Sex Histories	Sex Histories Archive

In "People v. Thomas Kennedy," the defendant is charged with "public lewdness"; it is alleged that he "while riding on board train 6070 LIRR [Long Island Rail Road] ... did sit across from the complainant and did place both his hands on his clothed penis and rubbed same for a period of approximately six minutes in open view of the complainant in a lewd manner" thus causing complainant feelings of "annoyance and alarm."

The defense failed to point out that there are many millions of men and women who would love to see Thomas Kennedy rubbing his cock, even "clothed," and even with only one hand; that these millions would give him extra points for using both hands; and that he had no way of knowing that the complainant was not this sort of person.

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The defense did try to get the charge dismissed on the grounds that "there are no evidentiary facts which allege that he exposed his private parts."

But a certain Judge Robinson (we are supposed to know his first name) in Queens County, New York City Criminal Court declared that "conduct can be found to be lewd without any exposure of private or intimate parts.... Clearly the duration of defendant's rubbing directed the public's attention to his genital area. Moreover such actions are a clear indication of a form of sexual activity [presumably jacking off] that, when done in public is depraved." Therefore, the judge ruled that the motion seeking dismissal of the charge is "denied....This constitutes the decision and order of the court."

The charm of the case is somewhat lessened by the fact that the complainant is a woman, which suggests that Kennedy, so admirable for what appears to be an unusually high degree of sexual heat, is just a common ordinary heterosexual.

Chances are that if the person Kennedy put on this show for had been a man, he too would have complained. In fact men in general are probably more likely to complain about such things than women; men are under more pressure to display heterosexuality than women are and men are probably closer to homosexuality than women are.

The New York Law Journal's report of this case does not say whether, during his six-minute exhibition, Kennedy got a hard on or creamed in his pants. If he did, it would be but a minor mess if he was wearing jockey shorts, which can contain a wad of cum better than boxers. A load of cream would slide through the leg openings of boxer shorts and slide down a man's thighs, thus tainting his trousers and requiring dry cleaning. But even dry cleaning can be fun; the last time I went to my cleaner's the handsome young Hispanic who attended me gave his groin a blatantly sexual squeeze without making any pretense that he was merely relieving an inguinal itch, and a New York Times writer has written (not for the Times but for my own oeuvre) that he licks the asshole of the Puerto Rican who delivers his dry cleaning and then sucks him off. The Puerto Rican is married; the Times man divorced.

The law journal clipping was sent by no less a personage than a professor at a top New York law school. Healthy man. Somewhat less healthy was a New York lawyer who attacked my sexuality in a letter to the New York Native and threatened to kill me-- presumably for not being as nice as he. I feel that to kill me would be in bad taste. Moreover, it is injudicious for a lawyer to issue such a threat. That he was not as chaste as his letter suggested can be seen in his obituary, which lists his C.O.D. as AIDS.

Also dead of AIDS is a gay writer who, in a review in the Advocate, like evaluated books this one as "dirty."

Both of these gentlemen are what I call "wax fruits" in honor of the middle class atmosphere from which they seem to have emerged-- the bowls of wax fruit and artificial flowers scattered through the lovely home, the plastic runner to protect the lovely carpet, the red light bulb behind the plastic logs in the fireplace, the sign in the bathroom reading "Thank you for washing your hands." Both seem to belong to that percentage of homosexuals who hate homosexuality (in themselves and in other homosexuals). They don't really have what it takes to enjoy homosexuality.

Author Profile:  Boyd McDonald

Born in 1925 in South Dakota, Boyd McDonald entered Harvard as a high-school dropout after serving in the army in World War II. Jobs with Time, IBM, and several Wall Street firms preceded Boyd's career as a chronicler of gay sex. He was the founder and editor of Straight to Hell (alternatively the Manhattan Review of Cocksucking), and later published a number of anthologies of true sex histories. Boyd died in September 1993, two months after completing his final book, Scum.