Mr. Marlowe's witty and frank biography Mr. Madam, will appear in book form this summer.
Is Homosexual Rape Legal?
Kenneth Marlowe
It was one of the hottest nights of the year. All weather records had been broken and were being topped day after day last September. It is normally our most uncomfortable month in Los Angeles. But this was the worst anyone had experienced.
I live in an apartment building on the second floor front. You enter the building through a metal gate and reach the apartments through interior stairways, off the central Patio. There are no street entrances to the apart-
ments.
It was unbearable, even several hours after midnight. I was very tired from loss of sleep for nearly a week. But I slept, finally, from exhaustion.
out.
The apartment lights were Only moonlight from the shuttered window filtered softly across the bed. The bedroom is about forty feet from the doorway and you cannot see the arched alcove from the entrance, All you can see is the interior blackness until you are standing inside of the room and your eyes become accustomed to the dark.
There is an outside entry light at the head of the stairway, which leads to three apartments. Other apartment doors in the building were also open. Some of the other tenants in the building were still up, watching the Late Show and sitting around chatting, trying to keep cool.
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I was lying on my stomach, in the buff, and had been sleeping for about an hour. In my sleep I became aware that a large man was on top of me, and I was being violated.
I struggled, which only made him more stimulated. It took only mo-
ments.
A million thoughts ran through my mind. Was he a burglar or a robber? Would he try to kill me if I yelled out? And if I did yell, and people rushed in to help me, what kind of position was I in? What would my neighbors think, seeing such a scene? Perhaps they wouldn't even even think something terrible was happening to
me.
Maybe they would think I was only expressing passion, screams of passion. Who could one really turn to at a time like this? It's for sure the police wouldn't help me. My neighbors, whenever they saw me afterwards, would only think that I am a homosexual. They would then know the things I'd kept unrevealed until now.
After all, when a female is raped, people only remember the incident that happened, not the struggle to get away from it. They only recall the intercourse itself.
I will admit that I might go through such a scene a hundred times. And its an entirely different matter when it's voluntary on my part. But this
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