Crackdown on Crusing: Police Cite Deterrent Effect : Minority of Homosexuals Are ‘Tearoom’ Sex Addicts

It has cost him his marriage, thousands of dollars in lawyers’ and psychologists’ fees and thousands of hours of time.

He has tried behavior modification, hypnosis and electrical shock treatments.

He has suffered from chronic diarrhea and nausea, and he has shaken uncontrollably whenever he thought about doing it again.

For eight years, Howard (not his real name) was addicted to anonymous homosexual encounters in public parks and restrooms. He was a compulsive cruiser, and he couldn’t stop.

“I did it with people whom I never in a million years would want to touch or talk to,” he said. “I was doing things I knew were dangerous and irrational and stupid.”

Arrested Twice

Howard, now 38, was married during the years he compulsively cruised the restrooms, called tearooms. He was arrested twice on suspicion of lewd conduct, and his wife posted bail.

“What I found was I didn’t know why I was going,” he said. “It was a coping mechanism. I never enjoyed it. It made me physically sick.

“It was all a game--’Well, I’ll just drive past the park, but I won’t go in.’

“You’re compulsive, completely. You don’t care what’s happening. You don’t care if the cops are right there or if there’s a murder going on.”

In a highly publicized, two-week-long crackdown in February, Fullerton police, uniformed and in plain clothes, made eight arrests for suspected sexual activity in Hillcrest Park. Police said the park’s shrubbery and restrooms had become a haven for sexual encounters.

Four Times a Day

Hillcrest was only one of the Orange County parks Howard would cruise before work, at lunch time, on breaks and after work. At the worst point of his addiction, Howard said, he would go to the parks four times a day.

An engineer who sold technical equipment, Howard lives in a large home in an upper-class neighborhood of Orange County. He is now unemployed and in the process of divorce, but he says he is more in control of his life than he has been for a long time.

He hasn’t gone to a park in months, but the temptation is still there.

Howard said he was addicted to sex just as an alcoholic is hooked on liquor. “I don’t drink, smoke, do drugs--I do sex.”

Tearoom cruising can be as addictive as alcoholism and overeating, say psychologists and psychiatrists who treat habitual cruisers.

A compulsive cruiser spends an average of 15 hours cruising each week, and 15 hours thinking about it, said Gary Lane, a counselor at the Gay and Lesbian Community Counseling and Lifestyle Center, in Tustin.

“I work with men who are real addicted,” said Lane. “I mean, every time they have a free hour, they go to a park.”

Tearoom sex is fast, free and readily available in Orange County, Lane said. Most of the men he treats, on the average, have been arrested twice. They seek therapy only because it is a condition of parole.

“Hillcrest Park is the big focus right now, (but) I’ve had patients arrested in almost every park in Orange County,” Lane said.

There were 726 lewd-conduct arrests in the county in 1983, according to the California Department of Justice Bureau of Criminal Statistics. In the same year, there were 8,161 such arrests statewide. Ed Merrilees, Orange County assistant district attorney, said homosexual acts in public account for the vast majority of lewd-conduct arrests.

Heterosexual sex in public does occur and is also illegal, but represents a small percentage of all lewd-conduct cases, Merrilees said.

Silent Encounters

Yet a cruiser can have hundreds of tearoom encounters and never be arrested, Lane said. The encounters occur at all hours of the day or night, are usually brief, and often are completed without either partner saying a word.

Laud Humphreys, professor of sociology at Pitzer College, psychotherapist and author of the book, “Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places,” has studied homosexual behavior in parks and restrooms since 1965. “We don’t acknowledge this, but one of the major uses of a restroom is for sexual acts,” he said.

Humphreys estimates that about half of all men who use tearooms are compulsive repeaters. Many are married or severely closeted, “people who really don’t think of themselves as gay,” Humphreys said.

Gary Gesler, a licensed marriage and family counselor in Newport Beach, has treated several men with this compulsion. He estimates that 5% to 10% of all gay men have had a sexual encounter in a public place.

The “small percentage” of gay men who cruise, Gesler said, are “typically people with low self-esteem, or people under a lot of stress.”

Juan (not his real name) is 22 and openly gay. He said he went to Hillcrest Park one Wednesday afternoon because he felt anxious at home. “I was waiting for a phone call for a job. I’m in the process of changing (jobs), I’m insecure. I’m not dating anyone right now.”

‘I Wouldn’t Admit This’

Although his friends, family and co-workers know he is gay, Juan said, “I wouldn’t admit this (cruising) to anyone. If I would meet someone at a dinner party and he would say, ‘You should try this park,’ I would say, ‘Forget this guy.’ ”

Juan was in Hillcrest Park that day despite the police patrols and a previous lewd-conduct arrest. “If I get arrested again, I automatically go to jail. Automatically. I just try to play it as safe as I can.”

Now, Juan said, he cruises ocassionally, maybe once a month. From the time he was 17 until he was 20, he cruised Hillcrest Park almost every day.

He went even though he usually felt guilty after an encounter, he said. He went when he really did not intend or want to go.

“Sometimes, I was driving home and I’d end up in this place (Hillcrest),” he said. “I had to avoid getting on a street, because as soon as I got on a certain street, that was it.”

Juan stopped cruising compulsively about two years ago, around the time of his arrest. Also during that time, he had his first long-term relationship with a man, and became active socially and politically in the gay community.

He said being arrested scared him, but the major reason he stopped was “I knew who I was, what my duties were as a homosexual.”

The risk of arrest adds an exhilaration that fuels the addiction, Lane said.

“The aspect of danger creates a sense of thrill and excitement. Having sex is somehow paired with danger and excitement,” Lane said. “In order to become sexually fulfilled, they have to seek risky activity.”

Risk Adds Excitement

“It’s much the same as someone getting into race-car driving or parachuting.”

Humphreys said the risk of arrest, along with the unpredictability of having sex with a stranger makes cruising “the type of behavior we tend to get hooked on. It’s exciting because it’s an adventurous game.”

Lane and Humphreys agree that police crackdowns, like the one in Hillcrest Park, only move the activity elsewhere until cruisers think it’s safe to return. Undercover patrols actually “up the ante” in the cruising game, Humphreys said.

“Police help out a lot in this game, because you never know if they’re going to be there. If police were always there (tearooms) in uniform, there wouldn’t be as much of the activity.”

Cruisers associate certain events and moods with cruising as a smoker associates certain activities with having a cigarette, Gesler said. Cruising can become a reaction to depression, to stress, to certain times of the day, he said. “It becomes real ritualized,” Lane said. A sexual compulsive may go from one restroom to another, always in the same order, and repeat the route over and over for hours, he said.

“I have one patient who, when he gets off at 5 o’clock, cruises until 3 in the morning,” Lane said. The patient may have sex “as many as 10 times a night. He goes home not because he’s satisfied, but because he’s exhausted.”

No Social Skills Needed

Lane estimates that in 70% of tearoom encounters, neither man speaks. He says this aspect is attractive to cruisers with low self esteem. “It’s done in silence. There are no social skills. When you go to a bar, you have to have social skills.”

Cruising is “silent, and it’s noncommittal,” Humphreys said. “Consequently, that anonymity makes it safe for a person in a relationship.”

Dr. Robert Phillips, a psychiatrist practicing in Orange, has treated several compulsive cruisers. He says their brief, silent encounters allow them “to pretend to themselves that they’re not really gay, or they’re not having homosexual relations. It’s completely impersonal and (so they think) it doesn’t really count,” he said.

Phillips said it is not uncommon for these men to have addictive personalities. “There are people who deal with problems with compulsive behavior, or they substitute one compulsion for another.”

Michael (not his real name) has had problems with overeating and drugs and is a recovered alcoholic. For 10 years, he also had a sexual addiction. Michael has cruised parks and restrooms for 15 years, 10 years compulsively. He said he was married and “severely closetted” during the years he cruised “morning, noon and night.”

Now 42 and divorced, Michael lives with a man in Orange County. He said he has accepted his homosexuality, and a number of friends and relatives know he is gay. Cruising now is something he does “periodically. It’s like a binge. Sometimes I may not show up (at a tearoom) for two or three months. Sometimes I go every day for two or three months.”

Lover Knows He Cruises

Michael said his lover “is aware that sometimes I frequent tearooms. It’s just not something I discuss. Ultimately, we’re home together. “I’m not willing to give it up right now,” he said. “I’m addicted to food, so I have to take the tiger out of the cage each day to eat. That’s what I’d have to do with sex.”

Michael, like Juan, described a compulsion to go to a park when he really didn’t want to go. “I tell myself that I’m going to go today without going to the tearooms, I have so many things to do (but) the car just seems to have a mind of its own.”

He said he doesn’t know and couldn’t count the number of times he has had sex in public places. He said he fears arrest and disease, but tearooms do something good for him: they give him a way out of the closet. “These are places where, sometimes, people need to go for sanity reasons,” he said. “These were areas that got me started, got me to know that I was a gay man.” “I would like to see it move out of public restrooms, because some people are not as discreet as I am.” He said that while he is having a sexual encounter in a restroom, if some one walks in, he always stops immediately.

“If it’s between two consenting adults, I don’t see anything wrong with it, “ he said. “My encounters will continue.”

Phillips agreed that tearooms can be a way out of the closet, but said, “It’s not a very good way. There is something so profoundly humiliating about cruising the bathrooms.” All the patients he has treated for compulsive cruising “always feel degraded” after a tearoom encounter, Phillips said. “It’s a way of punishing themselves and gratifying themselves at the same time,” he said.

Discrimination against homosexuals is a major reason for bathroom sex, Gesler said. “Gays can’t just go and be normal. It’s more difficult for them (than heterosexuals) to date. As long as there is oppression, gay people have to come out every day of their lives.” The best way to cure compulsive cruising, Humphreys said, is “to get homosexual men more involved in their gayness, and more proud of it.”

Search for Alternatives

In treating cruisers, Lane said, he tries to find out what needs are being met in tearooms and then finds alternatives.

A patient who went to tearooms to relieve tension and affirm his sexual attractiveness stopped after he began lifting weights, Lane said. “He goes to the gym, and he works out. He feels better about himself, and people are complimenting him on his body, so he feels attractive.” Howard now goes to gay bars and bathhouses instead of parks and restrooms. He stopped after his second arrest, around the time his marriage broke up. The arrest and the danger of going to jail scared him, he said, but he really decided to stop cruising when “the time had come in my life” for an evaluation.

“I just knew I wasn’t happy long enough. There was this uneasy feeling all the time,” he said.

Now, he is active in both heterosexual and homosexual singles groups, he said, and is looking for a long-term relationship with either a man or a woman.

“Now, I can choose. It’s not like anybody who looks at me, I’m going to go with them,” he said.

“I’m more comfortable with myself. I’m happier with myself.”