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The Confessions of Danny Slocum, or, Gay Life in the Big City
From the first editon dustjacket (1980)In this hilarious and moving account of any life in New York City---part novel, part autobiography---we meet Danny Slocum, a young gay man with a sex (or is it love?). Wanting it, but certainly not finding it, even in a time when gay life is, if anything, overpopulated. But still...preoccupied, if dysfunctional. How Danny gets cured in sex therapy with a complete stranger is just part of the story. In the course of his remarkable adventures, Danny takes us along on a sometimes bumpy but always entertaining trip through gay life in the big city. Sociable and bizarre, bleak and joyous, it's a world like any other a place you live in and try to make your home.
215 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1980
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143 people want to read
About the author
George Whitmore
6 books6 followersAn author and playwright who wrote about the effect of AIDS on society and on his friends, then finally about his own expected death from complications of the disease. Member of the Violet Quill literary group that met from 1980-81.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 7, 2019
Unlike most reviews I write that point to some objective element in the book that I believe will resonate with readers, there is something, for me, in George Whitmore's gay classic from the 70s, "Confessions of Danny Slocum," that resonated so deeply and spiritually with me that I am not sure I can properly explain others why this book is so important.
This review itself seems superfluous, but all I can say is that I have discovered a new book that I will read again and again and again.
This review itself seems superfluous, but all I can say is that I have discovered a new book that I will read again and again and again.
July 11, 2012
A critical, yet humorous, novel about the shallowness of some gay relationships in New York City, written in 1979 just before the beginning of the AIDS crisis. Although it should not be read to represent all gay men at the time, it is a fair representation of some of the negative aspects of the otherwise truly fabulous decade of the 1970's. The story is told by a young man, Danny Slocum, who is in sexual therapy to cure his problem of "slow cumming"---very ironic considering the open sexuality of the times. Danny writes it as an undated (and quite literary) journal of the treatment's progress effected through an arranged relationship with another man with the same problem. He reflects movingly about his dysfunctional family in flashbacks interleaved with the graphic descriptions of how the treatment progresses with his "partner."
I was impressed by the quality of the writing, and what Whitmore accomplishes with relatively spare prose. And I was saddened by how quickly the environment Whitmore describes was destroyed by the crisis. Certainly the author didn't know what was coming nor did he make any such predictions in the book, which makes the contrast that much more extreme to us modern readers, and even frightening. Still it is possible to read the book as Whitmore intended, as a critique of some of the excesses of the 1970's.
Whitmore wrote two more books: Nebraska, a more elaborated fictional account of his childhood in that conservative state while using even more spare and effective prose; and Someone Was Here, an extremely moving account of three real AIDS victims, and one of the best of its sub-genre. Whitmore himself died of AIDS in 1989, leaving a very promising literary carrier behind. Very few gay writers since have risen to the standard of writing in his three novels, something sorely missed in this later era.
I was impressed by the quality of the writing, and what Whitmore accomplishes with relatively spare prose. And I was saddened by how quickly the environment Whitmore describes was destroyed by the crisis. Certainly the author didn't know what was coming nor did he make any such predictions in the book, which makes the contrast that much more extreme to us modern readers, and even frightening. Still it is possible to read the book as Whitmore intended, as a critique of some of the excesses of the 1970's.
Whitmore wrote two more books: Nebraska, a more elaborated fictional account of his childhood in that conservative state while using even more spare and effective prose; and Someone Was Here, an extremely moving account of three real AIDS victims, and one of the best of its sub-genre. Whitmore himself died of AIDS in 1989, leaving a very promising literary carrier behind. Very few gay writers since have risen to the standard of writing in his three novels, something sorely missed in this later era.
December 20, 2012
A must-read for insight into the various cracks in the utopia known as being gay in the 1970s. By focusing on Danny Slo-cum's problems with intimacy and body fluids, Whitmore somewhat eerily foretells the coming decade's troubles and tragedies. I enjoyed this far, far more than I had thought I would. His light and breezy style seems superficial and flighty but turns out to capture and relate character, time and subject matter highly effectively. A forgotten book that deserves to be rediscovered and reclaimed.
April 2, 2021
I read this whole thing for some reason. It should've been a breeze - episodic, a casual narrative voice, sexy bits, 200 pages, big font - but what a slog. The plot centers around Danny, a middle-aged sexually active gay man on the scene in late-70s NYC (when this was written) who's a bit heartbroken from a past romance and unable to orgasm during sex unless he finishes himself. A sex therapist pairs him with another similarly-afflicted man and has them basically do an exposure hierarchy of sexual contact with each other over a period of months. That's the setup, which sounds tacky and gimmicky, but is told with remarkable earnestness. The rest of the book is populated by characters referred to as "my artist friend" or "my choreographer friend." It's a bit of pulp, and it hints at having more depth than it's really comfortable developing, and it also doesn't really conclude as much as it peters out (pun intended). This is the second Whitmore book I bought at an LGBT book fair years ago, the other being Nebraska, which I can barely remember apart from that it, too, stopped short of being worth the price of admission.
April 15, 2022
“ELATION, EXPECTATION AND . . . INNOCENCE”
I love George Whitmore’s gorgeously written novel, Confessions of Danny Slocum, or, Gay Life in the Big City. Told in the first person, the novel is a teeming cornucopia of gay life in New York City in the 1970s. It accurately depicts how a certain segment of gay men—white, educated, cultured, ruthlessly witty, and extremely sexually available--lived their lives.
Whitmore expertly interweaves the two threads of his novel which correspond to the two parts of the title. One thread of the novel, Confessions of Danny Slocum, is Danny’s account of his sex therapy. Danny has a problem with “retarded ejaculation,” as Virgil his therapist, calls it. He can’t achieve orgasm when he’s with another person. Virgil pairs Danny with a partner, Joe, who has a similar problem. They are to work together to try to solve their issues with sex and intimacy. Joe is an attractive young man of Italian descent, but he is from a different world than Danny. Danny lives right in the heart of New York City’s gay life, while Joe is from the suburbs and sells men’s clothing at Korvettes. Danny never tells us what he himself does for a living.
The sexually explicit scenes between Danny and Joe as they perform the exercises assigned to them by Virgil made me laugh but also brought tears to my eyes. Each tries so hard (no pun intended) to become comfortable and intimate with the other and to conquer their performance anxiety, while maintaining a façade of invulnerability.
Gay Life in the Big City is the other thread of the novel. Early in the novel, Danny says, “Here I am in the Big Apple, in an era when it seems gay life is suffering from, outrageously enough, rampant overpopulation.” The novel gives the reader a travelogue of 1970s gay New York which could have been used as a guidebook by someone new to the city. Bars, discos, restaurants, outdoor cruising areas, you name it, Danny and his friends are going there. Danny never tells us what his friends’ names are. He just refers to them as my novelist friend, my political friend, my dancing friend, my Fire Island friend, and so forth.
The two threads of the novel come together when Danny and Joe, individually, sometimes with their respective friends, and occasionally together, go out into the “fleshy fantasy,” as Danny calls it, of the gay world of New York and use what they’ve learned in their sessions with each other in encounters with other men. Each experiences varying degrees of success. Who wouldn’t have suffered performance anxiety when dealing with this wild world which could be quite intimidating if he was unsure of himself?
During the 1970s, gay men made it up as they went along. There weren’t any models for how to form and conduct relationships except heterosexual ones. In a scene where Danny and Joe discuss what they are to each other, Joe doesn’t like Danny’s humorous suggestion that they are “sisters.” He prefers to consider them buddies “working on being fuck buddies.”
In a fantasy sequence where Danny imagines that his friends help him prepare to go out on stage and perform again, Danny asks several times, “Where’s Joe?” This really jumped out at me. I hadn’t realized that Danny had become so dependent on Joe. After what I assume is their final session with Virgil, Danny and Joe go to Julius’ for beers and sit in the back of the bar, “where it seems only lovers and buddies with no thought of cruising sit.” At this point, I was invested in Danny and Joe to the extent that I hoped that they would give it a try and become lovers. Hell, hadn’t they done everything else with each other? I won’t repeat Danny’s last line here, but Whitmore gives us an honest and almost heartbreaking conclusion to the novel.
I went to many of the places at around the same time that Danny and his friends frequented them. I had brunch at Clyde’s, cocktails at Julius, danced at the Cock Ring, and spent Sunday afternoons on Christopher Street. I did a daytrip one Saturday to the Pines on Fire Island and, just like Danny, was overwhelmed by the “men men men.” And, as Danny describes, my boyfriend and I wreathed our shoulders with our swimming suits when we were in the surf. I can still hear New York street vendors yelling, “Check it out,” as Danny does. “Check it out” became a popular catch-phrase for a while. Also, I admit to participating in more than one argument, as Danny’s dancing friend and political friend do, about who the Queen of Disco was, Donna Summer or Gloria Gaynor? I favored Gloria Gaynor. I wasn’t able to spend an entire season on Fire Island until the summer of 1981.
Whitmore’s novel, although it covers some of the same territory as Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, published two years earlier, doesn’t have the sense of foreboding as Holleran’s novel. If AIDS hadn’t happened, would there have been the backlash the big city gay world of the 1970s—and gays in general—suffered? What would have happened to the culture that gay men had developed for themselves?
The 1980 edition of Confessions of Danny Slocum includes an afterword by Whitmore in which he says that Danny was his alter ego and that he “felt rather desolate when I let him go.” In 1985 The Confessions of Danny Slocum was published in a paperback edition by Grey Fox Press. Gay Life in the Big City was dropped from the title. Whitmore wrote a new afterword for this edition in which he writes, “In these five years [between editions] a pronounced generation gap has developed . . . Danny will never grow older, and the world he lives in seems dead as a dodo to me. In Danny’s inconclusive world, it’s still three o’clock in the morning and the d.j. hasn’t yet played his last “Last Dance.” In that ghostly disco, it seems to me, hearts still throb with the kind of elation, expectation and even innocence most gay men of my generation will never be able to feel again. Countless of those hearts have been stilled forever. Danny . . . will never have to face the conundrum of sex and death that confronts us at present.”
I agree with Whitmore, as quoted above, when he says that his generation—my generation--will never again experience the “elation, expectation and even innocence” that we had at that time. At least we had disco--for a while.
George Whitmore published a second novel, Nebraska, in 1987. He was lost to AIDS on April 19, 1989 at the age of 43.
I love George Whitmore’s gorgeously written novel, Confessions of Danny Slocum, or, Gay Life in the Big City. Told in the first person, the novel is a teeming cornucopia of gay life in New York City in the 1970s. It accurately depicts how a certain segment of gay men—white, educated, cultured, ruthlessly witty, and extremely sexually available--lived their lives.
Whitmore expertly interweaves the two threads of his novel which correspond to the two parts of the title. One thread of the novel, Confessions of Danny Slocum, is Danny’s account of his sex therapy. Danny has a problem with “retarded ejaculation,” as Virgil his therapist, calls it. He can’t achieve orgasm when he’s with another person. Virgil pairs Danny with a partner, Joe, who has a similar problem. They are to work together to try to solve their issues with sex and intimacy. Joe is an attractive young man of Italian descent, but he is from a different world than Danny. Danny lives right in the heart of New York City’s gay life, while Joe is from the suburbs and sells men’s clothing at Korvettes. Danny never tells us what he himself does for a living.
The sexually explicit scenes between Danny and Joe as they perform the exercises assigned to them by Virgil made me laugh but also brought tears to my eyes. Each tries so hard (no pun intended) to become comfortable and intimate with the other and to conquer their performance anxiety, while maintaining a façade of invulnerability.
Gay Life in the Big City is the other thread of the novel. Early in the novel, Danny says, “Here I am in the Big Apple, in an era when it seems gay life is suffering from, outrageously enough, rampant overpopulation.” The novel gives the reader a travelogue of 1970s gay New York which could have been used as a guidebook by someone new to the city. Bars, discos, restaurants, outdoor cruising areas, you name it, Danny and his friends are going there. Danny never tells us what his friends’ names are. He just refers to them as my novelist friend, my political friend, my dancing friend, my Fire Island friend, and so forth.
The two threads of the novel come together when Danny and Joe, individually, sometimes with their respective friends, and occasionally together, go out into the “fleshy fantasy,” as Danny calls it, of the gay world of New York and use what they’ve learned in their sessions with each other in encounters with other men. Each experiences varying degrees of success. Who wouldn’t have suffered performance anxiety when dealing with this wild world which could be quite intimidating if he was unsure of himself?
During the 1970s, gay men made it up as they went along. There weren’t any models for how to form and conduct relationships except heterosexual ones. In a scene where Danny and Joe discuss what they are to each other, Joe doesn’t like Danny’s humorous suggestion that they are “sisters.” He prefers to consider them buddies “working on being fuck buddies.”
In a fantasy sequence where Danny imagines that his friends help him prepare to go out on stage and perform again, Danny asks several times, “Where’s Joe?” This really jumped out at me. I hadn’t realized that Danny had become so dependent on Joe. After what I assume is their final session with Virgil, Danny and Joe go to Julius’ for beers and sit in the back of the bar, “where it seems only lovers and buddies with no thought of cruising sit.” At this point, I was invested in Danny and Joe to the extent that I hoped that they would give it a try and become lovers. Hell, hadn’t they done everything else with each other? I won’t repeat Danny’s last line here, but Whitmore gives us an honest and almost heartbreaking conclusion to the novel.
I went to many of the places at around the same time that Danny and his friends frequented them. I had brunch at Clyde’s, cocktails at Julius, danced at the Cock Ring, and spent Sunday afternoons on Christopher Street. I did a daytrip one Saturday to the Pines on Fire Island and, just like Danny, was overwhelmed by the “men men men.” And, as Danny describes, my boyfriend and I wreathed our shoulders with our swimming suits when we were in the surf. I can still hear New York street vendors yelling, “Check it out,” as Danny does. “Check it out” became a popular catch-phrase for a while. Also, I admit to participating in more than one argument, as Danny’s dancing friend and political friend do, about who the Queen of Disco was, Donna Summer or Gloria Gaynor? I favored Gloria Gaynor. I wasn’t able to spend an entire season on Fire Island until the summer of 1981.
Whitmore’s novel, although it covers some of the same territory as Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, published two years earlier, doesn’t have the sense of foreboding as Holleran’s novel. If AIDS hadn’t happened, would there have been the backlash the big city gay world of the 1970s—and gays in general—suffered? What would have happened to the culture that gay men had developed for themselves?
The 1980 edition of Confessions of Danny Slocum includes an afterword by Whitmore in which he says that Danny was his alter ego and that he “felt rather desolate when I let him go.” In 1985 The Confessions of Danny Slocum was published in a paperback edition by Grey Fox Press. Gay Life in the Big City was dropped from the title. Whitmore wrote a new afterword for this edition in which he writes, “In these five years [between editions] a pronounced generation gap has developed . . . Danny will never grow older, and the world he lives in seems dead as a dodo to me. In Danny’s inconclusive world, it’s still three o’clock in the morning and the d.j. hasn’t yet played his last “Last Dance.” In that ghostly disco, it seems to me, hearts still throb with the kind of elation, expectation and even innocence most gay men of my generation will never be able to feel again. Countless of those hearts have been stilled forever. Danny . . . will never have to face the conundrum of sex and death that confronts us at present.”
I agree with Whitmore, as quoted above, when he says that his generation—my generation--will never again experience the “elation, expectation and even innocence” that we had at that time. At least we had disco--for a while.
George Whitmore published a second novel, Nebraska, in 1987. He was lost to AIDS on April 19, 1989 at the age of 43.
May 5, 2021
This book just didn't work for me. Reading page after page about Danny's sex therapy sessions with his therapist and fellow therapy patient Joe just didn't hold my interest. This book had to have the most non-erotic sex scenes I've ever read. I jerked him, he blew me, no one got off. Wash, rinse, repeat. The only thing I found interesting here was that Joe worked at Korvettes because I'm old enough to remember Korvettes and going there as a kid. Ah, the 1970s...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews