JERY TILLOTSON

Very excited that one of my favorite and most popular novels, THE KISS OF KING KONG, has been re-launched by my publisher, AuthorHouse, with a new and exciting PR campaign. Because of all the awards heaped on the 2011 Best Picture movie, THE ARTIST, my staff at AuthorHouse thinks the time is hot for a new generation to discover KISS OF KING KONG which I wrote under my pen name of 'Jason Fury." THE ARTIST is the story of a silent screen swasbuckler who refuses to change over to the talkie revolution that's engulfed Hollywood. The movie ends when he utters his first words for the screen. My book begins with talking pictures just starting out and shows how three extraordinary young men, all talented, great looking and ambitious, evolve during the l930s as they scramble for movie work. One becomes a matinee idol, another becomes a popular dance extra and drag queen and the third one gives up and becomes a stag film legend. Now, I'm waiting by my phone for that call that Hollywood is calling--and they want to turn THE KISS OF KING KONG into a movie. If only! My favorite boy toy, Mark, just left me a few minutes ago. He's cute, sexy and living in a halfway house for recovering alcoholics. You'd never know it by Mark. He resembles an English professor with wire-framed glasses, a spiffy new haircut and snazzy casual clothes. He resembles a little boy although he's 34-years-old. But we talked intimately--he said he can't go off on these wild sex binges where older men fly him to Atlanta, Chicago, NYC as a popular and in-demand boy toy anymore. He's moved nearby so i can check on him regularly. I promised to call him at least once a day--to make sure he's not gotten into mischief and this bad boy does have a penchant for doing just that which is one main reason I'm always fascinated by him. I'm using him as a major figure in my current nonfiction book, BULLS OF THE BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS, a work-in-the-progress which will be a series of individual interviews with pictures of some of the fascinating mountain men I've encountered in the city of Asheville--both gay, straight and bisexual. I really do think the men here are much more open and frank about their love lives, although they're all discreet. There's no major hiding in closets that I encountered in Wilmington and Carolina Beach where I lived for three years before moving here. The Asheville male reminds me much of the men in New York City and North Dakota who I've written many stories about. As far as the men in Alabama, they're still mostly in the closet, although you find some stunning Southern bucks there. Frigid temperatures have now come to the North Carolina mountains--but for me, the nights are welcome when my mountain bear, Thor, visits me several nights a week and awaits me in bed. He resembles that Nordic god--with a powerful body, gleaming hair and bear the color of snow and his body feels like an electric heater. * * * On a darker note, another boyfriend, Aaron, visited me yesterday and I was totally shocked at his appearance. He told me he has terminal cancer of the throat. The doctors give him little hope and he said he would be dead by Christmas. I could only stare at him in disbelief. The last time I saw him in July he was a blazing stallion, a stunning 54-year-old male who could easily have been a Playgirl centerfold with his stunning body, male equipment, and radiant air of sensuality. Now, his face was caved in, his skin color was deadly and he had lost tremendous weight. When he was leaving my apartment, I said: "Aaron, I want you to come back whenever you want to." His reply: "Jery, I won't be back. But I want you to come to my funeral. I've already got my casket picked out." What a horrible farewell! By the way,he's married with three grown kids. I can only imagine what they're going through to see this once blazing beauty of a man, heading quickly steadily to the grave. This afternoon I opened my mailbox and was naturally quite happy to receive royalty checks for several of my books. I mention this because one of them was for my story collection, ERIC'S BODY which was first published in l995. This was a gay fiction story collection that was turned down by over l20 literary agents and publishers for over two years. Forgive my bragging about it because when I finally found my l21 publisher, Masquerade Books in New York City, the publisher Richard Kasak called me up in much excitement and told me it would be a huge hit. Indeed, his prediction turned out to be correct. ERIC'S BODY went through numerous printings in the first two years and during that time sold over 70,000 copies. When it was reissued in 2005 by the Author's Guild Back-in-Print of American classics, it sold nearly 100,000 copies. My readers have been farmers, Marines, cab drivers, physicians, minisgters, priests and college boys. When it was first making its rounds in the early 1990s, it was usually rejected without a comment. Several agents wrote in large block letters "We do not handle porno!" The most hysterical reaction came from a nameless New York agent who called me around midnight and proceeded to scream that I had greatly insulted him by sending him a collection of gay love stories. He said I had written a bunch of horrible, repulsive stories that should be thrown into the sewer. When I broke in and asked him to explain himself, he shouted that I had written about sex between men. When I said: "But you also represent Jackie Collins whose last book was a catalogue of explicit sex acts between male and female", he sputtered and said: "Yeah, but that's for normal people. You cocksuckers are animals and I hoope you all die." Ironically, this jerk-off went out of business the next year but that was typical of what an author who penned "gay fiction/erotica" could expect. Ah, how times have changed." An interesting sidebar to that is that after ERIC'S BODY was selling out, New York City's major gay book store, A Different Light, ignored it. This was a store that if any author wrote boring, whining stories in The New Yorker style that had a gay chracter, where nothing happened, they were guaranteed readings and publicity from A Different Light. but when I asked the store owner why ERIC'S BODY was hidden in the back near the bathroom and garbage cans, he sniffed and said: "We only spotlight serious gay writers here!" And I retorted: "Yeah, you showcase books that will never sell and who nobody's ever heard of." Yet, just five blocks away, the big Barnes & Noble showcased my book and gave me a gala books igning. Readers were lined up around the block. They loved the book. Sad to say, A Different Light closed down several years ago. Why? No one went there for their boring, nothing novels and story collections. I'm proud that my book endured, as did my other best-sellers like THE ROPE ABOVE, THE BED BELOW, EIGHTH WONDER, NAKED FURY, THE SECRET OF JIMMY X, NIGHTS OF FURY, HIS EYES WERE DARK, HE LICKED HIS LIPS, SCREAMS OF PAN and THE KISS OF KING KONG. At last, have moved everything here to Asheville, NC--also called 'The Land of the Sky." I'm living in a beautiful hotel-type aparment comlex, Kenilworth Inn, which holds particular meaning for me. Because it was formerly known as Appalachian Hall, an ultra-posh sanatorium for the rich and the famous. In l962, my aunt Myrtle, who worked here as a nurse's aide, got me a job here also as a nurse's aide and both my brother, Joe, and myself were hired. We had cozy rooms on the top of the building with dormer windows that looked out over the mountains. The patients were all so fascinating, in paricular, Edward Cowan, that I've written about them many times in my stories and novels. I was heart-broken when I finally left in l963 to begin my sophomore year at East Carolina University> i've dreamt often of returning to live here and now I am.

The minute you enter the grounds here, you're reminded of the past. in the early l960s. I'm curious to meet some of the other tenants and see what their life stories are.

I'm so reieved to finally have escaped Carolina Beach, NC, where I was miserable. Dead, joyless, rednecks wearing ball caps and pot bellies and women who looked like they'd never visted a beauty parlor. Thank God I'm out of there forever!

Several months ago, worked hard on the new CBS medical series being filmed at Winnabow Airport, outside of Leland, NC.

Terribly exhausting and uncomfortable since we had to bundle in heavy winter clothes beneath blazing hot sun. Fun to watch Sissy Spacek in action but awfully tiresome when we have to stand for endless hours while the scenes and cameras are set up. The latest news is that the series will be televised in January under the name, "Gimme Shelter."

But, I'm not complaining. That's show biz!
One good benefit of this is that I keep meeting some faacinating people--in addition to the psychos.

Which reminds me that I need to return to work on my new book, ORGY, which I'm writing under my pen name of 'Jason Fury.' I'm basing this wild tale on my own experiences working on the upcoming A GOOD OLD FASHIONED ORGY that was filmed here last year. I was one of the swingers known as 'The Man on the Leash.'

When this movie is ever released I'm certain to become a sensation--or the funniest thing to ever hit Hollywood.

Just spent a great week in dear ole New York City.
Whenever I return to a place where I lived 30 years, it's amazing how instantly I fall into the insane pace.
I always enjoy trying out different hotels and this time I found my favorite: The Hotel Bedford, just two blocks from Grand Central and mucho places to eat.

It was fashion week. Dazzling models, both male and female, were everywhere, posing for photographers. When I visited Wall Street, where I worked one year, I saw all those powerful looking Wall Street tigers everywhere. I used one of them as the protagonist in my popular novel, HIS EYES WERE DARK, HE LICKED HIS LIPS. These men are unique. I'll take them any day over the college jocks.


The local paper, the Star-News, where I worked during the early l960s, ran a big spread with photos last week--and everywhere I go, people recognize me. So far, no requests for autograph. Boo hoo!

I was fourteen when my first words were published in a newspaper. I couldn't sleep the night before. And when the weekly publication, The Denton Record, finally appeared at our only drug store down the block one fall day in l957 and I saw neighbors reading it, I was one happy freak. "The Denton School Report" was the dramatic head for my weekly column that ran for three years. At first, I stuck with obediently recording the time and date of the next PTA meeting and other profound occasions. Gradually, I transformed the column into something casual, gossipy, chatty. It became popular with everyone. I had learned the first lesson of writing. I pretended I was yakking with a best friend. Paint a picture in words to entertain the reader. This became even more important after I began work at a real newspaper in Wilmington, North Carolina, in l965. I had just experienced five, tumultuous years in college. My effiminate personae repelled many while attracting others. Straight men, then and now, were the main ones I liked being with. Most were just buddies. Several became more than that. Gay men had nothing to do with me. I was "too" obvious. That didn't bother me. I wasn't interested in attracting them anyway. I was fascinated by rugged, macho men and even today, my best friends are your ordinary Joe Six Packs. I don't like intellectuals. I find them pretentious and a pain in the neck. My first real newspaper editor on the Wilmington Star-News was an egotistical monster. "Chip" was the Hollywood version of a charismatic, temperamental, handsome editor. At first, he tried to hide his sharp interest in me by yelling at me and testing me. He'd order me to go out into the rain to get him coffee. He expected me to refuse. I eagerly obeyed and always asked: "Do you want anything else?" He blushed, because he was a real Irishman and that made him even more attractive. We eventually became more than friends. The newsroom knew. You can't hide much at a newspaper. When I told this really troubled man I was leaving to take a job with the Associated Press, he became violent, emotional and vowed I would never leave his newspaper alive. He saw this as a slap-in-the-face to his reputation for keeping the cream of the crop of journalists. He vowed to ruin me if I took the Associated Press job. I made my escape and never saw Chip again. He died soon afterwards. Cause of death: an overdose of pills.
Chip was, indeed, an unforgettable man but there were to be many others in the future. The Associated Press was a good place to learn the craft of journalism but it was no place for romance, either in Charlotte, N.C., or in Fargo, North Dakota. Although I was to discover that men in this last city of forbidding terrain can be quite fabulous. I met dozens and dozens of North Dakota farmers and regular guys at the cozy little family bars that dotted main street in Fargo. All were lonely. All were desperate for companionship. I used all my experiences in that snow-frozen metropolis in many stories I was to later write while in New York City. Even today, people ask me in disbelief: "You actually lived in Fargo?" I was glad to leave the snow-drenched universe of North Dakota and accepted a job in Montgomery, Alabama as "star reporter" for the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper.
Most of the men I worked with were bigots, as were many of the those I met outside the newspaper. But--my job allowed me to interview some of the most fascinating Southern guys alive. I interviewed prisoners, politicans, preachers, actors, wrestlers, cops, troopers, mixed-up artists and writers. They gave me tons of material for my future stories. One real tragedy on the eve of my departure from Dixie: my long-time buddy, Art, a jazz pianist, was murdered and eviscerated by a group of black thugs, as he left my apartment building. His killers were later tried in court where they laughed about the killing. Since they were all not l8 years of age, they were sent to a youth detention center and released one year later. I considered them animals and wished that I could have killed them all. That gave me a bitter lesson in American justice.
By the time I moved to Manhattan in l978, I was ready to let down my hair and celebrate my freedom! My stories had become fixtures in many gay magazines and fan mail poured in. I still receive notes and letters and e-mail from my fans who discovered my work back in those halycon days of Disco. Those days wouldn't last long, though, because in l980, we began to hear about a strange "gay sickness" affecting many of the young swingers in Gotham. Quickly, it became an epidemic. Men I knew began dying. The whole landscape changed. In the meantime, I'd managed to finally get my story collection, ERIC'S BODY published and it became an overnight sensation. The collected stories were mostly those that had already appeared in leading gay magazines. More than 200 editors and agents had turned ERIC'S BODY down. Those few who said anything about it laughed in my face and said I should be ashamed of writing "porno garbage." These were the same men busy promoting and gushing over Jackie Collins lusty, graphic hetero adventures that were being pushed in mainstream bookstores. That I was doing exactly the same thing as she--with the exception that I had all males doing it--was seen as too perverted to even imagine. My second novel, THE ROPE ABOVE, THE BED BELOW, came out in late l994. I literally copied pages from my personal journal to describe the wild, feverish hedonism that obsessed Manhattan before the AIDS epidemic hit. My publisher demanded that I cut out much of my original manuscript and cram it full of sexual passages. I fought back. I did not want to write this book as another "porno" job. He took control of my book and when it appeared I was not a happy author. Whole chapters were torn out and it was so heavily edited that the book only ran l50 pages--when it was originally 350! A year later, I sued my publisher for he refused to publish three of the novels that he had brought--because he demanded that we become more than friends. We settled our problems out of court after Court TV wanted to feature my case on their program. The publisher nearly had a heart attack for he had pulled this same little game with other writers who were too frightened of his power to threaten legal action. Over the years, I've written several popular novels as Jason Fury and 'Andrea D'Allasandra.' My long-time companion, 'Big Bill Jackson asked me to help him put together his memoirs and as EIGHTH WONDER, it became an instant hit with his many fans. In Europe and Russia, his cult following is even bigger than mine, darn it. Big Bill shuns parties, the bars, book signings. He's an independent cuss. Men and women have offered him fortunes for a good time. He turns them all down.
When the terrorism attack hit Gotham on Sept. 11, 2001, I was exactly on the crime scene that horrible morning. I had planned to have breakfast with one of my fans, a young off-duty fireman. He and some of his fire fighting buddies had read both ERIC'S BODY and THE ROPE ABOVE, THE BED BELOW and we had all become close. Especially this beautiful fireman who I'll call Cameron. We had discovered many similar interests and we became very close. As our group sipped coffee and enjoyed bagels and eggs, someone in the place screamed. We watched in horror as the first plane exploded into the Twin Towers. Cameron and his buddies all jumped up. He embraced me and raced away.
That was the last I saw of him and his two close firemen buddies. Their remains were never recovered.
The horror still lingers here, although the nightmare occurred more than six years ago. I attended many of the heart breaking memorials and funeral services for our New York firemen and cops. It's like having a large family wiped out by brainless psychos. And since the killers also perished, there's no grim satisfaction to be enjoyed in seeing them receive their punishment.
Last year, New York City had its worst blackout ever! I was trapped in an underground subway for seven hours. There were more than one hundred of us. We eventually had to climb out of a window and walk in absolute darkness along the sides of the rails, avoiding giant rats that scampered alongside us. I arrived home four hours later and took a long, long cold shower.
Me and Big Bill are planning on leaving New York City and moving back to God's Country--the Piedmont area of North Carolina. Or maybe the Wilmington coastal area. Both are fabulous places to live and more importantly, a hell of a lot cheaper to live there than here in the Big Apple. We've both had New York City, having living here for over 20 years. In North Carolina we have families and friends and fans.
The next time I write here may well be from some North Carolina city where civilized and friendly people live.