BOULEVARD by Jim Grimsley

Finished We 5/30/18

This is one of my old hardbacks that I bought on a day off at West Branch on Fr 4/4/08, and I finished it on Sunday, 4/13.

This is the first Gay Novel that I can ever remember reading.

The first third of the book is like a very interesting, 'coming-of-age' novel, but then it seems to break up into a series of vividly portrayed scenes. The central question was never, 'Am I gay?', but it was more how can I learn to live and adapt to the strange and outrageous life of 1978 New Orleans.

Not much is told of Newell's life in rural Pastel, Alabama except that he lived with his elderly grandmother and brother or uncle. The novel begins as he gets off the bus in downtown New Orleans and he knows that he must find a place to live and a job.

Soon he finds a room with Louise, and older lesbian woman who is in an unrequited affair with a teenage worker, Millie. Louise runs a junk shop and there are apartments upstairs. This is located near the French Quarter.

Newell gets a job as a bus buy in a popular restaurant, but he soon loses the job because some of his fellow workers are intensely jealous of his good looks and youth.

Then, he gets a job with Mac, the manager of an adult bookstore (with a house of heterosexual prostitution on the upper floors). Newell is a natural behind the register and he provides numerous tips on what magazines are hot and how the movie rooms can be made more effective.

Henry becomes an acquaintance of Newell's. This man is older, slightly overweight, but very knowledgeable of the local gay community.

Mark becomes Newell's first true lover, but Newell quickly seems to outgrow this relationship.

The novel doesn't seem to develop the transition from the very immature rube who gets off the bus, with little or no prospects, into the confident 'man on the scene'.

With Mark Newell takes acid for the first time, and this section of the novel is probably the most interesting. Within this scene, there is an odd history of the area dating back to the French. It's about a wealthy white female slave owner who throws a young black girl off the roof and keeps her cook chained to the stove with a knife-like collar secured to her neck.

Newell then gets involved in real 'rough sex' and the novel kind of implodes. Newell disappears and many believe that he is dead. But, he has only left the city to return to Alabama. However, he's confident that he can make it anywhere- when he's ready. Sounds like a lame way to end the book.

Miss Sophie is a transexual old man who is a janitor at the adult bookstore. This is a man who returned from WWII and decided to live part of the time as a woman; from Clarence to Sophia. He stays relatively sober during the work week, but drinks nearly a gallon of vodka on the weekends. His story figures (probably too much) quite prominently in the book.

I loved the first part of the book, and the rest was fairly interesting, but overall, it didn't hold together as a novel. The only truly innovative part was that 'gay identity' was never an issue. Acclimation to an urban and cosmopolitan environment seemed to be more of the central problem of the book.