Sex Takes a Holiday

Despite the ubiquitousness of "Sex Takes a Holiday" as a title today, I first ran into it when I found a copy of an early 60s pulp fiction novel with the same name. I have to admit that I stole the paperback from the basement apartment (more of a room with a toilet and shower) of a boarder in my maternal grandmother's house. She had started to take in boarders to help pay rent. The one that had the book was in his 20s and as far as I was concerned, startlingly goodlooking. I had just started fantasizing about men and this guy fit every fantasy I had. Older (I must have been 13 or 14, so anyone over 18 was an older man), goodlooking, slender, and he wore tight blue jeans and white t-shirts.

To enter his room, you had to go through the basement door (which he kept locked) but you could also get to his room through my grandmother's kitchen. I would go down in the basement to help her with her laundry or get things for her. That's when I noticed him the first time. He was coming in and startled me. After that, I would find all sort of excuses to go over to grandma's and help her out. One day, I knew he was gone for the weekend so I snuck down into his room to check it out. I remember that I was struck by how neat his room was; even his bed was made, which surprised me. I figured bachelors wouldn't care how their room looked. He was different.

By the way, I confessed this whole incident to my confessor but even then, I knew I couldn't tell him everything. So I prefabricated a little of the confession to ease Father Thatcher's burden. I didn't tell him I stole a book. But I was given forgiveness for snooping in a stranger's bedroom.

While I was checking out the boarder's underwear drawer (that's another story), I noticed a whole stack of small paperback pulp novels. There had to be at least 10. I don't remember any titles except the one that I stole. Sex Takes a Holiday had cover art that puts the romance novels of today to shame. There was a beautiful, buxom red-headed woman standing on a beach in a skimpy swimsuit in the foreground. In the background there were four men, all drawn with tight bathing suits and big muscles surrounding another man who was wearing jeans and a shirt. The man in the middle was obviously scared and trying to get away.

I figured that the boarder would never miss one of the books, so I stuffed the paperback under my shirt, tucked into the waistband of my jeans and went home. Grandmother never suspected a thing.

Sex Takes a Holiday was filled with descriptions of the red-head having sex with every sort of man imaginable. She was at a beach resort somewhere on the east coast - on holiday. But the chapter that caught and held my attention was all about the "man in the middle" portrayed on the cover of the book. He was described as a smaller man, rather effeminate but not explicitly as homosexual. Nonetheless, one night while he was out walking the beach, in search of God knows what, he ran into a rowdy, drunken group of four men who started to taunt him. He tried to ignore them and walk away but they were emboldened by his unwillingness to defend himself. They began to physically push him around and calling him queer! At that point, he tried to run away which angered them even more. One of the men pushed him down and started to beat him up, but was stopped by one of the others. The group decided instead to strip the man and rape him. All four men eventually took their turn humiliating and abusing "the queer". They left him bleeding, naked on the beach.

I read and reread this chapter time and time again. I felt sick every time I revisited the humiliation of the men calling him queer. I was revolted by the violent and explicit description of the rape. Yet each and every time I read it, I couldn't help getting an erection and jerking off. My feelings were so conflicted I tried desparately to throw the book away and never read it again. But I couldn't follow through with it. I'd wrap the book in a newspaper and throw it into the trash can but an hour later run out and retrieve it. Finally after weeks of hating myself for enjoying the humiliation and rape of this man, I finally threw out the book and let it go.

The disgust with myself wasn't based on an early understanding of the horrors of rape or a budding sense of feminism, but instead, I think it had to do with a feeling deep inside, a recognition that that man in the middle, that queer, could easily be me someday. I knew even then that my desires to look at men and to physically touch them not only set me apart from the rest of my friends and family but could be dangerous.

This was the first book I ever read that made me realize that books could be used as weapons against people and especially against queers.