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. 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. I never enjoyed it.
It made me physically sick. 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. 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.
Howard said he was addicted to sex just as an alcoholic is hooked on liquor. 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. 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. There were lewd-conduct arrests in the county in , according to the California Department of Justice Bureau of Criminal Statistics. In the same year, there were 8, such arrests statewide. Ed Merrilees, Orange County assistant district attorney, said homosexual acts in public account for the vast majority of lewd-conduct arrests.
