About My Life and the Kept Woman: A Memoir

by John Rechy

The untold personal life story of the novelist whom Gore Vidal has hailed as “one of the few original American writers of the last century.” John Rechy’s first novel, City of Night, is a modern classic and his subsequent body of work has kept him among America’s most important writers. Now, for the first time, he writes about his life, in a volume that is a testament to the power of pride and self-acceptance. Rechy was raised Mexican-American in Texas, at a time when Latino children were routinely discriminated against. As he grew older—and as his fascination with a notorious kept woman from his childhood deepened—Rechy became aware that his differences lay not just in his heritage but in his sexuality. While he performed the roles others wanted for him, he never allowed them to define him—whether it was the authoritarians in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, the bigoted relatives of his Anglo college classmates, or the men and women who wanted him to be something he was not. About My Life and the Kept Woman is as much a portrait of intolerance as of an individual who defied it to forge his own path.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Biography, Autobiography

320 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2007

About the author

John Rechy is an American author, the child of a Scottish father and a Mexican-American mother. In his novels he has written extensively about homosexual culture in Los Angeles and wider America, and is among the pioneers of modern LGBT literature. Drawing on his own background, he has also contributed to Chicano literature, especially with his novel The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez, which is taught in several Chicano literature courses in the United States. His work has often faced censorship due to its sexual content, particularly (but not solely) in the 1960s and 1970s, but books such as City of Night have been best sellers, and he has many literary admirers.

Reviews

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 3 out of 5]

This week I picked up John Rechy's new memoir About My Life and the Kept Woman (New York: Grove Press, 2008). The book written in his usual peculiar but engaging style details his early life in El Paso, Texas and his fascination with a woman who was a kept woman for a leading Mexican politician. The image of this woman stayed with him for the rest of his life and became a symbol of style, decorum, class and invulnerabilty. An image Rechy used to formulate the persona he developed as a hustler in New York and Los Angeles. The story charts his emerging sexuality and identity and development as a young, sexy Mexican-American man in the racist atmosphere of post war America. I have always been a fan of Rechy's work and have fond memories of discovering City of Night and Numbers in the local library and devouring them privately in my own room. Of course they were salacious and juicy (especially for a young gay boy) but they also made me aware of a magical world driven by desire outside of the confines of my own small town world. I wanted so much to taste of the pleasures Rechy described. Now as an adult, as someone who has explored my own sexuality and plumbed the depths of desire I find his memoir tinged by a control that leaves me wanting more. Rechy's remembering is too measured, too controlled and too manufactured. It seems to be lacking an honesty about his own sexual development even while trying to grapple with his own desires. It is the memoir of a posture, that of a hustler, rather than the memoir of a person. None of this diminishes Rechy's writing, or his skill as an author, indeed I still find myself unable to put down the book turning each page to see what comes next, but like any good hustler Rechy leaves me wanting more. Indeed, the book mimics the posture adopted by hustlers adopting a literary style that assumes a similar posture, a pose of indifference. It would be nice to see past the pose, what lies behind the posture, maybe there is nothing behind the pose after all? Maybe that is Rechy's point?

[Adam Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting reading the reviews here some say they wanted more of Hustler Rechy and some say they wanted more of Childhood Rechy. I think it can be agreed though that this book leaves you wanting more.
Rechy invented the prose he uses in his other books, the sexmoney and the frantic style of the chase, and he leaves much of that behind here. There seems to always be the line with Rechy of what you tell and what you don't, of how much you hide behind the posture to please the client, in this case the reader. He hides less here, but he still hides, not sharing aspects of his personal relationships with friends or lovers at all. One assumes he has them, but one is left to assume.
For some reason I had inferred this story was about his relationship and being kept by a woman, and I had put off reading it not wanting my Rechy fantasy to be shattered until I had read more of his work. I am slowly making my way through his library and this book came up for a book club I'm in. I was pleased that I was wrong, and the book is in no way about his life with a heterosexual woman.
The story worked well in the first half detailing his childhood but I felt not enough was tied back to the meaning of the kept woman and what that ideal would later mean to him. Although she is mentioned a lot the reader is left to make those inferences on their own.
The book picks up when Rechy moves to New York and has his first same-sex encounter about half-way through the book. The stories behind the composing of City of Night and the later volumes Numbers and The Sexual Outlaw are great, as are his stories of meeting famous people of the time, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Isherwood, and being groped by Liberace. I would have preferred even more of this with him delving into other works, not just a greatest hits. Also without the frenzied style of his previous works, the things he's not saying are highlighted and I wanted more on the man and his life. Rechy still controls the image here, which I guess is why we love him, but it leaves you feeling disjointed from the action in the book.

[Slagle Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This must be my year for reading memoirs for I have already read three and it is only February. This was my favorite of the three for it took in a larger span of the author’s life than did the other two I read by Lena Dunham and Jesmyn Ward. Those volumes were written by people in their 30s and consequently fell back a lot more on childhood memories than did Rechy’s title. To be sure, Kept Woman had its share of youth and high school memories but it also gave us a glimpse into the author’s stint in the army during the Korean War and his coming of age, both in literary and sexual terms. The book has a 2008 copyright but, Interestingly, only covers up to about the late 1970s, with the bulk of the story falling in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It makes me wonder if there is not another volume out there looking back at the last 40 years. This is the first book I’ve read by Rechy but I plan to read more.

[Paul P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling memoir of the author’s childhood and young adulthood. Examines identity by asking whether it is a given or self-made, or both. Refined and wise, and uses the motif of the glamorous yet socially outcast woman as a metaphor for his own life, as well as that of a neighborhood girl. His sexual awakening came early—at 15 with a female teacher who seduces/takes advantage of him, and then evolves gradually—years later as he becomes aware of the interest of men in him and of him in them. Yet, when he embraces his sexuality, it is with emotional distance. He will only allow himself to be desired and “active,” never desiring his partner or removing his carefully crafted veneer of “masculine” indifference. He leads at least three lives: the devoted son and brother, the emerging author who shadows his face and origin, and the sex hustler/addict who obsesses over the number of men he can attract for sex and thereby—falsely—affirm his worth. A deep story that flows easily with novelistic techniques. Finely written, though with occasionally odd (perhaps awkward?) language and a few copy errors (such as extra/erroneous articles).

[Nanaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting memor, filled with historical events that uncovered a hidden world for many and a well-know paradise for some. The mexican-american experience through the lens of a gay men who also happens to be a hustler.

[Ellen Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Rechy's novel, City of Night, which told the story of his hustling in big cities. City of Night was a scandalous best-seller in 1963 (I can imagine!).

This book covers some of the same territory is more personal and starts with his childhood as a light-skinned boy of Mexican/Scottish descent living in poverty in El Paso. At first, I found this memoir interesting but slow; a long section describing his high school relationship with a girl goes on too long. But the more I read, the more mesmerized I became. He’s always revealing himself, and yet holding back. Watching him come to his sexual coming out as a gay hustler, a man “admired without needing to admire,” a beautiful man who other men want, as a vocation, is really fascinating. He doesn’t write about sex so much as about desire and longing. About gazes. About the nuance of a glance. The nod of a head. The hand on the thigh. Unspoken powers.

The heartache of the book lies in the refusal of longing. In the fifties, rigid sexual stereotypes didn’t just exist in straight culture but in gay culture as well. Rechy would not admit to being gay in those days, at least not to others. It wasn’t in line with his ultra-masculine hustler pose that so appealed to the men seeking him out. They wanted him “straight.” Stupid too. He couldn’t be seen reading a book, even though he spent his days with his head buried in literature at the public library.

At one point he moves to a new city, S.F., and takes a job in an office. He doesn’t explain why, which is one of the things appealing about this book. We are left to infer what gradually becomes obvious: that society demands a large toll from people who live this way.

But the cost is worth it to him...

"Soon after, I was in the office on an idle day–-the litigants were in court. I looked out the window. I saw a man approach a hustler at the arcade across the street. I stared. I could almost hear the transaction, echoing from all my own previous times–-the asking about how much, the response, the qualifications. I stared out the window as the man, in a business suit, walked off with the young man, who was swaggering, sleeves chopped off his T-shirt, faded jeans. I felt a pull so powerful that I was almost dizzy with excitement at the prospect of returning to the world I had abandoned in this orderly office of laws. I gave notice that day to Nadine that I was not working there any more."

The kept woman of the title is a woman he saw when he was a child, a notorious woman related to him through his sister’s husband. She’s beautiful, desirable, mysterious, and the kept woman of a powerful politician. Hidden from sight, he watches her all alone hold a cigarette to her lips in a certain way that stays with him, haunts him for years. There was something overwhelmingly compelling about her. He grows up to embody that same force: mysterious, beautiful, desired.

[Matthew Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

This took me two months to get through, though that's probably my fault and not John Rechy's.

Do you ever read something that's pretty good, and maybe it's actually interesting more than it is technically good, but somehow it's completely inspiring anyway and makes you want to just write and write and write? Well, for me this is that book. I want to write now.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading the very amazing "City of Night", I was very tempted to read Rechy's other offerings.
I just got a massive parcel from Amazon, and this was one of them. I've just started reading it, and it's about growing up as a half Latino, half Irish boy in El Paso. Will see how it goes, but I love Rechy's narrative style, so I'm sure I'll dig it.

[Margaret Robbins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, I thought this was a good book, and I enjoyed it. I thought the end part about his life in California dragged a bit, and I was more interested in his childhood and college years. I thought it was an interesting exploration of identity, and particularly for the first half of the book, I couldn't put it down.

[Randy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am glad I stuck with it. Once the author gets himself to Los Angeles the story becomes more complex. The first third of the novel confused me as if the author himself was confused about the meaning of his childhood. I don 't think this story is about a gay man. I think this is a story about a Hispanic American man who became a hustler and discovered his ability to write.

[Pan Ellington · Rating 5 out of 5]

this read touched me on numerous levels - as a queer, as a white passing latinx, and as a writer. more specifically, as a writer that blends reality with fiction. loved recognizing so many locales in los angeles. loved, too, the meta-feeling in reading his recollections of the writing of scenes from his novels.

manifique.

[Jeff Russo · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this entire memoir by Mr Rechy, much of which involves him engaging in sex acts with men, it's still not clear to me if Mr Rechy is straight, gay, or bisexual, or (as the constructionists would say) whether those terms have much meaning.

[Kenneth]

I read John Rechy's first book, City of Night when it was first published in 1963. I was about 23 and too naive to appreciate what a good writer he is. I am tempted to reread City of Night, but it seems to be almost 800 pages. This is a beautifully written book and a compelling story.

[Wendy Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rechy tells a little bit more about himself and his personal story with each coming book. He's a fascinating man and the revelation about the kept woman is well worth waiting for. He has come full circle. Love him and his work.

[Tlcp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biographical...this can happen to someone...

[Jon Varga · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rechy's novels are never disappointing. This long-awaited autobiography is good and interesting, but it never packs the walloping punch that I had expected.