Cowboys, Pirates, Truckers, Private Dicks and Rocketmen

How Adult Pulp Paperbacks Rewrote the World Through Queer Eyes

For most of the 20th century, gay men saw little of themselves in American popular fiction other than within problem novels, or as carefully coded villains, or in minor roles as comical sissies, affected artistes or colorful guests at sophisticated / bohemian soirees. The exception was the twilight world of adult fiction, whose pragmatic publishers learned early that inexpensive paperbacks — the format originally lauded as a revolution in making literary fiction available to the masses — was also ideally suited to serve specialized niches, from horror and science fiction to stories that delivered, or at least promised, sexual content that went beyond polite boundaries.

“Racy” books may have been looked down upon and/or ignored by respectable publishing houses and high-minded readers, but inexpensive paperbacks in general were a hit with everyone from housewives to teenagers and servicemen — there even were special Armed Services Editions sized to fit into uniform pockets. Novels with provocative covers and no respectable bonafides could be found in drugstore racks, transportation depots and tucked under bookstore counters for customers who knew who and how to ask. And one of the niches they exploited — in both the positive and negative senses of the word — was sexuality that didn’t conform to conservative standards. They ranged from “free love,” group marriage and interracial unions to transvestism, bisexuality and same-sex relationships.

More importantly, gay-adult pulp fiction defied the problem-novel template, which positioned gayness as inherently isolating and tragic, instead targeting an underserved segment of the profitable market for genre fiction: gay men who enjoyed Westerns, thrillers, detective novels, pirate sagas, horror and science-fiction stories and wanted to see people like themselves in them. Not tawdry tripe like straight actor/writer Lynton Wright Brent’s 1965 Homo Sweet Homo (credited to W.B. Lynton), a “gay book” in name only that chronicles the travails of of a '“rugged man with a rugged mind” who goes to Hollywood to break into movies and temporarily catches the gay by “having affairs” with homosexuals. Homo Sweet Homo’s only claim to significance was its influence on Dirk Vanden (born Richard Fullmer, 1933-2014), one of gay-adult fiction’s respected elder statesmen. Given a copy to use as a model for writing a salable gay novel, Vanden embraced it as a 150-page lesson in how not to write a book that delivered the “fag hots” his publisher demanded while telling a story rooted in the experiences and interests of an actual gay man. Vanden later went on to write what became his ambitious “All” trilogy — I Want It All, All or Nothing and All is Well (1969-’71), the narrative of which is driven by his upbringing in repressive, deeply religious Vernal, Utah, and, later, life in San Francisco’s gay community.

Still, why bother reading old books when there’s so much new LGBTQ literature? Because during the golden age of gay erotica — which by my reckoning is roughly 1969 to 1982 — adults-only novels were an act of affirmation, not only of the right to be gay but of the right to be represented in a wide range of ways. That and the fact they range from merely entertaining to remarkably imaginative disruptions of familiar narratives. In science-fiction stories like Larry Townsend's hugely entertaining 2069 trilogy (1969-1970), future space exploration is dominated by gay separatists who embrace group marriage, habitual nudity (clothing is reserved for public formalities) and a diplomatic philosophy that favors the bedroom to the boardroom for hashing out differences. In revisionist Westerns like Richard Amory’s Song of the Loon (1966), The Song of Aaron (1967) and Listen, the Loon Sings... (1968), the wildest frontier is manly love between saddlesore cowboys and Native Americans. In horror novels like Vampire's Kiss (Sonny Barker, 1970) and Gay Vampire (Davy S., 1967), vampirism is associated with empowering sensuality and counterculture cool well before Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (1976) made such notions mainstream. And historical romps — one of many specialties of the versatile Peter Tuesday Hughes, whose Seventeen69 (1970), Garden of Cruel Delights and The Master of Monfortin (both 1977) — offer period pomp, social maneuvering and swordplay (in both senses of the term) among gentlemen who prefer each other's company to that of fluttering ladies.

Many vintage adult publishers regularly included prefaces that situated their output within the realm of transgressive and activist literature: Surrey House congratulated its writers for addressing controversial social issues. Spartacus Books lauded the richness of "the homophile erotic heritage... [f]rom the pure, idealized passions of the ancient Greeks to the dizzying sensuality of Michelangelo and the bizarre underground of cruelty that belongs to Jean Genet." Blueboy Library simply declared, "The love of Man for Man is as old as Man himself.” And French Line appropriated a line from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s unequivocal 1953 defense of free speech — "People who hold unpopular ideas... have a right to have them, a right to record them and a right to have them in places where they are accessible to others" — with cheeky glee.

High-minded rhetoric aside, vintage gay-adult paperbacks were first and foremost intended to entertain. And there’s no shame in that: While a few gay pulp authors, notably Bruce Benderson, winner of the French Prix de Flore award for young writers, went on to literary careers, many — including Vanden, William Maltese, Victor Banis, Richard Amory and Carl Corley — saw pulps as a way to write stories that not only entertained but captured a complex and distinctive culture, and addressed issues specific to imagined different futures. There’s some good old naughty fun to be had exploring them, along with a wealth of background stories about authors, publishers, imprints, cover artists and the pseudonyms many writers employed at a time when adult entertainment was at best considered disreputable and at worst left everyone involved, but especially publishers / distributors, vulnerable to prosecution for the production and distribution of pornographic material. First Amendment arguments notwithstanding — the crux being whether material that a significant number of people consider obscene is protected by a principle conceived to foster the free exchange of ideas — adult literature, art and film have always been subject to censorship, suppression and dismissal. And the trouble with common-sense arguments is that, as the wags love to say, common sense is rare.

Though it was possible to buy adult books and magazines in bookstores, most didn’t carry them, whether for high-minded reasons or for fear of being boycotted or prosecuted for selling to a minor, either unwittingly or as part of a sting. It was also illegal to distribute adult material using the U.S. Postal Service. And while enforcement ebbed and waned and prosecution was often as much a matter of bad luck as targeting, there were real penalties. And yet the back matter of virtually every gay-adult book published by the major paperback companies included lists of available titles, sometimes with pictures, often grouped by subject (gay, straight, fetish and much, much more… ) and always accompanied by an order form, complete with a signature line that included the statement that the buyer was of legal age.

The books kept coming and buyers kept buying; given how many titles were produced between the late ‘60s and the early ‘90s, when widespread American resistance to sexually-oriented material became increasingly fragmented (by age, gender, marital status, political affiliation and region), gay-adult novels remained in demand even as glossy, heavily illustrated magazines and non-theatrical movies on video, DVD and streaming platforms killed theatrical hardcore. At the same time, mainstream writing about gay lives — including sex lives — moved further into the mainstream, initially in the form of fun gay neighbors who show up both in films and TV series, generally come bearing fashion tips and emotional support for their straight friends. They’re here, queer and people are getting used to it, so much so that gay young-adult fiction is a growing genre.

It would be wrong to suggest that vintage gay-adult novels have been fully forgotten, but their significance has yet to be widely acknowledged. Yes, there’s a brisk trade in merchandise featuring colorful, “camp” covers, and no, the books between them aren’t all great literature — some are no better than they should be. But as a body of writing they remain under-appreciated, in part because so many have been lost: They were the ultimate disposable books. A friend once told me that, when still living at home and closeted, he would drive to Times Square, buy a gay adult book, read it while parked under the West Side Highway and then drop it in the trash before driving home. As far as he was concerned, there was no hiding place sufficiently secure to risk. And who knows how many collections were lost when relatives cleaning out the homes of “bachelor uncles” discovered a cache and rushed it to the nearest dump? Time itself has been unkind: Most pulp paperbacks were printed on cheap paper that yellowed and crumbled unless stored with some care. But there are now archives in locations ranging from Duke University in North Carolina (which includes the papers of prolific artist and writer Carl Corley) to Brown University in Rhode Island. Each surviving vintage adult paperback book is a little piece of history waiting to be discovered.