HIGH GEAR/JULY 1977

PAGE 11

JOHN RECHY:

MORE THAN A "SEXUAL OUTLAW"

by Mitchell Menegu

"Damn it! I AM a stereotype," says John Rechy to those gays who attack him for presenting an unfavorable stereotype of gays. But Rechy is considerably more a human being than the image of himself presented in the projections of his character as Johnny Rio in the novels City of Night and Numbers and as Jim in the recent "documentary" The Sexual Outlaw. In part, Rechy insists upon recognition of the apparent split between his image and his thinking about that image; at the same time, he seems to regret that in both his public image and personal life he has been unable to unify the separated aspects of his personality and thinking.

These observations resulted from a telephone interview with Rechy arranged for High Gear by the writer's publisher, Grove Press. Having formed my image of Rechy from his writing, I was somewhat apprehensive about confronting the street-wise, muscular, narcissistic sometime hustler even on the telephone with more than two thousand miles separating us. I was surprised by his affability and easy sense of humor that made our conversation pleasurable that I was surprised to find, when I hung up, that forty-five minutes had passed.

SO

I had placed the call to Rechy

hoping to elicit from him some controversial statements. Our conversation convinced me that the controversial nature of what

Rechy has already said has earned him the right to take advantage of opportunities to clarify misunderstandings about his work and his ideas.

Rechy is conscious of the criticism leveled at him for dramatizing the dark side of gay life, the "sexual underworld" that forms the substance of much of his work. He bridles at being designated as a gay spokesman. "You never hear of heterosexual spokesmen," he said. "It's a subtle way of categorizing and demeaning us. There are some 'professional' gay spokesmen, but I just wish they would shut up." described a vision he has of their waiting eagerly for some offense against a gay so that they will have the cue to take center stage.

He

Rechy insists that he has no intention of speaking for the whole spectrum of gay experience. "I have a special experience," he said, "and try to convey that." He recognized many other forms of gay experience that other writers should be

writing about. Those who would label him as the definitive writer about homosexuality earn his contempt. There is, he believes, no more a definitive writer about gayness than there is about heterosexuality. No

one con-

cludes, he added, that Norman Mailer has said all there is to be said about heterosexual relationships, and it is ridiculous to make that claim for any one writer who deals with homosexual life.

Questioned about what has been viewed as a sexist element in his writing, Rechy urged a more careful reading of his work. I had asked whether the frequency with which both Johnny Rio and Jim, the protagonists of his books, reject men as unattractive or too old doesn't suggest that he believes that those who are not especially attractive physically or who are no longer young should be denied sexual gratification. He answered, "Absolutely not. That's one of the things I'm sorriest about being misread about. That's a total misreading of my attitudes." He noted that The Sexual Outlaw presents two points of view that must be considered together: "Jim is my street persona. The 'voice-over' is my attitude; it comments on the occasional carnage Jim is involved in.' While he says. that Jim in fact does not reject those who are older and less attractive, pointing out that he accepts them when he is hustling or playing his game of "numbers", Rechy reserves for him the propriety of being particular when Jim needs to satisfy his own physical needs.

Still, he does not fully approve of Jim's behavior, even though the sexhunt is an activity Rechy himself continues to pursue. He said that Jim is not meant to be a hero; he is a product of the pressures that society imposes upon gays. The "voice-over," he added, finds fault with Jim for the damage he sometimes does to himself and to those with whom he comes in contact during the sexhunt. The reader needs to give equal attention to the experiential level in the narrative and to the level of comment in Rechy's latest book. On one point Rechy speaks strongly for Jim. The author sees Jim as a revolutionary, whether he is conscious of the nature of his actions or not,

fighting the oppression of a fascist heterosexual society on the front lines of the battlefield, the street, where the oppression is exercised most vigorously. "Repressions," he said, "have produced this outlaw figure." What he considers particularly important about The Sexual Outlaw is that he has named street sex as a revolutionary act, defining its meaning even to those who perform it without consciousness of what their behavoir's importance is.

When I asked him whether he recognized the likelihood that many straight people who might agree with the argument presented in the level of comment

would decide to withhold their support when the experiential level of the book made them aware of the possibility that gays were performing sex acts in their garages and beneath their stairs, he first answered facetiously, "I am quite sure that a lot of people are eagerly looking out their windows." More seriously, he agreed that ultimately gays will have to depend on support from sympathetic straight people. In the few reviews his newest book has had in the straight press and in letters from straights, the reactions to the narrative sections of the book have been uniformly positive. It is what Rechy calls the "reactionary gay press," like Christopher Street, that has been most irate about the experiential sections of the book detailing Jim's weekend activities as a sexhunter.

Rechy focuses on the type of person he presents in his new book as the Saboteur, who, in contrast to the revolutionary Sexual Outlaw, plays up to the oppressive elements of straight society. In particular, he views as traitors "straight" homosexuals who, in order to prove that they are "good gays," "offer up" as sacrifices the street gays in order to to protect their own interests by cooperating with police in harassing the street gays.

The Saboteur entered the con-

versation again when 1 questioned his attitude toward S & M. Asked whether Jim's apparent enjoyment of being the dominating person in some erotic S & M situations, in contrast to Rechy's expressed opposition to S & M because he feels it is a reflection of straight oppression of gays, doesn't suggest that Rechy is repressing sexual S & M inclinations in himself by rationalizing them away so easily, he replied "

emphatically deny that it is rationalizing." He also said, "Jim is attracted to sexual power. S & M is the twisting of sexual power. I am very attracted to S & M and continue to be: "However, as the "voice-over" in his book realizes, the gay participant in S &M, acting out the pattern of oppression of gays by straights, is also the Saboteur figure that the straight world has often forced gays to become; there is "an obeisance we pay to the straight world when we demean another gay." This realization has affected his attitude so that his attraction to S &M is constantly lessening.

Rechy acknowledges that "Gay writing has come out of the negatives of the gay exper-. ience." He has written of the pressures that make that experience negative, but he does not see all gay experience as negative, even some aspects of it that are sometimes criticized. "I insist," he said, "that promiscuity is a positive aspect of homosexuality." While he finds value in the abundance of relationships in gay experience, he also thinks that feelings are important. The positive elements of homosexual experience, he believes, will be clearer once the pressures that foster its negative qualities are eliminated by the revolution that his new book describes. "Given the release of those pressures," Rechy added, "there would be a renaissance of gay art that would be dazzling. We would probably enrich the world." The outlaw figure would disappear into more positive relationships. With reference to experiences that Rechy has not yet dealt with in his writing, I remarked that the list of names acknowledged at the beginning of The Sexual Outlaw suggests that there seem to be dimensions to Rechy's life that his readers probably do not imagine on the basis of what he has written. His response was: "That is true, and that is why I have a very negative media image. I have many close friends, a large portion of heterosexual women and lesbians as well as straight men and gay friends. I can love people, but I find it very difficult to bring the two together, meaning feelings and sexual relations. I try. I myself have not been able to bring it off, but that doesn't mean that I would not.".

Although somewhat wistful about not being able to join emotional and sexual feelings, Rechy continues to find value in the pattern of his own sex life. One reason he has not accepted invitations to appear on television talk shows to promote his books and ideas is that he wants to protect his privacy so

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