Frat Boys and cowboys are only two of the kinds of boys, boyz or boiz ready to disport for your erotic entertainment in this month's book duo.

Hot ... Off the Press: Erotica in Print
by marq

Games Frat Boys Play
By Todd Gregory
Kensington Book, $14.95, trade pap.
(save $2.00 by using the link below)

Imagine you are (1) a genius, (2) unspeakably rich and (3) universally desirable. That pretty much sums up Jordan "Jordy" Valentine, the protagonist of Games Frat Boys Play. Even his name is some kind of wet dream. Jordy's is an ugly duckling story in which not only does his exterior undergo a glorious transformation, so does his inner self.

At 18, Jordy has just graduated from the exclusive boarding school in Switzerland he has attended since 5th grade. Before he goes to Harvard, however, he wants to spend a year or two being a "'normal' student at a 'normal' university." That would be CSU-Polk. His parents, a sort-of Bill and Melinda Gates couple, object, but they humor him by renting and decorating for him an upscale apartment next door to an equally fabulous gay couple, Blair and Jeff (first introduced in the author's Every Frat Boy Wants It).

Blair and Jeff are alums of Beta Kappa fraternity, the only frat house on campus that welcomes the queer (as long as they are not poor and ugly). Although Jordy is a virgin — with all the promise for the reader inherent in that status — when he pledges Beta Kappa, he knows he is gay, and he knows he is in love with brother Chad. Frat brother, not religious brother or sibling. Chad, however, is not what he seems. In form and visage like Apollo, Chad could mentor Iago in how to exploit and manipulate people. Despite numerous warnings, Jordy is determined to bed and wed him.

The novel unfolds largely in flashback, opening with Jordy being questioned by the police regarding Chad's fall from an upper-story window at the frat house. The only person in the room at the time was Jordy, who quickly left the scene. According to the frat brothers who were there to see or hear the thud, Jordy must have pushed Chad. The back-story takes up most of the rest of the novel, as Jordy tells all to Detective Joe Palladino.

Games Frat Boys Play is a delicious page-turner, in which art mirrors porn more than it mirrors life. The frat boys (the author doesn't waste time on the straight ones) are mostly shallow, horny, godlike and driven by hormones. Chi Chi LaRue could simply walk into the Beta Kappa frat house and turn on the camera. Character takes a distant back seat to drama and revenge, with a few swooning, romantic interludes and a couple of hot sex scenes. It's the perfect book to read on a plane or anywhere else you need a pleasant diversion for passing the time.

Beautiful Boys
Edited by Richard Labonté
Cleis Press, $14.95, trade pap.
(save $2.00 by using the link below)

There is a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in which the heroine tires of her suitor's "honorable intentions and honorable mentions" until she must take her gallant bull by his horns, bluntly stating "Let's lie down somewheres baby."

Reading the 14 stories collected in Beautiful Boys, you might get the same itch felt by Ferlinghetti's heroine. It seemed that editor Richard LaBonté had the Miller Test in mind when he selected the volume's content, and he made a concerted effort to balance the appeal to prurient interest inherent in gay erotica with serious literary and artistic value.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Heaven knows we've all read a lot of bad porn that could really have benefited from some author artistry, the ability to limn a character, or an image that was incandescent for its prose as well as for its sexual heat. But the subtitle of this collection is "Gay Erotic Stories," which led me to expect a bit more grunting and drooling.

The individual stories offer both diversity and originality, while at the same time taking a lot of latitude in how they define beauty. A chance meeting, leading to nothing more than a knowing nod, between a gay man and a straight man who once had conflagrational sex 20 years ago is one example. It's a concept that might well be expanded into a larger story.

There's romance, some BDSM, a tale based on nothing more than a night of cheek-to-cheek dancing, and a brave story that begins when the two main characters are 9 and 14. A long term three-way relationship takes center stage in "Bookended by Beauty" and a different kind of three-way relationship, in which one partner has a secret lover who knows he's the odd man out but loves the circumstances, in "Hyacinthus in Bloom." There's even an old-West cowboy tale, "Palomino," which asks whether murderous bank robbers in love can escape their past and find love.

That said, approach Beautiful Boys with interest and curiosity, prepared for interesting reading and good writing but not a lot of one-handedness.

June 2011