Overview

A stunning evocation of gay desire in the moment just before AIDs by the acclaimed author of City of Night: "Taut writing and unapologetic sexual energy" (The Dallas Morning News).

It is 1981, a hot summer night, and an unscripted ritual is about to take place. Jesse, "the kid," is celebrating one year on the dazzling gay scene and plans to lose himself in its transient pleasures. Clint has fled New York with a sense of unease in the wake of a vicious gay-bashing. Buzz, Boo, Toro, Fredo, and Linda are cruising the city looking for danger, and so is Dave, a "leatherman" devoted to S&M and testing limits. And a priest is searching the streets for a young hustler named Angel, determined to bring him to Jesus.

In this city of night we meet a black cowboy, a bodybuilder obsessed with his sexual prowess, a drag-queen porn director hired to rehearse her stars for a closeted Hollywood mogul, and a middle-aged romantic hiding from a new...