Rent Boy, by Gary Indiana

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. I say, “Oh, please.”  I do it all the time, and I’m not the least bit sorry. The cover, title, and font of Gary Indiana’s Rent Boy - one of those beautifully designed McNally Editions from McNally Jackson (my second home after The Strand)—reeled me in instantly. These books promise works that are “off the beaten path,” which is basically my natural habitat.

This little underground classic wastes no time grabbing you. Danny, the narrator, attends Rutgers’ architecture program by day and works as a waiter and sex worker by night. He’s perceptive, funny in a bruised kind of way, and disarmingly matter-of-fact about the whole enterprise. His musings about tricks, AIDS anxieties, and juggling life and work in1980s queer New York are sharp, wry, and weirdly tender.

I’m a sucker for anything that evokes things like the Port Authority in its grim heyday, seedy gay bars, or a nightclub where celebrities, rent boys, and sleazeball characters all converge under the same grimy roof, so I was fully hooked. Indiana conveys Danny’s thoughts with diaristic intimacy; Danny is writing his heartfelt feelings to someone, a former client or lover perhaps? We never find out.

Frankly, the book could have coasted beautifully on Danny's musings alone. I’d have happily read another hundred pages of him navigating the emotional (and literal) detritus of the city. But at just over 100 pages, Rent Boy makes a sudden, unexpected jump midway through, into a dark organ-harvesting plot. It’s creepy, not all that interesting (certainly not as interesting as Danny’s regular life), and not entirely successful. It’s as if Indiana felt obligated to tack on a more conventional plot to a perfectly fine confessional novel. The tonal lurch threatens to drown out what was working so well: the raw humor, the honesty, the sense of lived-in grime, and Danny’s unpretentious insight into the way people use each other to stave off loneliness.

Still, when the book is good, it’s exceptional. Indiana has a gift for capturing the psychological clutter of a life lived in dim bars, cheap rooms, and emotional no-man’s-lands. Danny’s voice stays with you. He's funny (hilarious at times), jaded, and strangely gentle. The (occasionally gross) details about his regular johns and some of their fetishes, his unrequited feelings for fellow escort Chip, and the way shame quietly corrodes everything, feel deeply true to that era.

If not for the unnecessary crime caper amended onto the back half, this would easily be a five-star novel. Regardless, it’s absolutely worth the ride for anyone who appreciates queer lit that doesn’t flinch.

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By the way: as a photographer, I really appreciate the covers of these McNally Editions. Last year, I read a great book in this series, Lover Man, by Alston Anderson, that I picked up because the cover was so compelling. Check it out below:

Is that a great black and white street photograph or what?