Amtrak: The Trickin’ Trip

Ross Lawrence, GX Inc., 1973

One of the great things about popular culture, whether it's a pulp-fiction paperback or an indie B-movie, is the fast turnaround time: Introduce Amtrak in 1971, and there's a gay erotic novel set on it before you can say, "All Aboarrrrrrrd!" And as with everything from Mystery on the Orient Express to Narrow Margin to Bullet Train, almost anything can happen on a giant penis riding the rails.

Paul Harper, a young gay man based in Los Angeles, has been summoned to his company's faltering Seattle, Washington, office to whip it into shape. He’ll be travelling by train, and in the early 1970s that meant Amtrak, America's nationalized railway system — created, amazingly enough, during the Nixon Administration, as were the Environmental Protection Agency and, calling it what it is, socialized health care allowing for free kidney dialysis and transplant. For all of Richard Nixon's sins, Republicans clearly were more woke back then….