Book 685: A Gay Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – Bert Shrader

This has been sitting on my shelf for almost three years ever since I read the Rolling Stones article “How One Publisher is Rescuing 1970s Gay Porn Paperbacks”. I finally got around to this as I was looking at the shorter books already on my shelves. And after the emotional drain that was Ethan Frome I thought I should try and get a little further away and a smutty gay porn novel from the 1960s checked all the boxes plus some.

Let’s just say, not a lot has changed in erotica novels. I mean sure the large portion of MM romance/erotica novels are now written by women, but the few that I know for a fact were written by men are pretty damn similar to this one. The big things that have changed is that in general the toxic masculinity and hetero-toxicity in general seem to have been tone down in the more recent books and there are some overt racist scenes and comments sprinkled throughout the novel that were horrible.

The premise of this book is that Travis rents an entire pueblo in Mexico to turn into an erotic LARP of an early Greek Olympics including the orgiastic bacchanalia and festivals. All the athletes are flown in prostitutes/rent boys/hustlers/gigolos/whatever you want to call them, all the men who stay in the town to help out are “open to offers”, and the guests are generally wealthy gay men from around the US. I don’t have to say where the story goes because this is a porn novel, use your imagination.

The toxic masculinity and hetero-toxicity came across through Travis, the protagonist and brains behind the entire to-do. A lot of this comes from his privilege in that he has the ability to pass as heterosexual and the money to pay for what he wants when he wants it, and there’s a very poignant comment by his friend Jim that I didn’t highlight, but more or less it says not all of us have that option. Ultimately, this is a romantic story but neatly within the confines of the toxic masculinity

“Whoa there, boy! I don’t want a queen. What I want is more like what the Greeks had. A man they liked and admired. Someone they could talk to and work with. Camaraderie with another man . . . this marriage stuff you hear about with the gay girlies, hell, that’s just an imitation of a man-woman relationship. I don’t need an imitation. I just happen to enjoy your company more than anyone I’ve ever met and I think you enjoy mine . . . and I intend to screw the living hell out of you until you admit it. So . . . put that on your pipe and smoke it, boss.” (Chapter XIV)

I’d love to say things have gotten better in the gay world, but they really haven’t if you read LGBT news sites. I do feel like a lot of the literature has especially become more open and accepting and diverse, but the reality hasn’t caught up yet.

The racism was by far the worst part of the book and what really dated it. There’s a horrible sex scene between a black man and a white man where the white man demands the black man play act as a slave (and not a BDSM slave). This white man is problematic for other more disgusting and vulgar reasons, and I guess if this were in any other genre you could probably argue that he’s there to represent the worst of society or even as a mirror to show that even in the setting of a 50+ person gay orgy, there are things that are too far. (There’s always an “other” to be declared or dominated over—Thanks, Foucault!.) But in general I felt the book could’ve been just as good without this character and his scenes.

I am interested in checking out some of the others that the 120 Days Books imprint releases because they sound fascinating and Maitland McDonagh really sold them in the foreward:

“There’s no consensus as to exactly when the golden age of gay erotica began and ended, but I favor roughly from 1969 to 1982, when adults-only novels struck a harmonious balance between sexual explicitness and solid narrative. Science-fiction stories unfurled in richly imagined future societies where such burning contemporary issues as racial segregation and the politics of sexual repression play out in topsy-turvy scenarios like that of Larry Townsend’s enormously entertaining 2069 series (1969-1970), where the macho business of deep-space exploration is powered by rum, sodomy and the lash, minus the lash and the rum.” (Foreward)

Recommendation: If this is your thing, it’s worth a read. I found it to be a fascinating time capsule of late 1960s/70s erotica tropes that strangely translates to modern times with the exception of a few scenes and one character. I’d read more of these if I stumble across them, but I doubt I’ll go out of my way to look for them when there are so many new MM romance/erotica novels being released.

Opening Line: “Travis knew he had found the right pueblo the first time he saw it.”

Closing Line: “‘Then—that’s the way I want it,’ Travis answered firmly.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)