The Mad Man

by Samuel R. Delany

In New York City in the early 1980s, a black gay philosophy graduate student, John Marr, is researching a dissertation on Timothy Hasler, a Korean-American philosopher and academic stabbed to death under unexplained circumstances outside a gay bar in 1973. As details emerge, Marr finds his lifestyle converging with that of Hasler, and he becomes increasingly involved in intense sexual encounters with homeless men, despite his growing awareness of the risks of HIV. In the course of unravelling the mystery of Hasler's death, Marr joins with a homeless man from West Virginia, who goes by the street name "Leaky." Scenes based on letters Delany actually wrote (see: 1984: Selected Letters) take place in a gay bar in New York, though the basic incident is fictional.