Born On This Day- March 10th... Writer John Rechy

In the crazy 1980s, even after I had achieved a degree of success with a great role in a long running play, & collecting residuals for a national commercial, an international commercial & a national voice-over, I still would not give up my “day job” working in a restaurant. When John Rechy published his first novel, City of Night, in 1963, he was still earning his living as a prostitute on the streets of Los Angeles. I suppose he didn't expect a book that dealt with underground gay life in America to make much money, & it was foolish to give up the day job (or in Rechy's case, the night job), just because you got published.

Nervously purchased at a used book store in 1968, City Of Night was my first gay book as a reader, & I hid my very worn paperback for years. In 2009 I read his very funny & crazy memoir- About My Life & The Kept Woman. He tells how he was a succesful best-selling writer, & a professor at UCLA. But by night, he was back on the streets, selling sex to men. "I wanted demarcation between the different areas of my life, & I fooled myself that I could keep them separate. I wanted to be treated one way as 'the writer', another way as 'the hustler', & if they crossed over I got very confused." Christopher Isherwood invited Rechy home to talk about writing, & then pounced, & so did Liberace & George Cukor. He remained confused.

Rechy kept writing in the 1970s & 1980s, detailing the ups & mostly downs of his compulsive sex life in Numbers, Rushes, & The Sexual Outlaw. I read them all. Rechy survived his time on the streets, survived drug problems in the 1970s, survived the epidemic that killed many of his friends in the 1980s & 1990s,  & wrote 15 book. He was hailed by Gore Vidal as "one of the few original American writers of the last century".

He & his partner of 30 years are living happily ever after in the Hollywood Hills. "I never believed that this could happen to me. Back in the 1970s, when I was having a bad time with drugs & cruising, my friends all thought I'd end up committing suicide, & I thought they were right. But things changed, & that's all due to Michael."

Rechy didn't mend his ways overnight:  "The last time I hustled was when I was 55 years old. It was more of a symbolic act than anything, just to prove to myself that I could still do it. I actually gave the guy his money back, much to his astonishment. I didn't put that story in the book. There's a limit to how far you can stretch people's belief."