The question of what’s real and what isn’t is a universal preoccupation. As a teenager I went through a period where nothing seemed real; I felt trapped in a sitcom, specifically The Mary Tyler Moore Show, where all the people around me were playing roles but no one was convincing. Later, when I saw The Truman Show, this sentiment was echoed. The difference was that when I’d felt it, it wasn’t the same perfect small-town 1950s world that’s shown in that film. Instead, it was a world of cowardice and lies, where everyone played a role out of fear of revealing their true self.
They were the ones being fooled, and I was a hopeless outsider to the collective madness. My response—not a good one in retrospect—was to be “honest,” meaning to tell people exactly how I felt about everything. I’d publicly confess my feelings—not a useful social strategy.
What I learned was that being real can’t be just a personal decision; one must be socially recognized to be real. This is why people adopt certain speech patterns and social comportments: it’s an entry-level reality. You can see it in the generic American accent that’s shared by all those unsure of where they fit into the social hierarchy—it’s accepted as neutral.
Recently I re-read John Rechy’s book City of Night. Its autobiographical subject is the life of a self-described narcissistic male hustler, a homosexual who sells his body to (usually older) men. Written in a hybrid-Beat style, it follows Rechy as he travels around the USA in the early-1960s, engaging—with an alternating mixture of self-discovery and guilt—in his trade. Coincidentally, it’s the book where “youngman” was coined, a term later to be used by The Village People in the song “YMCA.” In the book it refers to all the younger men and boys on that scene, all lost, looking desperately for some human connection, playing for time, using their youth as a bargaining chip to make money in furtive encounters in toilets, parks, or anywhere they can be private for 10–20 minutes. Though at times I had the impression that Rechy was playing a certain role in his presentation of himself in City of Night, it’d be hard to imagine a more honest book.
Rechy describes the gay scene at that time. It ranges from the hustler and transvestite to the costumed Storm Trooper sado-masochist and beyond. A lot of it deals with the roles used in their mutual interactions. And as part of this, the question of being real takes center stage, for within the sexualized economy of that world, where fantasy provides an escape from the tyranny of reality, role-playing is key.
For example, Rechy points out that the male hustlers usually start the night out adopting tough-guy poses which attract potential clients. But as the night rolls on, and, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, when the façade drops, you’ll see them acting more effeminately—what Rechy calls being fairy-like. Of all the roles he discusses in which being real plays a part, the greatest is that of the Real-Looking Transvestite. These aren’t to be confused with Drag Queens, where the role is one of outright female caricature.
If considered within the context of the modern social gender dialogue, the book offers an unexpected perspective. Rechy presents these roles as roles and sees them as necessary fantasies developed as survival techniques against what would be otherwise an uncaring and usually hostile exterior world. He knows and accepts that the actors in the scene are all male. However, since within their world, everyone’s playing a role, they accept the roles that the others play—like a mutual support system.
We learn that to fool a straight man is the height of success for a Real-Looking Transvestite. Though logical within their world, it makes you question those in the current world who want to fool themselves about gender difference, saying it doesn’t exist. They should learn from Rechy, who had no illusions as to what is real and what isn’t, and wasn’t afraid to express what he found roaming in the night.