John Rechy
by Todd Richmond
365Gay.com Features Editor

Writer, activist, hustler, bodybuilder John Rechy was born on March 10, 1934 in El Passo Texas.

Rechy could be a character in an Evelyn Waugh-style satire about contemporary L.A. A gay bodybuilder of mixed Mexican and Anglo blood, a proud narcissist who's worked hard to keep himself looking 20 years younger than his actual age, a lover of California's light and glamour and movies, Rechy, in his late 60s, embodies much of the city's best and worst features. Life, he says, is a performance -- if done right, a grand performance.

Rechy has an enormous following among gay men. But his detractors say he's superficial, a writer of limited gifts coasting on his early successes, a throwback to the gay world of the pre-AIDS '60s and '70s who hasn't matured or adapted. He's both a gay hero and a gay outlaw, and as such, his battles typically begin -- rather than end -- when a new novel is published.

He teaches literature and film courses for writers, in the graduate division of the University of Southern California.

Rechy is the recipient of two coveted Lifetime Achievement Awards: PEN-USA-West’s 1997 Lifetime Achievement Award and The Publishing Triangle’s William Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement.

In September 2000, a CD-Rom of his life and works--"Memories and Desire: The Worlds of John Rechy" (produced through the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California)--debuted at the Museum of Modern Art in Los Angeles to an overflow crowd.

Last August, 2001 his eagerly awaited novel The Coming of the Night was published by Grove/Atlantic and appeared as # 2 on the Los Angeles Time's Bestseller List. His 12th novel marks the author's return to some of the scenes and themes of his now-classic first novel, City of Night. The paperback edition was released in September 2000.

Greeted with controversy when they first appeared, Rechy's books have in recent years been singled out for major prominence. City of Night was named as one of the 25 all time "best gay novels" by the Publishing Triangle in New York.

His The Sexual Outlaw: A Documentary was included by the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review as among the 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the century. In a recent issue of the Los Angeles Times Book Review devoted to "L.A. Literature," Rechy was repeatedly named by other writers, including Critic and Author Mike Davis (City of Quartz), as among the five most important writers to have written about Southern California.

When "City of Night" was published in 1963, it wasn't all clear sailing. "At the time, I was very well known," he says the author of the groundbreaking chronicle of gay hustling.

"Basically, someone would come up and say: 'You think you're really hot shit?' Somebody would get a little tipsy and they'd want to take me on -- arm wrestling or something. 'You think you're such a stud.' " One of these challengers was Peter Orlovsky, the Beat poet and Allen Ginsberg's boyfriend, who accosted Rechy at a party in San Francisco's Nob Hill, sizing him up and asking him how much he could bench-press. "And my answer was always the same: 'Look, I don't care how strong I am. It's that I look like the stronger man.' "

" City of Night's impact went way beyond book review pages: Jim Morrison intoned its title in The Doors' "L.A. Woman," and rocker David Bowie, painter David Hockney, and director Van Sant have all spoken of its inspiration.

Van Sant, in fact, says he gave Rechy's book to Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, his street hustlers from Private Idaho. "I gave them both City of Night and said: "If you want to know the life of a street hustler, this is the place to start.' Later, I found that Keanu had bought all of John's other books."