(About man-on-man sex in printed gay porn, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest)
Caught on Pinterest a little while back, this gay pulp novel from 1983:
(#1) Apparently, the young man — the piece of chicken — is offering to service the trucker’s erection; though the boy’s buttocks are prominently displayed on the cover, fellatio (rather than anal intercourse) is the conventional service in truck-stop sexual encounters (I know nothing about the actual story, or about its no doubt pseudonymous author Michael Scott)
So: three things here: chickens (and the men who seek them out); truck-stop sex; and the gay pulps, in particular the Adam’s Gay Readers of the 1980s (the series to which Trucker’s Chicken belongs).
Jailbait lexicography. Call the kid in #1 Pollito (Sp. literally ‘little chicken, chick’, figuratively ‘cute, adorable boy’; pronounced [pojíto]). Pollito is definitely (a piece of) jailbait. From GDoS:
noun jailbait: … 2 (orig. US) a young person, usu. a girl, who is under the age of sexual consent; having sex with such an individual is to invite a jail sentence [AZ: usually — for me, invariably — treated as a M[ass] noun, as when I (just) wrote, “Pollito is definitely (a piece of) jailbait” rather than “Pollito is definitely a jailbait”, using jailbait as a C[ount) noun]
Pollito is also (a piece of) chicken — or a chicken — in the sense ‘a boy or young man regarded as a sexual object’; Pollito is viewed this way by Trucker, and in fact Pollito views himself this way (and offers himself for sex with Trucker, apparently with enthusiasm); we can’t tell whether Pollito’s just cruising, looking to satisfy his own desire for male-on-male sex (in a context where, in the nature of things, potential partners will mostly be older men; it’s also possible that he’s specifically looking for a daddy), or whether he’s actually hustling, offering sex for money. (We also can’t tell whether Trucker is indiscriminately looking for a fellator and Pollito just happens to be the candidate who turned up, or whether Trucker has a specific yen for chicken — whether he’s an ephebophile, a chickenhawk.) So the sexual noun chicken has a range of usages, which the OED3 subentry for it attempts to catalog, giving special attention to the chicken / chickenhawk relationship:
OED3 on the noun chicken: section II. A person likened to a chicken … 10. slang (originally and chiefly U.S.). A young homosexual man, esp. a young male prostitute. Also: a boy or young man regarded as a sexual object by another (typically older) man (cf. chickenhawk). [1st cite 1914]
Two cites:
1914: They demand young boys — ‘chickens’, they call them — and they will stoop to almost anything to satisfy their desire in this regard. Sacramento (CA) Bee 23 November 6/2
1977: Grandfatherly ‘chicken hawks’, men in their 50s and 60s, haggle with ‘chickens’, teen-age boy hustlers, through the windows of Cadillacs. Time 15 August 31/1
(Personal notes. In a long-go rich sexual life I was acquainted with a number of teenage boys who saw themselves as chickens. Some of them were specifically looking for daddies, but most were just looking for sex with other males, and in the settings where this was easily available to them, most of their partners would happen to be older men. They were all sweet kids, but visibly anxious about satisfying their powerful sexual desires in a hostile environment.
I’ve also observed teenage boy hustlers plying their trade. and have talked with men who spent some time hustling on the street as teenagers. The life is difficult and dangerous, and kids don’t do it for kicks or for pocket money. Their situations — as runaways or throwaways — are desperate, but if they’re lucky, they’ll find a way out. In any case, there is no joy here, unlike Pollito’s evident pleasure in his sexual connection with Trucker.)
Truck-stop sex. This is a real thing, and some of it is man-on-man sex, and it looks like most of that man-on-man sex is truckers getting serviced at the wheels of their trucks by fellators cruising the parking areas (just as in #1). At least, that’s the evidence of the (considerable number of) amateur porn videos showing the real-life events. (Truckers are symbolically high-masculinity guys, like garage mechanics, military men, boxers, cowboys, etc., in real life as well as in gay porn, so they’re insertive rather than receptive.)
Gay pulps. From Wikipedia:
Gay pulp fiction, or gay pulps, refers to printed works, primarily fiction, that include references to male homosexuality, specifically male gay sex, and that are cheaply produced, typically in paperback books made of wood pulp paper … People often use the term to refer to the “classic” gay pulps that were produced before about 1970, but it may also be used to refer to the gay erotica or pornography in paperback book or digest magazine form produced since that date.
… Gay pulps are part of the expansion of cheap paperback books that began in the 1930s and “reached its full force in the early 1950s.” Mainstream publishers packaged the cheap paperbacks to be sold in train and bus stations, dimestores, drugstores, grocery stores, and newsstands, to reach the market that had bought pulp magazines in the first half of the twentieth century. Designed to catch the eye, the paperback books featured vivid cover art and often dealt with taboo subjects: prostitution, rape, interracial romances, lesbianism, and male homosexuality.
… Beginning around 1964, the more than a decade of challenges to U.S. censorship laws applied to literary novels such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Portnoy’s Complaint, and Naked Lunch had redefined legal standards for obscenity. Susan Stryker cites Tom Norman’s bibliography of American gay erotic paperbacks to note that thirty gay paperback books were published in 1965, and that over a hundred were in 1966. Many of these publishers had their roots in publishing beefcake, or “male physique” magazines in the 1950s, precursors to explicit gay pornographic magazines.
Most of the new gay paperbacks were explicitly pornographic, writing designed to provoke sexual responses, rather than literary writing, and they came from small, gay presses, such as the Guild Press, Greenleaf Classics, and the Publisher’s Export Company, rather than from mainstream national publishers.
… Among “the more provocative titles and noms de plume” published in this decade include: Summer in Sodom, by Edwin Fey; Gay Whore, by Jack Love; Hollywood Homo, by Michael Starr; The Short Happy Sex Life of Stud Sorell, by Orlando Paris; It’s a Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay World, by Guy Faulk; Gay on the Range, by Dick Dale; Queer Belles, by Percy Queen; and Gay Pals, by Peter Grande.
The golden age of the pulps lasted roughly from the mid-60s through the mid-90s; after it, the low end of printed gay porn shifted largely onto the net.
Meanwhile, a body of more literate gay porn appeared during the golden age of the pulps. Including, for example, the books published from the 60s through the 90s by Samuel Steward, especially under the name Phil Andros. (See my 1/6/11 posting “Pseudonyms 2: Samuel Steward””.) More literate gay porn continues, now co-existing with a huge body of M/M romances (fiction focused on an intimate relationship between men, often explicitly sexual), largely written by women.
Towards the end of the golden age of the pulps came Adam’s Gay Readers, tons of them. There are inventories of them, listing the titles and their pseudonymous authors. Here’s a page with Trucker’s Chicken on it:
(#2)
I’ve been able to find a few more covers for the AGR pulps (I don’t know who did the illustrations). Here are two, both featuring Perky Ass Meets Trouser Trout in the illustration, and the second with the antique ferries / fairies pun in the title:
(#3)
(#4)
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