Chapter 7 Summary

Although he has been accepted into a graduate program at Harvard to study Chinese, on an impulse the narrator follows Lou to New York City, where they both live at the YMCA and search for jobs. Lou is almost immediately successful, finding a well-playing position at an advertising agency. He and the narrator spend their evenings exploring the homosexual activities of the city in the restaurants, the bars, and the street community with the narrator realizing just how many homosexual men there are.

For his part, the narrator eventually finds a job first as a trainee writer on a national magazine, doing odd jobs, occasionally doing some writing, and earning barely enough money to rent a small apartment. He describes how he works during the day and cruises for sex at night, how he gains weight as a result of his poor diet...