I was standing there and suddenly I felt somebody’s hand next to mine on the rail. They had fat ladies and various sundry freaks on display. But there used to be something called Hubert’s Museum in Times Square, which was like a flea circus, like the sideshow of a circus. So instead of going to church, I got on the subway and went to 42nd Street. I went off, in a suit, tie, the whole bit. And I also wanted to get laid in the worst way. DELANY: I was in the process of giving up on church for good. In it, you mention that the first time you went to Times Square in the late ’50s, you actually skipped church to go. JONATHAN LYNDON CHASE: Recently I was reading the book Duets, which is a conversation between you and one of my favorite artists, Freder- ick Weston. Recently, Delany took time from his hectic schedule to talk to Chase about the good old days, which now, hopefully, seem new again. He’s also the subject of a behind-the-scenes look at his work in the book On Samuel R. The ever-prolific Delany (or Chip as he’s known to his friends) has just finished up a new collection of short stories, and has a second volume of essays on writing slated to be out at the end of the year. “We smiled and said hello to each other, and he left,” Chase recalls. The Philadelphia-based painter Jonathan Lyndon Chase remembers first spotting the legendary author “in suspenders and a white beard” in the gay bookstore Giovanni’s Room at age 19. But a younger generation seems to be finding its own corners of desire in the city, inspired in part by Delany. Delany, who now resides in Philadelphia, is no longer an active participant. Since the end of the tight restrictions from COVID-19 and the celebratory feeling of a new era running through the streets, cruising has returned to the urban landscape. Those days feel very long ago, but also, suddenly, potentially here again. Delany, a New York native, captured the vital, lived history of the urban stretch right at the moment it was being systematically dismantled (and whitewashed into the family-friendly capitalistic tourist hub that it has become for most of the 21st century).ĭelany gets it all down-the seats, the films, the theaters, the economics, the moves, the men. And yet, Delany’s seminal tome, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (two distinct essays first published as a unit in 1999) captures the desire lines and exquisite, fragile freedoms of sex in the public space by taking as a case study the stomping grounds that the writer knew well: the streets and theaters of Manhattan’s 42nd Street area, where men of all ages, classes, and races intersected with a shared purpose. Cruising is obviously not a 20th-century phenomenon. Or really, that should be books plural, as the pioneering 79-year-old writer (of science fiction, of short stories, of essays, and of criticism an all-around gay hero of letters) has included the art and technique of cruising in many of his narratives. The book has been written on American gay cruising, and its author and prime practitioner is Samuel R.