THE ROPED ROMEO

Enforcing homosexual laws was low priority. But, sometimes, we'd get so many complaints about aggressive male homosexual activity we'd have to do something about it. One location was the Men's Restroom at the City Pier.

The City tried, since the Pier was its crown jewel, to keep it in good repair. One problem was homosexuals liked to bore holes in the divider partitions like woodpeckers, woodpeckers being a propitious term as you will see. The holes were bored at waist level adjacent to a urinal. This allowed a latrine Lothario sitting on the toilet to place his eye up against the partition and check out the equipment of someone taking a leak.

Might not sound like a fun way to pass an afternoon, but it was popular. Soon as the holes were patched, they'd be re-bored.

The other type of hole was bored in the thin divider between two stalls. This allowed two folks to engaged in oral sex by one placing his, uh, serious intentions through the hole so the other fella could. . .well, you get the point. Hence the term, woodpeckers.

Had these gents been particular and kept their games to those who appreciated them, there wouldn't have been much cause for our grief. But, they didn't. We'd have reports of someone enjoying a relaxed sit-down, in one of the stalls, when suddenly a one-eyed worm would wiggle through the wall. Or through the eyeball hole by a urinal.

As mentioned, we didn't have a lotta time to waste on this foolishness and thank Heaven, American ingenuity solved the problem. Some good citizen, evidently a victim of probing penis syndrome, decided to take matters into his own hands: literally.

One night, we received an anonymous call referencing a something suspicious in the men's restroom at the pier. At first we though it was a joke because the caller was laughing. We did, however, in due time respond. Our officer, on entering the restroom heard a muffled "Please help me" coming from one of the stalls. Opening the door, he saw a man with his belly flush up against the partition. The man gasped, "The other side, the other side." Opening the door, the cop saw what caused him to roar with laughter. This in turn making our toilet tryst seeker to yell, "It's not funny!"

Someone had tied a slip-noose in a piece of rawhide, which in turn, was tied to one of those green concrete sprinkler donuts. It seems that when the wandering wang poked through the hole, our hero slipped the noose over it and snugged it and the donut up tight, thereby trapping the prober.

We called an ambulance for the roped Romeo--none of us were about to undo that thing. He was taken, with his now blue magoo, to the ER where he was treated and release. We didn't have any charges we cared to press, figuring nothing worse could happen to this guy. And we never found the problem solver.

Nor did we look very hard. There was a rumor that it was an off-duty cop but we discounted that as totally ridiculous.