The novel begins with the introduction of "Lee", who recounts his life in Mexico City among American migrant college students and bar owners surviving on part-time jobs and GI Bill benefits.

The novel is written in the third person and Burroughs commented in the "Introduction", published in 1985, that it represents him off heroin, whereas in Junkie, his narrator was psychologically "protected" by his addiction.

Lee is self-conscious, insecure, and driven to pursue a young man named Allerton, who is based on Adelbert Lewis Marker (1930–1998), a recently discharged American Navy serviceman from Jacksonville, Florida who made friends with Burroughs in Mexico City.

(The primary source of this quotation is unclear; it is quoted, second-hand, by narrator Peter Weller in the 2010 documentary feature William S. Burroughs: A Man Within.

[8] Buscemi led the first reading of Queer at the Sarasota Film Festival with Stanley Tucci, Ben Foster, John Ventimiglia, and Lisa Joyce.