Even More Vintage Gay Pulp! Gay Erotica from the 50's, 60's and 70's.

Image a world before internet porn; terrifying isn’t it? Well back in the 1950’s, when it was still illegal to be gay, cheap paperback erotica was the only game in town. Gay pulp was sold alongside other pulp fiction paperbacks that dealt with equally taboo subjects such prostitution, interracial romances, lesbianism and rape. The lurid titles and titillating illustrations were designed to catch the attention of closet cases and openly gay men alike.
 
The first pulp paperback to deal openly with homosexuality was 1952’s Men into Beast by George Viereck.  This nonfiction account of Viereck’s imprisonment deals the indignities that men suffer while in prison and of course details man to man prison sex and male rape. Just imagine how erotic this books cover must have seemed to a gay man in the early 1950’s! 

 

By 1964 literary novels with erotic content such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Portnoy’s Complaint had battled it out with the U.S censorship laws and won. The number of American gay erotic paperbacks soared from 30 in 1965 to over a 100 in 1966! The new paperbacks were explicitly pornographic and sold like crazy so small publishing companies sprang up to deal with the demand. 

 In the late 1970’s and into the 80’s, the gay pulp market was gradually disappeared, giving way to gay porn magazines and eventually gay porn videos. 

We can laugh at how campy these covers look today, but imagine the nerve it took to ask the guy at the news stand for one of these obviously gay paperbacks. In the 50's and 60's you could lose your job and even end up in jail just for being gay; buying these cheesy erotic novels took a lot of nerve! Next time you're on Xtube, take a second to thank the generation of gay men that fought so hard for your right to gay erotica! 

Gay pulp fiction is highly collectable these days with some titles selling for more than $40 or $50 on Ebay. Thrift stores such as Out of the Closet are a great place to find these old gems for a fraction of that price.

Check this great online archive Gay Pulp Erotic: http://www.gayontherange.com

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