I Pass Like Night [Paperback]

When Alexander Vine finishes his work day, he leaves his post as a doorman at Manhattan's exclusive Four Seasons restaurant -- and enters a nighttime landscape of chance and danger, excitement and reinvention in the city's erotic underworld. Walking a tightrope between sexual desire and self-extinction, Alexander Vine charts his destructive course -- and his struggle for redemption -- with startling, unadorned clarity.Jonathan Ames is the author of I Pass Like Night; The Extra Man; What’s Not to Love?; My Less Than Secret Life; Wake Up, Sir!; I Love You More Than You Know; The Alcoholic; and The Double Life Is Twice As Good. He’s the creator of the HBO® Original SeriesBored to Deathand has had two amateur boxing matches, fighting as “The Herring Wonder.” His most recent work is the detective novelA Man Named Doll. Chapter One
I like this one whore on the lower East Side, her name is Goldie because of her teeth, and she's really sweet. She's a big black woman with big breasts and I saw her for the first time a few nights ago when it was too hot to sleep. I came out of my room around one A.M. and I walked down to Grand and she was there. She was wearing a black bra like a bikini and a tight black miniskirt and black high heels. I went past her slow and my eyes ran over her breasts and down her stomach and she smiled at me and she took the plastic straw out of her mouth that she was chewing on and she said real nice, Ya goin' out honey? And I said, Yeahhh, real hesitant and shy and embarrassed like it was my first time, but I knew what we were going to do, and I came down there to do it, I...I am.
Well, come here honey, follow me.
So she took my hand and led me across the street. She took me into the old dark park with its broken fences, crumbling walls, and shadows that smell of piss and garbage and throlĻ