Numbers

by John Rechy

Johnny Rio, a handsome narcissist but no longer a pretty boy, travels to Los Angeles, the site of past sexual conquest and remembered youthful radiance, in a frenzied attempt to recreate his younger self. Johnny has ten precious days to draw the "numbers," the men who will confirm his desirability, and with the hungry focus of a man on borrowed time, he stalks the dark balconies of all-night theaters, the hot sands of gay beaches, and shady glens of city parks, attempting to attract shadowy sex-hunters in an obsessive battle against the passing of his youth.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Gay, Gay Fiction, American, 20th Century

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

John Rechy is an American author, the child of a Scottish father and a Mexican-American mother. In his novels he has written extensively about homosexual culture in Los Angeles and wider America, and is among the pioneers of modern LGBT literature. Drawing on his own background, he has also contributed to Chicano literature, especially with his novel The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez, which is taught in several Chicano literature courses in the United States. His work has often faced censorship due to its sexual content, particularly (but not solely) in the 1960s and 1970s, but books such as City of Night have been best sellers, and he has many literary admirers.

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

More important for what it represents than what it is. One-handed reading has, erm, come (!) a long way since 1967. But for 1967, or 1977 (when I found it)? Hawt. Stuff.

It's just a bit sad to me that this culture is gone because no-strings sex was a lot of fun. And before some moralizing bore says anything tedious, y'all's way does nothing to make the world better, either.

[Federica ~ Excusetheink]

Senza voto, forse più in là riuscirò ad essere obiettiva.
Può sembrare un paradosso, ma la storia dell'ex marchettaro che rientrato nella sua cittadina si mette a numerare tutti gli uomini che vengono a contatto col suo pene è quella dell'intera umanità.
Avverte una sensazione di vuoto e smarrimento, spesso corre allo specchio per valutare se è ancora attraente o se l'espressione del suo viso cambia.

"Ho paura!" strilla la sua mente.

Johnny non lo fa per soldi, ma fissato e raggiunto un obiettivo non ha la capacità (volontà?) di smettere. Non conosce altra vita che questa. La forza dell'abitudine. Tutto è superficiale, effimero. Come lui stesso, come noi in quanto esseri umani. Perché, dunque?

Viaggia a 130 chilometri all'ora.
Il caldo amorfo è feroce.
Lontano lontano, vede un'ombra tagliare l'aria, affilata come una falce che squarci il cielo: forse un avvoltoio che piomba su una creatura morta nel deserto. Johnny l'immagina appollaiato e ingobbito sopra la carne sanguinante. Agghiacciato dall'immagine crudele sonda ancora, inutilmente, la radio.
Ma la morte, a cui evita di pensare, sembra decisa a penetrare nella sua coscienza; come un coltello nella carne.
Alle sue spalle lascia ricordi di uccelli morti spappolati da altre automobili lungo le autostrade; di rosso, rosso sangue versato di fresco che macchiava il manto di cemento. Le piume schiacciate.
E già il suo parabrezza è tutto punteggiato di quelle tragiche bestioline alate che scendono dal cielo per cozzare contro il vetro, ogni minuscola vita trasformata all'istante, senza pietà, in una macchia polverizzata, forse un puntolino di sangue sul vetro che verrà ripulito con un fazzoletto di carta inumidito alla successiva stazione di servizio.
Ma lo sanno quegli insetti polverosi, che c'è il parabrezza? Si tuffano forse dal cielo cercando la distruzione? Oppure vogliono entrare nell'abitacolo per sfuggire alle poderosi correnti create dal flusso delle auto? Ingannati dal vetro, si schiantano contro un destino invisibile, un destino ignorato fino al momento fatale.
Non che Johnny metta sullo stesso piano il destino e la morte, che può anche ridursi a una caduta nella curva della vita; no, nella sua coscienza non entra tanto la morte, quanto un benvenuto esteso al fato, al suicidio che non arriva a toglierti la vita: agli infiniti modi in cui il tuo "numero" (così tanti penultimi numeri!) esce ogni giorno.
Con questi pensieri, Johnny accelera fino ai 135 all'ora, lanciato verso la città nebbiosa degli angeli perduti.
Inconsciamente, comincia a contare il numero di insetti massacrati dalla sua automobile in corsa.
Splash!... Uno...
Due... Tre...
Sta per contare il quarto, ma il minuscolo punto sfarfallante devia dal parabrezza,, la scampa. Il suo numero non era ancora uscito. Ma quando uscirà...
Johnny immagina un registro dove sono numerati tutti gli abitanti del mondo, passati, presenti, futuri (come in quel libro della Bibbia dove Mosè riceve da Dio l'ordine di censire il suo popolo): tutti riportati ordinatamente in lunghe, sottili, fitte colonne. Diciamo che il tuo numero è infiniti miliardi sei milioni ottocentosessantaseimilatrecentosettantatré. Questo significa che tu te ne andrai subito dopo il numero infiniti miliardi sei milioni ottocentosessantaseimilatrecentosettantadue. Se solo potessi stabilire il numero di quanti ti precedono, potresti quasi conoscere il momento preciso in cui uscirà il tuo. (Un modo sicuro, non può fare a meno di pensare Johnny divertito, per assicurarsi che tu sia davvero il custode di tuo fratello!)
Splut!... Quattro.
Immagina Dio che, appostato dietro un fucile automatico, centra un "numero" dopo l'altro, anche se, per comodità, potrebbe usare, all'occasione, una mitragliatrice per abbattere le file come tessere del domino.
Johnny nota il quinto moscerino spiaccicato da quando ha cominciato a contare.
Quando esce il tuo numero...
Sei!
D'improvviso si accorge di quel che sta contando, e con rabbia tenta un'altra volta di abbandonare quella zona della sua mente ossessionata dalla morte e dall'autodistruzione, quella zona in cui era entrato con gli uccelli spettrali nelle vicinanze di Phoenix e le loro piume schiacciate, incollate dal sangue al manto stradale, e con gli insetti alati sul parabrezza.
Ed ecco come cerca di escludere quei pensieri: si guarda il petto nudo che, molto, molto abbronzato, brilla per il sudore. Compiaciuto a quella vista, lo accarezza, porta la mano alle labbra e lecca il suo stesso sudore, sentendo l'eccitazione gonfiarsi tra le gambe. Apre le ginocchia, e inarca il corpo. Il piede sul pedale aumenta ancora la velocità: 150 chilometri all'ora.
Un trionfo: il pensiero del sesso ha scacciato il pensiero della morte, almeno per il momento.

Del resto i francesi non la chiameranno 'piccola morte' a caso. Qual è la distanza tra l'orgasmo e l'ultimo respiro fatale, dove finisce uno ed entra in gioco l'altro?
Sesso e morte sono così simili eppure stanno distanti. Si guardano. Ci si mette in mezzo anche la sottoscritta: non vorrei che le personalità con queste due fissazioni così spiccate le abbiano inconsciamente scelte in quanto sanno che, a parte la sensazione di sentirci vivi, la continuazione della specie, non vi è altro di particolarmente utile ed importante? In fondo andiamo tutti nello stesso posto.
Però John, tu sei un bastardo. Come sei arrivato ai novant'anni con questa testa? Io temo già i prossimi dieci, anzi non li vedo proprio! Potevi essere anche un pelo più delicato.

Soundtrack
"I don't need to believe all the dreams you conceive
You just need to achieve something that rings true
All this running around, well it's getting me down
Just give me a pain that I'm used to" 🎶

[Huw Collingbourne · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Rechy is a wonderful but sadly unappreciated writer and this is one of his best books. It tells the story of Johnny Rio (a barely fictionalised version of the author) who returns to Los Angeles for ten days in which he will hunt for a fixed number of sexual partners. And this is where we come to the major reason for Rechy's lack of wider public appreciation: his novels contain a great deal of explicit description of male-to-male sexual acts. Even in the 21st Century, some people may find this shocking. Back in 1967, when this novel was written, it is hard to imagine the impact it might have had. In his preface Rechy says that when he showed the manuscript to a friend, he was warned against publishing it as the book would harm his reputation as a serious writer. I think that is true - it probably did harm his reputation. Nevertheless, I am glad that Rechy did publish it as the book is extraordinary.

It is by no means a pornographic book. It is, in fact, beautifully written. The descriptions of Griffith Park have a heightened reality that is often quite dreamlike. Moreover, the themes of the book are universal: life, love, hope, despair and death.

I don't think 'Numbers' is quite as good as Rechy's later book, The Sexual Outlaw. And it is not as famous as his first book, City Of Night. Even so, this is a fine book by one of the very best of modern American writers.

[James Roman · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an impressionable junior-high student when this book was released, I had an after-school job at the town library, shelving books. It meant that I held the very newest books before a single person checked them out. To prevent challenges by local residents if a book might be "racy," the librarians glued a favorable review inside the cover to preclude all confrontations. "Numbers" was one such title. All I had to do was look at the cover and spy that review pasted inside to know that I must be the first to read John Rechy's book!

"Numbers"is not great literature, but it's momentous for me, as this novel permitted me to explore what I suppressed. "Numbers" enabled me to contemplate and confront my orientation, marking the first time I really pondered what life in America was like for gay men. (Fortunately, times have changed!)

Years later, when I moved to Los Angeles, I thought of Rechy's book as I encountered places like MacArthur Park, mentioned in his novel. It didn't take long for me to meet John, and to tell him the anecdote above. Now we're pals.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been over ten years since I last read this book - but I liked it back then, but then I've always liked Rechy and thought him better and more interesting than he was ever given credit for. I am old enough to have come of age before HIV/AIDS and had drifted well into middle age by the time 'respectability' and 'acceptance' of gays really began to be commonplace (I knew how much times had changed when I saw two boys walking hand in hand in the City of London and nobody noticing). I have nothing but joy for those changes but, I do not accept that those who wrote about gay life back in the years between Stonewall and AIDS have nothing to say to younger gay men.

I never lived in or experienced either LA or New York at the time Rechy writes, indeed in 1967 I was still in short trousers attending primary school. In another dozen years when I made my first explorations into the gay world it was in London a scene that was about a shadowy, but aspirational, copy of the gay American scene Rechy describes. That world of cruising in London or the USA has gone, but I am not convinced that moving from using gay bars, clubs or other 'meeting' places to using whatever is the current online/app (sorry I am showing my age and how out of touch I am) to sex is all that much better. It hasn't been any better for the London boys murdered by serial killer using grinder to find his victims.

We 'gays' are now all supposed to be integrated in the great consumer dream of the suburbs - just because your Adam is with Steve instead of Eve it means the same - well there are a lot of us queers out there who don't want to be a heterosexual variant. The only problem is that back in 1984 it was the government Margaret Thatcher was telling us to shut-up, behave and go back in the closet but now it is other gays who are telling us to shut up and rock the boat.

So I like Rechy, I like the sex in his books because it is part of the story. It is not pornography unless Henry Miller is pornography or James Joyce. He writes about sex because he likes it, and it is part of who he is. I like this novel because it captures well the question of the aging hustler - all hustlers age - and he captures the hysterical but pervasive doom/dystopian longeurs that were never far away in 1960s California. There was a reason the Tate/LaBianca murders resonated so thoroughly at the time. The world did seem to be on the verge of collapse, or at least society. Of course nothing really changed or rather what changed was those who thought they were changing the world - look at Abbie Hoffman - probably the saddest example of a wasted life you will find.

I loved this novel and I love Rechy, not because his works are great, though are very, very good, but because they remind us of our roots and those are too close to be ignored.

[Chadwick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I recognize that this is considered a classic of LGBT literature. But it's just way too focused on a scene that I believe the LGBT community of 2019 has moved beyond thanks in part to broader acceptance, increased civil rights, and most importantly, greater aspirations of it's individual members. I personally don't understand a world where someone is defined by a body count of partners. Identifying solely with that statistic and personal beauty is so shallow an existence that it makes me almost feel sorry for the main character here and those who see themselves in his thoughts and actions. The writing was decent but a bit stylized in an effort to further impact the storytelling, as the author indicates in his forward. I struggled to get through this book and am giving it a rating that reflects that struggle.

[Bodosika Bodosika]

Started this book yesterday night
thought it would be interesting but I guess am wrong,
The characters descriptions were absurd and boring,the dialogue too artificial.I never knew it was about homosexuality and group of perverts....all the same I don't pick a book without reading it till the End,But I assure you that I will never read any book by 'John Rechy' again!

[P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Numbers was a stunningly sexy and sleek novel about an attractive man addicted to admiration. People cannot get enough of him; he revels in the power he has over others, and in the fact that he is the desired and not the desiring. He cruises and cruises to quench this thirst for being worshipped, an addition that gleefully envelopes him after a three-year break. This would make for a great movie - Rechy evokes an eerie, haunting, sinister universe in the Park, and the effect is dazzlingly hypnotic.

Turns out the novel is loosely autobiographical. Rechy was a professor during the day and a hustler at night - what a colorful life! Here's a brilliant interview: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/j...

[Adam Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not City of Night, don't be expecting it. This follow-up likely disappointed many but it is classic Rechy and well describes the sex-hunt and mating game that continues to this day and likely will well into the future. Cruising has never been displayed as well as in this book, and perhaps, being written in 1967, everyone knew it had been done the best it was going to get and moved on. This could explain why a similar book hasn't been done since. But... but... is it enough?
The book could do with a little more structure. Johnny Rio, so cliché it's laughable, is not the most likeable fellow. While he does have some encounters with others, notably the black woman on the street corner who says the world is ending, these are not fully explored. I could have done with a few more diversions from the sex-hunt and that gathering of numbers, but perhaps that's the point in a single-minded ten day binge like this, there is nothing else.
The real problem is that Rechy begins to ride the line with this book between a book with a point and a book that people will want to read. This book is a perfect portrait of an experience and a time, but I can't see people coming back to read it again or loving it, and maybe it needs just a bit more.

[Gene Hult · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dated, rather repetitive, and with a character who comes off as more emotionally stunted, psychologically backward, and depressing rather than engaging, Numbers nevertheless has some lovely descriptions, and certainly serves as a fascinating historical record of the pre-AIDS era. The sex is more perfunctory than titillating (as supported by the plot and characterization), but there's a lot of it, and its honesty and directness still feels fresh. My favorite part of the book was the naturalistic and believable dialogue -- Rechy is extremely talented at rendering character through offhand conversation. It's a quick read, but ultimately more important as a document than as a relevant, enjoyable entertainment. I rated it an extra star for its frankness, dialogue, and significance in the gay fiction canon.

[Menno Nootens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intens boek, op momenten ook heel graphisch en best moeilijk geschreven maaaar toch invested!
Het crazy hoofdpersonage heeft soms rare kronkels die het verhaal interessant houden.
Leuk leuk leuk

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

My edition of "Numbers" has John Rechy decked out in his hustler finest, resplendent in work denim shirt sleeves rolled up the arm to show off his saucy guns. Really wild.

"Numbers" is a wild story about a hustler who returns back to his old haunts in Hollywood after a sabbatical in Texas. Once he comes back he returns to his old habits, realizing he wasn't really in it for the money, but is in reality a rampaging sex addict. The book starts out as a serious meditation on loneliness but descends into a sordid, lurid David Friedman-style sexploitation yarn with Griffith Park as the greatest amusement park for hustlers on the planet.

Still and all, you gotta love a book where a guy cruises for action boys in a 1966 Mustang listening to garage rock.

[b aaron talbot · Rating 5 out of 5]

my first rechy book (and yes, i know i should read “city of night”). quite fantastic.

the writing style make you feel as manic as the main character, johnny rio, as he cruises griffith park in l.a. and his quest to reach his ‘number’ of sexual contacts/conquests. and while it is definitely about sex and very erotic for some stints, it is also about identity, obsession, addiction, and being queer in l.a. in the mid to late 60s.

some of this book reminds me of david rees, who wrote about california from a queer british perspective in the 70s. it also reminded me of michael warner’s “the trouble with normal” and how queer people have had to carve out public private spaces for themselves in order to be themselves.

great book. wish i had read it sooner.

[Wally · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is serious literature and porn - incredibly dark existentialist tale set in L.A. Is Rechy the best writer of Los Angeles ever? Good question. I don't like to deal in absolutes personally, but you could say, yes, and I might hum and nod quietly in agreement. I teach this book in a class on addiction. One mystery - is there a cameo appearance by Isherwood 3/4 of the way through - I've always thought so.

[S.A. Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Numbers (and City of the Night) were my bibles of gay life when I was a burgeoning teenaged gay boy of the late 70's and 80's. His work both enriched me and instructed me on a part of gay life that I knew nothing about. But more importantly, Rechy gave me the gift that being gay didn't mean that I was emasculated. I was transformed by this knowledge.

When I need a literary reset - it is his prose and his hand and his mind that I turn to. He has never failed me yet.

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is definitely adult reading material, not so much because of any eroticism, but rather the subject matter--promiscuous sexual excess. It may take some familiarity with a life such as Mr. Rechy elucidates to appreciate what a truly refreshing and poignant writer he actually is.

[Amy Gay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up on a giveaway shelf not knowing what it was about. Way different than the books I normally read but found it interesting to be inside the mind of someone struggling with their identity, particularly with the societal pressures of defining your sexuality causing denial and feeling of emptiness that can come with it.

[Thomas Hinton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel follows the exploits of Johnny Rio, an extremely good-looking narcissist, during his ten day return to the city of 'dead angels', Los Angeles.

Rechy explores the city as a series of subterranean spaces -- public parks, theatre balconies, cinema bathrooms -- that play host to the grubby and fleeting homosexual activities of the nameless individuals who haunt them. In doing so, Rechy delineates an interpenetration of sex and death, where the former, played out in all its glorious anonymity and anti-intimacy, serves to destroy any sense of self-identity Johnny strives to forge.

Johnny's searching for something beyond his hauntingly endless series of 'numbers' -- the spectre-like individuals with whom he has 'made it' -- takes on a tragically spurious nature as he circularly navigates the landscape of Los Angeles' underbelly, as well as his artificially constructed sense of self, desperately generating retrospective reasons for his exploits in the darkened corners of the city. Painfully clinging to his need to be desired in opposition to the passing of time -- a dynamic wonderfully captured by Rechy's manipulation of sentence tense, in which the present traverses into the past with startlingly chaotic ease -- Johnny paradoxically locates himself in a space where he finds himself unable to break away from the ultimate object of desire: the Los Angeles landscape that cruelly offers him the never-to-be-obtained promise of recreated youth.

[James Garman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was John Rechy's second novel. It is based, at least in part, on his early years in Los Angelos and the anonymous sex scene and hustling that he took part in. It was written in 1967 and I likely read it sometime between 1976 and 1980 and remembered the title "numbers" and one phrase from the book. That much had stuck in my mind as indicative of how my early gay experience played out.

However, reading it again, almost 45 years later, give or take, there is so much more to the story. It tells the story of a young man (called Youngman throughout) who is actually searching for meaning and self-esteem.

John Rechy had a unique voice and way of expressing things, and there are occasions when it takes a bit to understand exactly what he is talking about. However, it is also indicated that Johnny Rio, the main character, has some really bad issues with self-esteem and the rampant sex is the only way that he seems able to deal with that issue. It still, even today, resonates with my early coming out period.

Whatever cruelty he inflicts on others, and he does inflict cruelty, he also has a big heart and has compassion in almost equal message.

This book is a decidedly valuable one for those who are younger to read to understand how gay life was for many before Stonewall, and the Gay Rights Movement started working to change things.

[Micha Meinderts · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe it was a good book for its time, but damn, such pointless drizzle. The style grated across my eyes, there was no plot to speak of, the character was not very fleshed out at all and not very likeable either and the worst thing was that in the end the whole story had been in vain. It reminded me somewhat of The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway, what I remember of it anyway, and that's NOT a compliment.

Waste of time.

[Ahmad Awadalla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Captures the geist of cruising and sexual obsession so skillfully. Exposing characters through dialogue and sex acts works perfectly. I guess the downside is that the main character John is unfortunately a limited character and not very likeable. maybe it is laudable to write a story about the guy that most of the queer scene hates on.

[Picoroco · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poor, dispiriting follow up to City of Night. Morally hollow with no real narrative to hang on to.

[Tlcp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting description of subculture just as all Rechy's books are

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

...for the sex-obsessed

[Michael B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, so when I first came across this novel, I may have thought it was just pure pornography. But that may be more of a reflection of who I was at that time. The novel stayed me through, and the ideas imbedded in it wormed its way through my consciousness long after I had hidden the book on my bookshelf (where no one in my family would dare to look). Up until this time no one thought to write about a man obsessed with sex due to an unacknowledged sense of inferiority. Women, maybe, but not men. Sure, there were male characters who obsessively sought out female conquests, but this had more to do with being masculine and was generally applauded, you know, like a graceful touchdown in a football game. But here was a man whose obsession for sex, for need to be desired by another man, was literally represented by an obsessive-compulsive act of counting. At first this appeared to be a shotty literary device just to link sex scenes. I did not recognize how profound this story was until I was able to get some distance on it. Instead of being about conquest, this novel is about something deeply sad and depressing, it is just that the sadness is temporarily masked by all the sexual stimulation. Of all Rechy's books, this one left the biggest impression on me.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having volunteered at a queer bookstore since the Fall, I've felt inclined to get back to reading more LGBTQ literature. What a blessing that's been! This year alone, I've revisited Lorca's plays, Stein's "Tender Buttons," and Genet's "Miracle of the Rose"; and finally got around to reading Forster's "Maurice," too. All have been wondrous. The latest addition to my internal bookshelf is Rechy's gripping second novel "Numbers" -- an accelerated, anti-erotic rush into the mind of a gay hustler with a sex addition problem exacerbated by easy parkside access to the willing hands and mouths of L.A. Does Johnny Rio's overriding compulsion to get blown by anonymous men make him gay? Will intimacy rescue him from a venereal madness? Did some childhood trauma drive him to this compulsion or is it a perverse manifestation of the capitalist edict to acquire: In his case, you suck therefore I am. Rechy doesn't deliver any pat answers. His protagonist flees from such questions whenever they arise. But what this novel does, brilliantly no less, is capture the utter insanity behind obsessions rooted in our subconscious -- public M4M sex included.

[John-Manuel Andriote · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Rechy is one of my favorite authors. His writing is poetic with its images, metaphors, and sharp-edged insight into the human heart. Rechy excels at exploring the depths of loneliness and the sometimes shocking things people will do to keep loneliness at bay. In NUMBERS, Rechy’s second novel (after CITY OF NIGHT), the young Johnny Rio makes a return visit to Los Angeles to prove to himself that he’s still “got it,” that he can still attract and seduce as many men as he chooses to. Johnny’s frantic efforts to reach the goal he has set for his visit—measured in the number of men who will succumb to his beauty and sexiness—reveal a young man who has no measure of himself and his value beyond his own beauty, sexiness, and the number of men willing to pleasure him. A fascinating and unique story by a master storyteller early in his very long career.

[Carlos · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was excited to read this book after having enjoyed City of Night, but I was disappointed by how repetitive and dull this book was. A clear “sequel” to the City of Night, this book sought to address the existential crisis that arises when someone who is completely defined by his sex appeal realizes that his good looks won’t last forever. However, unlike the first book, where the protagonist is gradually able to see through the façade of his “hustling”, the protagonist in this novel seems incapable to see beyond the obsession with being desired that he acknowledges at the beginning of the story. While it is possible that Rechy meant for this to be the whole point, it nonetheless leads to a frustrating experience of reading of one casual sexual encounter after another.

[Jeffrey Powanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

A limp follow-up to Rechy's classic debut novel, City of Night. In this one, the narcissistic hustler has a name: Johnny Rios, an obvious stand-in for Rechy. Numbers was published in 1967, four years after City of Night. In the forward to this edition, written in 1984, Rechy mentioned that he wrote the book over three months, and that he tried to capture "a sense of time pausing" in his description of the random sexual encounters Johnny experiences during his ten-day stay in Los Angeles. The gay sex scenes in Numbers are more graphic than those in City of Night, but there's hardly a story at all except for Johnny's quest to achieve 30 "numbers" in Griffith Park. The book is provocative but emotionally empty, like its shallow narrator.

[Daniel Sanderfer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wished it had been better than what it was, but considering the story is from the sixties, I understand it was a reflection of the times. Rio is an interesting character with layers facing down a crisis; he's not young anymore, and that reads through in this story. I liked the overall premise, but I found the MC to be very indecisive and that worked continuously against him, sabotaging his happiness. It kind of put me in mind of modern-day "gay for pay" guys. All in all, I greatly respect our LGBT elders and greatly appreciate their contribution to society when little to no gay literature existed mainstream. I read a first edition I found in an antique shop.