No one knows how many lesbians there are, because the female--or is it male--of the pervert species is seldom spoken about and is much less obvious. Psychiatrists and sociologists who have made a study of the problem in Washington think there are at least twice as many Sapphic lovers as fairies. A large incidence of lesbianism is concomitant with the shortage of men, where women work together, live together, play together, so love together.
Some display themselves, strut around in fairy joints; all queers are in rapport with all others. You will see them also in some of the late bottle-clubs, on the make for the same girls the he-wolves are chasing.
The mannish women used to hang out at the Show Boat Bar, H and 13th, until the management drove them out. Now in David’s Grill, formerly the Horseshoe, in back of the Mayflower Hotel, they outnumber the pansies who haunted the place. Many lesbians frequent Kavakos’ Grill, in the SE section, though this is not any joint so specializing. The club, owned by Bill Kavakos, a rich Greek who likes to gamble, is near the Navy Yard. It caters to sailors and slummers.
A breakdown of occupations in one group of 543 perverts who were arrested showed some interesting sidelights. Among them was only one actor, but 92 students. There were 58 army personnel and 28 from the navy. Even the rugged Marines appeared. Among the deviates were one bartender, one barber and one baker. There were four attorneys, only two doctors and only one embalmer. This is the record:
Accountant 7 Actor 1 Airport employee 3 Army: Commissioned 9 Noncommissioned 49 Attorney 4 Baker 1 Barber 1 Bartender 1 Businessman 7 Butcher 1 Cab driver 2 Clerk 48 Diplomat 1 Doctor 2 Embalmer 1 Embassy personnel 1 Government employee 57 Guard 9 Historian 1 Horse breeder 1 Interior decorator 3 Jeweler 1 Laundryman 6 Librarian 3 Marines, U. S. 2 Minister 3 Musician 5 Navy: Commissioned 1 Noncommissioned 27 Page boy 1 Pharmacist 4 Porter 6 Radio personnel 3 Realtor 2 Reporter 2 Restaurant personnel 27 Salesman 10 Sculptor 2 Servant 10 Service-station operator 2 Skilled laborer 17 Stenographer and secretary 4 Student 92 Teacher and Professor 12 Technician 3 Unemployed 50 Unskilled laborer 31 Writer 2 --- Total 543
With more than 6,000 fairies in government offices, you may be concerned about the security of the country. Fairies are no more disloyal than the normal. But homosexuals are vulnerable, they can be blackmailed or influenced by sex more deeply than conventional citizens; they are far more intense about their love-life.
Foreign chancelleries long ago learned that homos were of value in espionage work. The German Roehm, and later Goering, established divisions of such in the Foreign Office. That was aped by Soviet Russia, which has a flourishing desk now in Moscow. According to Congressman Miller, who made a comprehensive study of the subject, young students are indoctrinated and given a course in homosexuality, then taught to infiltrate in perverted circles in other countries. Congressman Miller said:
“These espionage agents have found it rather easy to send their homosexuals here and contact their kind in sensitive departments of our Government. Blackmail and many other schemes are used to gather secret information.
“The homosexual is often a man of considerable intellect and ability. It is found that the cycle of these individuals’ homosexual desires follows the cycle closely patterned to the menstrual period of women. There may be three or four days in each month that the homosexual’s instincts break down and drive the individual into abnormal fields of sexual practice. Under large doses of sedatives during this sensitive cycle, he may escape such acts.
“The problems of sexual maladjustments are urgent and still far from a solution. In the Army, several thousand were discharged. When caught in the act, they were generally discharged without honor, which means loss of citizenship. Many failed to survive rigors of warfare and intimate association with men. The majority were unable to conceal their tendencies and were eventually eliminated with disgrace.
“Never is the bond which unites two friends such that the acquisition of a new friend by one is regarded angrily by the other; but quite otherwise is the life among homosexuals. Here jealousy reigns supreme. Male homosexuals will not share their fairy with anybody.
“The sexual attraction exercised by a male on another may be apparent in many ways. The homosexual will become excited by the mere presence of some man in a public place. They often approach that man, though he is a stranger. A taxi-driver finds fares making indiscreet advances. The homosexual has no sensation in the presence of the most beautiful and seductive female. Her amorous advances may be repulsive.”
Until the recent purges in the State Department, there was a gag around Washington you had to speak with a British accent, wear a homburg hat, or have a queer quirk if you wanted to get by the guards at the door.
One high State Department official was a notorious homo who preferred young Negro boys. He was detected in a Pullman car of the Southern Railroad--on the funeral train to bury Speaker Bankhead, father of Tallulah--making immoral advances to a porter. The story reached newspaper offices, but before it could be printed the State Department sent out an urgent appeal to editors to “kill,” because it might imperil the war effort. When this official’s misdeeds were placed before President Roosevelt, it was said he refused to replace him because they both “wore the same school tie.” After resigning from the government, this official almost died of exposure when a Negro farm hand, jealous because of his attention to another, slugged him.
Aware of the seriousness of the problem, the State Department has a highly hush-hush Homosexual Bureau, manned by trained investigators and former counter-espionage agents, whose duties are to ferret out pansies in Foggy Bottom.
But the department cannot free itself of boondoggling tendencies, for at the same time it retains a personable and intelligent young lady to prepare a treatise on homosexualism, the purpose being to see if it’s possible to cure or contain the deviates who remain on the roles. Her assignment requires her to visit faggot dives, observe the queers in action and ask them how they got that way.
The following will be denied, but whenever possible the YMCA is vetoing the use of its facilities, especially the swimming pool, to all State Department employees, just to be on the safe side.
A man of almost cabinet rank in the Defense Department is also a pervert, with bivalent tendencies, a two-way performer.
These are no isolated incidents. The government is honeycombed in high places with people you wouldn’t let in your garbage-wagons.
David K. Eichler, a brilliant 37-year-old Harvard post-graduate who was a top policy-maker in the State Department as Deputy Secretary General of the Far Eastern Commission until a couple of months ago, was arrested by Park Police on the Ellipse, charged with committing an unspeakable act with a Negro man. He put up $25 “forfeit,” a Washington variation of bail cash, about which more in another chapter. The next day, at the hearing, the colored man pleaded guilty, but when Eichler didn’t appear the judge told the prisoner he might change his plea, inasmuch as his co-defendant wasn’t there.
The black fairy said, “Never mind, judge. I had a good time.”
Shortly after his arrest, Eichler went on a vacation trip to the South. After learning about the pinch, security officials instituted a search for him and summoned him back to Washington. Eichler admitted nothing, but resigned his $9,000-a-year job. He wasn’t asked to stay.