Brad Gooch

The Golden Age of Promiscuity is a novel that powerfully--sometimes shockingly--evokes the New York gay club scene of the seventies. Brad Gooch has brilliantly captured the mind-set, the voice, the way of living that characterized the men who frequented the clubs, showing us this world with all its games codes, emotions, and excesses for the first time.

 

Sean Devlin, at twenty--boyish, innocent, both fervent and controlled--drops out of Columbia Univeristy to pursue the downtown life of an avant-garde filmmaker. A variety of hustlers, and urbane, older, blue-blood mentor, and a charismatic performance artist on her way up are among his companions on his voyage of discovery. With them, Devlin is repeatedly drawn to the excitement of the clubs--to Studio 54, and to the Flamingo, the Ramrod, the Anvil, the Mineshaft--where erotic rituals are enacted into the morning hours.

 

The novel brings to life a night world that no longer exists, a subterranean New York of drugs, dim lights, and strange bare rooms where medieval seeming acts are performed and intimacy is anonymous. Energized, even hypnotized, by this scene, yet remaining detached, Devlin moves deliberately toward his goal--to be a famous filmmaker in the tradition of Warhol--and we watch him becoming, in the process, the ultimate voyeur, seeing and experiencing his own life through his camera.

 

A compelling work of fiction, an inside look at a fascinating, decadent, lost society.