Big Rigs, Open Roads and "Trucking" Rhymes with...

A Quick Trip into Gay Adult Trucker Novels: Putting the "Blue" in "Blue-Collar."

Vintage gay adult novels truly cover the waterfront, from coming of age / coming out stories to thrillers, Westerns, science fiction and celebrations of the open road: No-tell motels, biker bars, thumb trippers, the brotherhood of professional drivers, the lofty view from the cozy confines of a cab some 12 feet above the road and the joy of truck stops that offer everything from a hot shower to, well, the kind of things that happen on the road and don’t get spoken about the next day — because, you know, in the context of vintage gay erotica, truckers are manly men, not limp-wristed swishes.

As objects of desire among adult-novel readers, truckers are up there with sailors, firefighters, Old West cowboys and outlaws, bikers (their displaced masculine attributes being literally between their legs, for heaven’s sake) and sundry blue-collar laborers from mailmen to garbage haulers, ranch hands, fur trappers (the “Cal Jardine” trilogy), cops (Officer Dick, if you please), construction workers, lumberjacks and telephone linesmen. File under: Real men with lean, muscular bodies that weren’t built in some narcissistic, sissy gym or, heaven forfend, a dance studio. Pit a truck against pretty much anything else on the road and the smart money is on the truck.

While stories about blue-collar men, truckers among them, were a staple of the gay adult novel, I think it’s safe to say that most of the men who wrote gay adult novel were not blue-collar laborers. But I also think it’s safe to say that plenty of them had worked thankless, manual gigs at some point in their young lives, whether while going to school or looking to pay the rent as they tried to get a foot in the door of whatever profession they envisioned themselves pursuing. Women, gay or straight, picked up pink collar jobs like waiting tables, working in reception and staffing retail shops while they tried to earn degrees that would bump them up a few vital steps on the employment ladder. Men toted and baled. It’s all part and parcel of acknowledging a queer community that transcended socioeconomic boundaries: The sons of Fortune 500 families rubbed shoulders with waiters and construction workers, in both books and real life, and many found common ground.