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There is a section in Samuel Delany's magnificent autobiographical meditation, The Motion of Light in Water, 1 that dramatically raises the problem of writing the history of difference, the history, that is, of the designation of" other," of the attribution of characteristics that distinguish categories of people from some presumed (and usually unstated) norm. 2 Delany (a gay man, a black man, a writer of science fiction) recounts his reaction to his first visit to the St. Marks bathhouse in 1963. He describes standing on the threshold of a" gym-sized room" dimly lit by blue bulbs. The room was full of people, some standing, the rest" an undulating mass of naked male bodies, spread wall to wall."" My first response," he writes," was a kind of heart-thudding astonishment, very close to fear."

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