Times Square Red, Times Square Blue unknown Edition by Samuel R. Delany [2001]

by Samuel R. Delany

Almost like new if not for the very light wear on the cover.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, History, Memoir, New York, Essays, LGBT

Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Samuel Ray Delany, also known as "Chip," is an award-winning American science fiction author. He was born to a prominent black family on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany, was a library clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany, Senior, ran a successful Harlem undertaking establishment, Levy & Delany Funeral Home, on 7th Avenue, between 1938 and his death in 1960. The family lived in the top two floors of the three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany's aunts were Sadie and Bessie Delany; Delany used some of their adventures as the basis for the adventures of his characters Elsie and Corry in the opening novella Atlantis: Model 1924 in his book of largely autobiographical stories Atlantis: Three Tales.

Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City.

Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book.

Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.

Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City.

In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.

Reviews

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

samuel delany is a big gay angel whose only agenda is a healthier and happier humanity. This book about blowies at the movies is one of the most loving ive read!!!!!

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Jane Jacobs explains why we should all wank each other off in cinemas' is definitely the best use of Jane Jacobs.

[David M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Man, New York sounds fucking lame. According to Mr. Delany, gentrification has gotten so bad you can't even masturbate in public anymore. Dear goodreads, come to San Francisco for a good time.

(especially July 31 or September 25)

xoxoxo

#westcoast4life

*
Life is sort of a fleeting encounter, no?

A paean to gay cruising and other fleeting, random moments of intimacy that the city enables. At times Delany strikes an elegiac tone, which may be a bit premature. I don't think flaneuring is completely dead. Cities are still very exciting places, with that element of living collage and the vast reservoir of strangers one will never exhaust.

It may be true, though, that between gentrification and digital culture the self is growing ever less porous and more monadic (it may seem pretentious to bring Leibniz into this, but goddamn it I have the right; especially since Delany won't shut up about Lacan). It's probably true that most people just aren't open to having a meaningful exchange with a stranger on the street. I've always had a habit of talking to myself as I walk. I realize that in San Francisco this is accepted as normal, and not because of any great tolerance for eccentric behavior, but simply because here it's assumed that everyone is constantly plugged into their smart phone, and if they're talking it's in order to arrange a business transaction or plan some other very important aspect of their life.

[Allan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book of two halves - the first half , a memoir style account of Delany's experiences in Times Square, specifically the porn theatres, pre gentrification, the second half, an argument against this gentrification, happening at the time of his writing.

I absolutely loved the honesty of the first half. Delany, a gay black academic and writer, spent over 30 years frequenting both the straight and gay porn theatres around Times Square, and is frank and unapologetic about this fact, detailing activity, both that he observed and participated in, in the years before they were closed down under what he claims wasn't the shadow of AIDS, but the desire of successive city administrations to pander to big business. Yes, on many occasions the writing is explicit - but in addition to this frankness, Delany creates a valuable social document of the time, also telling the stories of some of the men he got to know over the years while part of that scene, long gone now thanks to the Disneyfication of the area.

As for the second half, while Delany may be earnest in his reasoning against the closing of the theatres that he loved, and the clearing up of the sex trade from the area in the late 90s, and includes arguments from several different angles, after having read the first section, it just didn't connect with me - the ship has long ago sailed, and to be honest, I just read it with the desire of getting through the book.

Overall? 5 stars for the first section, 1 star for the second. I'm really glad I purchased the book - I really can't remember where I heard about it in the first place - and on the strength of the first section, I look forward to reading his memoir, The Motion Of Light In Water: Sex And Science Fiction Writing In The East Village, another book that I hadn't heard of before this one, but one that is right up my street.

[Leo Robertson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read for Delany fans for the simple disturbing reason that every weird sex scene from his novels is probably something he was involved in in real life and enjoyed more than anything you've ever done. I CANNOT EXPLAIN how long I will be disturbed by the man with the dickskin as tough as the sole of your foot who sometimes pees on himself then continues to j/o until he has sores on his dick?! Delany in this respect (the one doing the j-ing o of this guy in this case) is like Cybill Shepherd in Taxi Driver: you're such an obvious write-off; I'm intrigued; let me hang around you longer and find out just how nuts you are!!

Not only that, but the second essay- not so interesting in itself for its rambling seemingly too high-brow nature given the topic under discussion (gentrification of public sex locales as a less-than-subtle form of class war/censorship- hang on, that sounds quite interesting- maybe I'm wrong...)- demonstrates the wealth of information and concepts at Delany's fingertips. Delany is the kinda guy I wanna be (non-judgmental, curious and voracious- I will never bone anyone in a theatre) and he possesses an intellect I aspire towards. It's both oddly impassioned and measured given that Delany is essentially terribly sad because he can't j/o the mentally ill anymore.

Still, it's very hard to deny that this and Delany's other masterful works are those of an inimitable one-of-a-kind writer/guy- and better than all those other writer geniuses, there's no envy here!!

A great companion to Delany's fiction, giving a lot of insight into the autobiographical components of works such as Hogg (most likely a combo of people Delany knows in real life) and Dhalgren (the extreme divide between those of the NYC subculture and the rest of the city's inhabitants, such that they effectively lived in their own city)

[hafsah · Rating 1 out of 5]

read for uni || my fav part of this is when the dude was like, "porn is sexist, but it gives men a safe space and a sense of belonging, and that is far more important"

yeah..... no.


EDIT : all the overemotional men who genuinely triggered by this review.... stay mad lmao

[Lars Meijer · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The sight of genitals when you don't expect them - in a public space, say - astonishes. The heart pounds. The stomach clutches. This is what makes exposure a violation. But it is not the greatest astonishment in the world. And acclimation mitigates it.'

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I would put this on the old "essential reading" list. Something for everyone here - narrative in the first piece, theory in the second. I am growing more and more fond of Chip the more of his stuff I read.

[Troy S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like an eternally lingering childhood memory where you were nothing more than a spectator, Times Square Blue's effect on me was so formative for adulthood in a way I still cannot pin down. A literary Objet petit a, Delany explores an explicit sexuality that was averse to commodification, a margin that couldn't fix itself on any page without taking it over.

The sexual deviant finds various underground communities. You've heard their legends, the sex dungeon under your local pizza place, the back rooms of your favorite video store, the movie theater that your parents always told you to stay away from. Times Square has gone from intimidating and esoteric in its poverty and homegrown culture to the locus of the horrible, abysmal aesthetic of the global capitalist. There is a Starbucks where Delany and his ensemble of merry masturbators once gathered. The only puddles gathering on the floor now are of venti iced soy mochaccinos, spilled by tourists that were too busy looking through their smart phone pictures of the new years ball (its much smaller than they thought, go figure) they just took outside to notice that the lid wasn't secured on their drink. But don't worry, our modern Thales will demand another one for free.

Don't get me wrong though, Delany is not the cynic here. Nor is he a sentimentalist, as another reviewer noted. What Delany is trying to do is Marcusian in its scope, finding a new way of interpolating sexuality and constructing blue prints for a new city based on the radically alterior communities that were birthed into the underbelly of cities and towns, like the human unconscious manifests itself from discarded thoughts and desires. Here we take the situationist project further, in a direction less laughable and without the malaise of political futility. Because, like Socrates at the Symposium, the city that Delany has in mind has not a foundation in the political, but one of eros.

Level music: Albert Ayler - Angels, Live in Greenwich Village

[Stesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wouldn’t have read this except the blurb talked about urban planning and the revitalization of Times Square. I’m a planner, so I thought this would be right up my alley. Alas, much of it focused on the “BEFORE” parts of the Times Square revitalization – specifically the activities in the many movie theaters. It was, um, interesting. On the other hand, I did learn that a “fish” is a woman in gay terminology.

That said, it was a well-written set of essays from a viewpoint I hadn’t considered.

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This spectacular book has everything: rigorous and world-shifting theory; buoyant, earnest, funny narrative; and even a roadmap to better (Madder, friendlier) ways of relating to one another and navigating complex desires. This is a must-read, especially for anyone even remotely adjacent to queer, trans, disability, and Mad studies.

[Audacia Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was published in 1999, the year I moved to New York - and of course at that time I fetishized the NYC of years gone. Its every bit as amazing a read as I remember it, but when I read it for the first time twelve-odd years ago, I was definitely more taken by the cultural analysis than the stories about Times Square and the denizens of the porn theaters. This time I felt the opposite, and actually skimmed through the analysis stuff and savored/reread the stories.

[ocelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

neat!!!! porn and gentrification!!! first half is memoir-y and second half is theory-y with a bunch of sociology jargon that slowed my stupid little post grad brain down. all of it is good though, one of my favorite things I have read in a long while!

[Shaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book and it touches on many things. I think Delany is somehow able to write interestingly about whatever he writes about. This made me think a lot of interesting thoughts, told me about things I never knew about, and somehow I wanted to make connections from it to pretty much everything else for the period I was reading it. I already know I want to read it again.

[Naeem · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find myself speechless in trying to review this book. It is about the nature of desire and the relationship between desire and the urban political economy.

I loved it. Then I hated it. Then I loved it. And again hated it. It is an imperfect project but oh so powerful. I'd venture that it is impossible to be indifferent to this book.

He shows me a world I wouldn't otherwise know and shows me a part of myself I am not sure I want to know. So kudos to Delany for this forced immersion into his daily life and theoretical world. I could not put it down and read it in one sitting.

For me the most powerful part of the book is his discussion of the social creation of sexual scarcity. This notion fits well with contemporary work on the social creation of economic scarcity. His ideas here are as radical as Monique Wittig's essay "One is not born a woman." But they unsettle something in me that wants to resist him with full force. If offered a cup of coffee with him, I think I would linger on the decision for some moments.

I often cannot abide the tone of his theoretical forays -- which strike me as weak and deliberately unsystematic. Nor am I convinced that he is a honest narrator. But he is pushing deep, deep buttons in the soft and vicious underbelly of modernity.

A more provocative book I don't think I have read.

I know I am going to read this again. Perhaps then I will have a proper review. Until then....good luck with it.

Meanwhile here are some passages (Julie pushed me here):

Page 89-90, from the first essay:

The encounters you remember are, of course, the men who were a little different, a little strange, the odder denizens of the Venus, this particular cock, that particular smile. Yes, they include the walking wounded, like Rannit. But most of the guys I had at the Capri, day in and day out, year after year (the professional medical companion whose wife had lupus: "So she knows I come here. I think she prefers that to me going with other women -- not that I go into details about it with her"; fat, friendly, uncut Puerto Rican Tony, a Saturday morning regular down at hte Variety for give years; the tree service worker there with his uncle, "'Cause he knew about this place -- and we both like guys"; the tall, rather elegant black man at the Cari who never seemed to do much int he line of sex, but who always lingered standing at the back of the aisle, sometimes chatting with the clutch of black queens who commandeered the seats at the back-left of the orchestra, and who always had some bit of gossip for me when I came in, who always whispered, "stay healthy, now," when I left. Perhaps because of some forgotten bit of conversation I'd overheard him in, years ago, I'd always call him "Eddy," until one day, he looked at me curiously and smiled. "Why do you call me 'Eddie'? That's not my name. I don't mind. But why you always call me that? -- though he wouldn't tell me what his name was when I apologized. "No, you just go on with Eddie. Maybe it's something sexual with you--no problem. Really, its alright." The big, pear-shaped diabetic who always wore dress slacks and a white shirt: "When I got the diabetes, they said I wasn't going to be interested in sex no more. But you and me, we been seeing each other in here, how many years now?" The social worker taking night classes, whose papers I would correct, first in the light of the flickering screen, then, two years later, over the phone: "I'm an exhibitionist, man. I know it. Till I found this place, I used to get in trouble. But I can come in here, stand in the middle of the aisle, facing everybody, jerk off -- and maybe a couple of guys call out, 'Hey, there! Sit down!' That's all. And most of you guys tell me you even get off on it. That's all I am looking for, man") though they tended to be more working-class than not, were pretty much like you, pretty much like me.

From the second essay, page 185-6:

What homosexuality and prostitution represented for my uncle was the untrammeled pursuit of pleasure; and the untrammeled pursuit of pleasure was the opposite of social responsibility...In the words of Bruce Benderson, writing in the Lambda Book Report 12, "The true Eden where all desires are satisfied is red, not green. It is a blood bath of instincts, a gaping maw of orality, and a basin of gushing bodily fluids." Too many had seen "nice ordinary American boys" let loose in some tiny French or German or Italian town where, with the failure of the social contract, there was no longer any law-- and there has seen all too much of that red "Eden"....

The clear and obvious answer) especially to a Catholic Repulican army officer and judge) was that pleasure must be socially doled out in minuscule amounts, tied by rigorous contracts to responsibility. Good people were those who accepted this contractual system. Anyone who rebelled was a prostitute or perversion was working, whether knowingly or not, to unleash precisely those red Edenic forces of desire that could only topple society, destroy all responsibility, and produce a nation of without families, without soldiers, without workers -- indeed, a chaos that itself was no state, for clearly no such space of social turbulence could maintain any but the most feudal state apparatus.

page 187: In order to dismantle such a discourse we must begin with the realization that desire is never "outside all social constraint." Desire may be outside one set of constraints or another; but social constraints are what engender desire; and one way or another, even at its most apparently catastrophic, they contour desire's expression.

page 196-7: Gay urban society early on learned how to overcome the sexual scarcity problem, in a population field where, if anything, scarcity could easily have been greater. Suppose heterosexual society took a lesson from gay society and addressed the problem not through antisex superstructural modifications but through pro-sex infrastructural ones.

Consider a public sex institution, not like the Show World Center that Ben so decries, set up and organized for men, but a rather large number of hostels in many neighborhoods thought the urban are, privately owned and competing to provide the best services, all of which catered to women, renting not by the day but by the hour, where women could bring their sexual partners for a brief one-, two-, three-, four-hour tryst. Such hostels would be equipped with a good security system, surveillance, alarms, and bouncers (as well as birth control material) available for emergency problems....

Some people recognize that in many cities prostitutes (and gay men) have had access to institutions now closer to, now further from, just this model for hundreds of years. In a sense, the only change I am suggesting is to move such institutions from the barely known and secret, from the discourse of the illicit, into the widely known, well-publicized, and generally advertised rhetoric of bourgeois elegance and convenience, promoting them as a sexual service for all women, single, married, gay, or society matron.

Such a social system might actually put a dent in the system of artificial heterosexual scarcity. With the wide establishment and use of such hostels, I can't guarantee that all wolf whistles or catcalls...will fall away from our streets; but I can guarantee that their meaning and their hostile tenor...will change radically, precisely as it becomes common knowledge among straight males that, in this town, you now have a statistically much greater chance of getting laid with a newly met woman (because even if she doesn't want to bond her life to yours forever but just thinks you have a cute butt, a nice smile, and something about you reminds her of a Will Smith or Al Borland or John Goodman, she has somewhere to take you), and that the best way to exploit this situation is probably not to antagonize random women on the street.

From the population problem to the lewd street comment, there are many reasons to promote public heterosexual sex on the model public gay sex has followed for years and, in one form or another, likely to continue to follow. But if we are going to do such a thing, it is only sensible to put its control in the hands of women and set it up for their use and convenience from the start.

[‎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve only been to New York City once, and I didn't even see Times Square. By the time I was old enough to enjoy the kind of “play” (as is the contemporary parlance—anyone with a Grindr profile could tell you) described in Times Square Blue, the area had long been remade into a "glass and aluminum graveyard," somehow utterly barren yet simultaneously bustling with hordes of tourists and massive, attention-catching facades. On the one hand, Delany’s concern is with the hyper-specific—here is a social milieu that once existed, at a particular city block (Forty-second Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenue), for a particular duration of time (from the sixties up through the early aughts). And yet, for all my distance from the world eulogized within these essays, I recognize my own experience in Delany’s experience, as a gay man with a similarly casual approach to sex.

There used to be three bathhouses in San Diego, where I live. Two have closed down—the Mustang Spa is now a veterinarian clinic, while the Vulcan Steam and Sauna building remains vacant. Only Club San Diego remains, though, in polite conversation at least, it is often regarded with disdain (too many homeless people, the bougie gays say. I imagine that for Delany, this would be a selling point), and given all that’s happened in this year of 2020, I’m afraid it won’t last for much longer (much like New York City, the city of San Diego has maintained an antagonistic attitude towards its men’s facilities. COVID-19 may be the excuse it needed to finally shutter its less desirable real estate). There are private sex parties. A lovely couple runs a monthly gathering called The Foxhole out of their home. They've converted their backyard into an extensive grounds for debauched fun, furnished with slings, glory holes, and a bathtub where you might lie in repose while other men relieve themselves upon you. And then there’s Morley Field, where at certain times of day, weather permitting, you might find some nice men loitering about the bushes and trees. What are they waiting around for? If you have to ask, keep walking. San Diego, New York City, coast to coast, the sticky floors and lingering glances of the free sex arena remain the same.

But there are differences too. Born not of locale, but of technology. The kinds of “contact” relationships Delany describes (chance, cross-class interactions facilitated by shared use of public spaces) are an increasingly rare occurrence. Public facilities such as porno theaters and bathhouses tend to be disfavored over apps such as Grindr and Scruff, which foster “network” relationships (institutionally sanctioned, goal-oriented interaction) over “contact” relationships. On Grindr, a logic of the marketplace dominates. There is no such thing as a chance encounter on Grindr—all hook-ups are derived from a complicated arithmetic of lust, fantasy, racism (vanilla and spice, not chocolate and rice) and extra-phenotypic factors such as "does this person display proficient command of written language" and “does this person have a car.” Delany predicts it himself, nearly two decades prior: “If every sexual encounter involves bringing someone back to your house, the general sexual activity in a city becomes anxiety-filled, class-bound, and choosy.”

That’s not to say I haven’t had fun on the apps. That every encounter necessarily takes place in somebody’s home can be a feature in its own right. You can approximate a contact-connection with an app-based interface by simply exercising a reckless disregard for personal safety. I love materializing into a stranger’s home and peeking a glimpse of how he lives. My experience of my city is a mosaic dotted with brief encounters with disparate lives, like a dick-driven Robert Altman film. I remember a cowboy with a tiny apartment—between his bed and his television the room felt cramped. He’d been using his floor as an extension of his ashtray. I helped him vacuum his carpet and install a new TV. Afterwards, we headed to the bars for some karaoke, where he proceeded to bring the party down with a mournful rendition of an obscure country standard between twinks belting Mr. Brightside and whatever Lady Gaga song. Back at his place, he told me his secrets. Sometimes the hook-up is all business—you cum and go. But sometimes a delicate intimacy reveals itself in the space between total strangers.

Then again, I find myself backpedaling from romanticizing the Grindr hookup too much—a ‘delicate intimacy?’ Shut up, she’s so pretentious; just call it pillow talk. High off an orgasm, the men either babble or fall asleep. Here’s Delany describing the relationships he maintained with the other patrons of the porn house: “The relationships were not (necessarily) consecutive. They braided. They interwove. They were simultaneous.” In comparison, the typical Grindr hookup is compartmentalized. Isolated. Discrete. Discreet. Two monkeys colliding to scratch each other’s itches then bounding off into the jungle with nary a tick shared between them (or many ticks, requiring penicillin shots directly into their baboon asses). Delany’s out there writing whole books about the men he once knew and I couldn’t even tell you the name of the cowboy I just recounted. Not so much a relationship but a blip on the radar.

Not so much a relationship but fodder for capitalists. When I started writing I intended to draw a parallel between Delany’s Times Square and the internet’s hook-up app but the more I think about it the more I feel like today’s smartphone projected virtual landscape constitutes a total razing of the world Delany once knew. Just now, I opened up Grindr and was greeted with a manifesto cheerily explaining how my data is shared with third-party advertisers (whether you opt out or not is immaterial—your data will still be shared with advertisers. And yes, the irony that I write this review on Amazon-owned Goodreads is not lost on me). Perhaps these long bankrupt porno theaters could have survived if they had instituted data analytics programs and figured out how to market Cialis to their patrons. For now, all I can think is that I’ve brought the new Times Square right into my own home. Erected the “postmodern superslum” atop my own libido. The old Times Square is dead. The new Times Square extends far beyond the borders of 42nd Street.

[Christopher Moltisanti's Windbreakers fan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book captures the rapid increase of gentrification in NYC at the expense of those who are marginalized, scrutinized, and often get pushed away whenever it is convenient for those in power. Delaney's description of gay culture at the time when AIDS epidemic, crack-cocaine, and all other drugs were at the corner of Times Square, is vibrant, honest, and most importantly deeply gut wrenching. It highlights how the beauty (if you consider it beauty) of modern day NYC, specially midtown, at the expense of gay sanctuary theaters and cultural centers. It also highlights how developers, real estate businessmen, and politicians use homophobia, xenophobia, racism to push away people from their neighborhoods by using drugs epidemics or cultural values as excuses. This book is not for everyone, specially if you are not used to reading descriptive masturbations, oral sex, and many other heart breaking experiences. Many suggested that Delaney romanticized a horrible period of NYC (he didn't). It was may be horrible for those who were privileged, but he highlights fact in such a New York City way.

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
chip i love u!! so happy i get to read u in new york
ty for writing the kind of theory i want to write and telling of your experience alongside marx because those things matter to one another
ty for theorizing the way relationships function in a city in a way that combines focus on discourse, architecture, public spaces, infrastructure, and superstructure.
the argument that life is enriched for all parties when cross class contact happens freely and often in public spaces is well made. emotion and analysis carry it through.

[Stephen]

Strangely enough, I've had to return to this book after I had read it in the first graduate course I ever took. It's more amazing to me this time around after having "been around the block" in academia for over a decade at this point.

The second portion provides a theoretical account of the memoir-ish first person. This kind of book is probably what more academic books should aspire to be: both rigorous but subjectively located.

[boocia]

-- 2025 thoughts, on blue
since blue and red started in two diff places (first as a written manuscript, latter as an academic speech), wanted to checkpoint my thoughts on blue before starting red

it was a delight to revisit that key passage that made me start hooking up on apps: "We do a little better when we sexualize our own manner of having sex -- learn to find our own way of having sex sexy. ... This alone allows us to relax with our own sexuality. Paradoxically, this also allows us to vary it and accommodate it ... to other people. I don't see how this can be accomplished without a statistically significant variety of partners and a fair amount of communication with them ... about what their sexual reactions to us are ... When Lacan says "One desires the desire of the other", self confidence is ... the aspect of it desired". Though, tbh I don't think he actually goes further into this idea explicitly in "Blue"; it's an aside to explain the allure of an exhibitionist hustler friend he makes. The keystone is "relax with our own sexuality", though, i think. Un-repress it, in a way. I think some of the anecdotes he has of having sex with men in theaters, or observing them masturbate, has that shade to it; of unselfconsciousness (relaxing), or of fetishizing, one's own sex being part of the appeal of public sex, sex in public, sex where other people can /see/.

another benefit of social sex like this is another form of relationship -- sometimes lasting as long as the encounter, sometimes lasting years of repeated but occasional ones, occasionally spilling over these cruising grounds to dinner at each other's houses, and one hospital visit to Delaney's mother. "these were not love relationships ... they were encounters whose most important aspect was that mutual pleasure was exchanged ... that did not involve any sort of life commitment ... most were affable but brief because ... these were people you had little in common with. Yet what greater field and force than pleasure can human beings share?" it is clear that these brief, bounded relations Delaney has lets him see and learn from his fellow man, think about mental illness differently, give and take differently than in his "regular" life.

these relations "relieve anxieties/pressure" in Delaney's central relationships, though he doesn't really elucidate how. I think it has to do with this generalized sense that out there, there are people who say yes, that the sexual world is not a foreclosed possibility, maybe? when Delaney takes his woman friend to the theater, and she's surprised that so many men decline each other for sex and those declines are met well; and is also further surprised when someone asks to eat her out "like i might actually say Yes" -- in other words, like a genuine human to human ask, and not a man-to-woman sexual harassment power play. "when so many people say yes, the no's don't seem so important", says Delaney. this wrinkled my brain my first read too (he says more on this in "Red" iirc), about almost the psychological circumstances where people are open, willing; and on the flip side, forgiving and flexible.

i really enjoyed his aside about straight pornography this read, his generous reading of it as a place with feminized or sidelined men (can't have a big masc distracting the straight men viewers), of women who have Jobs (sexy nurse, sexy lawyer), of women who have Wants and Get What They Want, of women interacting with each other Without men (lesbians). i think it IS another way of saying a similar thing as his central point about needing public sex establishments; of there just needing to exist places where the repressed can be unrepressed in a social way, in a normalizing way, even if its weird and sideways too.

-- 2025 thoughts, on red
couple of takeaways that were subtler than my first read:
- i think the idea of "smoothing out" relations under capitalism -- even adversarial ones, like landlordship -- is very compelling. delany isn't looking to destroy capitalism in this book, not in one fell swoop anyway. it is about "pleasantness", almost finding those loopholes around capitalistic relationships. a landlord can decide not to raise rent for a year because he discovers his tenant has undergone hardship, in exchange for perhaps a delay on fixing that broken window 'til the landlord has the savings for it; but a management company could not. those are the human loopholes that delany is interested in. will these cross-class contacts lead to an overhaul in society? i'm not sure delany thinks so. but maybe -- per his words -- they modify the discourse around relations. maybe it's the difference between yimbyism and nimbyism, or something.
- i think it was more clear this time to me (in that i read better) that networking is just functionally different than contact, not worse. some utilities of networking include changing or re-asserting discourse across an industry or subculture (writing conferences, etc.), and consistency of inputs (programmers in chicago) and outputs (programmers in chicago who have a shared understanding of dbt now).
- the bit about how it was easier to be a nice landlord in the 60s because you Had Enough to be a nice landlord was interesting (like literally -- you could afford to cut your tenant a break or afford to pay to fix things better). and how congenialness and an ability to be in a non-adversarial relationship w your tenant is predicated on you both having enough to not need everything from each other. that its not just about the tenant having enough, but the landlord having enough. i wonder how that plays, or if this take is just obliterated, by the late capitalist number go up thing. but i don't think the individual landlord cares if number goes up the way a mgmt company does. i guess the further corporatization of what used to be mom-pop industries just isn't factored in to what delany's talking about, or post dates it.
- the bit about how if there were women-friendly/women-lead sex hotels then catcalling wouldn't exist was just silly, like he clearly just forgot about societal misogyny as a whole and how that's separate from his framework around needs (ie, people are nicer if their needs are more met / more available to be met).
- i'm very intrigued by his indication that establishments/spaces/structures that allow cross-class contact will never be stable under capitalism; they're always be identified, cleansed, righted in some way. i'm thinking about the gentrified claim on the term "third space". and new ones will have to spring up when that happens. i wonder what cross-class contact establishments/spaces/structures there are right now, in my present, in my context? busses, grocery stores, the busy street i live on right off a train stop? i don't know if there are organic establishments in my sphere like that, or that i frequent. so that's a good one to reflect on.

=======

-- 2021 thoughts

cw: student-teacher relations mention

made me wanna take another swing at dhalgren, mostly

mixed feelings about this book that basically come down to whether or not i can take Delaney seriously.

it's very romantic to talk about chance encounters and the ways that meeting strangers - specifically, strangers from other classes - and connecting with them - for Delaney, sexually in these jack-off theaters - can change your life, or create and influence your sexuality-self, or make you part of a community. i think i bought it most when he described how drag queens in these theaters would warn you of who to watch out for, or of how he would keep up relationships with these people for years but only in the theaters, or how all these men - some straight - would interact with each other in a community form. there was a Delaney essay I read in college where he describes cruising spaces as these science-fictional liminal spaces where the fantastical become normal and the rules are different; so more of the same here; of sex becoming so matter-of-the-fact in some ways and of the casual intimacy of strangers; it really struck me at the time and it does again here how i felt the first time i went to gd2; of the rules of what is intimate and what is not changing in these new and exciting ways. so yeah, i bought it. i have always bought the real-not-real-but-real extra-selfhood of existing and participating in these extra/para-societal spaces, and how it's about being queer, and about queerness as sort of having these moments that are very communal. an interesting take he has is that he personally thinks a sexual identity is only established when you have sex with many people; that that's how you 'get over' any internalized repressions and figure out what you really want and how you really want to be perceived. which again, should i try to read Dhalgren again?

queerness aside this book is about community and connecting with people in your own community. i definitely like the way this book crawled into my brain, made me relax more when walking around the street alone at night, got me unlearning the idea that stranger is more dangerous than neutral. times square red definitely had something interesting to say about "networking" vs "contact". rhetorically i thought it was interesting because i think i've never seen a queer marx-adjacent scholar truck so closely with , idk, social math? game theory? there was a lot abt like, the density of "similar" needs in networking contexts (all these younger writers at a writer's retreat need their big break; so the mentor is more on guard about being nice to them or leading them on) vs more dissipated needs in contact contexts (you can more easily offer to put in a good word with your editor for some stranger you started chatting w at the grocery store; there isn't this big need/expectation going in). one thing i really liked was his analysis about how city planning and governance is making contact much, much worse; there are so many needs no longer provided for infrastructurally that people Are scared to strike up convos with strangers in their neighborhood now; there is this hidden fear caused by lots of unmet needs. this was such an interesting way to think about being afraid to talk to strangers as not just societally-instilled fear of "dangerous" homeless people or racism or whatever; but also a context of too much need created at a more superstructural level.

anyway i think , as one other goodreads review i read said, the thing crumbles a bit because it is very easy to interpret these essays as ultimately a lot about Delaney being bummed out he can't jack-off in theaters with homeless people / the mentally ill / desperate gay sex workers anymore because gentrification includes shutting down sex theaters and cracking down on sex work. i think the essays, written in the 90s, maybe just don't speak more modern discourse. so there really wasn't v much acknowledgement of the power differential between Delaney and these men for ex (including a story where one of his own married students seduces him at a writer's conference), and those differentials seem very worth considering with regards to exactly what kind of community dynamics /connections being built in these theaters? he has some kind of tepid things to say about women's safety/sexuality in these; ultimately a bit of an unconvincing pitch that catcalling might be reduced or might be less scary if there were more women-friendly sex hotels that didn't really make much sense to me. but it's just unclear; i can definitely feel some neuroticism n discomfort inside myself that Delaney, in the way he writes, feels more accepting about. like yes, "this man is homeless and i am an established professor, and we want to have sex right now, why wouldn't i do so and then buy him a sandwich and sort of trust him that this isn't degrading or that he's not letting me take advantage"? that seems to be the subtext in these anecdotes, like "what other workaround is there in this moment?", or like "real connections are messy and weird like that and sanitization is sort of what this essay is entirely against". another way to put it, is that Delaney writes assuming he is part of this community and belongs even though he is of a different class than these blue-collar workers, is on the 'same level' as them and isn't mentioning in these essays any fear of abuse. this attitude circumvents the aloof, alienating, white-liberal hyperaware-of-privileges take that assumes one is always helping or touristing in a community, but never part of it. so idk. lots 2 think abt.

[Nicolas Lontel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cet essai est brillant et vraiment fascinant à tellement d'égards que tout lister prendrait une éternité.

Dans la première partie, Delany nous propose une exploration du monde des cinémas porno et de leurs fréquentations par un très vaste pan de la communauté gai à l'époque. À travers le récit sur une trentaine d'années de ces cinémas, de la population qui les fréquente, des décisions de la ville qui décide de les fermer (gentrification), des conséquences que ça a sur les lieux et les fréquentations, l'essayiste brosse un portrait à la fois sociologique large sur la fréquentation et l'importance de ces lieux, mais il le fait aussi de manière très anecdotique et fascinante sur les rapports sexuels qu'il a eu, ou que d'autres ont eu dans ces cinémas. Il raconte aussi très bien les sphères de marginalisation qui évoluent dans ces lieux et l'importance qu'ils ont pour que ces personnes marginalisées trouvent un lieu "rassembleur", presqu'exempt de jugement, où ils peuvent permettre de se retrouver, de se parler et de s'exprimer librement.

Dans la deuxième partie de l'essai, on est plutôt dans la théorisation du relationnel. Delany parle de l'importance du contact et de comment la géographie et l'urbanisme est nécessaire pour multiplier ces instances. Il contraste (pas n'oppose) le "contact" avec le réseautage "networking" de la gentrification et parle de l'austérité de ce dernier mode de relationnel. J'ai trouvé la réflexion très intéressante et j'adore qu'il définit super bien ses termes et donne de multiples manières de jeter un coup d'oeil à ses théories pour bien les comprendre. Bien qu'il donne quelques anecdotes ça et là pour illustrer ses propos, on est beaucoup plus dans les théories sociologiques et architecturales que dans la description fluide, unique et intime de relations sexuelles de la première partie (bien que les exemples ne manque pas, mais il semble vraiment montrer comme exemple plutôt qu'être inscrit dans le fil narratif du premier texte).

Je n'ai que deux critiques de l'essai: une carte aurait vraiment été importante à ajouter, je ne connais pas New York, j'avoue être complètement largué lorsqu'il me parle de la quarante-deuxième avenue ou de l'emplacement de tel ou tel lieu. Une carte avec les éléments nommés dans le texte serait certainement le bienvenu. (J'ai cherché sur Internet un google maps où une personne aurait pu mettre les lieux cités, mais rien trouvé :( ). Deuxième critique: son analyse du harcèlement de rue comme frustration sexuel des hommes hétéros qui pourrait être, partiellement, réglé par l'équivalent de Love Hotel japonais (il imagine une structure qui ressemble beaucoup à celle-ci, il ne la mentionne toutefois jamais s'il les connait) ; c'est du harcèlement sexuel oui, mais ça na pas vraiment rapport avec le sexe, plutôt avec la violence, la haine, le pouvoir, le contrôle, etc. Oui, comme il le suggère, établir des relations sexuelles saines et multiplier les lieux et manières d'avoir des relations sexuelles peut certainement changer la façon dont est perçu le sexe et épanouir un peu tout le monde, mais ça n'arrêtera pas, même partiellement, le harcèlement sexuel.

Un des rares livres que je vais très probablement relire dans plusieurs années (je ne suis vraiment pas une personne qui relit).

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's pretty cool, because I live here kinda or at least nearby, now I can get off the ACE a few stops early and walk by Worldwide Plaza (pitbull in the bkgd: mr worldwide) and all these big buildings and read from the book: zamn this used to be a Hot Spot for Homosexual Relations. More importantly: this was the infamous Adonis, or Eros, or whatever other venue for casual public sex that eventually got swept out in a show of "urban cleansing," under the pretense of an AIDS epidemic, in the weird way that nyc decided to enforce "safety" by pushing a bunch of [largely homosexual] sexual behaviors to illegal corners of the law and darker corners of the city. instead of letting everyone just have a good time I guess? (pitbull in the background: forget about your boyfriend and meet me at the hotel room)

here's a sizzlin quote: "My tertiary thesis, to which now and again we shall return, is that, while the establishment and utilization of those institutions always involve specific social practices, the effects of my primary and secondary theses are regularly perceived at the level of discourse. Therefore, it is only by a constant renovation of the concept of discourse that society can maintain the most conscientious and informed field for both the establishment of such institutions and practices and, by extension, the necessary critique of those institutions and practices—a critique necessary if new institutions of any efficacy are to develop. At this level, in its largely stabilizing/destabilizing role, superstructure (and superstructure at its most oppositional) can impinge on infrastructure." F R I C K

this also is another reason to finish reading Death and Life in Great American Cities bc basically he quotes Jane every other section? though he has some sweet critiques so it's not all just an echo. I assume that at the end of her book Jacobs also has her concrete suggestions, and I also assume that these suggestions don't include the women-centered public sex houses that Delany suggests (partly, as he admits, bc it just isn't something she could've discussed openly / bookily in the 1950s) and then separately there's also his insistence that community != contact which he kind of just sticks in there as a footnote though so idk.

and finally whats up with the fifth star well !!! u know i cant resist when a book's form does somethin wild to further its fundamental argument !!! what "makes" this book five stars ha! probably it's the way he enacts interpellation! like literal althusser interpellation!!! I honestly didn't even have a firm grasp on this term before i read this!!! whoops sorry!!!! but like!!! zamn! how did ya do that man and can u teach me :/

-0.01 stars because I dont understand which part is red and which part is blue

[Zoe]

finally got around to this & woah so many thoughts. samuel delany is a genius formal fiend like he knows how to structure. i love how he starts so deeply in the personal and the interrelational as a grounding for the second, more theoretical half of the book - it means we start the second section with a nuanced, narrative understanding of the interclass, contact-ful institutions he references more abstractly yet which form the basis of his argument. it felt like i'd already had a long chat over coffee w him abt his inspiration for writing the book so i could go in with a ton of context and like goodwill towards him. which was necessary sometimes lol bc i did not agree w all of his takes for ex. that having more institutions for men to have casual sex wld eradicate catcalling ??? i think his analysis of the pros/cons of contact vs. networking is extremely useful but i didn't agree with his explanation of WHY they are useful to those who engage in them. like one of his biggest arguments for contact is that it enables career opportunities. i mean yeah it also sort of ended up being abt mutual aid/community care too (sandwiches after sex at the porn theater!) but i would've liked that to be explored more. and i liked his points abt pleasantness but then i was sad that he was only advocating for pleasantness within a capitalist system (explicitly at that!) and i wish he had gone farther with his analysis. and that he like even had a clear analysis...bc like he totally twisted the concepts of "class" and "class war" to mean things that they do not imo

oh i also really liked his takes on embracing pleasure/chaos and structuring cities in a way that recognizes the need for pleasure and desire - as well as embracing diversity. makes me think of bookchin and how cities cld become more ecological by diversifying neighborhoods instead of siloing residential vs. economic vs. red light activities (also this is just more inherently sustainable from a transit perspective!)

[Jake Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anecdotally and historically, a rich dive into ways of being queer that are both wholly separate from what I live now, and also completely recognizable. Theoretically, an approach to urbanism that will stick with me. Not certain that the framework of contact will be my guiding model, but it’ll certainly stay on my mind.

[isabelllaj · Rating 4 out of 5]

the memoir portion was very oddly moving for an essay about public masturbation/red light spaces and the second half was a convincing explanation of different social relationships (contact, which is interclass and effective vs networking, more insular and less effective) that are impacted by urban planning.

[Liv Townsend · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like talking about the politics of public sex but also gentrification this is the book for you ! Seriously though am a big fan of anything discussing how queerness intersects with place and locality. Pair this with the new trump biopic The Apprentice and you've got a great combo commentary on how gentrification and property development have changed cities into more individualistic places.

[Mica C · Rating 4 out of 5]

good and seemed important but i did not understand some parts :(

[Maya]

i liked what he said abt contact

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. samuel delany is one of our greatest living gay guys. times square red is good but times square blue is great.

[Rosie Brennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Public sex is based and it's imperative that we do it as a community to increase interclass contact and to fight gentrification.