome; dismembered corpses (as in Cruising's first killing) and mutilated genitals are common. One explanation is that homosexual male sex is likely to be more aggressive than heterosexual sex simply because two men are involved. Sex researchers generally endorse Freud's finding that "the sexuality of most men shows an admixture of aggression, of a desire to subdue." Indeed the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders characterizes sadism and masochism as almost exclusively male perversions.
C.A. Tripp, a pro-gay psychologist and author of The Homosexual Matrix, thinks sadomasochistic practices are rare in heterosexuality and virtually nonexistent among lesbians, but relatively frequent in homosexuality because of "the additive effect of two males together." In Tripp's view, the average heterosexual who wants to play sadomasochistic games with his wife or girlfriend will be disappointed. Despite the male fantasy of a masked, booted, whip-wielding beauty, most women seldom want anything to do with SM. In male-to-male relationships, there is no such shortage of players, and leather bars make them easy to locate.