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With the repeal of censorship laws in the 1960s, magazines such as Mandate, Honcho, and Blueboy began to appear on newsstands in the 1970s, displaying photos of full frontal male nudity (followed by Advocate Men, Torso, Inches, et al. in the 1980s). Taking their cue from Playboy, these magazines included articles of interest to the growing out Gay community, reviews, perhaps a celebrity interview or two, and erotic fiction, often illustrated by non-photographic art. French Quarter Nights & Other Stories by JR collects ten such stories from the 1980s, with an introduction by Matthew Rettenmund and an afterword by the author. (Although there is no indication of where/when these stories were first published–an omission I find regrettable–the presence of condoms, as well as conversations between the characters about safe sex, presume a mid-to-late 1980s publication date at the earliest.)
The danger of a volume of erotic fiction (especially a collection by a single author, or of an anthology organized around a theme) is that after reading a few of the stories, they often become indistinct and meld into one another. JR alludes to this in his afterword, when he discusses the “formula” he expected from a well-written porn story: a clear setting, characters, and circumstances; a minor or near-sex scene at the beginning to “hook” the reader; and finally the climax should be obvious and presented in detail. Fortunately, the scenarios are varied enough that JR is able to avoid this pitfall; he can even write an arousing story that doesn’t end in intercourse (“Punk Rock Cock” is essentially about a single blow job). Moreover, many of his stories have a cinematic quality to them, relaying several sex scenes, instead of just describing a single encounter.
Of especial interest in this volume are the stories that depict 1980s Gay nightlife in New Orleans (the title story), Fire Island (“Fire Island Threesome”), and two of the three set in New York City (“Kerouac at the Everard,” and “The Anvil”). “The Anvil” reads almost like an entry in an oral history, as does the title story; “Kerouac at the Everard” does even better, where the contemporary protagonist overlays his bathhouse encounter with a fantasy of Kerouac at the same bathhouse nearly thirty years earlier. Like the best of historical fiction, JR makes me want to learn more about these (now mostly closed) places of 1980s Gay nightlife (one does not expect porn to arouse scholarly as well as carnal interest, but there you go.)
As interesting as the stories are, of equal value are the introduction and afterword. The former, titled “The Rise and Fall of Gay Porn Magazines,” provides a context for the milieu of JR’s stories, and explains what led to its eventual demise (the advent of home video in the 1980s, and later, the Internet); most of these magazines would cease publication by 2009. The latter, “Life in a Porn Magazine Office,” offers a dishy, behind-the-scenes look at the office of Mavety Media, where JR worked as an Associate Editor for Mandate and other erotic magazines (both Gay and otherwise) for twelve years. Both of these additions increase the historical value of the original volume.
Originally published in 1996 by Masquerade Books, French Quarter Nights is the second title to be reissued by The Library of Homosexual Congress imprint of Rebel Satori Press. Curated by Tom Cardamone and Sven Davisson, this imprint is devoted to rescuing forgotten queer classics from obscurity, specifically “preserving and promoting provocative works” of Gay literature, focussing in particular on the AIDS crisis and political action. (As an aside, I also highly recommend the first such reissue, Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski, edited by Philip Clark and Michael Bronski.) However one may feel about a volume of Gay erotica initially published in stroke mags from the 1980s, it cannot be denied that it is provocative, and furthermore preserves a snapshot of a (nearly) forgotten era.
Reviewed by Keith John Glaeske
Out in Print: Queer Book Reviews 