Chapter 1

When I first started writing, I avoided erotica. Not because I didn’t enjoy the genre, didn’t appreciate it, but because I thought I had nothing to add to it. I mean, it had been around a long, long time; what was there left to write about?

Suffice it to say, I thought wrong.

In any case, I wrote pretty much everything else. I wrote funny romances with no sex. I wrote, actually, for several years, and then, one day, I saw a call for submissions from a publisher who had previously published my work. They were looking for dark fiction, sex-filled. I shrugged and took a stab at it, the piece, Go Fuck Yourself, quickly submitted—and almost as quickly rejected. It wasn’t dark enough, I was told. Again, I shrugged, and asked if they’d like to use it for their online literary site.

They took me up on my offer, and, a month later, my first stab at gay erotica was published online.

It might’ve ended there, had fate not stepped in—had leapt, in fact. Because, not another month later, I received an email from the editor of MEN Magazine. He’d read my story and enjoyed it. He asked if I’d like to write for them. Me. The me who had only ever written one erotic short before, now potentially writing for the most-read gay men’s erotic magazine on the planet. FYI, the me said yes. I mean, I was a writer, albeit one with almost no erotic writing experience, but I knew I had the chops for it.

I’d written almost nothing but romantic comedies prior to that. Now, I’d be writing erotic romantic comedies. Turned out, that was something new I could add to the genre. I could get people off while I made them grin, chuckle, laugh. It was a match made in heaven. And, by the time the magazine folded, I’d written for forty issues of MEN, plus its sister magazines, Freshmenand [2]. I also wrote for almost every gay publisher, culminating in more than two-hundred published short stories, almost all of them erotica, almost all of them romances.

Fate then stepped in again. Soared, in fact. Because I was then asked to edit the oldest and most-read gay erotic anthology on the planet, Best Gay Erotica, which has now been around for more than twenty-five years. Did I have experience editing an anthology? No. Did I let that stop me? Hell no. Did I have the chops for it?

Well, I’ll let you decide, seeing as you have this anthology yet to read, replete with twenty of my erotic romances, almost all of them from my early career, many from my years with the magazines. That said, dear reader, enjoy!

Oh, and when fate steps, and leaps, and soars in, grab its hand and go for it!

Worked for me.

Rob Rosen

San FranciscoA Groovy Kind of Love

Don’t let anyone try and tell you anything different, Woodstock, despite its monumental problems, was awesome. Yep, even though we were only there during that on-again, off-again, rainy Saturday that tried and failed to wash off the caked-on mud and grime, it was worth it. Well worth it. Life altering, in fact.

In more ways than one.

The concert got off to a late start. No worries, though, because so did we, my group of six, best buddies traveling across two states in our beat-up van, looking to change the world. We settled in, found a patch of barely-there grass to lay some threadbare blankets on, and waited anxiously, breathlessly. The stage was off in the distance, seemingly miles away, the sound traveling just well enough to reach our ears.

Then again, the show around us was just as spectacular as what was happening on stage: half-naked, all naked, painted-on, tie-dyed, long haired, hippies, flower children, college kids, young parents and tiny toddlers, freaks, wannabes, men and women, black, white, and all shades in between. It was a true collective of humanity, a sight to fucking see.

And speaking of sights, I spotted him during Santana’s third song, then lost him hours later at the start of The Who’s long set.

He was way off to my right, a good fifty yards away, hunkered down in a cross-legged squat, his head tilted upward, his long hair cascading down his back in a torrent of dirty blond. His eyes were shut tight, a smile spread wide across his angelic face, a long goatee hanging precariously off his chin. The crowd faded from my line of vision, the roar of the revelers going suddenly mute. I stood up and walked over, my friends neither caring nor noticing my departure.

I sat down next to him, a foot or so to his side. I watched as Santana was replaced by Canned Heat singing A Change Is Gonna Come. Prophetic words. He opened his eyes, stared for a moment at the stage, then turned his head my way.