I write gay erotica because gay erotica is fun. I write gay erotica because it is the one form of gay literature that cannot be co-opted. That may seem like two reasons, but they are one and the same. Although the fantasy sex described in a work of gay erotica may be scary or tragic or considerably rougher than anyone would care to experience in reality, the message still comes through. In reality gay sex is fun. And whether the work is produced well in a slick magazine or printed with the worst typography on the cheapest pulp paper, the second message is equally clear. Gay people are numerous. Gay readers are numerous enough that the publisher had some hope of making a profit.
The second message is perhaps not now as controversial as it was when I first read Clint Wins His Letter (by Lance Lester, a great author of the pre-Stonewall era who worked under a variety of names including Clay Caldwell; some of his titles are being revived by Badboy Books), a generic-looking dirty book. Books of the same physical appearance, if not so well written, are still available in adult bookstores or by mail from companies that take out tiny ads in the back pages of magazines. My first impression was that Clint had been written just for me. I knew that this impression could not be entirely correct, and I pondered at length the existence of this book which I held in one hand so often. The truth seemed so fantastic that I resisted it for some time. Clint Wins His Letter was not published only for me, but for many, many people like me.
That gay men are numerous has not been altogether a secret since Kinsey published his work in 1948. But it was news to me when I discovered Clint many years later. In spite of all the gay pride marches and mass gatherings, this is still news to new gay people.
In many respects "guys who are likely to enjoy reading Clint Wins His Letter" is a much better definition of "gay men" than the one likely to be induced from the majority culture's many sexless, unattractive, and stereotypical images of gay men. For this reason gay erotica will remain an essential tool in the formation of gay identity and gay community for a long time.
The gay movement can be - and has been - co-opted in many ways. While the early movement aimed for reform, or even revolution, more recently gay spokespeople seem to be willing to settle for assimilation. But the assimilation the majority culture offers to gay culture is not a melting pot of pluralism, but is the kind of assimilation the frog's stomach offers the fly.
Gay sex can be co-opted. When gay sex is painted as joyless and obsessive, the majority culture can tolerate it. Where gay sex has been decriminalized, the majority has conceded only that the attempt to suppress gay sex is troublesome and counterproductive. The majority culture never accepts that gay sex is a matter of right, that gay is good, or that gay sexuality is something in which to take pride.
In a like way the majority culture can accept and even celebrate literature that seems to have gay elements. For example, the majority culture can award a literary prize to a novel that depicts a lesbian relationship - but only if all the male characters in the book are abusive monsters. And even so, the relationship between the women must not be primarily sexual.
Does any work that is not explicitly erotic deserve to be called gay literature? I sometimes wonder.
A novel about a gay detective may contain the message that gay men can be detectives as well as they can be hairdressers. But the majority culture can easily accept this as a story about an exceptional individual who overcame what is perceived to be a handicap. Gay novels without explicit sex can show that gay people do not think about sex all the time. But gay people who are not thinking about sex are the majority culture's third - favorite kind of gay people (after dead gay people and dying gay people). If gay erotica is not the whole of gay literature, it certainly is the most essential part.
That the majority culture can never accept gay erotica is no surprise. Naturally the assimilationists and sycophants among gay critics will favor eviscerated volumes which are gay in name only, and co-opted gay writers, publishers, and bookstores will pander to them.
Yet even among gay people who do not consciously subscribe to the values of the dominant culture, gay erotica is not highly regarded. Perhaps some people who buy gay erotica and then hide it away have unresolved internal conflicts about their sexualities. The standard of literature held up for admiration in the public schools is not even that of the present majority culture, but rather is the one the majority culture professed a century ago. For that reason, perhaps, some gay readers think that any book with a sexual theme, whether gay or not, is trash. Other readers may think that the position of gay erotica in gay literature is analogous to the position of heterosexual erotica in the majority culture's literature (which it is not).
No doubt there are a number of reasons that gay readers do not think highly of gay erotica. But is there not some way in which gay erotica has been at fault in this matter?
Certainly gay erotica could have given a better account of itself. Unfortunately, not much of it is very good.
Orwell distinguished two senses in which a work of letters may be good or bad. He thought highly of good bad books, by which he meant books of little or no substance that are highly entertaining. An example of a good bad author that Orwell cites is P.G. Wodehouse. The opposite of good bad books is bad good books. These are undoubted works of Literature that are unreadable. Most required reading in American secondary schools consists of bad good books - Silas Marner, to name but one. On this scale, the typical work of gay erotica is mediocre minimally-good.
Gay erotica has a minimal amount of substance because it contains the two messages I have mentioned that are fatal to the premises supporting the majority culture's dominance. This minimal good is hardly a credit to the author, for it is inherent in the genre. Few authors aspire to anything more, although some works include incidentally circumstances of historic or cultural significance.
Most readers, I suspect, do not expect gay erotica to have any substance. If they think it is possible for gay erotica to have any value, its value must be as entertainment. Unfortunately, little gay erotica is very entertaining. "Mediocre" is the word for it.
For a number of years, Boyd McDonald has solicited and edited the sexual histories of gay men. This work appears in several magazines and in a number of books, usually with the words: "The truth is more pornographic than pornography." To the writer of gay erotic fiction this is a hard saying. I admire McDonald's work greatly, and I do not doubt that in general his slogan is true. I can only hope it is not necessarily true.
Everything is wrong with the way McDonald's correspondents write. Many of them are barely literate. They are clueless as to how to set up a narrative. They tell their stories out of order and often step on their punch lines. Everything is wrong with the stories - except that most of them are doubtlessly authentic and they are stories the authors believe to be worth telling.
Against such, what chance has fiction?
Fiction cannot be authentic. Fiction can aim for verisimilitude, and if it is very good fiction it can achieve a kind of truth that transcends fact - but never authenticity. The erotic excitement in McDonald's work largely derives of its authenticity, which cannot be matched by any quality fiction can muster.
But in the author's belief in the worth of the work, surely fiction need not take a back seat.
Unfortunately, I think it is in this last that the overall mediocre quality of gay erotica can best be explained. The gay community provides many messages that it does not expect much of gay erotica and that it will not value highly even the best work. Writer's cannot help absorbing these messages to one degree or another. They become discouraged. They discover that shoddy work will be accepted because the community expects no better. In a variety of ways the quality of the work is depressed. This of course justifies the community's opinion of gay erotica. It is a vicious cycle. In the end, even those who believe in the principle of gay erotica cannot be happy in endorsing its practice.
This is the situation.
Perhaps a dozen more-or-less small publishers who issue high-quality paperback books are supposed to be gay publishers. Most large publishers in the majority culture have lines of books that are supposed to be of interest to gay people. Yet aside from the manufacturers of generic-looking dirty books that are sold in adult bookstores, only one or two publishers regularly issue books of frank gay erotica. Many books with lurid covers are issued but nothing so erotic can be found between the covers.
The generic-looking pulp books are no longer like Clint Wins His Letter. Now the pages are fewer, the type is larger, and there are many lines of only one or two words. These books are commissioned as piecework. Writer's are encouraged to fill as much space with a few words as possible and are discouraged from doing anything so literary as developing characters or a plot.
Writers of gay erotica are poorly paid. While this does not in itself excuse poor work, it is yet another message that gay erotica is not considered valuable. Unfortunately, many of these messages are amplified by gay people who hope to be assimilated.
People who aspire to change their status in society often adopt an exaggerated version of the attitudes that they suppose are held by people who have already achieved that status. Thus, assimilationist gay people often are in the forefront of efforts to belittle or suppress gay erotica, even when nongay people of a similar class may tolerate, accept, or celebrate nongay erotica. For this reason it is sometimes easier to place a work of gay erotica with a nongay publisher or to find it in general interest bookstores than to place such a book with gay-identified publishers or to find it in some gay-interest bookstores.
Magazines editors are something of a bright spot in this otherwise dismal picture. They usually struggle mightily to find the best stories they can and to produce the stories well. But when they go to their mail, they find dozens and dozens of letters praising the obvious attributes of the photographic models. Did anyone get off to the fiction? Not so far as the mail reveals. The editor will have to take the reader response into account in budgeting space as well as money. For this reason, or some other, a gay magazine's standard rates tend to be truly standard, and an excellent story will bring its author no more than a merely acceptable one would have.
The wonder is that any writer ever overcomes the voice of internal homophobia that says erotic writing is wicked and the voices of the co-opted leaders of the gay community who say that gay erotica is trivial at best.
This is a sad situation, and I have not yet devised a program certain to reverse it.
While I cannot defend gay erotica with reason from the attacks of people who believe without reason that gay sex is wrong and gay people are wicked, some people of otherwise evident goodwill have raised some questions about gay erotica. I do not think these questions really account for much of the poor repute of gay erotica among those who ought to esteem it. But insofar as these questions are put in good faith, they deserve to be answered in a like manner.
Almost all the questions come down to this: Can readers tell fantasy from reality? Or to put it differently, will a work of fiction be likely to cause its readers to do something bad when they would not otherwise do anything as bad?
Implicit in such questions is the assertion that characters in gay erotica often do bad things. I think, to the contrary, that characters in gay erotica most often behave better than real people. Some people, however, want characters to be perfect and want fictional worlds to paradises. I admit that gay erotica neither often attains this standard nor commonly aspires to it.
Cervantes gave us Don Quixote, who was overly influenced by good bad novels of chivalry. Clarence Darrow, in a brilliant defense that saved his clients from execution, claimed Leopold and Loeb had been overly influenced by cheap crime novels. Can we say no one will be overly influenced by gay erotica?
Well, Don Quixote was himself a fiction. Darrow was desperate in his attempt to mitigate one of the most senseless crimes of all time. Leopold and Loeb had read Nietzsche too, or rather had misread him. Shall Nietzsche go into the fire with the sleazy sleuths?
I have seen, more than once, paranoid lunatics discover conspiracies in telephone directories and sinister imperatives in laundry lists. Some imbecile or lunatic can find a twisted plan in even the most innocuous writing. Even the majority culture now admits that literature cannot be judged by its effects on exceptional individuals, for in that case there could be no literature at all.
Or so the reasoning goes. In fact it is not well established that the coincidence of harmful acts by exceptional individuals and their possession of literature that portrays similar acts means that the literature is to blame. Plausibly, persons of murderous frames of mind are likely to acquire murderous literature. The telephone directory cannot be blamed for the plot a paranoid lunatic discovers in it, for the lunatic will also discover a plot without a telephone directory.
In truth, almost all people know the difference between fantasy and reality. Even children know perfectly well that they cannot do as Nancy Drew does, although they may skulk around in play.
Yet people do learn things from fiction. Certainly that is what I claimed when I wrote that gay erotica contains two messages the majority culture cannot stand. How can we be sure people will learn only the good things in fiction?
I think we cannot be sure. We cannot be sure that people will learn only the good in fiction any more than we can be sure they will follow only the good examples they encounter in life. Putting only good examples in literature, if that were possible, would most likely produce a bad good literature - stacks of uplifting books that no one would read.
The reason reformers always want to start by reforming literature is that it much easier to attack ideas and their expression in print than it is to change material reality. Even some who claim to be bedrock materialists fall into this trap. Likewise, reformers who claim to be gay attack gay erotica first because gay publishers and writers, already besieged by the forces of the majority culture, seem likely to wither under criticism be it well-founded or ill. If the reformers succeed in destroying gay literature, that will be the end of it. The time will never be quite ripe for a campaign against similar flaws in the literature of the majority culture.
As to particulars: I am sometimes asked why gay erotica does not show partners in loving, committed relationships. Of course it does sometimes do just that, but I won't quibble. I suspect this question means: Why doesn't gay erotica portray gay people as living the way heterosexuals claim to live? If that is the question, the answer is: for the same reason that fiction seldom portrays trees that pretend to be rocks.
In truth, an average sexual act between partners in an average, loving, committed relationship is not good erotica because the situation is not good fiction. On the other hand, how the couple met - or how they overcame some crisis in the relationship - is good fiction and quite a number of erotic stories are of this kind, ending either explicitly or implicitly, "And so they lived happily ever after." Living happily ever after is not fiction - because nothing ever happens. What would Ulysses be if the Blooms had the sort of relationship some critics advocate? There is no fairy tale about Mr. and Mrs. Prince Charming at home.
There remain quite a number of promiscuous stories. I see nothing wrong with gay promiscuity. I think it is one of the most positive aspects of gay life that people of very different circumstances can achieve intimacy very quickly. Those who think promiscuity is blameworthy have quite a task ahead of them if they mean to show that gay promiscuity arises from gay erotica.
Of late there have been many questions about safe sex in gay erotica. In particular I have heard stories criticized because the characters therein do unsafe things. This is very curious.
I seriously doubt it is a very safe thing for stout and aged Englishwomen who live in small villages to go about sticking their noses into unsolved murders. I have not yet heard Agatha Christi criticized on the grounds that Miss Marple is an unfortunate influence.
Fiction is just the place to experience that which would be unsafe or unwise to attempt in reality.
Gay erotica can emphasize the erotic aspects of acts that are inherently safe. It can provide a model of how one partner raises the issue of safety in a firm and tactful way. It can even provide an instructive and erotic description of the proper use of a condom.
But that gay erotica can and should do these things does not mean that every story ought to do so. Indeed, when magazines were insisting on safe sex in every story, the mention of the condom became so perfunctory that it was meaningless. The stories were not safe-sex stories, but were only fuck stories into which a couple of lines about a condom had been inserted. If anything, the message of these stories was that the use of a condom involves an unwelcome and intrusive interruption. Surely one story celebrating the eroticism of mutual masturbation is worth quite an number of stories in which the mention of the condom seems an afterthought. It is not, of course, that condoms are antierotic-before AIDS there were occasional gay stories into which condoms were introduced as toys. What is antierotic is the requirement of explicit mention of condoms in stories as a rule. It is the rule that makes stories into propaganda.
Propaganda seldom is good literature. And after awhile, propaganda is not even good propaganda. That a reader can learn safe sex from one story does not mean he will forget it if the next story does not contain safe sex. Critics worry about some hypothetical nitwit who will decide to practice unsafe sex if most of the stories he reads contain unsafe sex. Such critics always think that they themselves will practice safe sex no matter what they read. Censors are always concerned about the possible effects on someone other than themselves.
The principal use of gay erotica is as an enhancement to masturbation. Masturbation is the safest form of sex. So long as some gay erotica does provide safe-sex information incidentally, it seems to me gay erotica has done its duty.
I wonder, really, whether anyone learns-aside from masturbation-any sexual technique, safe or otherwise, from gay erotica. And this brings me to questions about SM and related activities.
Bondage, psychic and physical domination, and sadomasochism appear in some stories of gay erotica. This bothers some people. I think good writing reveals very quickly what a story is about. Then it should be a simple matter for a reader to avoid a story which he finds distasteful. But of course, it is not for themselves that people are bothered by such stories; it is out of concern for the hypothetical nitwit.
When this concern is genuine, it seems to stem from a lack of understanding of what SM is when it is practiced in reality. People who practice SM and related activities in reality have a very clear understanding of the difference between fantasy and reality, and in many communities they organize educational and outreach programs to ensure that the distinction is clear to newcomers.
Curiously, the more fantastic a story, the more the critic fears it will be mistaken for reality. What shall we do? Put a disclaimer on every story: "Do not play with people who are untrustworthy"?
Most often, I think, the real concern about these stories is that some gay people find the SM scene embarrassing and they wish it would go away. They think suppressing SM stories will make the SM scene go away. That will not work. If the concern were really for the safety of neophytes, the best way to encourage safety is to keep the SM scene above ground, visible, and accessible. Stumbling around in the dark, the neophyte might very well encounter a homicidal lunatic.
Finally, there is a group of interrelated questions. Why are there not more older people in gay erotica? More blacks? I have read a reader's complaint that redheads are underrepresented. Why is always the same stock characters, doing the same old things, in the same old places?
At last, some questions that are more literary than political!
All genre fiction has its stock characters and its set-piece scenes. Gothics have grim old houses. Romances had tall, dark strangers. Mysteries have drawing-room denouements. Gay erotica has motorcycle cops, drill instructors, jocks, frats, locker rooms, hitchhikers, public rest rooms, back seats, front seats, and a great deal more. Once these were powerful images - nothing lives long enough to become trite that is not vigorous in its youth.
Women seldom appear in men's stories for the same reason that dolphins seldom appear in Westerns. Modern length requirements do not allow for much development of secondary characters, and so it is probably just as well to have no women in these stories as to have cardboard-cutout women making cameo appearances.
Men of color are not really so rare in gay men's stories. Unfortunately, they often appear in roles that bear a disquieting resemblance to the racial stereotypes of the hypersexual black stud and the fiery, macho Latin lover. Racism is not the whole explanation. Queens and androgynous types of all races are rarely given principal parts. Partly this is a reaction to the many less-than-studly gay men who appear in the majority culture's literature.
Many stories are of the first-time or coming-out kind with few places for older men. A very few May-and-September stories are written. but it is true that almost no September-and-September stories exist.
In short, sexism, racism, and ageism exist in gay erotica. But as a literature available only to adults, gay erotica can hardly be blamed for shaping the attitudes of its readers. The scourge of Political Correctness could be applied to other targets with greater effect. Editors and writers of gay erotica are especially eager to produce innovative stories. But most of us have been burned more than once when we have failed to take proper account of our readers' rather rigid expectations.
Occasionally one of us finds a new idea that works and there is rejoicing all around. But day in and day out no one can write gay erotica for long without having to reuse one of the stock elements, and eventually all of them. Good writers, willing to work hard, can still bring some life to the stock characters and can move them around the stage while avoiding the well-worn ruts. But this brings us back to the problem: Is it worth the writer's while to exert the extra effort? Why should he take a chance on something new? If the community will value the good erotic story no more than it values the poor one, and the payment is the same, why bother?