Le Sueur’s fascination with the scene was at once othering and hankering: “‘It’s so sordid,’ I remember purring in appreciation the first time I entered the place with two other thrill-seekers from USC, ‘sordid’ being a key word in our lexicon, the standard to which we held our libidinous experiences.”

In the late 1940s, the directionless blond undergrad Joe LeSueur ventured into Maxwell’s in downtown Los Angeles, a rough saloon populated by hustlers, drifters and the gender nonconforming. At a certain kind of joint, slumming it may be a sip away from hobnobbing with literati.