Customer Reviews

Titanic: Forbidden Stories Hollywood Forgot and Other Gay Canon Stories of Gay History, Queer Culture, Leather, Bearotica, and Gay Studies, with an Erotic Screenplay

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"Love And Slumming." Okay, that about wraps this one up. Or how's about: "Now I know why handguns should be outlawed."

This is the fourth collection of Jack Fritscher's short stories, collected from three decades of sensual erotica. But perhaps this time, more than in any other of the collections, "Titanic" displays his razor sharp wit. The temptation to just list line after memorable line in this batch of stories is tough to resist.

Tied loosely together by a Hollywood concept, "Titanic" is also something else that many never expect from a collection of Fritscher's magazine work. There is very little leathersex involved here. Plenty of man on man horseplay, more than a few uncircumcised folks (the book could just as easily been subtitled Memories Of Headcheese) and lots of hypermasculine images, but the ropes and the dungeons are pretty much kept locked in the projection booth. That doesn't make the pieces any less wild, in fact, it enhances the craziness of a story like "CBGB 1977" and reminds you that the 70's in New York weren't all boogie nights at Studio 54.

Yes, the sex is fast and dirty, and often, funny. Funny in a way that suggests whimsy, which is pretty much a lost art in American humor, where a fart joke is easier to insert than a set up for a pattern of good belly laughs. To have a starlet so shamelessly exploit her he-she sexiness (in "Aqua-Nymph") will make many squirm in the fact that they're becoming more than a little female icon worshipping suckler, all while looking for Fritscher's usual cask of rough players. Think Bette Davis. Or even Cher. Not leather. Glitter. ...

OKAY! You want the nasty? Read "Buck's Bunkhouse Discipline: The Screenplay." (You thought no-one concerned themselves about porn film plotting!) "Three Bears In A Tub," which attempts to answer the question of how much sex can you fit into a single sentence. It's a gasping run-on of he-men in the wild for reel men in the big screen world. There's not a story here among "Titanic's" dozen that won't leave you with a 16cc smile. I'll indulge myself with one more Jack Fritscher quote to close this review: "Most people prefer masculine men...masculine in the best sense, not macho in the worst."

It never occurred to me that gay people went down on the Titanic. But of course they did. Think of how gay an airplane or cruise ship is today. Why is the Titanic always considered a straight experience? This book makes the probable seem very real. Also the other stories in the collection are good--particularly the camp-like "I Married an Aquanymph" and the butch story of gaining muscular weight in the hot "Buzz Spaulding's Training Academy." The Hollywood theme keeps going in the porno screenplay of an actual video, "Buck's Bunkhouse." Also, I liked the dozen photographs in the book--for nights when I don't want to read as much as "look."

I was glad to search "disaster" and find this book, because the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center made me wonder about the human interest stories of all the lesbigay people in the Twin Towers. Then I read that it took 3.5 hours for the Titanic to sink and only 2.5 hours for the Twin Towers to collapse. Which all brought me to this book which tells the gay stories from Titanic. Not only informative, but imaginative and probably true, and certainly erotic, particularly the scenes with the sexy Stoker below decks. The story does not trivialize disaster, but rather makes you think about what being gay and being inside a tragedy is like. AIDS, of course, is a parallel subtext symbolically present in the Titanic sinking, just as HIV scares for gay people make the anthrax scares a bit simple by comparison. (At least for now.) I recommend this book particularly at this time that everyone is watching disaster on TV and maybe wants to read some escapist fiction around disaster--where some survive. Timely and hot.

Be assured this tale of gay victims and gay survivors is historically accurate in its details of Titanic culture on board in all classes, and in its details of the sinking and rescue.

This novel is reviewed with praise at several Titanic websites for both its accuracy as well as for its rather daring angle in being the first book to deal with gay men on Titanic as passengers, pursers, and stokers.

This story, which is a QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT READER, is a metaphor of what gay people must do to save themselves in a time of Aids and fundamentalist politics.

As such, it is true to the legend of Titanic which has always been about progress and how ALL OF US, STRAIGHT AND GAY, MUST SAVE OURSELVES IN A TIME OF TERROR that changes everything.

The tone of the book is romantic and will be culturally challenging in a good way to those readers who have never thought about all the gay people who served on Titanic. This is their FORBIDDEN STORY that till now they were NOT ALLOWED TO TELL.

It's a charming hoot to read how MOLLY BROWN interacts with the gay men on board! And to read how Molly, handing out her ballgowns, teaches "survival at all costs."

Fritscher is also the author of the nonfiction books, "Popular Witchcraft: Straight from the Witch's Mouth" and "Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera."

"Titanic" is recommended for those readers open to cross-cultural experiences. Actually, Fritscher's "Titanic," despite the ending, has a fun, musical-comedy feel appropriate to the way the passengers felt as the celebrated ship set sail.

Enjoyed the read(so did my seat mate as I flew to NY).
Hot and very creative man to man action..a real fantasy come to life in the pages. The scenes on the Titanic with the hunky engine crew is amazing. A bit of romance and nostalgia as well.

Twelve short stories or other "items"--all of a gay male pornographic nature--which apparently appeared previously in hard-core magazines. Some of the writing strives to be "arty" but that doesn't change things; this is just a collection of smut and not all that good.

I was hoping for a compilation of smart and clever romantic stories with erotic overtones. But this is just collection of written porn. There's a place for porn, of course, but I'd rather read real stories about real people -- in love or in lust -- than outrageous fantasies of improbably perfect people having improbably perfect sex.

Not something I'm going to put on my coffee table.