Hefner
responded to the backlash in a defiant note. “If it was wrong to persecute
heterosexuals in a homosexual society,” he wrote,
“then the reverse was wrong, too.”
I found this article on Hugh Hefner fascinating. Not so much because of what he did or said, which is fascinating in its own right, but because of the description of the short story "The Crooked Man." It led me to look up and read the story, which is contained below, if you're curious. I was fascinated by the notion of a society in reverse, where heterosexuals were persecuted for their way of life. More so, because it gives a glimpse into humanity. Humans will always persecute other humans. As much as homosexuals fight the persecution that they now find themselves in, if given the chance, they would become the persecutors.
I am also fascinated by this concept, because it exactly describes the state of the city of Sodom when God destroyed it.
Before they had gone to bed, all the mend from every part of the city of Sodom - both young and old - surrounded the house. They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."
Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof."
"Get out of our way," they replied. "This fellow cam here as a foreigner and now he wants to play the judge! We'll treat you worse than them."
They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door. But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door.
Genesis 19:4-10
This was not only an acceptable way of life, but the homosexuals in Sodom were actually pushing their agenda and persecuting the heterosexuals. I understand that Charles Beaumont's story was supposed to outrage people into seeing how wrong the persecution of another human being is because of their sexual inclination, and that heterosexuals would dislike it just as much if the tables were turned. I hope we never get to a place where the tables are turned, but it was an eye-opening experience to imagine it. While I don't agree with homosexuality, I don't agree in persecuting homosexuals either. It is not my place to enact judgement on them.
But it also scares me to think that based on the current trends and given enough time, our society might reverse itself. People do not stop when they have equality, they keep pushing and pushing, selfishly driving their agenda to advantage. That is human nature. There is always an imbalance of power, and we as a society are seeing the see-saw slowly, slowly tip the other way.
The Crooked Man by Charles Beaumont (1955)
“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools . . . who
changed the truth of God into a lie . . . for even their women did change the
natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men,
leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another:
men with men working that which is unseemly . . .”
(Si. Paul:
Romans, I)
He slipped into a corner booth away from the dancing men, where it was
quietest, where the odors of musk and trangipani hung less heavy on the air. A
slender lamp glowed softly in the booth. He turned it down; down to where only
the club’s blue overheads filtered through the beaded curtain, diffusing,
blurring the image thrown back by the mirrored walls of his light thin-boned
handsomeness.
“Yes, sir?” The barboy stepped through the beads and stood smiling. Clad in
gold-sequined trunks, his greased muscles seemed to toll in independent motion,
like fat snakes beneath his naked skin.
“Whiskey,’’ Jesse said. He caught the insouciant grin, the broad white-tooth
crescent that formed on the young man’s face. Jesse looked away, tried to
control the flow of blood to his cheeks.
“Yes. sir.” the barboy said, running his thick tanned fingers over his solar
plexus, tapping the fingers, making them hop in a sinuous dance. He hesitated,
still smiling, this time questioningly, hopefully, a smile filled with
admiration and desire. The Finger Dance, the accepted symbol since 2648,
stopped: the pudgy brown digits curled into angry fists. “Right away, sir.”
Jesse watched him turn; before the beads had tinkled together, he watched the
handsome athlete make his way imperiously through the crowd, shaking off the
tentative hands of single men at the tables, ignoring the many desire symbols
directed toward him.
That shouldn’t have happened, Jesse thought. Now the fellow’s feelings were
hurt. If hurt enough, he would start thinking, wondering — and that would ruin
everything. No. it must be put right.
He thought of Mina, of the beautiful Mina. It was such a rotten chance; it had
to go well!
“Your whiskey, sir,” the young man said. His face was like a dog’s face, large,
sad; his lips were a pouting bloat of line.
Jesse reached into his pocket for some change. He started to say something,
something nice.
“It’s been paid for,” the barboy said. He scowled and laid a
card on the table and left.
The card carried the name E. J. Hodart, embossed, in lavender
ink. Jesse heard the curtains tinkle.
“Hello, there! I hope you don’t mind my barging in like this, but — well, you
didn’t seem to be with anyone . . .”
The man was small, chubby, bald; his face had a dirty growth of beard and he
looked out of tiny eyes encased in bulging contacts. He was bare to the waist.
His white, hairless chest drooped and turned in folds at the stomach. Softly,
more subtle than the barboy had done, he put his porky stubs of fingers into a
suggestive rhythm.
Jesse smiled. “Thanks for the drink,” he said. “But I really am expecting
someone.”
“Oh?” the man said. “Someone — special?”
“Pretty special,” Jesse said smoothly, now that the words had become automatic.
“He’s my fiancé.”
“I see.” The man frowned momentarily and then brightened. “Well, I thought to
myself. I said, E. J., you don’t actually think a beauty like that would be
unattached, do you?’ But, it was certainly worth the old college try. Sorry.”
“Perfectly all right,” Jesse said. The predatory little eyes were rolling, the
fingers dancing in one last ditch attempt. “Good evening, Mr. Hobart.”
Jesse felt slightly amused this time: it was the other kind, the intent ones,
the humorless ones like the barboy, who revolted him, turned him ill, made him
want to take a knife and carve unspeakable ugliness into his own smooth,
aesthetic face.
The man shrugged; “Good evening!” and waddled away, crabwise.
Now the club was becoming more crowded. It was getting later and heads full of
liquor shook away the inhibitions of the earliest hours. Jesse tried not to
watch, but he had long ago given up trying to rid himself of his fascination.
So he watched the men together. The pair over in the far corner, pressed close
together, dancing with their bodies, never moving their feet, swaying in slow,
lissome movements to the music… The couple seated by the bar: one a Beast, the
other a Hunter. The Beast old, his cheeks caked hard and cracking with powder
and liniments, the perfume rising from his body like steam; the Hunter, young
but unhandsome, the fury evident in his eyes, the hurt anger at having to make
do with a paid companion, and such an ugly one. From time to time the Hunter
would look around, wetting his lips in shame. . . . And those two just coming
in, dressed in Mother’s uniforms, tanned, mustached, proud of their station . .
.
Jesse held the beads apart. Mina must come soon! He wanted to run from this
place, out into the air, into the darkness and silence.
No. He just wanted Mina. To see her, touch her, listen to the music of her
voice . . .
Two women came in, arm in arm, Beast and Hunter, drunk. They were stopped at
the door. The manager swept by Jesse’s booth, muttering about them, asking why
they should want to come to the Phallus when they had their own sections, their
own clubs . . .
Jesse pulled his head back inside. He’d become used to the light by now, so he
closed his eyes against his multiplied image. The disorganized sounds of love
got louder, the sing-song syrup of voices: high-pitched, throaty, baritone,
falsetto. It was crowed now. The Orgies would begin before long and the couples
would pair off for the cubicles. He hated the place. But close to Orgy-time you
didn’t get noticed here; and where else was there to go? Outside, where every
inch of pavement was patrolled electronically, every word of conversation,
every movement recorded, catalogued, filed?
Damn Knudsen! Damn the little man! Thanks to him, to the Senator, Jesse was now
a criminal. Before, it hadn’t been so bad: not this bad, anyway. You were
laughed at and shunned and fired from your job, and sometimes kids threw stones
at you, but at least you weren’t hunted. Now — it was a crime. It was a
sickness.
He remembered when Knudsen had taken over. It had been one of the little man’s
first telecasts; in fact, it was the platform that had got him the majority
vote:
“. . . Vice is on the upswing in our great city. In the dark corners of every
Unit perversion blossoms like an evil flower. Our children are exposed to its
stink, and they wonder — our children wonder — why nothing is done to put a
halt to this disgrace. We have ignored it long enough! The time has come for
action, not mere words. The perverts who infest our land must be flushed out,
eliminated completely, as a threat not only to public morals but to society at
large. These sick people must be cured and made normal. The disease that throws
men and women together in this dreadful abnormal relationship and leads to acts
of retrogression — retrogression that will, unless it is stopped and stopped
fast, lead us inevitably back to the status of animals — this is to be
considered as any other disease. It must be conquered as heart trouble, cancer,
polio, all other diseases have been conquered . . .”
The Women’s Senator had taken Knudsen’s lead and issued a similar
pronunciamento and then the bill had become law and the law was carried out.
Jesse sipped at his whiskey, remembering the Hunts. How the frenzied mobs had
gone through the city at first, chanting, yelling, bearing placards with
slogans: “Wipe out the heteros!” “Kill the Queers!” “Make our city clean
again!” And how they’d lost interest finally after the passion had worn down
and the novelty had ended. But they had killed many and they had sent many more
to the hospitals . . .
He remembered the nights of running and hiding, choked dry breath cutting his
throat, heart rattling loose. He had been lucky. He didn’t look like a hetero.
They said you could tell one just by watching him walk — but Jesse walked
correctly. He fooled them. He was lucky. And he was a criminal. He, Jesse Martin, no different from the rest, tube-born
and machine-nursed, raised in the Character Schools like everyone else — was
terribly different from the rest.
It had been on his first formal date that he became aware of this difference,
that it crystallized. The man had been a Rocketeer, the best high quality, and
frighteningly handsome. “Mother” had arranged it, the way he arranged
everything. carefully, proving and re-proving that he was worthy of the
Mother’s uniform. There was the dance. And then the ride in the space-sled. The
big man had put an arm about Jesse and — Jesse knew. He knew for certain and it
made him very angry and very sad.
He remembered the days that came after the knowledge: bad days, days fallen
upon evil, black desires, deep-cored frustrations. He had tried to find a
friend at the Crooked Clubs that flourished then, but it was no use. There was
a sensationalism, a bravura to these people that he could not love. The sight
of men and women together, too shocked the parts of him he could not change,
and disgusted him. Then the vice-squads had come and closed up the clubs and
the heteros were forced underground and he never sought them out again or saw
them. He was alone.
The beads tinkled.
“Jesse.”
He looked up, quickly, afraid. Then his fear vanished.
A figure stood outlined against the curtains, quietly. A small,
soft, clean figure, a softness there, and a cleanliness, cutting and
dissipating the dark asylum of his memories like sudden sunlight, with all the
good warmth of sunlight, and all the brightness. Mina.
She wore a loose man’s shirt, an old hat that hid her golden hair: her face was
shadowed by the turned lip collar. Through the shirt the rise and fall of her
breasts could be faintly detected. She smiled once, nervously.
Jesse looked out the curtain. Without speaking, he put his hands about her
soft, thin shoulders and held her like this for a long minute.
“Mina—” She looked away. He pulled her chin forward and ran a finger along her
lips. Then he pressed her body to his, tightly, touching her neck, her back,
kissing her forehead, her eyes, kissing her mouth.
She pulled her head back and sat down, staring at the table. “Don’t do that,
please don’t.” she said.
Jesse opened his mouth, closed it abruptly as the curtains parted.
“Order, sir?’’
“Beer,” Jesse said, winking at the bar boy, who tried to come closer, to see
the one loved by this handsome stranger.
“Two beers. Yes, sir.”
The barboy looked at Mina very hard, but she had turned and he could see only
the back. Jesse held his breath. The barboy smiled contemptuously then, a smile
that said: You’re insane — I was hired for my beauty; I know that I am
beautiful, hundreds would be proud to have me, and you turn me down for this
bag of bones . . .
Jesse winked again, shrugged suggestively, and danced his fingers: Tomorrow, my
friend. I’m stuck tonight. Can’t help it. Tomorrow.
The barboy paused a moment, grinned briefly with understanding, and left. In a
few minutes he returned with the beer. “On the house,” he said, for Mina’s
benefit.
She turned only when Jesse said, softly, “It’s all right. He’s
gone now.”
He looked at her, at the pain in her face, and the fear; hard lines that lied
about the love that was between them and had been for all these months. He
reached over and took off the hat. Long tresses of blonde hair spilled out
splashing over the rough shirt.
She grabbed for the hat. “We mustn’t,” she said. “Please. What if somebody came
in?”
“No one will come in. I told you that.”
“But what if someone does? I don’t know. I don’t like it here. That man at the
door, he almost recognized me.”
“But he didn’t.”
“Almost, though. And then what?”
“Forget it. Mina, for God’s sake. Let’s not quarrel.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jesse. It’s only that meeting you like this
makes me feel . . .’’
“What?”
“Dirty.” She spoke the word defiantly, and lifted her eyes to his.
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“No. I suppose not: I don’t know, any more.” She hesitated. “Maybe if we could
be alone together, I—”
Jesse took out a cigarette and began to use the table lighter. Then he cursed
and threw the phallic object under the chair and crushed the cigarette. “You
know that’s impossible,” he said. The idea of separate Units for homes had
disappeared, of course, to be replaced by giant dormitories. There were no more
parks, no country lanes. There was no place to hide at all now, thanks to
Senator Knudsen, to the little spearhead of these great new sociological
reforms. “This is all we have.” Jesse threw a sardonic look around the booth,
with its carved symbols and framed pictures of entertainment stars all naked
and leering.
They were silent for a time, hands interlocked on the tabletop. Then the girl
began to cry. “I—I can’t go on like this,” she said. “I can’t. Jesse, listen; I
came here tonight to tell you—”
“I know. I know how awful it is for you. But what else can we do?” He tried to
keep the hopelessness out of his voice.
“We could—’’ the girl started, and seemed to change her mind. “Maybe we should
have gone underground with the rest, right at the first.”
“And hide there, like rats?’’ Jesse said.
“We’re hiding here, aren’t we,” Mina demanded, adding, “like rats!”
He sighed. He could not remember seeing her quite so unhappy. Things had never
been exactly right, never perfect, because she had always seemed to fight her
instincts. Even her affection for him since that first time when he made her
admit it, pried it loose from her. But he had thought this could be conquered .
. . No; don’t think about it. Think about now, and how beautiful she is, how
warm and vibrant and soft.
“It’s necessary,” he said. “Parner is getting ready to crack down. I know,
Mina: I work at Centraldome, after all.
In a little while there won’t be any underground. He has a list of names a mile
long already.”
Then, suddenly, the girl said. “I love you,” and leaned forward, parting her
lips for a kiss. “Jesse. I do.” She closed her eyes. “And I’ve tried to be
strong, just like you told me to be. But they wouldn’t leave us alone. They
wouldn’t stop. Just because we’re qu. ..”
“Mina! I’ve said it before — don’t ever use that word!” His voice was harsh; he
pushed her away. “It isn’t true! We’re not the queers. You’ve got to believe
that. Years ago it was normal for men and women to love each other: they
married and had children together; that’s the way it was. Don’t you remember
anything of what I’ve told you?”
The girl stared downward. “Of course I do. I do, really. But it was such a long
time ago.”
“Not so long! Where I work — listen to me — they have books. You know, I told
you about books? I’ve read them, Mina. I learned what the words meant from
other books. It’s only been since the use of artificial insemination — not even
five hundred years ago.”
“Yes,” the girl said, sighing. “I’m sure that’s true.”
“Mina, stop it! We are not the unnatural ones, no matter what they say. I don’t
know exactly how it happened — maybe as women gradually became equal to men in
every way — or maybe solely because of the way we’re born — I don’t know. But
the point is darling, the whole world was like us, once. Even now,” he said,
desperately, “look at the animals.”
“Jesse, don’t you dare talk as though we’re like those horrible little dogs and
cats and things.”
Jesse took a deep swallow of his drink. He had tried so often to tell her, show
her, make her see. But he knew what she thought, really. She thought she was
exactly what, the authorities told her she was.
God, maybe that’s how they all think, all the Crooked People, all the
“un-normal ones” . . .
The girl’s hands caressed his arms and the touch of them became strange to him.
I love you, Mr. Martin, even though you do have two heads . . .
Forget it, he thought. Never mind. She’s a woman, a very satisfying, desirable
woman, and she may think you’re both freaks, but you know different, indeed you
do, you know she’s wrong, just as they’re all wrong . . .
Or, he wondered, are you the insane person of old days who was insane because
he was so sure he wasn’t insane because —
“Disgusting!”
It was the fat man, the smiling masher, E. J. Hobart. But he wasn’t smiling
now. Jesse got up quickly and stepped in front of Mina. “What do you want?” he
said. “I thought I told you—”
The man pulled a metal identification disk from his trunks. “Vice-squad, my
friend,” he said. “Better sit down.”
The man’s arm went out through the curtain and two other men came in, equipped
with weapons.
“I’ve been watching you quite a while. Mister,” the man said. “Quite a while.”
“Look,” Jesse said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. 1 work at
Centraldome and I’m seeing Miss Kirkpatrick here on some business.”
“We know all about that kind of business,” the man said.
“All right — I’ll tell you the truth. I forced her to come here. She didn’t
want to, but I—”
“Mister, didn’t you hear me? I said I’ve been watching you. Let’s go.”
One man took Mina’s arm, roughly; the other two began to propel Jesse out
through the club. Heads turned. Tangled bodies moved embarrassedly.
“It’s all right,” the fat man said, his white skin glistening with
perspiration. “It’s all right, folks. Go on back to whatever you were doing.”
He grinned and tightened his grip on Jesse’s wrist.
Mina, Jesse noticed, did not struggle. He looked at her and felt something
suddenly freeze into him. She had been trying to tell him something all
evening, but he hadn’t let her. Now he knew what he had feared. He knew what
she had come to tell him: that even if they hadn’t been caught, she would have
submitted to the Cure voluntarily. No more worries then, no more guilt. No more
tender moments, either, but wasn’t that a small price to pay, when she could
live the rest of her life without feeling shame and dirt? Yes. it was a small
price, now that the midnight dives and brief meetings were all they had left.
She did not meet his look as they took her out into the street. He watched her
and thought of the past when they had been close, and he wanted to scream.
“You’ll be okay,” the fat man was saying. He opened the wagon’s doors. “They’ve
got it down pat now — couple days in the ward, one short session with the
doctors; take out a few glands, make a few injections, attach a few wires to
your head, turn on a machine: presto! You’ll be surprised.”
The fat officer leaned close. His sausage fingers danced wildly near Jesse’s
face.
“It’ll make a new man of you,” he said.
Then they closed the doors and locked them.
