Sex Histories	Sex Histories Archive

A 25-year-old man in Florida is in danger of losing his job as a deputy sheriff for his passive role in a high school initiation rite in which 22 youths aged 16 to 19 had to strip off all their clothes.

As part of their hazing in a social club at Manatee's Southeast High School, says the Tampa Tribune, 22 boys "were brought blindfolded one by one into a room" in a Bradenton motel," where they were told there was a woman who wanted them to remove their clothing."

Note the use of a fictitious woman to mask a homoerotic scene. In the same way Sports Illustrated, after worshipping men 11 months of the year, covers its ass by putting a woman on the cover in the 12th month for its annual swimsuit issue. Because of this annual scantily-clad woman, some people innocently complain that Sports Illustrated is shockingly fond of women; but the magazine is not anywhere near fond enough of women to conceal the fact that it is men that SI likes.

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I think women should be more aware of the fondness "straight" males have for each other, so that women won't be surprised when they discover it.

Instead of "a woman" in the Bradenton motel room to provide an excuse for all the male nudity, there was a deputy sheriff (male). He "had no sexual contact with the students" said an investigator, but "it is clear [he] watched this event 22 times and failed to take any action to get away from it. Therefore by... remaining there, he condoned [it] ...."

The deputy, whose job is serving arrest warrants, has been on the force ever since he was 19. He apparently is a friend of the 25-year-old teacher who founded the high school club. The deputy was an adviser to the club and "was to be a role model for the boys."

The club, called Alpha Phi Gents, was founded "with the stated purpose of keeping young blacks out of trouble." Its founder evidently-- and rightly I think-- had the avant garde idea that he could keep the boys from destructive behavior by providing them with naked homoerotic distractions and even actual intercourse; he was later arrested on charges that he "offered members of the boys' organization hundreds of dollars for sex."

He has also been similarly charged in another county (Pinellas).

The Tribune does not say what happened after the boys undressed, whether undressing gave them (as it does some) hard ons, nor where they stacked their jockey shorts and other raiment. Did they have the opportunity to see each other naked?

Twenty-two naked boys comprise an extraordinary scene even for a motel; motels are famously sexual.

What light does the founder's interest in male flesh cast on his friendship with the deputy sheriff? The Tribune says only that the founder "dated" another deputy sheriff, this one a woman, 34 years old and a jail guard. Many men who like other men enjoy friendships with women tough enough to be jail guards.

As for the sheriff himself, no attempt is made to explain how he fulfilled his job as "role model for the boys" by watching them strip. Mmmm.

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.