Wild Animals I Have Known

Other reviewers have summarized the best aspects of this work, and anything I may add would only gild the lily. I will add a more personal view. Kevin's book touched me deeply. I felt a kinship to the author, like we would've been friends back in the day. His honesty and willingness to allow us into his world was very much appreciated. There were so many familiar scenes in this book, and a couple of truly heartbreaking and breathtaking entries. I loved the glimpses of his sense of humor. I was so happy to discover in the last chapter that Kevin found happiness, and was so pleased to read that some of the folks from his past were still in his life. But I wasn't surprised. You see, Kevin is one of those guys you want to know and will never forget. I imagine him sitting in a bookstore somewhere, sipping something good, reading this review and smiling wryly thinking about how grand life truly is. Blessings.

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

What a happy surprise to set out to read a book for the horny pleasure it promised (and delivered!) and to discover it also full of wit, humor and warmth. I went from picking it up from time to time to reading it over more sustained periods of time to being unable to put it down in one long marathon session until I finished it. I was especially gratified by its happy ending, believable because it's true. (And, enquiring minds want to know, WHO was "Gwen Arden"?!)

I loved it - brings back memories of my pre-AIDS youth in the early 1980's and the changes and maturity thatresulted as a result of AIDS. My first visit to San Francisco was in 1982, and I could see the changes with my next visitin 1992 - as such, the book captures a time that will never come back.

If you found yourself, if you found who you are/were during the early 70's; you could not possibly read this book and not feel like you are in these pages.Downloaded and opened before going off to work..........and I am considering taking a sickie to stay in and read the lot in one go.

Had I not lived in the same San Francisco neighborhoods and frequented the same bars, clubs, theaters and restaurants during exactly the same time period as the author, I probably wouldn't have found this book as compelling to read as I did.Like Mr. Bentley, I too, was also a Polk Street clone -- fresh out of college and recently escaped from the intolerant Midwest, trying to "come out" while living in my first apartment, a Tenderloin studio. Clad in bomber jacket, green striped leather Adidas and crotch worn 501's during the late 70's and 80's (switched to pink Oxford cloth shirts and GAP kakkis). I spent more time at the Giraffe than I'd care to admit, and hooked up with more characters than I'd care to disclose. Naturally, I found this book to be relatable. I could have written most of it.That said, I may be a bit more forgiving of the story, or lack thereof, than most. I couldn't put the book down, hardly turned on by the non-stop sexual descriptors hitting the reader at a rapid, non-stop rate (I was astoundingly virginal by comparison), but because of the honestly with which the author reveals himself in the pages.Simply put, it's a smutty and raw coming of age story where Peter Pan grows up, one trick at a time, and amazingly lived to tell the tale.

The entries that Kevin Bentley has chosen to publish from his "Polk Street Diaries" of that era are primarily about sexual adventures, often comic misadventures. Anyone who does not want to read about men having sexual encounters with men should steer away from this book. Like Renaud Camus's TRICKS from the same pre-AIDS era, or Ricardo Ramos's FLIPPING about that time in San Francisco, Bentley was finding out who the men he met were through sex: what they did, how they did it, and the places they lived. It was often the books (or the total lack of books), the recorded music (LPs then),, and the artifacts in a trick's room or apartment that made incompatibility obvious."Getting laid" was a focus then and there for gay men (and for most young men most of the time in other eras and locales). However, it was necessary to make a living to have a place to live and to pay bar cover charges (and, perchance, to eat, bhough that was a low priority at the time). The gay novels of Manhattan/Provincetown/Fire Island sex, drugs, and disco elide this, leaving readers to guess how the characters acquired money. Something I particularly appreciate in Bentley's book is his chronicling the difficulty of making a living. It also chronicles what the Swedish investigator Benny Henriksson dubbed "the risk factor of love" (reducing "promiscuity" and having unprotected sex with an HIV-infected partner).Like the fictional inhabitants of 28 Barbary Lane, Bentley paid no attention to politics (gay, HIV-prevention, or any other kind). Less sexually adventurous than Bentley, and writing in a "family newspaper," Armistead Maupin in his well-known "tales" only hint at what life was like for gay men during "the golden age of promiscuity." Written at the time (though culled recently), these diary entries tells it like it was--without apologies, without shame, and without the chauvinism of "lgtb pride."

I enjoyed this book for the history of the time period in San Francisco. There was a lot of explicit information. This was just how it was back then. This book is definitely not for the closed minded. I would definitely read more of his books.