His Brother’s Keeper : David Glascock cares about the people nobody cares about: imprisoned gays. He’s made their treatment his business.

They call it the Witch’s Castle, this jail cell decorated with he-man posters and frilly toilet-paper curtains, filled with men arrayed in homemade earrings and with silicone breast implants.

It is here that gay activist David Glascock comes to visit “the Girls,” who greet him with all the fanfare of a returning hero.

A rotund, balding man with a gray mustache, he makes for an unlikely celebrity. But little is as one might expect in Module 913, the tiny ward tucked away in the padlocked heart of the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho, the Castaic jail where the county houses transvestites--the men who would be women.

With the determined air of a drill sergeant, Glascock wades into a bevy of shrieking inmates, ready to hear the concerns of this subculture behind bars--their bouts with the AIDS virus as well as their treatment by jailers. He is their advocate, their defender and, sometimes, their savior.

Glascock has insight into this little-known world: He is gay. And he is HIV positive. And he too spent time as a teen-ager in prison for a sex offense--an indelible asterisk that is the extent of his criminal record.

“Nobody cares about people in jail, especially homosexuals,” he says. “Last of all come the queens. They’re one of the most isolated groups in society. They have no power. And they have no one with any power who’s interested in their behalf.”

Except Glascock. Since walking into the Central Men’s Jail in Downtown 12 years ago, curious about the treatment of fellow gays, the onetime taxicab dispatcher and former assistant to County Supervisor Ed Edelman has been a demanding prisoners’ rights advocate, battling for the men he calls “my brothers.”

First as a volunteer, then as a paid monitor for the American Civil Liberties Union, Glascock, 53, has campaigned to see that all gay men receive equal treatment in the Los Angeles County jail system, where since 1981--after several lawsuits--they have been separated from other prisoners for their own protection. Last year, the Honor Rancho became the jail for gays arrested countywide.

Now, that crusade is in jeopardy.

In recent months, Glascock’s $15-an-hour job has been slashed from 100 to 62 hours a month. The ACLU, which pays him out of a special budget that it administers for the county, called the cutback an internal matter and stressed that its commitment to protecting the rights of gays will continue--with or without Glascock.

Still, the cuts concern many inmates and some jail staffers who say his dedication could simply not be replaced.

“David Glascock has made a difference for gay people behind bars,” says a gay former inmate. “He works wonders in the most hellish of circumstances. And the jail command respects him. When David talks, they listen.”

Most days, Glascock drives from his West Hollywood home to the distant Honor Rancho, north of Magic Mountain. There, in the gay ward’s four 96-bed units, he listens to problems worsened by a military-style system with few clues about gay life--the needs, fears and dangers.

Often, he intervenes on behalf of sick inmates, some with AIDS, who he says are slow to be given drugs such as AZT or even routine medical care. He haggles with a sluggish bureaucracy to secure extra blankets and double portions of food for the sickest. Jail officials acknowledge that oversights occur and that Glascock has pinpointed prisoners who needed extra attention.

He also plays a gruff guardian angel to first-timers who dread becoming lost among the 20,000 inmates in the nation’s largest jail system. Many fear being housed with the jail’s general population, the domain of career criminals and gang warfare.

Glascock walks a tightrope between the jailed and the jailers: Among the prisoners, he weeds out career complainers from those with serious concerns, sometimes inspiring criticism from the inmates. He is mistrusted by some guards who dislike the pampering of gay inmates by an outsider unafraid to circumvent jail command, even telephoning a supervisor’s boss to get his way.

“I piss everybody off,” Glascock says, “at one time or another.”

When he started this work, deputies wouldn’t use the same cafeteria table as Glascock. They left him nasty notes, whispered about the man who had spent two years in a Wisconsin prison decades earlier, after a conviction for having sex with a 15-year-old male prostitute.

Glascock’s relationship with guards has improved. He now conducts seminars for deputies on the intricacies of gay life. Because of his efforts, jail officials hand-select deputies to work in the gay ward at the Honor Rancho.

He also successfully pushed to transfer “homophobic” guards, including one who reportedly terrorized the men, destroying their personal belongings. “Some guards hate him,” one deputy says, “because they don’t understand him.”

Still, he has defended others wrongly accused of abuse.

Most of Glascock’s time is devoted to the classification of inmates based on a system he helped create with Deputy Ernie Cobarrubias. He evaluates the sexual orientation of all would-be gay inmates, weeding out straight prisoners who might infiltrate the gay dorms to attempt rape or extortion, or just to escape the jail’s main population.

Working with Senior Deputy Ken Irwin, he also tries to keep the drag queens out of the gay dorms. While not sexually attracted to each other, the queens often seek relationships with heterosexuals or other, more masculine gays.

Over the years, Glascock has conducted more than 30,000 such interviews.

“I respect what David does here,” says Irwin, 51. “He feels a strong connection to his people. I’m proud to call him my friend.”

Last month, in a move approved by his supervisors, Irwin sent a letter seeking the political support of local gay leaders, calling the cutback in Glascock’s hours “an injustice to someone who actually gives more than he could ever be compensated for.”

Meanwhile, inside the gay module, there is growing concern that a voice might be stifled: “A lot of people call him a big, blustery so-and-so, but underneath it all is one big heart,” inmate Randolph Higgins says. “I’m afraid to see what life here would be like without him.”

In a charmless cinder-block room, the Odd Couple awaits the lineup.

Ken Irwin and David Glascock sit like stern-faced judges presiding over some sexual court, sizing up the men seeking a bed in the gay module.

But gaining admission to the dorm is no easy feat before these two, who are always on the lookout for impostors--the neo-Nazis, gang members and tough guys who might try to claim the cells as new turf.

*

With studied looks--as well as a guide book to gay bars nationwide--they question each man, examining his written answers on a form with such queries as: “Which gay bars have you been to?” “What is your lover’s telephone number?” “Where and when is the gay pride parade?”

The criterion for entry is simple: living a legitimate gay life on the street. It does not mean, Irwin says, having gay sex just for convenience.

They’re a wily pair. After one long-haired inmate bluffs several correct answers, Glascock’s eyes narrow. It is the quick studies who anger him most--sullen jail veterans who lie about lovers they’ve had, gay bars they’ve visited--men who would cause nothing but trouble among the gays.

One man once professed to be HIV positive in an attempt for sympathy. Glascock cleared the room. “Listen, you son of a bitch!” he spat. “You know you’re not gay. But I am gay and I’m HIV positive. And you don’t want to be me. So, don’t ever pull that again.”

So he goes on the attack with the long-haired man, demanding to know the location of the fish tank in the lobby of a West Hollywood gay bar.

“Er, it’s on the right, yeah, the right,” the inmate stammers.

“Next!” Glascock calls out. Smiling, he says the bar has no fish tank.

To another inmate he says, “Why should you end up here? Why shouldn’t you be sent to the place where the Bloods and the Crips are?”

The man’s reply: “Because I’d end up dead there.” Glascock lets the man in.

The drag queens play a different game of deception--scrubbing off makeup and nail polish, telling lies and wild stories--all to avoid the isolation of the Witch’s Castle, which sits on a hill overlooking the rural grounds--inspiring the nickname.

With 60 inmates to see that day, Irwin and Glascock are not amused.

“Let me see your chest,” Irwin barks at one man. “Do you have chi chis? OK, now let me see your toenails. You tried to scrape off the polish, didn’t you?” The man is sent to the Witch’s Castle.

After a few tough minutes, an inmate with orange hair passes muster. “Thanks a lot, darlin’,” Glascock says, clearing him for the gay ward. “The third degree’s over. Oh, by the way, I like the way you do your hair.”

The system isn’t foolproof--straight inmates have slipped past the pair. Borderline cases are scrutinized. Some are housed in the “Softie Tank,” the dorm for white-collar heterosexuals who might be victimized in the general population.

After months of tension, Glascock has developed an easygoing relationship with Irwin--a muscular, religious man and a reluctant newcomer to the world of gays behind bars.

When gay inmates were moved to the Honor Rancho last year, Irwin, an 18-year veteran, was low man on the deputy supervisory ladder: He was made the classification officer, a job no one else wanted. Irwin had never known an openly gay person.

Until Glascock. Initially, tempers flashed with this strange, often-grumbling volunteer who was Irwin’s guide to the gay community.

“Once, when I cut off some inmate, David corrected me right in front of the guy,” Irwin recalls. “He said, ‘Hey, you’re not giving this man a chance to talk.’ So I let him talk. Later, Glascock and I had a little talk of our own.”

Fourteen months later, the two discuss Irwin’s home life in Valencia with his wife and three daughters, or Glascock’s in West Hollywood with his 34-year-old lover.

They exchange birthday and Christmas gifts. At the jail, it was Irwin whom Glascock first told about his HIV-positive status.

Through Glascock, Irwin has learned compassion for the transvestites: He has allowed impromptu “weddings” and a talent show in which inmates sang and danced, using toilet paper rolls for microphones and mop-heads for wigs.

*

On regular tours of the gay ward, Irwin will sit with inmates and critique their drawings or tell stories with the warmth of a grandfather.

Recently, Glascock gave Irwin a tour of the West Hollywood streets where most drag queens are arrested. For Irwin, this was another first.

“Look! There’s Irwin!” several queens shriek as Irwin cruises past in a late-model Lexus, smiling broadly like a kid on a field trip.

“Hey,” he later asks Glascock, pointing to one gay bar, “that sign says ‘SM’! What’s that stand for, like S & M?”

“No, Kenny,” Glascock answers, his face wrinkled. “It stands for Santa Monica Boulevard, the street we’re on.”

It’s a scene of two friends having fun. “Which way do I go, right or straight?” Irwin asks at one corner.

“This is West Hollywood, Ken,” Glascock replies. “It’s either right, left or gaily forward, but never straight.”

At a crowded bar, the two meet several gays they had interviewed at the jail. Glascock introduces a suddenly reserved Irwin: “Hey, remember Ken? He’s finally come out of the closet!”

Irwin’s reply: “Yeah, and now I want to go back in.”

The group laughs. Glascock pats Irwin lightly on the shoulder.

In dramatic fashion, the drag queen sighs breathlessly and describes life in the Witch’s Castle: “The witch,” he says, “is always hidden away where no one can hear her cries.”

Neither Glascock nor the people he helps like the way the queens are housed in the most secure area at the Honor Rancho, alongside the most violent inmates. Jail officials say the 32-bed ward is the perfect size for the community, normally ranging from 20 to 30 inmates.

Indeed, it’s the treatment of the queens that most concerns Glascock.

Mostly uneducated teen-agers who have taken to a life of street prostitution, the queens fall to the bottom of jail society, Glascock says. They’re ostracized by other gays, who see them as unflattering stereotypes--men who dress as and imitate women.

Queens moved to regular gay modules have taken on boyfriends, inciting fights. After lights-out, they have cruised the dorm for lovers, using ripped-up bedsheets as makeshift halter tops.

Glascock has defended such practices, describing the inmates as “women trapped in men’s bodies.” If they must be isolated, he says, allow them to go topless and wear makeup as a way to express their sexual identity.

“The attitude is, ‘Dammit, these are men and they’re going to be treated like men,’ ” he says. “Well, they’re not men. Nobody would choose this lifestyle unless they had something burning inside them.”

And so they languish in the Witch’s Castle--some awaiting trial, others serving time, mainly for prostitution--dancing daily to MTV in herky-jerky moves, calling each other “Miss Thing” in low-pitched but oddly feminine voices and fighting over the smallest things: “We may look like women,” one says, “but we fight like men.”

Risking punishment, the queens defiantly maintain their feminine look with homemade makeup recipes: For mascara, they burn the black telephone receiver with a lighter, mixing the melted plastic with toothpaste smeared on the cinder-block wall. They combine soap and a breakfast ration of oatmeal to make beauty masks. Earrings are fashioned from the foil tops of their morning orange juice.

“We want to stay beautiful,” says Carlos Alvarati, a male prostitute who uses the name of Lizete, “even though it gets us into trouble.”

Glascock has lost battles for makeup and topless inmates. But he has had his victories.

Taking inmate complaints to jail superiors, he secured a doctor to replace one who had taken sick. And he won the queens part-time use of a classroom where they can study for high school equivalency tests.

And so, Glascock continues to play confidante to inmates. As he watches a family inheritance dwindle, he wonders how long he can survive on his ACLU salary of $930 a month.

But he knows that the job--and his newfound friendship with Ken Irwin--has deepened his sense of compassion.

Like during the interview when he asks which gay bars an inmate frequents. “I don’t go to bars anymore,” the man says. “I’m almost 56 years old, nobody would have me. Anyway, I value my life, so I just don’t go.”

Glascock studies the man in silence. “I know,” he replies softly, glancing over at Irwin. “You get to be 50 and nobody wants you. It’s tough, man, really tough.”