Number 13, accidental and appropriate for Edward Gorey, the writing style target and image style target for this in the 50 book series I’ve been introducing here. The group of gay men visiting Fire Island over 50 years, providing a palimpsest of gay life over the period by following their concerns, events, and intrigues in isolation, a visit every summer. The book, the narration of the summary, the images are 100% AI generated, even the software to create the video. I used these books as an exercise in not just novel generation (200-300pages) but also to maintain long-form stories and characters over a 50-book series. I share some of the work, and observations I had in the generation process.
I first was introduced to Edward Gorey in a gay teen group in 1980 - too young to go to bars (though from my size, rarely carded anywhere … but I didn’t drink a drop then) but somehow I met guys (read: I fucked anything that said hello then, blond hair, muscles and a big cannoli got a lot of hello’s in LA then) my age, and somehow every friday night we ended up at one microscopic apartment in Silverlake with a fusty young man called James, straight out of a Leyendecker painting, carefully decorated with Fiestaware, Bauerware, California Plein-Air painting, Stickley Furniture, an old Victrola with a big Horn, and a prize Tiffany (style) lamp. We went shopping occasionally in old-town Pasadena before it become Old-Town Pasadena (Pasadena being my abode while at Caltech). He introduced me to Edward Gorey - whom you should really know if you enjoy whimsy.
His depiction of tall Edwardian and Victorian men, all big beards, big shoulders, often be-furred and in situations always with children being vaguely tortured by nameless terrors (I long-ago decided that HP Lovecraft was an invention of Gorey, a neurasthenic man devoted to nameless horrors - for instance the gloryholes at the Mineshaft) was pure catnip. If there was any kind of hot daddy porn that existed back then it was the drawings of Edward Gorey. He was a striking man, sort of a larger, wilder version of Pernell Roberts (Bonanza, Trapper John M.D.) or the “Penny Dreadful” version of Timothy Dalton.
And oh so gay.
It’s something I still don’t fully grasp after four decades of carefully turning over in my head what are the patterns behind certain things, but I remember the very first time I saw an Edward Gorey book - at James’s micro-apartment - I knew the artist was gay. It was the same feeling I had the first time I read a Lovecraft book, in the late 70’s that he was gay. There are certain ways of seeing the world in which manifestations of heterosexuality feel so peculiarly strange - Weird is the word, and Weird is a genre of horror fiction (Lovecraft, Derleth and others), that you know without even trying that the writer or illustrator sees things like you see them, and happens often in the Weird/Horror genre - another in this vein is Clive Barker.
An old friend of mine, the gay erotic artist Rex, also illustrated in this world, of men in flophouses encountering thrilling events in dark rooms with nameless people. I designed and launched a private book series for him a few years back, supplementing his income (long since retired, living on pennies a day in Amsterdam), and used Gorey as my inspiration for part of it - Rex had illustrated a dozen of the very earliest gay pulp fiction books under the imprint “Rough Trade”, and being the clever geek I am, I was able to digitally remaster all of the small works from printed books in indescribably poor condition, and created a small Gory-like book with cryptic Gorey-like quotes from the texts.
I’m not sure what substack’s position is on a drawing of an erect penis, but some of the other more elliptical - straight from porn - quotes are much more amusing in their context “It dripped to the ground” or “Where the head went the rest followed,” “Wanting it and getting it were two different things,” “His voice said one thing, his cock said another,” “It was a very special rooming house,” “He held another device.” So true all, and so true for all time as the brilliant comedian Ruth Draper might say. (If you’ve not heard Ruth Draper, who is brilliant beyond compare, find some recordings, she’s the ur-Mother of all modern female comedians.)
Aside from Weird Horror, the flip side of anonymous sex pornography, Gory had a facility with fur, hair, beards, and so on. The images made in his name are fun, but like all AI generated images hint at a limitation.
AI hates hair, especially male body hair.
The fact that I can depict hair at all is a triumph of peverserance over adversity. (Perverserance I’ve decided is the pursuit of lightly perverse objectives in the face of conformity).
Here’s a couple of statements I don’t want to do the math behind, but quite simply; A human male has around 2000 hairs per square inch. Considering a photo of his face and hairy chest at 8x10, you do it justice need to show 8000 hairs per square inch, or roughly 16,000 dots per square inch, for instance pixels, or printer dots (for a gloomily detailed explanation read about Shannon-Nyquist sampling theory). The camera would also have to be able to photograph them. An iPhone or advanced mac display could show them without much problem. However, until recently, all printing of male body hair, and photography (except close-up) simply rendered male body hair as an amorphous blob, because the detail required exceeded technological capability.
Partially because of that, and because of taste, no AI’s were trained with male beards and male body hair, and therefore without careful treatment, you cannot get an adult male generated with complete secondary sexual characteristics. It’s no wonder to me that boys who arrive at puberty and suddenly sprout body hair in surprising places may find it unnatural, shocking and ‘dysphoric’. Dysphoric is a perfect Gorey word, as I’ll explain later.
This is not as trivial a problem as it seems. Consider that in all depictions of human males which are commonly in circulation, there is never one with hair on the back, shoulders, or chest. Males have flat stomachs, always, and have tight firm upper musculature. These men are all what we might call ‘juvenile forms’. Adult men have remarkably hairy bodies, especially ones of Western European, Mediterranean, or North African descent in which the hair is quite coarse. Often, the older men get, the more expansive the coarse body hair becomes - I didn’t have blond hair on my shoulders until I was around 50.
Men, if they did not amputate hair, would have beards which covered their neck and met their upper chest. Their chest would be covered with hair as would their arms. Their armpits would be full of hair which spread the smell of androstenedione to their chest and along their body gently, through capillary action. Their genitals would mostly be hidden in pubic hair, until they developed an erection which exposed their sex organs for use. Their upper legs and lower legs would have hair. On their upper back, they would have hair covering their shoulder which would converge and create a crest on their neck. that hair would flow down their back in some form, getting more dense again in a kind of crest in the cleft of the upper buttocks, and then flow over the buttocks to the back of the legs. Between their legs, around their genitals, and around their anus would be slightly denser hair which also serves to spread androstenedione to spread the smell, and with sweat provide lubricant so the man would not chafe when walking. Not all men have coarse hair, but all humans have ‘lanugo’ from birth, a fine hair which serves all the purposes above.
When a mammal gets excited or angry or cold, tiny muscles attached to each and every hair work to raise them up - the arrector pili. In the case of male mammals with coarse body hair, the effect is to make the man look larger and more intimidating (if naked), the term is ‘bristling’ [I recall instructions at a lodge I rented at Yosemite: if confronted with a Mountain Lion, bang pots and make yourself look bigger. Which is to say, dash off to the nearest kitchen when hiking, and combing back either layer on clothes or disrobe and attempt to have your erector pili do their damn job]
Here are Satyrs, which obviously are not adult ‘human’ males, but they serve as a good reference for the actual varieties of adult male body hair (a secondary sexual characteristic) which you never, ever see, and took me almost a year to figure out how to induce commercial image generators to synthesize. Furry backs, furry asses; furry armpits, long furry beards, fur on blond men, fur on black men, fur of different age, fur across different artists, even fur for artists who refuse body hair.
Gorey (back to the subject) took my hair instructions and generated an exceptional style of what I call ‘peppercorn’ hair, which I suspect is mainly North African or Middle-eastern. Very infrequently in my abundant sex life, I’ve encountered men whose hair is so tightly wound - not on their head, mind you - but on their body, it appears that they are covered with a fascinating carpet of tiny peppercorn shaped curls of hair. Hairy men of African ancestry, New Guinea, Rarely India, Italian, Greek, Egyptian, and perhaps Yemeni or other Arab ancestry are where it appears. Only once or twice have I ever seen it in a blond man. It reminds me of an episode of Golden Girls, where I think Blanch remarked after having been to a nudist colony, that there was a man there who ‘looked like he was wearing a shirt’. Perhaps wrong TV show and characters, but accurate description
Gory seems to intensely dislike children, since in several of his books they come to a dramatic and sad demise, The Gashleycrumb Tinies provides an alphabetically indexed way for children to leave the world, “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs,” “B is for Basil, assaulted by Bears”… So sad. In “The Curious Sofa: a Pornographic Work by Ogdread Weary” we get well-endowed young men among many things, as well as hints of dildos, and male threeway sex. In this volume, since the narrative is not limited to elliptical annotations to drawings (Perhaps I should rethink the structure just for this one), the Gory style is allowed free rein to become loquatious.
My first try at using Gorey for text was a volume called something like “Dylan’s Disquisitions for Dysphoric Doldrums”, in which in 12 stories where annoying children who are bullied for being unusual meet with appropriately prickly and disdaining adults (lesbian and gay couples) who recognize the inherent superiority of the child who has a special power which they teach them to use to turn on their tormentors who come to unfortunate though not lethal conclusions, leaving the children to be raised by benignly benevolent but throughly uninterested adults of the same genre as the child, and in whimsically idiosyncratic manner typical o YA novels everything is on knife-edge balance but resolves admirably. Perfect for Gorey tone. I have it still somewhere on my computer.
For this book, the Gorey target works pretty much flawlessly:
Fire Island had always been a haven for the peculiar and the singular, a place where inhibitions dissolved like icy specters in the searing sun. As Miller navigated the labyrinthine throng, he discerned his companions—Ethan Clarke, Derek Turner, and Brandon Lewis, who had already materialized. Clarke, with his spidery frame and razor-sharp repartees; Turner, the youngest and most tempestuous; and Lewis, the eldest with a tranquil yet formidable demeanor.
It was the dawn of another season bedecked with sun, sea, and secrets. The group had frequented this dismal locale for years, each visit etching another inscrutable line in their elaborate tapestry of shared trepidations and unuttered yearnings.
As Miller approached their desolate, wind-swept abode by the sea, a peculiar sense of anticipation permeated the heavy air. This summer was destined to be unlike any other; such was the foreboding consensus. The murmurs from the frothing waves seemed to portend the ominous escapades that awaited.
Inside the house, the decor was grimly modern with a melancholic hint of nautical despair. The oversized windows offered an oppressively uninterrupted view of the ocean, its vastness a constant, chilling reminder of their ephemeral existence on the island.
And which comes full turn back to poor H.P. Lovecraft at the beginning, who was a specialist in describing our “ephemeral existence”. I’d like to use Lovecraft, but the result usually ends up with the word “eldritch” every few paragraphs, almost as often as Camille Paglia uses the word “pagan” or “dionysian”.
And what (pray tell) happens when the thinly veiled terror of existence is thrust trembling into the luridly lit hands of gay pulp porn?
The intensity was unequivocally dreadful; every sinew and tendon in their corporeal vessels felt aflame. Miller's hand, as if possessed by an unseen force, extended furtively, his fingers lightly brushing Clarke’s forearm, resulting in a frightfully electric sensation coursing through them both. The fragile boundary betwixt yearning and prudence appeared on the brink of disintegration. Every inhale seemed to stretch into an eternity, the charged air zinging painfully through their noses and filling their lungs like molten electricity.
Clarke's burly chest, heaving under the strain, fought against his sweat-drenched shirt, revealing taut sinews and bulging pectorals that quivered with raw anticipation. The storm outside roared louder but was distant compared to the tempest within. Clarke's hand trembled as he moved closer, each inch added to the distance cutting through the throbbing silence like a blade.
Miller mirrored the anticipation, his skin prickling under Clarke's heavy-lidded gaze. The strong smell of musk drifted from Clarke, thick and heady, tinged with the saltiness of sweat, a scent that settled over Miller like a fog. Clarke's unruly chest hair glistened, droplets of perspiration zigzagging down the dark forest, the damp curls emphasizing the powerful contours of his muscles.
Clarke's cock, monster that it was even when veiled in fabric, began to stir, pushing against his jeans like an obscene beast trapped within its chains. The fabric stretched almost audibly, each fibers strained to accommodate Clarke's titanic manhood. Miller could almost sense, through the intense eye contact they maintained, the veins running down Clarke's shaft, the heat, the loud, wet sound of releasing it from its confines. OHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Clark's balls hung heavy below, swelling with every passing second, velvety flicks of friction emanating a soft but consistent scccrrrrpttt - like hundreds of tiny crackling fires, warm and intoxicating.
Everywhere Clarke's eyes scanned Miller's body, time seemed to contract and expand, each tick of the clock adding to the wrenching need for release. Clarke's breath was a throaty rumble, mixing with the low growl of thunder from outside, the storm intertwining with their own turbulent desires. Miller felt Clarke's presence before he even touched him, the sheer masculine energy pricking his skin like needles. His throat tightened in anticipation, every inch of his body screaming for the merest contact.
If you’ve read my prior notes, you know I edit the fairly bizarre juxtapositions, what I call impossible physics, which occur the close your get to physical reality with pure LLM AI generation. “Miller could almost sense, through the intense eye contact they maintained, the veins running down Clarke's shaft, the heat, the loud, wet sound of releasing it from its confines.” Usually eye contact conveys emotions, or other internal mental states, it’s rather fascinating that this eye contact conveys the veins, temperature, and sound of his cock. All of this occurs within the pulsating non-linear passages of time. Pass the popcorn! I do love “molten electricity” - it is as though the LLM actually understood the ability of electrons to form Cooper pairs, which allow it to assume a condensed superfluid state - all while existing as a metaphor for human male sexual response. Some days I myself feel like an LLM with too much information and not enough sense.
I’m a peculiar person; I live for reading moments of such wildly overwrought text that I am bubbling with laughter and pleasure at the insanity.
Your mileage may vary.
Enjoy.
13) Summer Fluff: Edward Gorey