LGBT Book & Video Blog

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. It made sense: he didn't expect a book that dealt with underground gay life in America to make him much money, and it's a foolish writer who gives up the day job (or in Rechy's case, the night job) with the first flush of publication.

To Rechy's astonishment, and despite the best efforts of homophobic critics, the book was a smash and money started rolling in. But Rechy still couldn't leave the streets. "It caught me out completely," says Rechy, now 74, and still living in Los Angeles. "I was bewildered. I did nothing at all to promote the book, even to the extent of denying that I wrote it. I felt that if I left the streets as soon as I had some success, I'd be betraying the world that I wrote about. And the truth is that I couldn't give it up. I'd been hustling for so long that it was a habit."

And so began a bizarre double life, which Rechy recalls in hilarious, toe-curling detail in a new autobiography, About My Life and the Kept Woman. By day, he was a writer, mixing with fellow authors, even teaching at UCLA. By night, he was back on the streets, selling sex to men. "I wanted demarcation between the different areas of my life, and I fooled myself that I could keep them separate. I wanted to be treated one way as 'the writer', another way as 'the hustler', and if they crossed over I got very confused." But cross over they did – as, for instance, when the expat British novelist Christopher Isherwood invited Rechy home to talk about writing, and then pounced. Liberace and George Cukor did the same.

"It got ridiculous," says Rechy. "People hit on me all the time, far more than I say in the book. Looking back, I can see it was my own fault – I projected a very sexual image, and I shouldn't have been surprised when people responded." Ridiculous it may have been, but the masquerade continued well into Rechy's thirties. "In the 1970s, when I was teaching at UCLA, I'd finish my evening classes, then change my clothes somewhat and go down to hustle on Santa Monica Boulevard. One night, a student saw me down there and said 'Good evening, Professor Rechy. Are you out for an evening stroll?'."

Rechy kept writing throughout the 1970s and 1980s, detailing the ups and (mostly) downs of his compulsive sex life in Numbers, Rushes and the non-fiction polemic The Sexual Outlaw. But it was City of Night that made his name, and on which his reputation rests. It's an American classic, with its loner hero, its juke joints and neon signs, its restless shifting from city to city, bed to bed; a hybrid of On the Road and Catcher in the Rye. It might be as famous as those books, too, were it not for Rechy's unapologetic portrayal of the drag queens, hustlers and clients who populated his world: Chuck the cowboy "stud", Chi-Chi and Darling Dolly Dane the street queens, Mr King the surly client ("I'll give you 10, and I don't give a damn for you") – and, towering above them all, the regal LA drag diva Miss Destiny. Readers were hooked. Despite hideous reviews, City of Night sold in massive quantities to a sensation-hungry public.

"Every character in City of Night has a strong antecedent," says Rechy. "Miss Destiny was very real. That was the name she used, and all those stories were based on my recollections of her. We kept in touch for a few years after the book came out; she'd ring me in the middle of the night, saying she was with one of her 'husbands' who didn't believe she could be a character in a famous novel. Then some boozy voice would come on, and I'd have to say 'Yes, that really is the fabulous Miss Destiny'. After a few years the calls stopped, so I guess Miss Destiny is now rattling her beads in God's face, like she always said she would."

See Midnight cowboy: John Rechy recalls 40 yeas of hustle
Independent, UK