Sixty years of gay erotica

Simon Sheppard opens this first-of-its-kind book with a whirlwind tour of gay history as reflected in queer men’s one-handed reading, from the era of World War II, when sex stories were mimeographed in Tijuana and smuggled to the States, to today’s ubiquitous web-based porn.

Included in the collection are well-remembered stories by renowned authors like Jack Fritscher, Aaron Travis, and Bob Vickery alongside old pulp-paperback pornography and up-to-the-minute “literotica.”

A rough-trade biker takes a farm boy to the barn in a 1953 story by Phil Andros. Richard Amory’s 1966 Old West classic, “Song of the Loon,” sets a horny frontiersman among hunky Indian tribes. In John Preston’s 1979 iconic “Mr. Benson,” a submissive finds his ultimate master. In Sheppard’s wide-ranging collection, men have sex in a psychedelic-60’s Berkeley orgy, under fire in Vietnam, and on a roadside somewhere in Texas.

Populated by a colorful mix of characters, from leathermen, drag queens, sailors, and hustlers to uptight accountants and gay vampires, this is an outstanding new collection put together by one of gay erotica’s favorite voices.