By Richard Labonte
"About My Life and the Kept Woman," by John Rechy. Grove Press, 320 pages, $24 hardcover.
The story about the story – and about the man – behind one of gay fiction's enduring classics, "City of Night," is about as good as memoir gets. Rechy writes with eloquent elegance about growing up Mexican-American in El Paso, where "Juan" often passed as "Johnny" because of the light skin he inherited from his angry Scottish father; about the double life of high school and college years, where he often hid his poverty from better-off friends; and about shying away from his true sexuality while in the military during the Korean War. Most compellingly, he relates how he became the street-wise, tough-guy hustler of "City of Night" and, later, "Johnny Rio" of the even more controversial novel, "Numbers." Fleeting anecdotes about 1960s gay publishing pioneer Don Allen (who brought Rechy to Grove Press), a salacious Christopher Isherwood, and a shameless Allen Ginsberg, to name a few, add historical luster to this fascinating life story. But the real star is Rechy himself, recounting the years of his sexual outlaw life with fierce, marvelous candor.
"The Road Home," by Frankie J. Jones. Bella Books, 280 pages, $13.95 paper.
When a relationship is already stressed, adding several million dollars to the mix turns out to be more hindrance than help. That's the gist of this clever combination of lesbian romance, picaresque road trip, and dream-come-true tale. The rocky romance is between Lynn and her partner Crissy, struggling to make ends meet with Crissy still in school. The road trip involves feisty 85-year-old Beulah Mae Williams, resident of the nursing home Lynn visits weekly; Beulah, an inveterate flirt with a rambunctious past, wants to reconnect with the family that disowned her decades earlier. And Lynn's dream of owning a horse ranch might be realized when she finds a lost lottery ticket worth many millions – except that her lover is wary of the wealth, and the man who lost the ticket turns out to be a violent son of a bitch, even though the law is on Lynn's side as she offers to split the winnings. Most everyone dreams of sudden wealth, but the consequences of becoming an instant millionaire aren't always wonderful, as this nicely textured novel illustrates.
"Code of Conduct," by Rich Merritt. Kensington Books, 464 pages, $15 paper.
Merritt, author of the well-received military-life memoir "Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star," invests his debut novel – about lesbian and gay marines coping with the egregious fallout of Bill Clinton's ill-conceived "don't ask, don't tell" policy – with an insider's enthusiasm. Too much enthusiasm, perhaps: the story veers often into a political preachiness that, as admirable as the sentiments might be, detracts from the plot, even as the author's real-life experience contributes welcome spirit. Gunnery Sergeant Don Hawkins is a spit-and-polish lifelong marine with secrets – he's gay, and he's fallen in love with an officer, both serious infractions in the military world. He and his queer comrades are under sneaky surveillance by a self-loathing, deeply closeted investigator hellbent on drumming homos out of the Corps; their lives are complicated by the bluster of a homophobic U.S. senator, and they are saddened by the murder of one of their friends. Merritt does an entertaining job of depicting the deleterious impact on gay soldiers of their stressful double lives, but the book is sometimes a slog.
"Comin' at Ya! The Homoerotic 3-D Photographs of Denny Denfield," edited by David L. Chapman and Thomas Waugh. Arsenal Pulp Press, 210 pages, $27.95 paper.
Two identical color plates per page, spiral binding so the pages lie flat for easier viewing, and plastic 3-D glasses enclosed with every book so that the twinned beefcake pics merge into one stereoscopic glimpse of male brawn: this resurrection of lost queer physique photography is a clever and rewarding blend of packaging and content. Denfield, who died in 1992, used a Stereo Realist camera in the 1950s and 1960s to achieve his "stereovision" effect, a process whose technology is explained by Chapman in a biographical introduction that follows Waugh's more academic analysis of the Kodachrome-color photos. Because he never sold his work, unlike other muscle-man photographers such as Bruce of L.A. or Bob Mizer of Athletic Model Guild fame – though he did give Rock Hudson a private showing – this remarkable book provides a first glimpse of Denfield's hardcore pictures. Almost all are solos of men – many posed in Northern California nature settings – with perky erections rampant. The pictures are a voyeur's delight; the text by Chapman and Waugh give this book historical heft.
Featured Excerpt:
He blew me until I came, gasping with a force I had never experienced before, as if in those moments I was pushing out, into his mouth, not only my cum but all the fear with which I had begun this welcome initiation. He gave me twenty dollars. "My name's Klein," he said with braggadocio. ""Mister" Klein," he emphasized as if grabbing for something he felt he had compromised. "Johnny," I introduced myself. "See you again, Johnny." "Sure, Mr. Klein." "Call me Ed." "Sure, Ed." "Library steps, Fifth Avenue, tomorrow, seven o'clock. Be there, kid, OK?" That encounter was the beginning of the birth of a new person, myself, another self, although at the time I had no intention of doing so, in a novel entitled "City of Night."
-from "About My Life and the Kept Woman," by John Rechy
Footnotes:
DAVID LEVITHAN, author of the gay novels "Boy Meets Boy" and "Wide Awake" and co-editor with Billy Merrill of the queer essay anthology "The Full Spectrum," has been promoted to executive editorial director of Scholastic Press trade fiction titles, while also overseeing both multimedia publishing and PUSH, the imprint he founded in 2002 for teenage writers. Levithan, who started at Scholastic 15 years ago as an intern, has also written "Realm of Possibility," a series of narrative poems that includes gay and lesbian characters. With co-author Rachel Cohn, he has penned "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," in which Nick is the "nonqueer bassist in a queercore band," and "Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List," in which gay Ely's attraction to Naomi's former boyfriend causes a serious rift in their friendship… TO COINCIDE WITH the release of "Code of Conduct," publicity-smart author Rich Merritt has posted a short film, ""Code of Conduct": Gayer Than "Top Gun,"" on YouTube (http://youtube.com/watch?v=GHQWyWSaZOc), as well as a trailer for the book (http://youtube.com/watch?v=4gQv19gbqL0), in which he discusses the facts behind his fiction. Both postings offer plenty of presumed Marine Corps eye candy.
