Rent Boy

Review

I bought this without preconception from Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia, which I make a point to visit and support every time I’m in town. I’d already gathered up something like 4 books, but when I got to the counter I saw this sitting there promoting their book club. Short, rather provocative title. I picked it up, opened to a random page and it was a pretty graphic gay sex scene. Obviously I purchased it instantly.

The first page is a definition of pornography which let me know (sort of) what I was in for:

por-nog-ra-phy, n [Gk pornographos, adj., writing of harlots. fr. porne harlot + graphein to write; akin to Gk pernanai to sell, poros journey] 1: the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement 2: material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement.

Now, I am not completely sure that this book desires to cause sexual excitement. It is not smut. There are sex scenes, and they are written in unusually (I guess) florid ways. Gary Indiana is certainly not afraid to use the words “cum” or “fucking” or “fuck it” (this being a command, not an expression of abandonment). And god bless him for it, hm? But this is also a noir. The back calls it a “tour-de-force” and I think that is a bit of a misnomer, applied because we’re only dealing with 112 pages. I mean, at that length if it’s not a tour-de-force, it’s just frustrating.

I had basically no idea what was happening half of the time, but that’s not because I was distracted by all the fucking and sucking. This is a noir in the sense, sort of, of The Big Sleep, which is basically incomprehensible. Which is fine because that’s not the point. There is a story here, and there are interesting characters, and I’m interested in the meta-narrative of the events being essentially in epistolary style. I’d like to know who our ‘rent boy’ is writing to, and who broke his heart so. That we don’t know is intentionally, and the events of the story are (IMO) about making us feel certain things, rather than having a specific and detailed McGuffin-worried plot.

This book is set around 1991 and the backdrop of AIDS is both subtext and text and is undeniable in the writing. There is also in a section of the book a fair bit of quite graphic stuff, some scatological, some of it with some self-contempt, that put me very strongly in the mind of Herve Guibert, who would have been writing around the same time. Though I don’t think it’s likely Gary Indiana would have been reading Guibert contemporaneously or vice versa, at least not to the point where this is a clear inspiration. More like, there is a clear and common thread here about the body, waste/decay, death, and exploration of that especially in the context of AIDS.

It does rather go off the rails when the events come to a head, and what else would you expect? I thought it was out of nowhere until I re-read my notes, and I can see the connective tissue. This would be well worth a re-read.

Notes

p30 – Strangely enough, most of the ad-answering johns are practically my own age, a little older, a lot of them wouldn’t have to buy it if they went out and cruised the bars or whatever. They’re usually not bad looking. Sometimes on the plain side. I think it’s mainly that they don’t want things to be emotional. They don’t want to have to cope with a lot of messy feelings.

p48 – But this episode made me really sorry for Sandy. Even with all her books and everything she still doesn’t feel like she even exists. Believe me, I know that feeling. like no matter what you do or how you try to prove yourself there’s always something holding your head underwater, there’s always this loneliness that drains you out while you’re sleeping so you wake up wrung out with every bad thing that ever happened weighing you down.

p50 – Even though I know that nothing ever really changes in his life, if I don’t see him for a while I get this awful fear he’s dead, or actually found the person of his dreams who’s gonna make him happy and that’ll be in between him and me.

p62 – I’ll stick this in the mail and write down the rest of it after I hear from you again because you owe me two letters. I miss seeing you. I also think you’re a real cunt. You said we’d try this for a while and then we could get together again and it’s what, three months now? Four months? You want me to say the magic words? You think they mean anything?

p68 – [following quite a detailed sex scene]… it’s two people losing themselves in each other’s bodies, except of course the whole time I’m also thinking, “this has death in it, this is life and it’s also death.” Which makes it into this amazing intricate act like skydiving with a parachute that maybe isn’t going to open, only you won’t know if it did or not for five or ten years. (TB: this book is set around 1991 and the backdrop of AIDS is both subtext and text and is undeniable in the writing. || There is also in this section of the book a fair bit of quite graphic stuff, some scatological, some of it with some self-contempt, that put me very strongly in the mind of Herve Guibert, who would have been writing around the same time. Though I don’t think it’s likely Gary Indiana would have been reading Guibert contemporaneously or vice versa, at least not to the point where this is a clear inspiration. More like, there is a clear and common thread here about the body, waste/decay, death, and exploration of that especially in the context of AIDS.)

p109 – If you’ve never had sex in the baths in Harlem with a guy you’re not only not attracted to but find repulsive in every respect, had sex with that guy not because you want sex but because you want to finally prove to yourself that you don’t exist, you don’t know what disappointment is.