The cover makes clear the book is gay pornography, with a well-built man in white trunks holding his head with both hands and looking up. In his introduction he gives us permission to touch the muscle comics and eroticize the writer of the “balls-on” essay on obsession with body building. Muscle Men is the second of his collections that I’ve read since beginning this assignment. Richard encouraged me to keep writing and was polite enough not to say my writing had the excitement of unused toilet paper. Sadly, the store now is another of the rainbow five-and-dimes on Castro Street with glossy photographs of naked men, hard-on magazines, a limited selection of books, and the gifts you’d give someone if you really needed to tell them how gay you are. I met him years ago at A Different Lights Books, which he managed when it had books of substance and was the place our community met to plan the next demonstration. I consider Richard Labonté the Dean of gay pornography.
