Thanks to whatever gods are delivering such, but I have actually found two consecutive days to actually–write!!! And, it’s been very productive, so the year o’returning to fiction goes on! Check back soon for the story Higher Education . . .
So, what can I say, the return to the website has been, well, productive. Yet, here I am one year in, and it is getting hard to keep up with it. That said, there are plans and reasons to do more yet, so stay tuned. Any who, finally, here is the conclusion to Closer.
As you read on, you will see, I believe, Romanino’s fresco made for a wonderful complement to this story’s concluding section, but for now, here is Franklin via Sean Cody to keep you reading hard. Is there any other way to read?
Regarding my approach to sexual realism via the sexual triangle, this story fits squarely within the reflective point, yet there are those who have argued this story is also very stroke, which I guess I have also come to term randy. As I’ve said before, these points re: narrative intention are more helpful than directive. Moreover, aren’t we all more in the age of reader response than literary auteur? So, in the end, who the fuck cares what I intended? This is your read–not mine. In the end, I will only add that Closer is, if you are interested in tracking my intention, perhaps more what Barthes would term a writerly tale than a top-down readerly narrative.
Here’s my favorite passage from Closer:
“Rudy hesitated before answering. He never considered himself a David collector, the equivalent of a size queen for men who only hook up with hotties. However, allowing someone into his vehicle sight unseen seemed too unselective—even for Rudy at this horny moment—even when being horny in a place such as this. Rudy pushed this thought aside as he reminded himself a blowjob is a blowjob, and he was achingly horny. ”
What I find the most interesting about Closer is how it gestures toward the next stories I want to write. Perhaps, the time to write and tell more will come, but for now, here’s Closer, the Conclusion.
Tucked into a cozy spot in town with a glass of wine, I am, yes, I am actually going to finish editing the story Closer, so I can actually post this story’s conclusion before 2014. Ah, this is why I live in Ptown, and if only all the rest would float away . . . Any who, check back soon for the conclusion to Closer.
While I would like to ignore the fact of the day job, the fact is one can’t. I find myself in Harvard Square staring at this, wondering when I will get the next story posted. Alas, tis the way it goes, but don’t fret, the next story is cumming 
One of my heroes of gay literature is John Preston. Preston’s My Life as a Pornographer and Other Indecent Acts, published by Masquerade Books in 1993, serves as a calibrating tool for clarifying the point and purpose for exploring erotic themes in fiction–specifically gay erotica. By gay, I mean actually gay, meaning there is a penis involved in the by, for, and about behind the authorial pen, something like a pen(is). This is not to make a political point or to slight serious female authors, Patricia Nell Warren and Annie Proulx come to mind. Instead, this is merely a point of clarification where confusion oft rules in our postmodern commercial digital culture. Preston’s collection of essays reminds the reader of a time, which I argue still exists, when there was a reason, value, and power behind the gay erotic word–not just as it gets one off but as it lifts one up.
This imperative goes back at least as far as the Pulp 600, who created the Age of Gay Pulp Fiction. On this note, Lambda Literary recently posted a very interesting interview, which focused on Richard Fullmer, aka Dirk Vanden–read it here. This was an age of gay writing where the imperative was existential and not merely corporeal, meaning of the body. Preston’s My Life as a Pornographer and Other Indecent Acts moves out from these days and this understanding.
Preston’s essay collection returns us to the questions that emerged during the Gay Renaissance, the oft-termed gay golden era of the 1970s, and the years of plaque and caution that followed. We are now in the early 21st century. How did we get here and what now for gay erotic writing? We got to this point because some–many–of us continued to live, which is a pragmatic point Preston would have been mindful of. Preston’s essays help an author, who will write gay content, gain clarity on these questions. For me, Preston’s book clarified what is essential and enlightening in gay erotica. It reminded me what is literary about the genre. It also reinforced why Preston is my hero, and it reminded me why I began writing in the first place. Jump starting things after time away from the fiction keyboard, I found myself wholly recalibrated by Preston’s essays.
I started with the beginning, so this post will focus on the book’s first chapter, which is The Jon Pearson Perry Lecture Preston gave at Harvard University on April 15, 1993. In this lecture, Preston speaks of the paralysis that overcame him when he found out he was HIV positive. Following his diagnosis, Preston admits he stopped writing: “I had stopped writing for quite a while, unable to focus energy on anything so intensive as creating while I was taken up with the idea of staying alive–even the question of whether not I wanted to” (3). One must remember, these were the days before AZT and cocktail therapies.
Lucky for us, Preston did write again. He would go on to produce important titles in gay writing, including Mr. Benson, Franny, the Queen of Provincetown, Hot Living: Erotic Tales of Safer Sex, Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS–just to name a few titles.
Preston then discusses the conventional authorial artist’s dilemma: writing for art versus writing for an audience. For some reason, the usual porn excuse of “being young and needing the money” does not work for (gay) erotic authors. There continues to be a strong bias against erotic writing in the face of the Western preference for viewing authors and writing as nearly creative godly acts. The taint of moral aestheticism continues to obfuscate sexual aestheticism in this regard.
Preston was a visionary, and he saw well ahead of his time: “pornography had power, that was something that I enjoyed writing and that readers wanted to have given to them” (13). Preston saw this as a fact within his own time, and he saw this fact as it informed gay liberation: “I think that explicit erotic material in those days, in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, was especially important to gay men because we were all in open rebellion over the way our sexuality had been repressed” (13).
This reminds me of how I have always perceived gay literature as being akin to sub-cultural DNA–something that binds a people. If we think about the days when erotic pages passed from hand to hand and the era of the gay pulps, this was at least true at some point. This also reminds me of the process toward liberation that one finds within all the American minority groups as they quest for something like liberty–the process of finding self in history, to locate self in the present, for the purpose of constructing self in the future. Here, perhaps, Elaine Showalter’s coinage of the term gynocriticism best samples and explicates the social imperative behind the pursuit of the authorial pen as it has been used in the civil rights struggles of the 20th century and as it might be used in the present.
Preston reminds me of the imperative I feel when writing the gay erotic word and why I am so committed to writing fiction through the lens of sexual realism: “The real power of the erotic literature that was being developed came from the fact that we, the authors, were participant/observers in the sexual life that was developing” (14). In short, Preston points out “we were doing what we were writing about” (14). Here, Preston touches what is essential in erotica, specifically GLBT erotica.
This comes down to the consideration of authority and authenticity. Otherwise, it’s rather like hearing marriage advice from a priest or a safe sex talk from a nun. What Preston touches here is what fuels vital erotic writing, for it means there is the experience of skin behind the words. In the case of gay erotica, it means there’s pen(is). Reading this lecture, I realized this is a central point that defines the difference between pornography and erotica for me, where the latter is art and the former is something else.
Preston continues by recalling an interesting observation about pornography from his friend Anne Rice. Rice commented that “pornography wasn’t a place where one lived, it was a place where one visited” (16). Rice’s quote reminds me of a resonant line from the TV series Queer as Folk (US Version) when the character Lindsay explains the ephemeral nature of her hetero-slip when she cheated on her lesbian lover by having sex with a man: “My house has many rooms. I occupy but a few. The rest go unvisited” (S4: E11, 2004).
The essential nature Preston sees in erotica are the rooms we must inhabit–not the ones we leave untended, the ones we leave perhaps for bourgeoisie show. This kind of writing is pure bedchamber with no parlor about it. Rice might be correct when it comes to porn, but her formation feels limited for the consideration of erotica as a literary genre much less practice, which as Preston reminds us is more essential than not. Rice’s formation feels more like an observation on the occasional rather than the essential.
Perhaps this potential of the erotic word is best sampled through Hot Living: Erotic Tales of Safer Sex (1985), a collection of gay erotica which Preston edited. Of this collection, Preston asserts in this lecture: “If [gay erotic authors] had worked to codify the sexual expression that we and others of our generation had experienced, it seemed only logical that we could also alter the code to show the ways that safe sex could be satisfying and hot” (18). This is essential; this is erotica as a literary practice.
There is a difference in this between object and subject, meaning the difference between what others think and what you think yourself. On the point of the difference between erotica and pornography, I am most concerned with the latter. For, yes, I agree, when it comes to conservative fundamental forces, there is no nuance–it is all considered pornography. However, many to most of these people are hypocrites, and their evaluation of anything is not my care. Instead, with this point, I am concerned with the writer’s consciousness in taking up the erotic pen.
What Preston termed pornography might be better understood today as erotica, for while both pornography and erotica can be entertaining, the first is purely prurient where the second is enlightening and essential. This might be understood as the difference between the consumer and critical consumption of narratives, and within this difference, one might frame an erotic ethos. This is certainly something Preston tackles in his various discussions, and I look forward to tracing his thoughts on this topic.
This was my take away from Preston’s Harvard lecture, and its content felt as needfully important to me today as it was then. I recommend reading it for yourself.
As I move forward, I want to reflect more on the how and why behind my writing. I figured I would begin by reading and responding to John Preston’s collection of essays, titled My Life As a Pornographer & Other Indecent Acts. It is currently out of print, but you can access used copies via Amazon:
Preston was an amazingly talented and prolific writer. Preston trail blazed a path for erotic words can do and be in an era when gay erotic words mattered. Look for my reflections on this collection of Preston’s essays over 2013. I am looking forward to this opportunity to reflect on my writing. Meanwhile, you can learn more about Preston through this essay about him at GLBTQ.com.
I am pleased to report my story Tricking at Triangle had been picked up for publication. It will be published in the forthcoming anthology Pay for Play, which is being edited by R. Talent. I am very happy to report it will be published by Bold Strokes Books. Look for it to come out sometime in 2013–more details to come. Meanwhile, check out Bold Strokes Books, which offers a diverse collection of LesbianGayBiTransQueer general and genre fiction.
I am not a fan of writing like others. Truth be told, I rarely read the work of others outside of proper literature. Being a real gay guy, I am given more to Romantic era ideas of originality than traditional literary forms. However, the rhetorical device of imitatio kinda thickens my pen(is). Especially given the Dionysian origin of this device, I find it particularly productive for gay erotica. In time, I will further flesh out the larger piece, but here’s my riff on Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from the final chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses:
“I was a visitor to his body, yes, when I put the poppers in my nose like the pre-plague boys used or shall I wear a red condom, yes, and how he kissed me through his toes, and I thought, well as well him as another, and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again, yes, and, then he asked me would I, yes, to say yes, my next fuck, and first I put my arms around him, yes, and drew him under me, so he could feel my cock all wet, yes, and his hole was throbbing like mad, and, yes, I said yes, I will, Yes.”
Here’s the original:
“I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. “
Decker is the guest author at Coffee and Porn. His story Tonight, I Want to be Gay is now posted. It’s a story about being gay in a college town and what happens when town and gown intersect on Gay Street. Read @ Tonight, I Want to be Gay.
Well, it’s more like toward a statement on sexual realism. This post introduces a new page on Deckerotica: Toward Sexual Realism: The Night William Dean Howells Kissed Me.
This page will develop over time, and its goal will be to offer my thoughts about gay erotica and why I write it. You can also check out other thoughts about sex writing from Jeffrey Essmann.
