ABSTRACT
Sociologists had studied bar operations and the practice of male prostitution by teen-age gang members, but no one had tackled the scenes of impersonal sex where most arrests are made. Social scientists have avoided this area of deviant behavior, perhaps due to the many emotional and methodological problems it presents— some of which are common to any study of a deviant population. Some methods, then, have grown quite naturally from the chromosomal messages of a particular "school" of sociology. Operation of one's car is a form of self-presentation that tells the observant sociologist a great deal about the operator. Like any deviant group, homosexuals have developed defenses against outsiders: secrecy about their true identity, symbolic gestures and the use of the eyes for communication, extraordinary caution with strangers, and admission to certain places only in the company of a recognized person.
