John Rechy

City of Night

Naked Lunch

City of Night

City of Night

My Own Private Idaho

Numbers

The Sexual Outlaw

The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens

The History of Tom Jones

City of Night

Vice: Let’s start with, of course, City of Night. I never quite understood what your background as a writer was before this book. You worked for a newspaper, right?

John Rechy:

And this was in Texas?

When you’re a copy boy, you’re really working with everybody else’s writing. When did you start to write yourself? Did you take any classes, or are you self-taught?

laughs

How old were you when you wrote that?

Time on Wings

That was the title of it?

It would be nice to see your juvenilia. City of Night started out as a—

A letter, and then it expanded into a short story and it was published in a magazine. Can you talk about that development?

City of Night

And did you hear back from the person you sent this letter to?

And you read it later.

Wow, and you hadn’t actually written anything at that level yet.

Evergreen Review

New Directions

So you were just getting letters back in El Paso from all these big New York people?

That’s amazing, isn’t it? What section was it?

The ending of the book.

So when he asked you that, had it never occurred to you that it might be part of a novel that you could write?

What bravado it took for you to say that.

Well, you did, and it was not written quite like anything else at that time, obviously. It is a highly original book, especially within the nascent world of gay literature of that era. I mean, it does not read like The City and the Pillar at all. What kind of larger literary zeitgeist was going on that made you want to write in that almost generational way of speaking? Were you into Kerouac at all?

But you can see why I ask that. City of Night, in much of its language, is very “Beat.”

So did you just invent this way of writing and speaking?

laughs

Winnie-the-Pooh

[laughs] That’s a pull-quote.

Is it the absurdity of it that inspired you?

Winnie- the-Pooh

Were you writing against anybody? Were you rebelling against anything? I mean, the character is a hustler, but he’s also sort of a JD. Were you a writer-rebel?

Evergreen Review

Really? Was it that the subject matter was too out there?

One thing that I find fascinating about this book—and a lot of other people do, too—is the depiction of sex in it. Back when it came out in 1963, the only gay sex in books was in those little paperbacks at porn stores. But the writing in those was so perfumed and silly. City of Night came along, and it set the template, even to this day, of writing about sex between men. There’s this quality to it that describes exactly, especially, that kind of interchange, what that kind of dirty hustler sex is like. And, I mean, you were hustling in real life. Were you just writing what it seemed like to you?

imitates a bell tolling

should

That’s when you were pulled from memoir into fiction, maybe.

Big Table

It’s sort of like it had to become a little more cinematic and romantic to encapsulate what was really happening. And I’ll tell you: When I first read City of Night, that was the quality that grabbed me in 1971. I was 18, and this almost punk feeling of in-your-face that novel has, and how real it feels, really grabbed me. It was set within this perfectly romantic, but not overly romantic, world. Like a really good 50s JD romance.

Oh, yes.

It was one of the best sellers at Grove. And it still is a pleasurable item. I know 20-year-old guys who love it.

You’ve got to read it if you’re a young, hip gay guy in the city, especially.

Well, I’m going to tell you something that I wasn’t sure I would, but now that we’re sitting here and I’ve had half a glass of wine… A year after I read City of Night, I became a hustler in Denver, Colorado.

laughs

For ten months I was a street hustler, in Denver in 1972, in the Capitol Loop, around the Capitol Building. They called it Fruit Loop or Sodomy Circle.

They’d drive around, pick you up, and it was amazing. Drag queens on the street… the downtown section of Denver was seedy but really fun. I had a wonderful time. I don’t regret it at all. Another book that comes to mind when I think of that time is Last Exit to Brooklyn, which came out a year later. What did you think of Hubert Selby’s book?

City of Night

That’s true.

laughs

He only wrote a few other things, and they weren’t known.

Anyway, I was just curious if there was some kind of connection. I only have a couple more questions about City of Night. Miss Destiny’s the best-known drag queen in postwar literature, I think. Whatever happened to her? She was a real queen that you knew, right?

Really?

City of Night

It’s very authentic.

laughs

Oh, drag queens have their way of getting phone numbers at 3 AM. What would she do, call up and say, “Remember me?”

I wondered about that. There was a queen I knew in Chicago 20 years ago, this young, really funny drag queen who named herself Miss Destiny after that character.

Yeah. But she wasn’t like Miss Destiny. She just liked the character. So, Gus Van Sant has mentioned over the years how much he likes City of Night.

My Own Private Idaho of course owes a heavy debt to City of Night.

laughs

Are you interested in porn as a subject?

It’s everywhere.

Like about people who’ve been tossed away once they’ve been used?

I know exactly what you mean, and it’s probably why I got out of hustling after ten months. I never made porno movies, but it’s the same kind of thing. But just switching gears here: You speak out pretty vociferously about the whole subject of the ghettoization of minority writers in bookstores, where there’s black lit, women’s lit, gay lit, and so on. But what about at the other end, in the 50s and 60s, when there weren’t any gay books in the bookstores at all? How hard was it to get City of Night or Numbers into a store in the beginning?

City of Night

Numbers

Oh, they were Christians?

Now, this was about ’67 when Numbers came out?

Yeah, right around there. The Summer of Love.

City of Night

Spain is pretty much the cutting edge of gay culture right now. It’s like, if you push something down that much, it’s going to pop up so much more eventually. Once you were a writer, you didn’t stop hustling. This is one of the most interesting things about your career.

You were only 23 or so.

It becomes a hall of mirrors at some point.

laughs

“I can dispense with that question.” But you kept hustling for many years because this really was you. You weren’t just trying to be authentic. Did you always take money? Because the whole money thing was so interesting in the hustling world, I recall.

Hustling and cruising are two separate things, but I can say from my own experience that they became confused in a way.

Right, specific places for each activity.

And if you went to hustle early, you’d have your money in your pocket when you needed it.

Let’s talk about that. Homosexual men, I think, are able to get affirmation more quickly than straight men. And all men need affirmation from other men. Now, being paid is also a very different sort of affirming, because then it’s concrete. Straight men don’t really have a version of this.

You’ve called Numbers a “sexual horror story,” which is extremely apt, I think. Nothing I’ve ever read has come as close to the monstrosity that’s found at the edges of existence in that book. I mean, not even Heart of Darkness. Did you set out to write it that way, or do you even agree with what I’m saying?

City of Night

Numbers

The Observer

Numbers

Just for those who haven’t read Numbers, it’s a book where a young man decides—for no stated reason necessarily—that he’s going to have sex with 30 men in, what? A weekend? Or a week?

Numbers

And you thought, “Let’s see if I can do this”?

That’s fantastic.

But that’s not really the theme of the book. That’s just the setup of the book.

Numbers

City of Night

You mean it irritates you when you try to read it?

City of Night

laughs

Oh, my God. I think you’re a bit insatiable.

Is it true that you wrote Numbers while driving across country in a Mustang and your mother was holding the writing pad?

You were thinking up this book with your mom sitting there? Did she read English?

But she didn’t know what you were writing right then.

And they were the actual—the beginning of the book as it is? I mean, obviously—

A writer named Jonathan Kirsch wrote a piece about you in the Los Angeles Times, and he brought up something I think is essential to what you do—this almost otherworldly passion that your characters possess. You’re known for all this expression of raw sexuality, but it’s almost like that’s emanating through a need for the ecstatic. So many of your characters are fighting against the fact that their lives aren’t something more.

How long have you been with your boyfriend?

I believe you.

Seriously? It really worked like that? [laughs] I’ve believed everything you’ve said until now. It’s so romantic—too perfect!

And then you went and talked to Michael?

I did that once when I was hustling. Oh, man.

Thirty years ago. That’s fantastic.

That Obscure Object of Desire

Numbers

Oh, my God. Let’s talk about The Fourth Angel. I think that’s one of the most interesting books you’ve written, but it isn’t very well known.

The Fourth Angel? Wow. Talk to me about it. It’s a book about kids.

So you took these adults and you wrote them as teenagers. The book is kind of a Lord of the Flies of the S&M era. I mean, it’s pretty rotten. It’s a frightening book.

And this book was made into a theater piece.

And you chose that particular book—the darkest book you’d done. [laughs]

The Fourth Angel

Wow. Where was it produced?

Like a showcase type of thing?

Karen Black? [laughs] No. Too old.

You’re kidding.

Your book Rushes ends in what might be called an S&M sacrifice. That book came out in ’79, which was the same year that William Friedkin was making Cruising, in which Al Pacino plays a cop who goes undercover in the leather, S&M world in New York. What is your stand on S&M?

Rushes

I was raised Catholic, too.

Rushes

How did I miss that? I’m obviously lapsed, but…

Our Lady of Babylon

I’m not into S&M. Fetishes are far stranger than just dressing up in leather. You have to have your own. But I do know that there are people who would say, “But to me it’s release in the end.” What do you think of that argument?

Sure, one of the original, iconic gay porn stars. He committed suicide after he lost his looks, is what I hear.

Rushes

He did really odd porn stuff, too. Strange fetishes, like fucking a motorcycle. [laughs]

He probably agreed but said, “And? What’s the problem?”

You have morals in your writing, but your morals are more about, “Look at this right now. Look at beauty. Look at death.” You don’t have a big ending, generally.

The Coming of the Night

No, I haven’t gotten to it yet.

Was this before AIDS or post-AIDS?

Well, people, would they know what it was yet?

Did you join in?

The Coming of the Night

I’ve been that guy, when I was a hustler hired for a party. I still to this day don’t know why I liked it, and I don’t know why they liked it and everybody else wanted to join in. I was also hired to beat guys with belts and all that stuff, and more. It was very interesting to explore, and I wouldn’t do anything horribly violent, but you do understand why people maybe want this stuff.

Do you think it’s dying out? Is it a generational thing like leather? I don’t really see much leather anymore.

One of my favorite things in your work is your refusal to attack the idea of narcissism. There’s a lot of that in the worlds you’ve written about, but there’s a kind of narcissism that is aware of itself. My good friend is very much that way. He’s one of the kindest people in the world, and then he makes homemade self-porn movies to sort of worship himself. You would love this guy.

Do you still teach writing at the college level?

What happened?

I was just thinking about an earlier brouhaha of yours. You once said that you were the first man to walk down Santa Monica Boulevard without a shirt on.

This was in the 50s when everybody was wearing gray flannel suits. It’s like you were almost naked, right?

Did you have a t-shirt in your back pocket?

Faded hadn’t really come in so much then. It was still Lee dungarees.

Engineer boots?

I still have those. [laughs] I had to order engineer boots for years just because of you. So was Santa Monica Boulevard a hustler place at this time?

What made you take your shirt off? It’s like me taking my pants off and walking down Fifth Avenue.

And you were wearing like a tight, white t-shirt?

Did anybody call you out? Maybe they couldn’t really think beyond, here comes a vision down the street.

Well, they wouldn’t really connect that anyway. Not then.