Customer Reviews

The Sexual Outlaw: A Documentary

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...This book has something for everyone. If all you want is a steamy read then just read the sex chapters, if you're only interested in the history of gay rights/oppression just read the other chapters. The sex chapters are graphic, and romantically rendered (the author being a big fan of public sex.) The historic chapters are fascinating and disturbing, a first-hand account of the persecution that has ruined lives, the kind of persecution that a younger person might find extreme, appalling, and entirely un-American.
I suggest you read the entire book, as the author's intention is to make the persecuted more personal, and to explain that a life of street-sex may be more than a self-involved search for orgasms. (Rechy actually makes a pretty good case for narcissism as a life strategy.) The book is made truly beautiful by Rechy's intense honesty (always surprising coming from such an overt egotist.) The ugly and the beautiful, shown side by side, simultaneously, run concurrent, until one may be prompted to ask which is which. Rechy does not just defend his lifestyle, he also faces its many problems.
In the end , my favorite thing about the book is that it raised so many questions in my mind. Throughout reading the book I found myself becoming angry with many of the author's declarations, and the questions piled up. By the final chapter, however, Rechy had answered every one of them, ultimately offering a sort of philosophy of what it means to be gay, and what it means to live under the gun of others' ideologies.
I would recommend this book to ANYONE with an open mind, or ANYONE who needs to open their mind a little more.