After the Blue Hour Quotes

“During the Mardi Gras carnival in New Orleans, drunk and drugged and sleepless for sex-driven nights and days, I saw leering clowns on gaudy floats tossing cheap necklaces to grasping hands that clutched and grabbed and tore them, spilling beads; and revelers crawled on littered streets, wrestling for them, bleeding for them on sidewalks; and beads fell on spattered blood like dirty tears—and I saw costumed revelers turn into angels, angels into demons, demons into clowning angels; and in a flashing moment the night split open into a deeper, darker chasm out of which soared demonic clowning angels laughing.”
― John Rechy, After the Blue Hour

“I think the camouflage of fiction allows more authenticity – you know, acknowledging that it is a ‘fiction’, a terrific lie, and that you want it to be believed.”
― John Rechy, After the Blue Hour

“Memory is too unreliable to be ‘truthful’.”
― John Rechy, After the Blue Hour

“How erotic Texas must be!” she said.
I was sure she had meant “exotic,” but I followed through: “Maybe, if you find cactus and deserts erotic, sensual.”
― John Rechy, After the Blue Hour

“Because it’s getting to be the blue hour, and that’s the time when everything is revealed.”
― John Rechy, After the Blue Hour

“No, I did not tell him about the raids on gay bars; cops invading private homes to arrest men having sex, the sexual act being illegal; entrapment, lying, aroused cops, years-long prison terms, suicides, violence.”
― John Rechy, After the Blue Hour

“All true? I think autobiographers are big liars.”
― John Rechy, After the Blue Hour

“Love can fuck up desire, I’ll agree to that,” I said, and I believed that. If, on the occasions when someone I had sex with remained after orgasm, and an edge of friendship was being suggested to me—as, say, we might lie, though rarely, talking—if, then, at those times, all desire faded.”
― John Rechy, After the Blue Hour

“It was never about the money; at times no money was involved, just sex.”
“Then what?”
“It was always about—” I had never asked that question of myself. “It was always about—” No word came, no answer.
“Power.”
― John Rechy, After the Blue Hour

“I suppose you could say that Paul is a … hustler? His rich wife Corina paid him grandly when they divorced, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s called alimony,” I laughed.”
― John Rechy, After the Blue Hour