I recall crying once I finished “City of Night” and thinking to myself, there I am. I had been utterly reckless and irresponsible with my health, my money and my sex life.

My evenings were a blur of expensive cocktails at trendy bars and random encounters with anonymous men in dark alleys and seedy clubs. Years prior, I had lived in the heart of Hollywood, not far from the streets Rechy’s “Youngman” had roamed. Steeped in Mayan lore, “Pablo!” explores the often-fractured nature of identity and the inescapable human desire to reach out, to connect, and to belong to someone, or something, bigger than oneself. He followed this up with “Pablo!,” a novel written years before his seminal 1963 breakthrough “City of Night,” which he published when he was in his thirties. “The novel is unflinching in its candor even as its events have a tantalizing aura of mystery,” wrote Publisher’s Weekly Kirkus Review called it “eautifully written.” The novel won the 2018 Lambda Literary award for best gay fiction. “After the Blue Hour” was published last February by Grove Press. His stare is focused, nothing gets past him, and when he gives you that look, you want to linger there with him. Rechy’s handshake - like his writing, like his very life - is exact, tough, but tender at the same time. Rechy and his mate Michael (he bristles at the term “partner” or “husband”) meet me at the door. A pair of gardeners in workshirts and khaki pants sit under a tree. It’s a beautiful neighborhood, with neatly trimmed lawns and well-kept houses. Getting out of my car, I pass rows of green and black trash bins, standing like sentinels along the street. He lives at the end of a cul-de-sac in a quiet section of Encino. I have come to the home of author John Rechy. The bright blue sky, cloudless and indifferent, holds an air of volatility, as if the whole city is on edge, waiting for something terrifying and brilliant to happen.

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