homoerotic fiction recommendations
I’ve been crippled and on crutches after surgery to repair torn ligaments in my ankles - housebound for almost a month now. As you can imagine, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I’ve zipped through quite a few books. I wanted to share some of the more homoerotic selections with you. Gay romances have become more commonly available in recent years, and now they are pretty much a distinct genre.
Sins of the Cities of the Plain by Jack Saul is an historic classic of the rather small genre of gay Victorian erotica, and considered to be the first Victorian homosexual pornographic novel. There really aren’t too many, although homosexual scenes are included in many classics such as The Romance of Lust and My Secret Life. Teleny, written by Oscar Wilde and his circle of friends, was published a few years after Sins of the Cities of the Plains and is the most famous of the rather scant selection of Victorian homosexual erotica.
Sins of the Cities of the Plain opens with a well-heeled gentleman picking up a marvelously well-endowed ‘rent boy’ named Jack Saul and bringing him home for an evening of decadent pleasure. I found the opening chapters to be the most exciting. After that, Jack Saul tells his story of early initiation into the joys of homosexual coupling. At boarding school, the entire boys’ dormitory engages in frigging and buggery. As a young man, Jack takes up with an exclusive gentleman’s club, a ‘molly house’ of sorts, and acquires a taste for cross-dressing. He manages to maintain himself quite nicely on the income he earns from the parties given by the house, and embarks on financially and sexually satisfying life as a high-class male prostitute.
As a novel, it’s quite readable, but except for the first few chapters, it’s not really my preferred style of erotica. Unlike many women who enjoy slash, men in dresses doesn’t do anything for me. The original narrator’s tale was more interesting to me than Jack Saul’s own story, and I wish their few encounters together were drawn out a bit more before Jack’s narrative began. Even so, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the Victorian underground. It is worth a read for the sexual slang along; many words which I had thought to be strictly modern, such as ‘rent-boy,’ were already in common use by the time Sins of the Cities of the Plain was published.
Quite a bit raunchier is the recently published The Great Cock Hunt by the pseudonymous “Alex,” based on his blog of the same name. The story unfolds over the course of a reunion weekend at Alex’s college, accompanied by his male and female best friends. During these few days, Alex hooks up with a myriad of guys, and recounts memories of even more hook-ups. No doubt about it, Alex is a huge slut, but an oddly engaging one. It’s hard not to sympathize with his love for his ex-boyfriend Jack, whose on-again, off-again relationship is the source of much angst. Alex’s unrequited love for his straight friend Dave is also a tender point. I found his sex-buddy relationship with his best friend to be one of the more intriguing characteristics of the gay men I know: they can have sex with their friends and not destroy the friendship. That’s never been possible for me.
The book is clearly marketed to gay men and the lengthy and somewhat clinical descriptions of sex didn’t do much for me. Yet I found Alex’s story to be a compelling one. I can’t help wondering if I know Alex, or if I’ve seen him walking around town. I wonder if things worked out between him and Jack. I couldn’t help but be fascinated by his unrelenting sexual appetite, and his musings on sex and love were rather poignant.
Phyllida and the Brotherhood of the Philander by Ann Herendeen was quite entertaining, sexy without being overly graphic. It’s gotten a fair amount of criticism for being historically implausible, but seriously, who’d pick up a novel labeled “a bisexual Regency romance” and expect historical accuracy? Phyllida is a beautiful country girl and the author of sensational romances, which she writes under an assumed name. She agrees to a marriage of convenience with the dashing Andrew Carrington, a gay aristocrat seeking to fulfill his familial duty and produce an heir. Despite knowing his sexual orientation, she’s attracted to him, and eager to escape her lower class dull country life with her bawdy mother. The marriage of convenience becomes a passionate relationship as Andrew, rather implausibly, suddenly awakens to his desire for a woman. Yet he still loves men, and with his handsome American lover, the three form a happy trio, with Phyllida eventually enjoying her husband’s romps with his lover as an avid observer.
A flimsy blackmail plot is rather secondary to the more fascinating fantasy of the erotic relationships of the three principal players. It is a fantasy - how often do such things happen, in the modern world or in Regency England? I personally found it most enjoyable, probably because the idea of a handsome, aristocratic bisexual love triangle is rather appealing to me. Andrew’s dalliances with various handsome men are lovingly described, erotic but never explicit, leaving much to the imagination. Phyllida is not quite as fascinating as Andrew, though a serviceable narrator, and her enjoyment of the hot man-love naturally strikes a sympathetic chord. I look forward to more by this author.
The God in Flight by Laura Argiri is a fairly serious novel, one which took 18 years for its author to complete. It is the story of a romance between Doriskos Klionarios, an ascetic Yale art professor, and Simion Satterwhite, a precocious scholarship student from an abusive home. It is a beautiful book, lush with 19th century details, and intently focused on Yale’s lavender scene. Only one female character appears in the entire book, which is mostly focused on the highly intelligent Simion: his abusive childhood, the sickly tutor who ensures that he can escape from his father and get an education suited to his intellect, and the passion he finds with the shy Doriskos, who for many years is too timid to consummate their relationship. Simion finds friendship and sexual comfort in the arms of his well-heeled friend Andrew, while still passionately involved with Doriskos, who tolerates Andrew, though he is occasionally jealous of their physical relationship while unable to pursue the same with the willing Simion.
Their relationship, apparently tolerated by Yale as merely a professor and his assistant and protégé, is suddenly put on trial when Doriskos creates a statue modeled on himself and Simion. A fellow Yale student, who is enamoured of Doriskos, reveals the existence of the statue to the Yale administration, which had been exhibited in Europe. Trouble ensues and reaches a crisis point in Simion’s final year. Eventually, after many travails, Doriskos and Simion finally enjoy sexual relationship, though their lives are forever changed before they can reach that point.
The God in Flight is sensuous in its details, the food and clothing, the interior furnishings, and all the beauty of the well-to-do life of Doriskos, in harsh contrast to the poverty from which Simion came. The passion of Doriskos, who for many years dreamed of a boy just like Simion and was surprised to meet him in the flesh, is somewhat mysterious and almost asexual, until his jealousy of Andrew flares up. The issue of a thirty-something art professor involved with a 17-year-old freshman is hardly broached. The two are soul mates, and their ages are irrelevant.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my selections. If you’ve read any good homoerotic romance lately, leave a comment. I’ll be on crutches probably for another 2-3 weeks and expect to be doing lots of reading while I’m stuck home. Maybe some writing, too; despite my well-intentioned reader survey, I’m still hot on Jack/Ianto and am about halfway through my next fic featuring this lovely pair. I have also considered writing some original fiction. Reading all those gay romances has sparked some thought that perhaps I could do no worse than the published authors. It’s a tough market; gay romance is still a niche genre, and it’s not exactly lucrative. Self-publishing might be the only option; or at best, publishing an online serial for a very modest compensation. Still, I can’t help thinking that perhaps I ought to give it a try, since writing homosexual pornography is a favorite pastime, and even if my only payment is seeing my pseudonym in print, it could open some doors for me. Anyway it’s an idea worth considering.