Best of
Gay

1984

The Alexander Trilogy


Mary Renault - 1984
    Now published for the first time in one volume.In Fire From Heaven a young Alexander unravels the mysteries of a violent adult world and discovers the divinity deep within him. Later, as he conquers ever eastwards, the love between him and Bagoas is immortalised in The Persian Boy. Then, as death comes to Alexander in Funeral Games, the human vultures gather round.

Urban Aboriginals: A Celebration of Leathersexuality


Geoff Mains - 1984
    Through intimate forms of encounter, using such tools as pain-pleasure, bondage, and role-play, leather can bring a shift of conciousness and a new vision of the self. This innovative book pioneered in sensitively exploring and celebrating leathersexuality. As relevant today as when it was written 20 years ago, Urban Aboriginals is an intimate view of the gay male leather community. Within its pages, author Geoff Mains explores the spritual, sexual, emotional, cultural and physiological aspects that make this "scene" one of the most prominent yet misunderstood subcultures in our society. Geoff Mains was a sweet, intelligent, articulate, and wonderful man who cared passionately about the leather community. He wanted to make sure that its accomplishments would be remembered and its wild beauty understood. Urban Aboriginals resulted from his love and is an enduring part of his legacy. It is a unique cultural study, and a priceless document of a now vanished time. --Gayle Rubin, Ph.D., author and anthropologist I met Geoff Mains in the early 1980s. We shared a common vision: fusion of tribal subcultures "on a journey marked by fetish and mana, shaman, ritual and trance". Urban Aboriginals was way ahead of its time for clearly defining a significant transformation in Western Culture. I feel Geoff would have enjoyed seeing his blueprint for ecstatic exploration live on and blossom even further in the still Apollonian world of the 21st Century. --Fakir Musafar, Father of the Modern Primitive Movement In Urban Aboriginals, Geoff Mains pioneered our understanding of the connections between the neurochemistry of pleasure seeking and radical sexuality. But the book is more..... .so much more. Its stories and vignettes take us personally into the experience of different old guard "scenes" with intimacy, intensity, range and depth not found anywhere else. Simply required reading. --Guy Baldwin, M.S., author and psychotherapist Urban Aboriginals ranks high on the list of books that belong in any library of kinky writing. Geoff's contribution to our history, our community, and our understanding of ourselves has withstood the test of time. This book, important -- classic, and a must-read -- is one that makes a pre-eminent contribution to each and every one of us. Urban Aboriginals was the first works to teach me the meaning of real SM, a lesson it holds for all who will read it. --Jack Rinella, author

I Once Had a Master


John Preston - 1984
    In books such as the S/M classic Mr. Benson, Preston explored power exchange in all its battered beauty. The sex stories in I Once Had a Master combine a hard-core sensibility with rare psychological insight.In "Authenticity," a top turns down two fawning bottoms in full leather regalia in favor of the sweet-faced novice who offers genuine surrender. In "Pedro," a college boy has a summer affair with a truck driver and finds himself flirting with other men just to provoke his lover’s rage. The lonely bottom in "Interludes" develops his body to perfection, then seeks out the Daddy who will cherish this gift.

Manners from Heaven: A Divine Guide to Good Behaviour


Quentin Crisp - 1984
    

Apples and Pears and Other Stories


Guy Davenport - 1984
    

The Butch Manual


Clark Henley - 1984
    

The Christopher Street Reader


Michael Denneny - 1984
    Book by

Dear Popsy: Collected Postcards of a Private Schoolboy to His Father


Eric Bishop-Potter - 1984
    Welcome to St Cloud’s, an exclusive public school where young Basil Leaf is sent to continue his education. Through a series of postcards written by Basil to his long-suffering father, the eponymous Popsy, we learn of the bizarre goings-on at this select place of learning - and we meet some of Basil's decidedly decadent chums: Gemini Tarqquogan, who paints his nails scarlet and wears frocks and feathers; Courtney Durham, who runs up curtains on his sewing machine; Rory O'Brien, St Cloud's rugger coach and Courtney Durham's close companion (too close a companion, some might think); Hugo Bletchworth, who is keen on leatherwear and flogging; Father Absolute, Basil’s gin-swilling Father Confessor ("such a wheeze and as common as muck"). Then there are Basil’s camp followers, so to speak, one of whom is Sir Geoffrey Grassington, a local magistrate and the proprietor of a palace of pleasure, wherein Basil and his chums bring comfort to wealthy gentlemen of unusual tastes, until the men from MI5 move in...

Homosexuality in Greek Myth


Bernard Sergent - 1984
    

Leather Blues : A Novel


Jack Fritscher - 1984
    Extraordinary use of dialog makes for strong character development. Story arcs arouse interest and build dramatic intensity. Genet-like literary merit drives relationship story beyond testosterone. Psycholology addresses the nature of manhood rituals at the end of the Millenium. You don't actually have to be intro rough sex yourself to enjoy this exquisitely crafted novel of initiation into bikes, leather, S&M, and man-to-man sex that pulls no punches when Denny Sargent (18) begins the rites of passage all men must courageously endure to seal their special bonding. Drummer, the leather reader's bible: "Fritscher's writing works spectacularly". The Advocate: "Jack Fritscher writes wonderful books". In groups in LA, NY, & SF, Leather Blues is required reading for men and women experiencing, after their First Coming Out into sex, their Second Coming Out into leather lite and Sensual/Mutual (sm) pleasures This is one Bedtime Story to keep under your bed, because the text does what erotica is supposed to do This legendary story has been serialized in Drummer, Man2Man, and Power Play magazines. Original cover drawing by famous NY artist, REX.

Greek Ways


Phil Andros - 1984
    All goes well -- until the police send in an undercover cop who turns out to be Phil's treacherous one-time lover.

A Bunch of Keys: Selected Poems


Mutsuo Takahashi - 1984
    

Facing It: A Novel of AIDS


Paul Reed - 1984
    

The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop


David P. McWhirter - 1984
    The Male Couple - How Relationships Develop [Hardcover]

Forever After (JH Press gay play script series)


Doric Wilson - 1984
    

Parisian Lives


Samuel M. Steward - 1984
    Nostalgic yet psychologically acute, 'Parisian Lives' chronicles the strange interconnections between Sir Arthur Lyly's career as a painter and his increasingly dangerous and desperate loves- for a Chicago gangster, a disturbed British sailor, a young Parisian tough, and a Spanish peasant boy.

Lovers in the Present Afternoon


Kathleen Fleming - 1984
    Romantic analysis of the beginnings of a relationship, overshadowed by the incest-scarred past of one woman.

Juice: True Homosexual Experiences from S.T.H. writers


Boyd McDonald - 1984
    

Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility


Michael Bronski - 1984
    Culture Clash explores the dynamics of gay liberation and homophobia, of change and backlash, and reveals the radicalism of the challenge that gay men and lesbians, as cultural adventurers, have offered to American society.