A Gay Man Watches Straight Porn #1: ‘Every Inch a Lady’

I had a dream about Seka the other night. I was helping her dye her hair — on her head, thank you. We were streaking her platinum locks green and blue. And yes, I am gay.

The reason a porn queen from the 1970s and ’80s was appearing in my dreams at all, even in a non-sexual context, can be attributable to my new favorite podcast, The Rialto Report, in which hosts Ashley West and April Hall interview performers and directors of adult films in the 1970s and ’80s in a friendly, non-judgmental way that shows that their subjects are more than the sum of their private parts. If you ever wished This American Life devoted an episode to the life story of Pat Barrington or wondered what a Fresh Air interview with Georgina Spelvin might sound like, the Rialto Report’s podcast is for you.

But in listening to all these Rialto Report podcasts, I had a renewed interest in watching some classic straight porn. (The Rialto Report has interviewed a few veterans of gay adult film, including Boys in the Sand director Wakefield Poole and gay-for-pay icon Jeff Stryker, but the site largely focuses on straight smut. I imagine part of the reason for this is so few Golden Age gay porn stars are still alive.) Though I’ve seen a few straight classics like Deep Throat and Talk Dirty to Me, the bulk of my hardcore porn consumption has been of the all-male variety. I’ve come to find current porn videos either boring or gross, however, so why not take a break from trying to rub one out to some present day man-on-man action and instead watch some fuck films that actually played in theaters, enjoying them solely on an aesthetic level?

Though I’d been dreaming of Seka, I by-passed one of her titles in favor of the 1975 movie EVERY INCH A LADY. It starred Harry Reems (the mustache might be off-putting to some, but there's no denying he had a hot body), featured another Rialto Report podcast subject, Andrea True, but, most importantly, it was streaming for free.

It was a fortuitous choice, for although Every Inch a Lady is a straight porn movie, it has a decidedly gay sensibility.

The lady in question is Crystal Laverne (Darby Lloyd Rains, giving a performance worthy of John Waters stock player Mary Vivian Pearce), the co-owner and proprietress of Deviations, Inc., a successful escort service catering to almost all sexual tastes, save scat. Crystal has the mannerisms befitting her name, which is to say she’s a female drag queen. When we meet her, standing in the living room of her penthouse apartment, she’s decked out in a red gown and matching feather boa, supervising the alteration of one of her call boy’s jackets (for which the young hustler has stripped down to his skivvies, as one does), signing real estate contracts and imploring her lesbian assistant Edna (a bewigged Andrea True) to answer the constantly-ringing phone. She’s just so goddamned busy—but not too busy to audition Margie, a blonde bubblehead played by Kim Pope. I thought for sure this would be the obligatory girl-girl scene, but no, Crystal summons the call boy getting his jacket altered, Tony (David Savage), to do the honors. Crystal spies on them through a peephole cut into wall of the neighboring room, occasionally offering Edna a peak (“A very handsome female. I wouldn’t mind being in Tony’s place myself.”) and picking up a microphone to broadcast her pointers to the professional fuckers (“OK, Margie, a little more hip action”).

Crystal even takes time out from supervising her potential new hire’s sexual prowess to draft up some new rules. “Just last night one of our best girls came over here and told me her client had shit on her head—and only gave her $50 extra,” recounts a horrified Crystal. “So, defecation is out!”

“No shit,” says Edna, making a note of the new rule.

Business casual.

Once Margie’s audition is out of the way, Crystal slips into something more comfortable: a black lace peignoir and nothing else. Given Crystal’s line of work and the fact that this is a porn movie, one wonders why she bothered with that red gown and boa, though I appreciated the filmmakers’ willingness to keep things covered up for a while, as the tease virtually non-existent in today’s smut. Anyway, with her pussy free to breath, Crystal takes a moment to relax with Edna. Once again, I was anticipating some girl-on-girl action as the set up was so obvious, and once again Lady subverted my expectations as no muff diving ensues. (Spoiler alert: there’s no girl-on-girl action in this movie.) Rather, Crystal chooses this moment to tell Edna of her humble beginnings, sending us into a flashback that makes up good two-thirds of the movie’s runtime.

Come-fuck-me platforms.

Before becoming a successful madam, Crystal was but a lowly streetwalker, struggling to make ends meet but still able to rock an amazing pair of glittery red platform shoes. After another, um, dry day of trawling for tricks, she comes home to her apartment, only to find Chino (Harry Reems) sacked out at her door. She invites him inside, as one does when finding a stranger at her doorstep, and they immediately start getting nasty. But just before Chino finishes Crystal off, he demands $20. “What?” Crystal exclaims. “I was going to get $15 from you!” (That money wasn’t discussed up front gives us insight into why Crystal wasn’t finding success as a streetwalker.) The two laugh off the misunderstanding, choosing money shots over actual money.

We learn via voice over that Chino had been a hustler for five years, making his living “from middle-aged women and homosexuals.” The pair decide to open an escort agency, under the guise of offering massages. I find it quaint that this movie treats the concept of massage services being a cover for prostitution as simply unheard of until these two dimwitted prostitutes brainstormed it during their post-coital chat.

Crystal and Chino quickly become business partners as well as lovers (it’s an open relationship, natch). Their first trick is none other than Jamie Gillis, who sits on the sidelines masturbating while Crystal and Chino go at it. Gillis does join the couple on the bed, and for a moment it looks like he’s about to mount Chino. But no, there’s no Gillis-on-Reems action. However, Crystal does insert a string of brown anal beads (Brown? Really?) in Chino’s ass, which Gillis yanks out as Chino comes. Though the beads clearly facilitated a powerful orgasm, Chino —a trade top, evidently — decides to exact revenge by shoving a carrot up Gillis’ butt. By the way, the male butt play appears to be simulated as neither the beads nor the carrot is shown disappearing into the male performers’ assholes.

I Didn’t Know Joan Rivers was in a Porno Movie!

Crystal and Chino’s business quickly grows, necessitating the need for extra staff. Crystal enlists the help of a former cell mate, Lois, to handle an opera buff, played by Mark “10 ½” Stevens, whose dick size is so impressive that its measurement merits a screen credit. This is by far my favorite scene, if only because it exposes the Joan Rivers’ porn past.

Joan Rivers in The Swimmer; not Joan
in Every Inch a Lady.

OK, Lois is NOT played by Joan Rivers (don’t sue me, Melissa); she’s played by Erica Eaton. But considering Eaton is so similar in appearance, possesses a New Yawk rasp that’s almost identical to Rivers’, combined with the knowledge that Rivers considered all offers, you could almost believe that it’s the late comic fellating the somnolent Stevens. (And really, Rivers would’ve done less damage to her career in the mid-’70s appearing in a porno than she did writing and directing Rabbit Test.)

The scene with Eaton and Stevens’ is strictly for laughs, as only a scene featuring a Joan Rivers doppelgänger could be. When Stevens’ fails to respond to Lois’ ministrations, his famed 10 ½ inches never quite reaching seven, he asks her to talk dirty to him. So, Lois reads aloud from a porno novel (“It’s a fucking beee-yoooo-tiful cock!”) while they fuck to Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyrie.”

Less shameful than writing and
directing Rabbit Test.

My second favorite scene in this movie features a performer billed as Dr. Infinity, in the part of Joe Blow. Consider that “character” name foreshadowing. Crystal, now operating out of an office, is about to interview Mr. Blow as a new addition to her stable, but she’s interrupted by a phone call. While Crystal chats on the phone with a disgruntled client (“Well, who could’ve foreseen that? You couldn’t have expected the poor mule to know the old Ferncliff bitch had had a hysterectomy.”), Joe Blow gets impatient. He strips down, hops atop a nearby desk, and demonstrates his special skill: sucking his own dick. He fucks himself with a cucumber as well, but that’s not a special skill, just resourcefulness. Needless to say, he’s hired. Incidentally, Dr. Infinity has a pretty interesting history, including the attempted theft of the Gutenberg Bible from the Harvard Library in 1969.

This brings us back to the penthouse with Crystal and Edna. Crystal’s trip down memory lane is interrupted by a phone call— Crystal is always getting interrupted by phone calls — reminding her of a meeting with a real estate agent to finalize a house purchase for Chino. No sooner has the harried madam rushed out the door than Edna is removing her Velma wig and her clothes. Chino arrives a minute later. Edna’s not a dyke at all (gasp!) but Chino’s lover, the pair plotting to murder Crystal and take over Deviations, Inc. Unbeknownst to them, Crystal, having forgot some paperwork and returned to the penthouse, overhears them in the bedroom. She sees them as well (Oops! Edna forgot about the peephole), and after hearing the couple’s murder plans (Edna also forgot the room is bugged), decides to use that plan to murder them. A surprisingly dark turn of events for what has otherwise been a lighthearted porno romp.

Humor in porn movies is usually crass, juvenile and/or stupid, but Every Inch a Lady is the first straight porn film I’ve seen that can be described a campy. This shouldn’t be a surprise, really; it was directed by gay brothers John and Lem Amero, who directed sexploitation movies in the 1960s before moving on to hardcore movies for gay and straight audiences in the 1970s and 1980s. Even if the sex was for the pleasure of straight men, the movie, with its hammy acting, outrageous dialog, and thrift store drag fashions, not to mention the autofellatio and male anal stimulation, seems to be giving a wink and a nod to gay men. I’d never masturbate to it, but I dug Every Inch a Lady and I plan to hunt down other works by the Amero Bros. (their movie Bacchanale looks trippy). But they’ll have to wait in line. I still owe it to myself to check out one of Seka’s movies. She’s my dream girl, after all.

The Lurid and the Literary

“Out here books are crap,” explains a screenwriter character in Herbert Kastle’s 1968 novel THE MOVIE MAKER. In Hollywood, this character goes on, books are just “words to be boiled down to a plot skeleton and refleshed for the screen. No one reads novels for the movies. They read story, skimming along and noting interesting twists and turns. Bestsellers are bought for their titles more than anything else.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out Kastle got a similar talk when he was working as a screenwriter, one of several of his early writing jobs—including editor and copywriter— before he became a full-time novelist. I also think this statement could be modified to apply to trashy Hollywood novels: no one reads these type of books for the writing; they read them for the sleaze.

The Movie Maker delivers the sleaze, but it’s too well written to be labeled mere trash. In fact, it’s so well written I can imagine Kastle’s agent having to lecture him about the hard truths of writing trashy Hollywood novels.

“Goddammit, Kastle,” his agent would have groaned, “why do you do this to yourself? All we wanted was a look at the sordid goings on in the movie business. Lots of sex, drugs and characters that are fictionalized versions of real stars, you know the drill. I know you know it because you’ve got this Mona Dearn character in this thing—a definite stand-in for Marilyn Monroe, all neurotic and fragile and shit. And giving her some lesbian leanings was brilliant. Man, I was getting hard just thinking of the possibilities, imagining Marilyn-but-not-Marilyn going down on, I dunno, an Ann Margaret stand-in, or maybe a fictional Jayne Mansfield. That would’ve been hilarious!  Sounds hot, though, doesn't it? But no, that was too easy for you. You had to go into her loneliness and insecurity and how her feelings for the movie publicist, Terry Hanford, are never reciprocated. Then the stuff about her painting, how she’s afraid to show her paintings to anyone in case they don’t like them, kind of a metaphor of how she’s afraid to show people her true self. I mean, Jesus Christ, who’s going to get hard thinking of that?

“At least you redeemed yourself with the Lois Lane and Sugar Smart characters,” the agent would continue. “God, what a couple of bitches. That poor egghead writer, Charley Halpert, didn’t know what hit him when he opened his motel room door to those two. You almost feel sorry for the bastard until you remember that it’s his fault for saying yes to a three-way with two teenagers. Serves him right, thinking with the wrong head.

“But maybe you should’ve been thinking with that other head, Kastle, instead of giving us all this insight into Charley Halpert’s inner conflicts—cheating on a wife who doesn’t support his writing ambition, his wanting to prove himself in Hollywood to win her respect but thinking maybe they should just divorce, except he doesn’t want to risk never seeing his son again. Then you involve him with this Cheryl character, the fat secretary—okay, okay, Rubenesque, but as far as today’s readers are concerned a Mae West figure isn’t much better than an Orson Welles figure. If Jacqueline Susann had that character in one of her books, Cheryl would be rejected repeatedly, maybe sexually humiliated when she does get laid. Then she’d spend a good third of the book slimming down until the men who rejected her earlier are begging to take her to bed, and then she rejects them. But I guess imitating a proven moneymaker was too simple for you, wasn’t it Kastle? Cheryl not only has two men hot for her—Charley and that producer, Alan Devon—she’s got that alcoholic, paraplegic husband of hers who seems to only want to stay married to make her life miserable. So, now the reader’s conflicted, wanting to write off Cheryl as a slut but having to wrestle with her relatable emotions. It’s too… too gray.

“Speaking of gray—or just gay—there’s that whole subplot with the schlock horror director, Carl Baiglen, being blackmailed by that young policeman from Baiglen’s hometown in the Midwest. That was good, a clever way for the cop to leverage his way into the movie business, transform himself into Brad Madison. Making him a closet case was a nice touch, too. Who was the real-life inspiration? Hudson? An amalgamation? Fine, you don’t have to tell me. Anyway, the homosexual stuff adds a bit of spice to it, but then you have to humanize him. I mean, people might forgive Baiglen for maybe-accidentally-on-purpose killing his first wife, but expecting readers to sympathize with this homo blackmailer? Worse, have him carrying on with Baiglen’s gay son Andy, and then present a reasonable argument—from Andy’s mother, no less—why Baiglen should not kill Madison? Look, Kastle, times are changing, but expecting people to sympathize for a fag actor is just too much.”

Kastle’s agent would pause here to light a cigarette, because it was the 1960s and everyone smoked. “But here’s my biggest problem,” he’d say, exhaling a pale blue cloud. “It’s your two main characters, Nat Markal and Isa Yee. Nat Markal is the head of Avalon Pictures, right? You’ve got his look right—I pictured a younger Edward G. Robinson—and he’s got the right take-no-shit personality, what people expect from a studio chief. Yet, he’s been faithful to his wife all this time, that it’s a point of pride for him? Christ, if anything could make Harold Robbins laugh, that would. Do you know how many starlets Nat Markal would’ve fucked if he were a Robbins character? At least four, within the first fifty pages. Yes, I know Markal’s staunch fidelity to his wife makes his falling for Isa Yee that much more dramatic, but who cares? And Robbins wouldn’t have Markal risking it all to make this grand epic—what did you title it? The Eternal Joneses?—for the sake of his artistic legacy. No, in a Robbins novel Markal would only make that movie if he thought it would be a huge blockbuster that would make him even richer. Fucking and making money, Kastle. That’s Robbins’ formula for success, without any of these petty concerns for three-dimensional characters. Do you know how many copies of The Adventurers Simon & Schuster sold? I could buy a yacht with that kind of money.

“Isa Yee almost gets this lost ship back on course. The sexy starlet with a dark secret. Dark, get it? C’mon, I’m not being racist, it’s a joke. Seriously, though, I thought Isa was a spitfire, and I can already see her on the paperback cover, a naked Eurasian girl—your word—practically draped over a director’s chair. The way you described her in those early chapters, especially when she strips for Nat Markal in his office, is hot stuff. But you couldn’t just let her be a conniving bitch, and one who does anal, no less. No, you had to make her smart and conflicted, adding in this race stuff. Christ-a-mighty-damn, first gays then race relations. I get it’s the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement, etcetera, etcetera, but people don’t pick up books like this for cultural insight. They just want sex and scandal, with cliché characters that are clearly good or clearly bad. You’re killing me with all this nuance, Kastle.

“No, no, I don’t want you to re-write it,” the agent would sigh, waving his hands dismissively. “It is a good book. I just wanted you to understand you don’t have to work that hard in the future. They can play up the sex and scandal when they market this thing, maybe compare it to Valley of the Dolls and The Exhibitionist, because it does fit in with that market. I just hope we don’t get any backlash when people discover they’re having their viewpoints challenged, or that the people making movies aren’t presented as just shallow vessels motivated solely by sex and greed. Who knows, readers might find it refreshing. But I still think Harold Robbins is going to laugh his ass off when he reads this thing.”

But, seriously, The Movie Maker is well worth your time, blending the lurid with the literary.  I’ve enjoyed the works of Harold Robbins, Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins, but their books are the equivalent of devouring a box of Ho Hos. Kastle’s books are a fattening meal that sticks to the ribs. You can read reviews of his other books here and here, and check out another review of The Movie Maker here.

The Divas’ Whore Complex

On the surface, NUTS and RENT-A-COP couldn’t be more different. One is a courtroom melodrama; the other a craptastic cop movie. One was meant to earn its star awards; the other exists to give its stars jobs. One was directed by Martin Ritt, director of such classics as Hud and Norma Rae; the other directed by Jerry London, director of the TV mini-series Shogun, as well as several episodes of Hogan’s Heroes, The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch. One was based on an acclaimed play written by Tom Topor, who also wrote the screenplay for The Accused; the other has a screenplay co-written by Michael Blodgett, who rocked leopard-print bikini briefs in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

But the movies have some distinct similarities. Both were made in 1987 and star Oscar®-winning gay icons playing hookers with incredibly irritating personalities. These divas are also the least convincing prostitutes in movie history, no mean feat given that Hollywood’s portrayal of sex work seldom represents reality.

Nuts stars Barbra Streisand, which, if you’re a hardcore Streisand fan, as I was in 1987, is pretty much all you need to know to be sold on the film. For those needing more of a plot synopsis, here goes: Claudia Draper (guess who?) is a call girl accused of murdering a john, but the issue isn’t proving her innocence, but rather proving Claudia’s mental fitness to stand trial. Her parents think it’s best that Claudia accept confinement to a mental institution rather than risk going to prison. Claudia wants her day in court, and with the help of her public defender (Richard Dreyfuss), she fights to prove she’s not crazy, she’s just a bitch.

Being a hardcore Streisand fan when this movie was released, I went to see it the weekend it opened, or possibly the weekend after (my early twenties are a bit of a repressed memory). The point is, I didn’t dawdle. And at the time I thought Nuts was excellent, one of the best, if not THE BEST, movies of 1987, and that Barbra should clear a space on her awards shelf for her inevitable Oscar® win. (Ultimately, she’d have to be content with a Golden Globe nomination.)

Though I still consider myself a Streisand fan, I’m well past my blind adoration of her. I re-watched Nuts recently and found it to be… OK. Just OK. Though attempts are made to open it up, it’s quite obviously based on a play, and a very dated one at that. Topor wrote his play in 1979, but the movie adaptation had me thinking of movies from an earlier time: the 1940s. Seriously, remove the profanity and references to overpriced blowjobs and Nuts would’ve been the perfect vehicle for Joan Crawford in 1948. Not only that, 1948 audiences might actually believe Joan as a hooker. Not so for Barbra in 1987.

Nuts wasn’t the first time Streisand was turned out. She played a hooker in the 1970 comedy The Owl and the Pussycat, and did so convincingly. In Pussycat, Streisand happily gets in touch with her trashy side in portraying prostitute/porn actress Doris, and she sells it. Streisand had starred in a string of G-rated musicals prior to being cast in the then R-rated Pussycat, so she was eager to get down and dirty, to show the world that the star of Funny Girl could wear lewd lingerie and drop f-bombs with the best of them.

Sometimes cheaper is better: Barbra in The Owl and the Pussycat
(left) and Barbra in Nuts.

In Nuts, however, Streisand has to Streisand. Claudia is a high-class call girl, not some sleazy ’ho. As shown in flashbacks, Claudia, tastefully and expensively dressed, joins her soon-to-be-murdered john (Leslie Nielsen!) for cocktails and suggestive repartee at a chic Manhattan restaurant before they go back to her place for (off camera) sex. It’s the Second Wife Experience. Claudia may flash her cooch to her attorney and graphically detail her services from the stand, but she’s still a lady, and a well-paid one at that. Which begs the question: Would a woman in her forties, who, though striking, is not conventionally attractive, and who I’m pretty confident would refuse to do anal, really command such a high price that she could afford the large, exquisitely decorated New York apartment she has in Nuts? Only if Barbra herself were turning tricks.

I’m also pretty confident Della, the hooker character Liza Minnelli plays in Rent-A-Cop, wouldn’t do anal, either, though, unlike Barbra’s Claudia, she’s a lot more flippant about her profession.

“Hey, Della, what’s happening?” asks a hotel desk clerk as she enters the lobby, dressed in a beaded red dress with a white fur boa around her neck. (An Amazon reviewer observed that Liza looks like she’s about to perform at the Sands.)

“Well, I don’t know yet,” Della replies. “That depends on if my date wants his mommy, Little Bo Peep or Helga the Bitch Goddess.” That’s right, kids: prostitution is just like playing dress-up!

 Liza-with-a-Z out to get some D.

Though made in 1987, the Burt Reynolds vehicle Rent-A-Cop wasn’t released until January 1988, lasting in theaters just long enough to be panned by critics before slinking off to collect dust on video store shelves. I watched it ironically last year, surprised to find that it wasn’t nearly as godawful as expected. It’s bad, yes, a flatly-directed jumble of clunky comedy, gritty action and straight-up camp, but it’s not unwatchable.

Reynolds, as the disgraced cop Tony “Churchy” Church, hired by Della to protect her from a ruthless killer, gives the performance of a man who’s just beginning to realize his leading man days are coming to a close. Minnelli, breathless and jittery, gives the performance of someone who likes a little coffee with her cocaine. (Minnelli had gone through rehab in 1984, but if any movie would cause a relapse, Rent-A-Cop is that movie.) In Minnelli’s defense, her jangly performance fits the character. She isn’t bad. In fact, I’d go so far as to say Minnelli gives a better performance in this shitty movie than Barbra gives in her Oscar® bait role. But never once did I believe Liza as a woman who is paid for sex.

That said, if I had to choose between hiring either diva for the evening, I’d go with Liza. I’m not really a Liza fan, but she seems like she’d be more pleasant company, or at least less likely to make me cry. And, besides, Liza’s used to dating gay men. 

Simultaneously Timeless and of Its Time

America is sharply divided, one side fighting to change the status quo while the other will stop at nothing to maintain it. Amidst this unrest rise Machiavellian politicians, self-serving pundits and fear-mongering preachers. The country is a powder keg, a single tragic event the match that could light its gasoline-soaked fuse.

No, I’m not about to launch into a right/left-wing screed about our current political climate. This is a review of Burt Hirschfeld’s 1973 novel, THE MASTERS AFFAIR, a political potboiler that’s simultaneously timeless and of its time.

I’m a fairly recent convert to the works of Burt Hirschfeld. I recall his novel Return to Fire Island being prominently displayed on the bestsellers rack at my local K-mart in the 1980s, when I was in high school. Back then I wanted brand name trash, so I by-passed Hirschfeld in favor of Harold Robbins. It wasn’t until I read some reviews of his books on the Glorious Trash blog that I actually sought out any of his work, starting with his 1970 novel Fire Island. I was immediately won over, surprised by just how gifted a writer he was, with a prose style more comparable to Irwin Shaw than Harold Robbins. Though his work does fall under the dismissive label of popular fiction, I could detect the ambitions of a “serious novelist” in Hirschfeld’s writing. But the ambition to be a bestselling novelist was clearly more important (hey, we all gotta pay bills), so he wrote whatever sold. Fire Island was not only a success, but a template, Hirschfeld following it up with a series of soap opera tales set in glamorous locales (Aspen, Acapulco, Key West). He also wrote non-fiction (A State is Born: The Story of Israel, Stagestruck: Your Career in Theatre), TV and movie novelizations (Bonnie & Clyde, The Ewings of Dallas), and, under the name Hugh Barron, trashy tales of Hollywood (The Goddess Game, The Love Thing).

And sometimes he wrote novels of political intrigue, like The Masters Affair.

The book begins with the assassination of W.W. Masters, the head of the secretive Internal Investigation Agency, sort of like the C.I.A. for domestic affairs. Hunting for the shooter, separately and with separate agendas, are by-the-book I.I.A. agent Peter Malone and liberal activist Dan Hellman. For Malone, catching Masters’ killer is personal: Masters was his mentor in the agency, and he was Masters’ devoted acolyte. For Hellman, who aspires to be the next Ralph Nader, identifying Masters’ killer and, just as importantly, discovering his motive, is a career opportunity. Also, just think of all the sweet pussy he’ll get when the spotlight’s turned on him.

Though the Malone character has a stick so far up his ass he risks puncturing a bowel, I found his storyline more engaging. His investigation leads him to a fundamentalist zealot, Rev. Willie Joe Tate, training a militia to fight atheist liberals and Godless communists, and later to an armory in Texas he suspects of supplying Tate his weapons. Hellman’s investigation, on the other hand, gets mired in too much pretentious philosophizing and side trips, as when Hellman appears on a talk show to battle wits with other political journalists. This chapter wastes too much time on pundits smelling their own farts (15 pages worth) when its primary purpose is introducing Joanna Cook, a Gloria Steinem-esque character and the novel’s only significant female character. 

Of course, Joanna and Hellman end up in bed, because Hellman is just that irresistible to women. Here it should be noted that while the paperback cover depicts Hellman as looking like Warren Beatty, Hirschfeld’s description of him brought to mind a thirtysomething James Woods. It’s should also be noted that while his contemporaries on the best seller lists of the day wrote unapologetically of throbbing cocks and quivering cunts, Hirschfeld’s sex scenes are either described in florid abstractions or happen off-page and referenced after the fact. Below is this book’s most explicit sex scene, an earlier encounter between Hellman and one of his college groupies. Be sure to have your lotion and tissues ready:

She lowered her face between his legs, reached for his slack member with her lips.

Hot.

Some out-of-left field accusations regarding Masters’ sexuality, courtesy of Joanna, ultimately leads Hellman to suss out the assassin’s identity, and it’s here that the book really shows its age. Though published the same year the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, The Masters Affair makes it clear it was written prior to this 1973 resolution. Broad generalizations are made about homosexuals, including a psychiatrist spewing some horseshit about gays being drawn to highly structured professions, such as the military and law enforcement, because they supply a “representation of a father figure,” and how conversion therapy can help gay men lead “reasonably adjusted” hetero lives. This is also where Hellman, the free-thinking liberal protagonist, is revealed to be a homophobe (another similarity to James Woods), coercing a closeted government employee to talk by threatening to out him. This makes perfect sense for a book set in the early ’70s, but it killed whatever goodwill I had toward the character of Hellman.

The ending of the book is a bit puzzling. Hirschfeld describes how the killer is about attempt another assassination, except for much of this final scene the killer is thinking about shooting Masters, making the chapter read like a flashback to the book’s opening. More than likely Hirschfeld was just conveying that the killer had gone batshit, unable to distinguish fantasy from reality, but I just found it confusing.

While I wouldn’t count it among my favorite Burt Hirschfeld novels, The Masters Affair is a fairly entertaining read, its take on the U.S. political climate of its time sadly just as relatable today. Hirschfeld’s take on homosexuality, however, is very much stuck in 1973.