Enchanted Youth (Gay Men's Press Collection)
In this sensitive, revealing memoir, McMullen recounts his year as a London "rent boy," a prostitute engaging in homosexual acts. In 1958, when he's 15, prostitution offers McMullen an escape from his abusive father (described in his earlier Enchanted Boy ) and the "cold hearted"p. 8 city of Liverpool. He ends up in "The Meat Rack" at Piccadilly Circus, where boys hang around "like marketable produce in a butcher's shop," waiting for customers. Fortunately, the more experienced Joker takes the innocent McMullen under his wing. In the course of the year he discovers a supportive camaraderie among the rent boys and falls in love with a public school boy whose father takes elaborate steps to separate them. But this period also has its horrors: McMullen contracts syphilis, is raped and tortured by a customer and learns of the murder of an acquaintance, another rent boy. Yet McMullen, who is now a counselor and youth worker, emphasizes the good in people rather than the sordid or demeaning, though he realizes that his memoriesstet/pk may have become generous over the years.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.