![]() “But we must always be responsible and clear about our intentions.” “I believe in freedom of expression and in looking at situations closely and with no censorship.” He leans in, stretching his forearms, his broad shoulders flexing. But what might appear as blurred boundaries to us are very clear to him. Whether it’s porn megastar Amber or Chicano punk rocker Manny in “Bodies and Souls” or the singularly attractive Lyle in “The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens,” Rechy shines an incandescent light on those people always on the cusp of discovering their true nature, individuals perpetually exploring the folds and areas that are undefinable and unmapped. Yet, if graphic sex is in short supply in his first published book, there’s plenty of it in others - “Numbers,” “The Sexual Outlaw” and “The Coming of Night.” But there is also deep veneration for family, culture and religion at the core of his novels “Our Lady of Babylon” and “The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez,” both of which center on strong female characters. When “City of Night” was first published, the book received a generally negative reception in his review of it for the New York Review of Books, Alfred Chester slammed the novel and called Rechy’s stories “awful” it regularly makes the list of most banned books in America. It was the impression of it, he continues, the very notion that a book can call attention to such a reality, that caused so much controversy. “You realize that there are no depictions of graphic sex in ‘City of Night’?” People will say to me ‘I love your book.’” Indeed, over a career that spans nearly five decades, Rechy has published 18 books. “I’ve written better books than ‘City of Night.’ Yet it’s often as if I’ve only done that one. I wanted to write from that thin strip of contradictions too. He thrives within those sites of transaction and exchange, in the ephemeral twilight, where things get messy and jagged. Rechy’s work resisted definitions, cast these aside, complicated the categories I’d come to believe were a necessity when it came to publishing. And for the first time, here was an author giving me permission to be both a gay writer and a Chicano writer. That want, that desire, that fevered lust had been mine too. I recall crying once I finished “City of Night” and thinking to myself, there I am. I had been utterly reckless and irresponsible with my health, my money and my sex life. My evenings were a blur of expensive cocktails at trendy bars and random encounters with anonymous men in dark alleys and seedy clubs. Years prior, I had lived in the heart of Hollywood, not far from the streets Rechy’s “Youngman” had roamed. Steeped in Mayan lore, “Pablo!” explores the often-fractured nature of identity and the inescapable human desire to reach out, to connect, and to belong to someone, or something, bigger than oneself. He followed this up with “Pablo!,” a novel written years before his seminal 1963 breakthrough “City of Night,” which he published when he was in his thirties. “The novel is unflinching in its candor even as its events have a tantalizing aura of mystery,” wrote Publisher’s Weekly Kirkus Review called it “eautifully written.” The novel won the 2018 Lambda Literary award for best gay fiction. “After the Blue Hour” was published last February by Grove Press. His stare is focused, nothing gets past him, and when he gives you that look, you want to linger there with him. Rechy’s handshake - like his writing, like his very life - is exact, tough, but tender at the same time. Rechy and his mate Michael (he bristles at the term “partner” or “husband”) meet me at the door. A pair of gardeners in workshirts and khaki pants sit under a tree. It’s a beautiful neighborhood, with neatly trimmed lawns and well-kept houses. Getting out of my car, I pass rows of green and black trash bins, standing like sentinels along the street. He lives at the end of a cul-de-sac in a quiet section of Encino. I have come to the home of author John Rechy. The bright blue sky, cloudless and indifferent, holds an air of volatility, as if the whole city is on edge, waiting for something terrifying and brilliant to happen. ![]()
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