The Waterfront Journals

Voices from the margins of American life tell tales of trickery, betrayal, sex, and defeat in these short monologues by "a spokesman for the unspeakable" ( New York magazine).
In his full but regrettably brief lifetime, David Wojnarowicz was many things: a visual and performance artist whose radical work incensed the right-wing establishment, a tireless AIDS and anticensorship activist, and, most emphatically, a writer. His Waterfront Journalsare a remarkable collection of fictionalized stories spoken in the voices of unforgettable characters the author met during his time spent living on America's streets and traveling her back roads. The narrators speak from the heart and from the depths of despair, creating an often shocking and powerfully moving mosaic of life in the shadows.
Here are junkies and boy hustlers, truckers and hoboes. A runner tells of his encounter with two drug-using priests who openly and proudly discuss their various sexual exploits. Whores tell of johns who brutalized them and corrupt cops who did the same. A young man relays his tale of a seedy movie balcony pickup and his shocking discovery that his "date" was not who she seemed. Another man describes sex with an amputee Vietnam veteran. Each of their stories stuns with hard and haunting truths that will leave the reader staggered and breathless, yet exhilarated.
From a Lambda Literary Award winner and the subject of a new documentary by Chris McKim, these are "dispatches from that region of dissolute grace at the city's edge" ( Time Out New York).

David Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1954, and first gained notice in New York's East Village art scene in the 1970s. He rose to fame for his exceptional range, intelligence, and passion, and by the 1980s had become one of the most provocative artists of his generation. In the years before his death in 1992 from AIDS-related complications, he worked tirelessly as anAIDSactivistand anticensorship advocate.
In 1985, Wojnarowicz brought his fight for freedom of expression to the case of David Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association, in which Donald E. Wildmon claimed that Wojnarowicz's work was pornographic and undermined family values. Wojnarowicz won and was awarded a symbolic dollar.He was thrust back into the spotlight in 2010, at the center of a censorship battle over the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. In 2012, Cynthia Carrpublished the critically acclaimedbiography Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz.

- Cover Page- Title Page- Contents- Editor's Preface- Man in Harbor Coffee Shop- Guy on Second Avenue 1:00 A.M.- Guy in Waterfront Hotel- Twenty-Year-Old Woman in Times Square- Kentucky Trucker in the Rocky Mountains- Woman in Chinese-American Coffee Shop- Man in Portland Movie Theater- Fourteen-Year-Old Runaway Girl- Young Guy Hanging Out on Market Street- Man in Mickey's Dining Car 2:30 A.M.- Young Boy in Times Square 4:00 A.M.- Young Runner Hanging Out by the River- Young Woman in Coffee Shop on the Lower East Side- Guy in Car on Wall Street at Midnight- Boy in Coffee Shop on Third Avenue- Young Boy in Bus Station Coffee Shop- Young Man in Silver Dollar Restaurant- Night Guard in a Bookstore- Boy on the Lower East Side- Man on Christmas Eve along the Rainy Hudson River 3:00 A.M.- Man Lying Back on a Couch in 90-Degree Weather- Twenty-Five-Year-Old Guy at YMCA Two Weeks after Self-imposed Hermitude in a Boarded-Up House in New Orleans- Young Boy in Seafood Restaurant- Elderly Transvestite on Second Avenue (Evening)- Canada-Bound Trucker on Interstate 90- Man in Sheridan Square Park Drinking 1:00 A.M.- Boy in Horn & Hardart's on Forty-second Street- A Kid on the Piers near the West Side Highway- Hobo in Train Yard- Man in Brew & Burger on Forty-second Street and Eighth Avenue- Guy on Fourteenth Street 3:00 A.M.- Man Drinking Coffee in Thirty-third Street Pizzeria- Man in Coffee Shop Midnight East Village- Man in Casual Labor Office 6:30 A.M.- Man on Interstate Heading Towards NYC- Woman in Coffee Shop- Boy in YMCA- Man in Lower East Side Tenement Room- Girl Sitting on Pavement in front of Coffee Shop- Guy Waiting for a Bus- Hobo on Flatcar Eastbound for St. Paul- Man on Second Avenue 2:00 A.M.- Boy in Trailer Park- The Waterfront 2:00 A.M.- From the Diaries of a Wolf Boy- About the Author- Copyright Page