Books like Hard Candy

So, I had one Tennessee Williams story to mop up from my short-fiction non-genre list, the titular piece here "Hard Candy". I knew that it had some connection to another powerful Williams piece ("The Mysteries of the Joy Rio") I liked, so, since that piece is also here, let me recapitulate my review of that story from another collection:"The Mysteries of the Joy Rio" has always stuck in my head since I first read it years ago - it's the tale of an elderly gay man and the decrepit pleasure palace (once opera house, then grand cinema, now aging fleabag theater) where he spends his time at furtive fumblings in the dark with strangers following the death of his longtime lover. It impresses on a number of levels - a sad and touching ghost story, a symbolic examination of life and death (the grand hall, awash with possibilities as a youth, turned rotting, empty cavern desperately filled with hollow desires by the end) and also a surprisingly frank (if slightly coded) portrayal of the unspoken rules and practices of anonymous homosexual cruising during the early part of the 19th century. Extremely well-written, as would be expected."Hard Candy" (presented before "Mysteries" in this collection - and rightly so) gives us the flip side of William's melancholy paean to the pleasure grounds of gay southern youth. Here we follow a rather (physically) ugly little retired man (not the character from "Mysteries") as he purchases some hard candy and makes his way to a secretive destination that no one in his family suspects - the cavernous darkened balconies of the Joy Rio, of course - where he has been known to find the companionship he desires on occasion (with the bag of sweets useful as a bargaining device). It is interesting to realize that this is Williams' setting down a truth that was unlikely to have been recorded in fiction before (certainly in this specific locale and detail) and also how "Mysteries" acts as a more pleasant counterpoint to the sordid intimations found here. Some details (view spoiler)[the age of the "boy" he encounters is never clarified - obviously not a child but whether a younger adolescent or older teenager is not clear (hide spoiler)]