“Contact – However Brief – Outside the Prison of My Class Is What I Still Desire.” Interclass Sexual Contact in Personal Essays by Bruce Benderson and Samuel R. Delany

This chapter examines Bruce Benderson’s and Samuel R. Delany’s selected writings on interclass sexual contact between men. Benderson – citing Max Nordau and Norman Mailer – contends that such contact can reinvigorate the creative artist. Delany – citing Jane Jacobs – focuses on ways in which urban spaces and institutions may facilitate interclass sexual contact to alleviate some effects of class divisions. In different ways, these authors criticize the gentrification of New York City’s Times Square neighborhood. Addressing economic inequality as an aspect of same-sex contact, they also exemplify queer thought’s recent interest in the negative, as postulated by Heather Love, Kadji Amin, and others.