JERY TILLOTSON

At last! Jason Fury's shocking memoirs are in stores! The author says that initial reaction "has been staggering! I thought it might sell a few copies to some of my fans. From what I understand, people buying this are your ordinary man and woman-in-the street."
He said he wrote his memoirs because "for 25 years, readers have asked me to write my autobiography, so here they are! NIGHTS OF FURY was terribly painful to write in some ways and begins in post-World War II America and concludes with the terrorist attack on New York City, September 11, 2001. Everything in these 274 pages is real--with only the names changed to avoid embarassment to the living or the dead. From college rebels, Wall Street Tigers, convicts, strippers, evangelists and bad boys, they're all here in this autobiography. It's definitely not for the meek or the timid." When his famous short story collection, "Eric's Body" appeared in l994, it became a literary sensation. "My publisher, Richard Kasak, called me a month after the book appeared, and he was nearly hysterical. 'Eric's Body' had sold out all 3,000 copies, a record for an erotic paperback. It went through six more printings and was banned in Canada. His other books have sold in the tens of thousands around the world. "For some strange reason, my books are very popular in Japan, Russia and Germany. And you should see the Polaroids I get!"
He begins and ends "Nights of Fury" on a somber night as he remembers the horrific events of September 11, 2001.
"I was in a coffee shop, a few blocks from the World Trade Center, with my boyfriend, a police officer. Before we even finished our first cup of coffee, the first plane hit. My friend dashed out and I was right behind him. He hugged me and raced away towards the Towers. He was dressed in his police uniform. That's the last time I ever saw him."
Fury creates portraits of a handful of men from different eras. "I chose the ones that played paramount roles in my life. I start out with Dale, who was probably sixteen and I was four-years-old. He taught me even then everything you had to know about sex."
That first encounter set the tone for the rest of his life. The author describes his nightmarish years at East Carolina University where he was the "first out-of-the-closet queer anyone had ever seen. You can imagine the reaction of the fraternity homophobes. But I did discover something strange--the jocks all liked me. I made some friends--several became more than friends. They're now grandfathers." One of his most intense relationships was with an editor at his first newspaper job at the Wilmington Star-News back in l965. "Scotty was something else. He was easily one of the charismatic and sadistic but handsome men I've ever met." Scotty died many years ago. Jason Fury also describes memorable affairs he had with the campus rebel, Billy Dragon, at Brevard College in l960 and later with a mental patient in a mountain sanatorium where Fury worked during the summer of l963. "Eric was so beautiful but so doomed. He'd had a lobotomy but looked like a young Clark Gable without the moustache. All the patients and staff fell in love with him. He was one of the great love affairs I experienced." In Manhattan during the swinging 70s and 80s, the writer found total liberation and freedom. "It was fun appearing a few times at the live sex shows at the Show Palace on Broadway. The strippers there were wild and beautiful and nearly all of them are dead now--from drugs and AIDS."
Whenever September 11 rolls around, Fury grows depressed. "I lost my beautiful companion, Roberto, in the massacre. Unless you were there, it's impossible to understand how horrendous this was to everyone who lives in Manhattan. It was like having an atomic bomb explode in your back yard."
"Nights of Fury" is now in bookstores everywhere.