Masculinity, Passivity

In John Rechy’s City of Night, masculinity is a complex concept. For hustlers, there are many rules about what it means to be ‘masculine.’ Hustlers can have sex with men without compromising their sexuality, as long as they do it for money and play the masculine role. As a hustler who claims to follow these rules, the narrator is perceived as masculine. At the same time, the narrator’s behavior is often passive. He doesn’t approach scores; he always waits for them to proposition him. The narrator prides himself in this passivity. He often mentions his desire to be needed by lots of people. In the final pages of the novel, however, when the narrator’s mask is stripped away, his passivity remains. His mask crumbles when he warns two scores that “I’m not like you want me to be, the way I tried to look and act for you: not unconcerned, nor easygoing – not tough: no, not at all” (341). The scores leave him; “[t]hey had sought something else in me – the opposite from them; and I had acted out a role for them,” the narrator explains (341). In this scene, which echoes many similar scenes throughout the novel, it is clear that scores do not want him, at least, not for what he really is – they want the masculine mask that he wears. Is the narrator ‘masculine’? Perhaps. He is often perceived as masculine. Does that perceived masculinity mean that he fully controls his sexual interactions? No. His success as a hustler depends upon his ability to construct a masculine mask that people are willing to pay for.

The narrator’s passive attitude towards picking up scores certainly doesn’t translate into sexual passivity, but it manifests itself in interesting ways in other parts of the novel. Although the narrator forms several character sketches throughout the novel, he does not form a clear picture of his own character. Readers can’t picture what he looks like. He reveals his name to other characters, but never to his audience, although his frequent use of “you” suggests that he is aware of an audience. Instead, readers must piece together the narrator through other characters’ impressions of him. Even most of those impressions aren’t very revealing – the professor correctly guesses his weight, height, age, and other measurements – but we aren’t informed of those measurements. The narrator describes his need to feel wanted by many people and his inability to form intimate relationships, but Jeremy offers a much deeper psychological interpretation of the narrator. In this way, the narrator’s method of describing himself seems almost passive; instead of providing us with direct characterization, we see him reflected through other character’s comments.

Even the narrator’s definition of love can be seen as passive. Through his conversation with Jeremy, the narrator decides that “choosing someone to ‘love’ you – to be loved by” or “accepting” someone else’s love is a form of love (362). He does not point out that this type of love is contingent upon someone loving him. Although he chooses to accept someone’s love, it still seems like a rather passive role.

These three examples of the narrator’s passivity – his approach to hustling, indirect self-characterization, and definition of love – add a great deal of complexity to his masculine mask. Is this passivity compatible with the masculine mask? In some ways, it seems compatible; many hustlers wait for scores to approach them. In that case, is the passivity part of his mask (is he intentionally passive, as he claims?) or is it a fundamental part of him that also works against that masculine mask?