ReadOut

by Dan Aiello

COMFORT OF NIGHT

A great and controversial John Rechy novel meant salvation for his biographer

By the age of 15, Charles Casillo was as adept at riding New York subways as he was clumsy at sports. And for this awkward teenager who, with puberty, found himself the target of every bully at school (“I was like Carrie without the telepathic powers,” he jokes), the subways provided more than just transportation. They offered a means of escape. The lonely boy who rode the trains, who is now 35, grew up to be the biographer of one of the most controversial writers of the 20th century, the novelist and male prostitute John Rechy. Casillo’s new book about the infamous hustler, writer, and sexual renegade is Outlaw: The Lives and Careers of John Rechy (Alyson Publications), and the story of how Casillo became Rechy's biographer is as interesting as anything in the book itself.

Every weekend, Casillo would jump on the E train at the Union Turnpike Station, usually without any planned destination. He had to ride the trains, and not just for his sake. “My parents did the best that they could and loved me and worried about me a lot,” he says. “They knew I had no friends, and I could see how much it upset them when I would spend the whole weekend at home alone in my room. I began riding the trains so that they would think I had a busy, active social life, like my younger brother. I didn’t want them to worry,” he says. So to protect his parents from anxiety and at the same time avoid his tormentors around his tough Italian-American neighborhood in Queens, Casillo took the subway.

At first the train rides served only to waste time—sometimes all day, but always long enough to keep his parents from discovering his pain. But in time, Casillo began to get off at different stops and explore Manhattan—a few train stops but a world away from Queens. On one of those Saturday excursions to Manhattan, Casillo found a piece of himself.

This great discovery for Casillo occurred in a shop that sells discovery every day, (usually at a discount), and maybe that’s why a 15-year-old kid wasn’t expecting that a Barnes &Noble bookstore would have his future sitting on a shelf. But it was there he discovered City of Night, the Rechy novel written years earlier. Casillo claims it was life-altering for a gay kid who had never known any world but his own unhappy one. For Casillo, City of Night was much more than a book; it was a vessel of discovery, hope, and salvation. And although he didn’t know it that afternoon, finding that book would eventually lead Casillo to his future not just as a writer but as the biographer of the man who had written the book he was holding in his hands.

“I’ve said this a lot, but discovering this novel was a turning point in my life,” Casillo says now of his discovery 20 years ago. “The book seemed to jump off the shelf at me, demanding me to read it. It’s difficult to explain, but I’ll never forget how I felt the moment I picked it up and began to read the back cover.”

On the book’s jacket Casillo read a compelling description, “an exposé on the homosexual underground lifestyle.” In fact, according to Casillo, City of Night was the first true documentation of gay life in the 1950s. Writers including Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams wrote about gay themes, but the situations were veiled. Rechy’s language and characters were very “in your face,” but written in a very beautiful, poetic prose. “I never realized that any situation, no matter how decadent or seedy, could be turned into literature,” Casillo says.

He began reading the book while still at the bookstore. “I wasn’t out to my family, and I certainly had no friends to tell, but I had admitted to myself that I was gay and I think I was looking for some answers. But it seems to me that the book found me. It wasn’t the male hustling aspect that fascinated me so much. City of Night told me that I was not alone. I wasn’t the only one in the world who was an outcast or a misfit. I wasn’t the only one developing masks to hide my true self. Rechy’s novel was filled with lonely, searching, hiding, characters. Reading it helped me come to terms with who I was.”

Years before Casillo encountered it, City of Night had shocked the literary world of conservative America when it was published in 1963, offering a candid account of the experiences of a young gay man living a homosexual lifestyle from New York to Los Angeles. But Charles Casillo didn’t live in the literary world. He lived in Queens, and to him John Rechy’s book was not shocking. It was comforting—and a comfort, in fact, that would last a lifetime.

“The motive and the characters are all very well drawn out. Rechy is a great writer,” Casillo says. He believes Rechy’s autobiographical novel was the first real look at life for a gay man and the big city’s underground homosexual society during one of this nation’s most conservative eras. His experiences, the people he encountered, and the emotional reasons for his decisions give us a rare glimpse into the fear and hardships gay men endured during this time and how Rechy and the men he met managed to survive.

Years after first reading the book, Casillo’s and Rechy’s paths crossed again. In 1999 Casillo, now a writer, learned that Rechy was teaching creative writing at the University of Southern California. “I’d wanted to meet him since I first read City of Night,” says Casillo, whose first cautious attempt to meet Rechy was with a letter addressed to the university. “I wanted to write a profile on him for a new magazine, and because he had a new novel coming out, he agreed to an interview. John liked the resulting article, and we talked about me writing his biography.” As a result, Casillo spent the next three years getting to know Rechy before completing the biography.

“He was very guarded at first,” Casillo explains. “John has many sides to him. After having only known him through his work, I expected someone darker, broody, or private, yet I found him to be very friendly, outgoing. But sometimes he would be more reserved, aloof. He could also be tough and demanding. I never knew what to expect. He can turn on any persona, a skill he mostly developed as a hustler on the streets. They’re all a part of who he really is, making him a very complicated person and difficult to figure out. In my book I explore him as much as is humanly possible, but people like John Rechy always keep a private, internal life that they don’t share with anyone. Because I was writing about him over a period of time, I think I offer the reader a good understanding of who he is. As a hustler, he taught himself how to turn on different personalities, but over the course of three years, there were times he was pleased with me, times he was displeased, times he was apprehensive—and because I’ve seen him in all those situations, I saw many sides of him and I think I capture that.”

About his life as a hustler, Rechy recalled to Casillo, “I was pulled into that world so quickly—as if I rehearsed it in dreams, acted it out, without remembering. There I was on the street, I looked around, and I had been observing the hustlers only for a few moments when I assumed the stance. And I had been there a few minutes when a Mr. Klein came by and spoke the words embedded in my mind: ‘I’ll give you 10 bucks and I don’t give a damn for you.’ Those were the first words I heard hustling. And it was as if I had always been listening for those words, waiting all my life. Like waking up. It was extraordinary.”

Casillo’s exploration of Rechy’s life is as much a story about male prostitution as Romeo and Juliet is a story about slow mail service in Renaissance Italy. “You have to remember that at the time John was coming out, homosexuality was classified by the scientific community as a mental illness,” Casillo explains. “A lot of guys, like John, used prostitution as a way to come to terms with being gay. Basically, they convinced themselves that if money was involved then they weren’t homosexual.” Casillo believes that taking the time to appreciate the historic context of the choices Rechy made and the motives for those decisions allows the reader to understand the very vulnerable and human side of his subject. What Casillo hopes will be revealed by his work is that we are more alike than different—and to appreciate that is to allow for greater acceptance of all people, regardless of their current situations.

Although City of Night is a novel based on Rechy’s life, it was written when he was 30, more than 40 years ago. Casillo’s biography discloses aspects of the novel that were disguised for the protection of individuals Rechy knew at the time and covers the next four decades of life for Rechy. “Knowing him is always exciting. He’ll always be a compelling person,” Casillo says. “Getting to know him, I came to realize my spiritual connection to him, but I believe anyone who meets this man realizes he is someone with a story behind him.” Casillo continues to see Rechy, now 72.

“The whole world has changed since City of Night was written and since I was growing up. We’ve had Boy George, Ellen, Will & Grace, and Queer as Folk. It’s now a much more open environment, and it’s a safer world. But the kind of loneliness you feel as a misfit or outcast still makes City of Night eternal and relevant. It’s a story of vulnerability, the emotions and fears that are universal and part of the experience of life. That’s why so many women read and are moved by City of Night. Although they might not be able to relate to the specific experiences of the character, everyone can relate to the emotions of the character and understand the choices they make.

“I think we all have a little bit of a hustler in us. In the gay community so much value is placed on our beauty that at some point I think we all have felt that urge to want to test our value. I never stood out on the streets like John, but we’ve all had the need for that affirmation, and for most people understanding that that need is a universal one is key to learning to judge others less by appreciating that we have more in common than different.”

Dan Aiello, who lives in Florida, has written for the Express and the Bay Area Reporter.

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