I enjoy collecting gay pulp books, and this cover is a classic. And it’s even better when I get to read them. While the front cover is well circulated, the back cover isn’t as known, and it’s quite the synopsis–and when you read it, the book has an ending that is a serious shocker!
Published in 1968, it’s set in the gangster-ish world of the 1920’s. But it’s much more explicit than the gangster world you see in old movies.
While this book has a lot of explicit sex, it is quite literate. Meaning it’s not just sex, but there’s lots of other writing and plot given, which I appreciate more. It even starts with this forward:
The book begins with a Tony, the muscle of a mobster gang in 1926, initiating two young male members by forcing them to be naked and have sex with each other. Quite explicitly. While he’d like to be turned on, he’s frustrated by his own impotence, and sometimes puts guys in very extreme situations… at one point, he ties the two men up naked, attaches a wire to their genitals, and is about to apply electricity, when he’s interrupted by the head guy, Leo. Apparently, in this gang, all the men like to have sex with each other, but this time, Leo also has some mob business to attend to, and he needs Tony to accompany him in picking up a very hot headed young man from Italy, Paulo.
Leo and Tony pick up up from the docks, where the ship captain assures him that Paulo, a fit attractive blonde, has been causing all sorts of trouble, starting fights and having sex with all his crew. Leo takes him back, and forces Paulo to give him a blow job as he drives him to his new home, with Tony pushing down on his head to force him to comply.
Leo has sex with Paulo. But once done, Tony informs Leo one of their bars got raided. While Leo leaves to take care of the new situation, Paulo tries to seduce Tony to no avail. Leo returns to catch them, and laughs and humiliates Tony by mocking his impotence to Paulo. Tony flashes back in his mind to events that likely caused his impotence [trigger warning for the rest of this paragraph–inscent and physical violence]: being verbally and sexually abused by a girl who he screwed in high school… especially when her mother also joined in–where their father/husband came home, outraged, with the girl and mom claiming Tony raped them. The father beats Tony up into unconsciousness, and when he awakes, he’s tied up spread eagled and naked on a bed, with a match placed in his penis slit and then lit.
Back in the present, Tony, Paulo (who now asks to be called Paul) and Leo are all at a speakeasy, which also gets raided. In the mele, Tony and Paul escape together, though Tony unfortunately has to kill a cop to do so. Once they escape, Leo contacts Tony and tells him to lay low and get out of town, as they cops are looking for him about the murder.
While on the road escaping, Paul tries to orally stimulate Tony, but to no avail. They hawk some goods for cash, and stop over at a town and pick up two twink hustlers. Tony, his impotence still showing off as sadism, slaps and beats the two twinks. He orders one of them to tie up the other with belts (aside: interesting seeing some bondage appear!), then for one to fuck the other, and for Paul to fuck him as he watches. Paul also tries to orally stimulate him again, and while Tony does feel a tinge, that’s the extent of it. Despite all this, Paul continues to profess his seemingly sincere love for Tony.
Another aside/observation, but Tony is quite the sexual jerk. I kinda glossed over his sadistic side, but it’s not a positive view of sadism… in addition to non-consensual and out of nowhere slaps and punches to the twink hustlers, when he orders one to fuck the other, they cry out that he’s a virgin, and the other is so large he’ll “tear him apart inside–and Tony doesn’t care. Not to mention that he even holds guns to their head to make them comply. I believe it’s all more supposed to be a reflection of how Tony is a troubled guy himself, but still not great to read.
Final note before finishing the plot–it’s notable to me, after reading a fair amount of these pulp books from this era, that the explicit ages of characters are not mentioned anywhere. I have found, regrettably, that many pulp books from this time will mention sex with underage guys/brothers, which is distressing, awful, and uncomfortable to read–and I just have to imagine that they guys are legal age when I read to even make it through (and just remind myself it was a different time). But in this book, age is not even brought up (as far as I remember, anyway). And just based on how the characters are written–many are described as “young men”, but that’s as explicit as it gets–I’d estimate the youngest characters as their early twenties or so thereabouts. So that’s one refreshing point.
In any case, the sex scene ends with Paul orally working on Tony, and there may be a slight twinge… but that’s as far as it goes. When they try to leave, the cops are around, but a menial worker named Eddie (also young and gay, but not into doing tricks for pay) decides to help them out, and drives them to home far away. On the drive over, they hear on the radio that both Tony and Paulo are wanted men, and should be considered armed and dangerous, with a large cash reward being offered for them.
Eddie get them all settled in, and later he and Paul have sex while Tony falls asleep. Tony awakens and noticed he missed a good time watching, Eddie matter of factly says, “You can’t get yourself hard. What good have you been?”
This instantly enrages Tony, who brutally and repeatedly punches and kicks Eddie as he’s down on the floor. Paul begs him to stop, but guess what? This is the moment Tony feels something stirring, and he feels himself getting hard. He and Paulo finally have sex, with Tony fucking him.
While they screw, Eddie stirs, understandably upset. He seeing them fucking, and also sees the gun Tony put aside. Thinking of the reward money and what Tony did to him, he blows off Tony’s head the moment he orgasms. His bloody head falls on to Paul as Paul gets covered in Tony’s blood, and Eddie says to him, “Sorry kid, but you have to go too,” and empties all the remaining bullets into both them.
And incredibly, that is literally where the book ends. No other resolution or anything. Not unlike another gay pulp book, Go Down, Aaron, which had similar shocking and violent ending. While I’m no expert, this does not seem to be the norm… most other books I’ve read stay more light, if they even have much of a plot at all. That said, surprises like this are what keep me interested in reading more books like this, from this time period.
