Wild Animals I Have Known

by Kevin Bentley

Kevin Bentley faithfully kept a frank, literate diary of his experiences as a young gay man living in San Francisco in the 1970s. In passages that are arousing, thoughtful, and funny, he details a scene of unrivaled sexual hedonism. First and foremost an erotic record, Wild Animals I Have Known is also the diary of a bookish, terrified, exuberantly promiscuous, and laughably romantic gay man’s exploits during the heyday of San Francisco’s gay bohemia. “[Bentley’s] writing is direct, intelligent, savagely funny, and very, very erotic.” — Kevin Dax, author of D.O.C. Lust Letters

Genres: Queer, Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Gay, Queer Lit, Biography Memoir

270 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2002

Reviews

[Daniel Archer · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have ever lived in San Francisco or ever dreamt of living in pre-tech, analogue San Francisco, you will love this memoir. Bentley is your tour guide through the stomping grounds of many, many gay men.

Meet friends at the lower Polk Street bars (Kimo's, Giraffe, The Gulch where legendary bartender Thor has been driving the guys crazy for generations). Apply for a bookstore job at Clean Well Lighted Place, Green Apple or Browser Books (depressingly, you'll be asked to "name 3 works by Virginia Woolf"). Trick with the nice-looking British guy tonight, cruise Café Flore tomorrow (more fun than Gridr). Spend the afternoon at the Lumiere watching the latest art film. Stumble home from Detour at 2 in the morning but, first, grab a bite at Grubstake.

Sex, drugs, fun, finding yourself, finding love and acceptance. Bentley's story is a reminder of why, for decades and decades, gay men have made San Francisco home. I'm sure I'm overrating this but I don't care. I felt like I was reading my own story.

[Dennis Holland · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was one time in my early 20s when I read a lover’s journal. He left me alone and asleep in his studio and , when I woke, I was snooping through his things when I found his journal. I felt guilty invading his privacy but I couldn’t help myself. Reading it was a fascinating, awkward, horrifying and very arousing experience. And so was this.

[That One Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is it possible to feel nostalgia for a time and place you never experienced? That is the only way I can seem to describe how I felt reading Bentley’s journal entries from his years in San Fransisco starting in a time of gay sexual freedom and liberation.
Bentley writes about his sexual encounters, friendship bonds and cruising lifestyle with such passion. He never shies away or attaches any shame to his exploits, and that level of honesty felt incredibly impactful.

I personally have found such great comfort and sadness in finding works that focus on what gay life was like during this time period. Much of the memoir taking place pre- AIDS. When gay men were experiencing a sort of sexual hedonism that had previously been hidden behind closet doors. It’s fascinating but also, empowering. I have a fascination with how gay men navigated this world back then, and these journal entries paint such a vivid, witty and explicit picture.

For me, personally, this memoir and Bentley”journals of this time in his life serve as a history lesson. Learning about the gay men who came before me and paved the way. They walked the streets of San Fransisco and New York and forged this community, most of whom were taken during the AIDS epidemic. I want to know their stories. Hear their tales. I want to keep them in my heart and honor the past. Too often, gay men and people of the queer community take for granted the open lives we get to lead now, without ever thinking about those that came before. I hope, in my own small way, learning and reading and engaging in the communities past, I am keeping their legacies alive.

I found myself heartbroken when the inevitable happened, as any memoirs taking place during the AIDS epidemic will leave you. It was difficult to watch as the tone of how Bentley described his sexual encounters begin to shift and then completely change. The freedom and abandon he’d had as a young gay man in SF, to the more calculated and safe nature of his later years.

One thing I loved about the entire memoir was that not once did it ever feel like Bentley judged himself or felt shame for living his life the way he did. Not that the two works are related but I couldn’t help think of the juxtaposition of this recounting of searching for love through countless hookups and tricks to that of the same narrative in the novel “Faggots” by Larry Kramer. Both show a young gay man living a promiscuous life during this time where sex was rampant. Yet, unlike the protagonist in Faggots, Bentley seems to write about his encounters with a sense of pride and love. There is a quote in the final entry/afterword that I think best describes the memoir and his view on his life that really sat with me.

“The importance of sex and love. It’s about the quest for love. I spent nine years working in bookstores because I was too busy partying and looking for love to find my vocation, and I’m not sorry. Either you’re the kind of person who thinks that’s a waste of time, or you understand that it’s the most important quest there is.”

These passages were raunchy and dirty, and vivid and wonderful and tender and beautiful and perfect.

[Macartney · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ultimately charming (and hot!) glimpse into gay life in San Francisco from the late '70s to the early '90s. Be open to lots of sex and not a lot of character development or external ambiance. If you accept the book for what it is, reading Bentley's journals gives the same joy as sharing a bottle of wine with a good friend and gossiping all night long about boys and boys and more boys.

[Nicolas W · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this in fluctuation. It was interesting to get a take on what living in 1970's San Francisco was like from someone who was indifferent and not involved in Harvey Milk politics, just from someone who was trying to live his life in such a dynamic time of social change. For gays I understand it was the place and time in the United States for full on sexual liberation but I personally found the authors sexual escapades a little redundant, even narcissistic at times, and was less interested in them in comparison to the emotional whirlwinds he went through in his relationships and personal development. It was in those pages that I really paid attention.

[Louis Waelkens · Rating 4 out of 5]

De eerste 150 pagina’s van het boek zijn zo nat van de seks en drugs dat ik bijna zin had om Kerk&Leven te beginnen lezen. In de tweede helft komt er meer aan bod waardoor dit uiteindelijk een van de weinige coming of age-boeken is die ik graag gelezen heb.

[Benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've never read a collection of diary entries in book form. I didn't entirely enjoy the format at first because characters and scenes weren't set up in the same way they would be in a novel or even a general non-fiction. However, I loved the intimacy of this book. The sex is very detailed, but it is a very important part of the connection and love the author was attempting to find. His descriptions of San Francisco in the late 1970's through the late 1990's, while sparse, were interesting to read. It was clear he didn't go back and edit them for the book's publication. Locations were presented as he encountered them at the time. Some I didn't recognize, but I was amazed at how many of the places he frequented, particularly in the late 1970's, are still in San Francisco today.

I know the book was about the author's longing for love. But I wish he had written at the time, or elected to include in the book, more about the political events that were taking place in San Francisco. For example, he mentions hearing the noise and smelling the tear gas during the White Night Riots, but only very briefly as he's having sex on the roof of a Tenderloin apartment building.

This could be the most subtle but heart-wrenching treatment of the AIDS crisis that I have ever encountered. It does not seem to feature prominently in the diary, but it is unmistakably present. And there are two exquisite, brief passages full of raw emotion that punched me right in the gut. If I had read this book only for those two passages, I would have felt it a success.

[TA Inskeep · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading diaries — they can really get you inside someone’s times & places when written (and sometimes, edited) right. Kevin Bentley’s diaries, spanning almost 20 years in SF, starting when he moved to the city in 1977, are filled with gorgeous, rich details of tricks and lovers, apartments and neighborhoods, and most of all what it was like for him to be gay in THE city men moved to do to just that. I am profoundly grateful to him for compiling these diary entries into this beautiful book, sexy and profound. I can’t recommend it enough, particularly for gay men of his generation (he’s now ca. 65) and that just behind his (I’m 49). I wish I’d gotten to live a life like his.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kevin Bentley's Wild Animals I Have Known could have suffered the same fate many erotic novels do - sexual monotony. Instead Bentley's real life sex and drug diary entries act as a travelogue through gay San Francisco from 1977 - 1996. Bentley begins innocently enough with pre-AIDS abandon, then navigates a very adult world of dying lovers and newly safe sex rules. Through it all, he spends those sex and drug experiences looking and longing for love and reading literature. A fascinating look at one man's journey through a remarkable moment in history.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
The book is excerpts from the diary of the author from the 1970s - 1990s San Francisco. It's interesting because so many of the entries just recall his partying and rampant tricking/one night stands. It's a decidedly apolitical book, skirting around (mostly) the AIDS crisis and other cultural events/LGBT touchstones of that time period. However, buried within the escapades of the author one realizes that the other is not just searching for sex, but has a deep yearning for love and companionship. Highly relatable.

Not as good as other similar memoirs or fiction I've read, but still a really good book.

[Alvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate reading about sex (and most of these journal entries are about sex, sex, sex) but persevered because Bentley has some clever social observations and nice turns of phrase. The story mostly transpires in SF's gay ghetto of the '70s & '80s, so anyone who lived through that time and place will encounter plenty of memories. For whatever reason, Bentley starts rushing the timeline once AIDS appears, and though he loses two long-term lovers, the overall impression readers finish with is that his life was an endless series of one night stands and whirlwind romances.

[Mediaman · Rating 1 out of 5]

How did this get published? It's nothing but hundreds of short diary entries in which the author talks about random guys he hooks up with sexually in San Francisco--from strangers to boyfriends to clients to long-term lovers, and many he's juggling at the same time. He has no sense of self-awareness, irony or morality, nor can he even tell a story. He is just a typical gay guy in the 1980s and 90s that brags about sleeping around without regard for health dangers or honoring commitments. Come to think of it...nothing has really changed, has it?

If anything this book's list of hundreds of encounters is proof that the vast majority of gay men are always looking for a better cock or ass to get off with. Bentley was seeing a half dozen or more men at the same time, misleading some and lying to others, not even knowing the names of some of them while assuring others he was innocently faithful. The guys he hooks up with are all doing the same, claiming to want something meaningful or to honor their relationships but quickly succumb to their lusts. It's sad that such selfish behavior is upheld as "normal" for any type of sexual orientation, but for some reason he seems to be boasting about it.

Bentley thinks he's one of the literate smart ones--claiming to be much more intelligent than he is, often looking down his nose at some commoners he has sex with, judging them on sight or by what they have in their bedrooms. The book covers about 17 years, but there are dozens of entries for some years and almost none for others. There's no real narrative beyond the few sentences he chooses to put in his diaries. Timelines get blurred and the lack of true stories beyond sexual specifics gets dull fast. For the reader it's confusing, especially trying to keep up with the dozens of names he tosses in. Then oddly some of the significant lovers he doesn't name at all. What's that about?

I laughed when I read in December of 1979 that he felt lonely having no one to go with to a candlelight march on the anniversary of the Moscone-Milk murders. He has just finished writing about five or six different guys he had sex with in all sorts of positions over the past few weeks, but wrote, "I felt a pang at having no close gay friend to do this sort of thing with." HUH? He had all sorts of guys he had no problem picking up the phone to bone when the urge hit or would boldly walk into bars and street festivals to pick up strangers (at times even having public sex), but he felt too shy to ask anyone to go to a gay march down the street?

The book is one-note and does nothing but underscore all that's wrong with the way justly stereotyped gay men approach relationships and life. They certainly have the right to do it whenever and wherever with whomever, but then they wonder why they end up lonely and unhappy with such shallow friendships.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Difficult Read

I had anticipated a bawdy recollection of male sexual adventure and appetite, along with all the joys, complications and sorrows of the 80s-90s era , and indeed, all that's there . But the obsessiveness and relentlessness and repetitiveness of the sexual couplings left me simultaneously queasy and claustrophobic . It's vivid, often funny, sometimes moving, but frequently inescapably boring

[Soph Nova · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a non stop romp of gay sex, drugs, affairs, and hedonist’s dream. It dives in to the AIDS crisis some, but I wish there was more - Bentley definitely knows how to provoke emotion, and it could have added a real depth to get more in to the feeling structures and devastation that AIDS caused.

[William O. Robertson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and eye-opening book about the life of a young man growing up in San Francisco in the 1970s, and of his maturing during the 1980s and 1990s of the last century. The book is a journal of the writer’s many gay encounters, friendships and lovers during these decades and how the onslaught of the aids epidemic affected those relationships.

[Ajay S · Rating 3 out of 5]

at 60% of my way through it, I felt the repetition of sex/life experiences was becoming a negative factor in reading the book. i thought i had a great sex life in my youth, but this guy was waaaaay ahead of me...but in the end i found what i was looking for, whereas i don't know if this guy would ever reach that point. the writing is OK.

[Marcus Kaye · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit repetitive, but erotic. With some excellent bits of writing mixed in with the smut. Some great character descriptors and insights. My god, I’m going to miss The Stud now that it’s closing...

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sexual adventures of a young gay man.

[Nicholas Bland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting account of the gay scene in San Fran in the late 70s, 80s and 90s. Pretty sex-focused, but paints an interesting picture.

[V. Briceland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kevin Bentley's diaries span from his days as a young punk trying to make a life for himself in San Francisco during the late nineteen-seventies through more than twenty years of one-night stands and two long-term relationships.

As a cultural artifact of both the pre-AIDS 1970s and then the decades following the deadly pandemic, it's fascinating. As a literary work, though, it's a bit like reading the earliest Armistead Maupin Tales of the City novels without any of the plot or depth of character—dancing and jock strap contests at the Stud and nights at the Liberty Baths and a procession of interchangeable Davids and Marks and Keiths and Jims.

And because these are diaries and Bentley wasn't writing at either his highest or lowest points, often there are hiatuses during times that can only be imagined. The longest relationships are over before we learn of them, and the year in which AIDS manifested itself, with San Francisco, is never documented, though its impact and reverberations color every page that follows.

[Tracy~Bayou Book Junkie · Rating 5 out of 5]

*copy provided to me via Divine Magazine by the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review*

*Note this review will be cross posted at Divine Magazine and on my personal blog, Bayou Book Junkie*

In 1977, Kevin drops out of college, packs up his 1969 Volkswagen and leaves Texas behind for San Francisco. Written in short journal entries, this memoir chronicles Kevin's exploits into drugs, sex, friendships and romantic relationships over the two decades that follow. Starting in the late 1970's, Kevin discovers San Francisco's gay sexual liberation and moves between numerous one night stands(sometimes without even exchanging names), friends with benefits and even a few meaningful romantic relationships.

This was very candid look at gay life in the late 70's and 80's, and into the early 90's in San Francisco. It was an interesting, intriguing and very erotic read. Kevin's writing is witty and humorous. It kept me entertained and turning the pages. I found I couldn't put it down, I had to see where his journey would lead. To see if he would ever find the love he seemed to so desperately desire.

The book does briefly touch on the subject of the AIDS epidemic, because in this time period and location, how could it not? Yes, the subject matter is deep, and the author suffers much personal loss, but he keeps the entries brief and on the lighter side. It is sad, and while I did need a tissue or two, I wasn't left a blubbering mess.

While this was a well written, fast paced and very enjoyable read, I want to stress before you open this book that if you are looking for something deep and meaningful, this isn't it. The author comes to no heavy realizations and the subject matters that were so huge at that time, such as the gay rights movement, politics and the AIDS crisis are very rarely, if ever, touched upon. I'd still highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in what the lighter and more promiscuous side of San Francisco gay life was all about during this time.

You can find my other reviews for Divine Magazine at ~ http://divinemagazine.net/jreviews/my...

[Thomas Tavis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Go Ahead, make a preliminary judgment of this book based on the compelling portrait of the author on its cover; you will hardly be disappointed.

There is indeed plenty of sex in this explicit (not for the faint of libido) diary-driven memoir (1977 - 1996) of Mr. Bentley's coming of age in libertine late 1970s San Francisco and on well into the onslaught of AIDS.

But, this smartly written document strikes a unique tone as well. Yes, full-on erotic, but also chilling and mordantly funny - often in the same paragraph - providing a headlong immersion in an amazing period from which the author emerges with a sort of wry wisdom.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to put the book on the "just-once-in-a-lifetime" shelf because you couldn't do this twice! I think I'll do a quick re-read and then give this a review. Since Kevin is a close friend and we lived and worked together during much of the period in the book, it deserves a second reading. Kevin always kept and probably still does keep, meticulous diaries. He could always do certain things that I only wished that I could do, but couldn't.

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this one. An addictive read, but nothing revelatory. Who knew butt sex and bjs could be so boring?

[Jason Mock · Rating 4 out of 5]

An almost twenty year chronicle of life and love in
San Francisco. A compulsive read!

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

the Nitty Gritty of Being....Gay before and after AIDS 1977-1996 San Francisco...