Rechy's City of Night follows in its way much the same path that Kerouac traced in On the Road, eastside, westside and all around the country. And part of his desire—wild reaching of the writer's organism—is to swing this huge cityscape wordwise with a series of variations on the theme of the male hustlers' experiences in the homerotic world through which his narrator wanders. The novel is sure to be read as a confessional exposé documenting the night side of homosexual life. Which it is. But it seems to me that Rechy has a deeper than confessional interest in the nationwide sexual skid road he writes about. The determining factor there is not so much this, that or some other sexual inclination, but what is much worse, a starved male impotence so pervasive that any momentary recognition of sexual existence at all is the real dime...