*Sanctity or There's No Such Thing as a Naked Sailor by D...

*Sanctity or There's No Such Thing as a Naked Sailor by Dennis Selby (Simon and Schuster, 1969)

The oddest thing about this very odd book is that it was published by a mainstream publisher in 1969.  I'd love to know who acquired it at S&S, and what they were thinking.

Sanctity... is the story of a young man, improbably named Shelley Skull, a homosexual scientologist from Wales who is living in New York City in the late 1960s searching for another gay man named Rocco Sabine, who has mysteriously disappeared -- or perhaps been murdered -- after living a somewhat legendary life in the underworld.  Shelley's episodic search takes him to orgies, gay bars, brownstones owned by millionaire transvestites, Tucson Arizona, and finally Morocco, where he is kidnapped and forced to donate his eyes to the above-mentioned millionaire (who's sight is failing).

None of this is particularly well-written or funny, or sexy, or cleverly-plotted, or amusing.  It's just bad -- a gay lark that falls quickly and desperately flat.