Last Call: Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York

Marc discovered "Last Call"--at least for our little house--and I'm giving my endorsement here.

It's the early nineties. A closeted married man ends up dead; his body is "disarticulated"; parts are found in various bins, where they shouldn't be.

Another guy--the "Norm-from-CHEERS" for a certain gay bar in the West Village--ends up murdered in similar circumstances.

And others die. A serial killer must be out and about.

An investigation begins. But many cops are homophobic, and terror around HIV/AIDS seems to be fueling new hate crimes. One observer remarks that if you're murdered and you'd like to be a news story, you need to be "white, straight, and killed in Central Park."

Meanwhile, the killer becomes careless. He seems to let slip that he works as a nurse--at St. Vincent's? And he might give his real first name to a pianist in a piano bar.

Like any other good true-crime story, "Last Call" is a window to another world. At a certain point in the twentieth century, it was actually easier to be gay in Youngstown than in New York City; New Yorkers' vicious treatment of gay-bar patrons was regarded with confusion in other parts of the country. It was "okay," in the early nineties, to show up for pro-LGBTQ "sensitivity training" with a pair of women's underwear, and to finger the underwear ostentatiously, for an hour, to demonstrate that you yourself were not gay. Also, the area known as Chelsea was once basically a vast farm belonging to Clement Moore, who had written "A Visit from St. Nicholas" ("Twas the night before Christmas.....")

I'm really hooked, and I couldn't ask for more skillful, more graceful writing. Five stars.

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