Black-Leather Black Mass Celebrates Perfect Sex Date 6/9/69, Eighteen Days Before Stonewall Rebellion

By Jack Fritscher

Christianity's body-guilt tension has created its own Frankenstein's creature: the sexual masochist who can be of any sexual preference or gender. Riddled with guilt because he has natural urges he has been acculturated into believing immoral, the sexual masochist resolves the erotic tension between his internal drive and its external prohibition. He seeks orgasm while suffering punishment. In his mind, the pain compensates God for the devilish pleasure. In effect, the atoning pain becomes part of the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too sensuality. From this readily available whip-and-chill group of masochists, a certain New York homosexual coven secures its ritual participants.

True or not, it's a legend - as ancient as urban - that all homosexuals are bewitched. On the numerologically perfect sex date of 6/9/69, gay parties and orgies occurred throughout the world. One invitation was to a sadomasochistic Black Mass to be celebrated in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. Satanic ritual often inverts Christian symbols. The Lord's Prayer is read backwards, or the crucifix is hung upside down, or the penetration is anal. Naturally, homosexuality, which doctors once identified by the term sexual inversion, was at the core of this chic Black Mass. The coven of "inverts" was exclusively male, and their interests were as sexual as they were demonic. Their altar was a young man, nineteen or twenty years old. He was by birth a Christian, by taste a sensualist, by resultant tension a sexual masochist. He was neither of the coven nor a probationer. The coven's magus had met him through a personals ad in the East Village Other, which like the Berkeley Bar, the San Francisco Oracle, and the Los Angeles Free Press carry alternative classifieds giving opportunities for Satanists and Wiccans to advertise and meet. The youngling eagerly agreed that what was expected of him was actually his fantasy. He would be ritually showered, tortured, and made the sexually subservient altar to thirteen men.

When the guests arrived, the young man was caged in a corner of the loft apartment. The dominus limini (the porter, the keeper of the door) counted as the core-coven and their guests assembled. The coven wore black leather garments ranging from loose medieval robes to motorcycle gear. The blindfolded boy was draped in a floor-length black leather poncho with a hood. After the invocation of the spirits and the inverted Lord's Prayer, the boy was led into the center of the coven's circle to be purged by torture. He was stripped, tied by the wrists to an exposed beam, and mercilessly whipped a ritual thirteen lashes by each of the thirteen members. Periodically, during the 169 blows, the young man eagerly inhaled, through a ventilated gag, amyl nitrate to increase his endurance and submission while making him feel as if we were flying. When the Magister Templi (the Master of the Temple) cut the boy down, he was stretched out to be the coven's altar. He was shackled face down and cruciform. Once the young man was secured, the High Priest carved the pentacle on the boy's already bloodied left buttock. The left side is, in Latin, sinister, and in the occult, the sign of Satan. Finally, a consecrated host, obtained during a communion service at a Catholic Church, was anally inserted into the willing young man who was then sodomized by each of the thirteen members. Afterwards, tea cakes were served.