Angel Lust : An Erotic Novel of Time Travel - Softcover

9781892149008: Angel Lust : An Erotic Novel of Time Travel
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Angel Lust combines the mystical atmosphere we see in Ann Rice's classics of dark eroticism with Brass's more open, full-throttle gay sexuality. What makes this book different from other gay "erotic" novels of fantasy is that the characters are totally real. Despite being angels, despite the element of Time travel, Bert and Tommy, the two angels who have been together since eternity, could be your neighbors. They worry about making a living, about their landlord throwing them out, and about the day-to-day struggles that all humans have. Although they have powers far beyond most of us (for instance, they can revive the dead), they understand that their human side can get them into trouble, both with the law and their own deeper feelings, just like anyone else.

The book begins with a white-hot erotic encounter between Tommy and Niko, a handsome Greek factory worker in Brooklyn. Niko, who has not at all come to terms with his homosexual feelings (divorced, he now lives with his parents and his three-year-old son, Paul), can not understand how Tommy knows so much about him. Tommy, the handsome young angel who has been looking for Niko, seems to be able to read him like a book. What Niko is not aware of is that this "book" was written almost a thousand years ago, when Tommy, then in an earlier incarnation as Thomas Jebson, a young blond serf youth, had met another handsome Greek man, who had taken his heart away. In the Law of Angels, Time is elastic. It can bend. You can ride it like a wave or cross it like a bridge. It is as negotiable as three-dimensional space. The only problem is, once there, what do you do?

Even angels (who must be reincarnated on earth) know that the past can destroy them, just as the problems of the present can.

Under the power of ecstatic sex, Tommy Angelo is able to cross the bridge of Time and return to the England of 1077, where as Thomas Jebson he met Sir Bertrand, the impetuous knight from the Land at the End of the Mountain. One night alone, the two met under a bright moon and there Sir Bertrand promised to love and protect young Thomas forever.

Thomas had been searching for a nobleman to offer him protection-this is medieval England, where that was the key to survival-but never did he believe that such a handsome young nobleman would love him sincerely as well. What young Jebson did not know was that Sir Bertrand was already an angel, and that he, too, had been searching, but had to keep his own search a secret.

Thomas and Sir Bertrand became linked with one another through a series of quests and adventures. Thomas was able to kill an evil knight out to murder Sir Bertrand, and Sir Bertrand introduced Thomas to the amazing way of knights. Many knights are secret followers of "forest love," the secret love of men practiced by the wild men who still roamed the forests of England, in Robin Hood fashion, as they had done for centuries before the Norman invasion. These men were often despised by the Church and corrupt nobles, yet they formed a secret band dedicated to real honesty and goodness.

At the behest of Sir Garet du Fontayne, Sir Bertrand's noble friend and once his secret lover, Thomas and Sir Bertrand follow a quest to kill the corrupt Baron Odred de Campe, whose gaze is like ice and who terrorizes the very land on which Thomas's parents are bound serfs. With Richard Smart, a bearded, very "hot" bear of a man who leads a forest band nearby, Thomas and Sir Bertrand sneak into the Baron Odred's fortified castle. They are given work in the Baron's filthy stables. At night, Sir Bertrand, who has heard strange rumors about the Baron, sends young Thomas out to seak out the Baron in his private chambers. Thomas is all fear, but soon learns that the rumors are true. The Baron's dark castle is a stronghold of every sort of vice and sexual excess, including services to the Demon of the Night, whom the Baron faithfully worships.

Seesawing between the New York of the Third Millennium and the violent England of the Norman conquests at the dawn of the Second, the two angels soon discover that the Baron Odred also has an incarnation: a demon in the form of Alan Hubris, the icy gay businessman who, with the help of the sleazy Mayor of New York, is trying to corner the market on all the gay real estate in the City.

Like his earlier incarnation the Baron, Hubris is all greed and insatiable desire. He now runs a gay nightclub on the East Side of Manhattan, where gorgeous boys dance almost naked and offer private "dance lessons" to wealthy customers. All of this goes on with the Mayor's blessing, despite the fact that the Mayor has closed down most gay clubs that offer sexual entertainment to men with less cash. As Hubris says: "The Mayor loves gays, especially gays with money."

Although this is a relatively short book, it offers an array of plot devices to keep you guessing, and some of the most erotic scenes ever written. Brass never uses sex gratuitously, but always to advance to plot. If you are looking for an erotic novel at least one full millennium beyond the usual "here-we-go-again" material, this is the book for you. If this is your first Perry Brass book, you'll want to go back and read his other novels, especially his science fiction trilogy. But if you are already a fan of his work, then you know what kind of thrilling ride you have in store, and you'll want to stick with it until you turn the last page.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Publisher:
How can any one book be, all at once, intensely, unashamedly erotic, spiritual, political, scathingly funny, suspenseful-and still tell a riveting story? Answer: Perry Brass would have to write it. Angel Lust, his newest novel, starts with a simple premise. There is a real reason for gay men and their lives on earth. In one form or another, they've always been here. And they'll continue to be here. Gay men can take the form of true innocents, heroes, monsters or hoodlums. They can be likable, lovable, or detestable. They can embrace others like themselves or live closeted, alienated lives. But there is a real pattern behind their meetings, matings, searchings, and at times even avoiding answers to such basic questions as: Why are they here? Where are they going? And whom will they meet once they get there?

From its first page, Angel Lust takes this premise and throws it at you - a seemingly random sexual encounter between a blond young man and a dark macho Brooklyn factory worker explodes into fireworks of sexual ecstasy. This brings Tommy Angelo, the young man, back to the bridge of Time. He will cross this bridge over and over again to relive his past life, that of the teen-age serf Thomas Jebson, in the violent England of William the Conqueror.

We learn that Tommy is an angel, long linked with Bert, now a sought-after "Daddy" among angels. Tommy and Bert are angels, but from any Hallmark greeting card. Going back to the earliest religious accounts of angels as both minions of the God-force as well as rebellious demons, Brass has taken angelology a step farther, to see an angelic presence behind all of life.

So, what are angels? Brass answers: "a thread of pure spirit." A spirit that includes-in all truthfulness-lust and naked desire. And, it includes the work they have to do-the work of healing wounded spirits and bridging the Dead with the living. Tommy and Bert have been doing this work, through various earthly "forms," for almost a thousand years. And in each spin of the wheel of Destiny, they have known each other. They have also known that lifetimes (and patterns of human behavior, "gay" as well as straight) repeat themselves forever on the earthly plane.

Negotiating time like three-dimensional space, Tommy and Bert return often to their first encounters together, a decade after the bloody Norman invasion of England, when Thomas Gebson, the son of a poor farmer, met Bert, then Sir Bertrand, a young knight from Provene, the "land of the troubadours," who were often "secret lovers of men." Sir Bertrand is called the Knight from the Land at the End of the Mountain. And what is the Mountain . . . it may be life, death, or even orgasm itself . . . that event which bring us closer to a glimmer of eternity.

Angel Lust sizzles through this glowing region of sexuality and faith, where intense Eros and spirituality explore each other unashamedly. The story of Thomas/Tommy and Bertrand/Bert, one of constant erotic suspense, introduces us to a gay cult of Robin Hood-like forest men. To robber barons, medieval renegades, towering castles and deep woodlands. Also, to a modern sexual underground where labels like "gay" and "straight" mean little. To Brooklyn factory men. Street machos. Nightclub witches. And New York real estate sharks. To political corruption and human goodness-and to the kind of gorgeous, mind-blowing erotic encounters for which Perry Brass has become justly famous.

As in his past novels, the wonderful Mirage series of gay science fiction books or later The Harvest, Brass has brought the gay novel-and the inner lives of gay men-closer to the real world, a world that is both intensely imaginative and yet filled with the day-to-day struggles of the men and women he creates and loves. Angel Lust should bring Brass an even larger audience of readers, who will find his blend of hyper-realism and mythology the perfect setting in which to capture their own dreams and feelings.

From the Author:
For a long time I had wanted to write an "historical novel" set in the time of the Crusades. I am fascinated by the lore of the Age of Knighthood, even though Angel Lust historically deals with what was only the beginning of that age. However, in mythology, the period of King Arthur and the legends of the Knights of the Round Table take place many years before the Norman Invasion - the time in which I place Thomas Jebson's story.

But I was fascinated by the lore of knights, their idealism, their sense of protecting one another, and also by the stream of homoeroticism that runs through the legends and the lives of knights. One of the things I learned in my research was that the knights prized "sexual purity," meaning heterosexual purity. It was common for a young knight to pledge his heart to a completely unavailable woman, such as the wife of his liege lord. He would fight battles in her name, sing to her, accompany her every place -all knowing that he could never go to bed with her. This woman would become a symbol of the Virgin Mary to the knight, and his devotion to her would be both spiritual and romantic.

However, the cult of the Virgin Mary and the unavailable woman also hid another side: that of intense homoerotic attractions. Sometimes two knights would become attached to the same woman, then sleep together, pledge their lives to one another, and seek the blessing of this "unavailable woman." I found this fascinating: that this cover would be used so that a multitude of "gay" knights could have homosexual relationships, sometimes more openly that we think.

In Angel Lust, I use the idea of a knightly network of not terribly secret lovers of men. I found out in my research that the famous troubadours, who sang to the Virgin Mary and other "unavailable" women were notoriously homosexual. Richard the Lionhearted, or Richard Ceur D' Leon, as he was known to the French, had a troubadour lover named Blondel, who survived him and sang openly of him. Provene, in Southern France, was the home of the troubadours, and I make that the home of Sir Bertrand of the Land at the End of the Mountain.

I also wanted to deal in Angel Lust with my own feelings about gay men and our spiritual nature. Basically, it is my feeling that our meetings and relationships (sexual and otherwise) are important not only to us, but to the world.

Readers may think this is a rash statement. Why should something so private be important to the world? But these meetings and the relationships that follow provide emotional nourishment for us, and without this the world becomes more violent (I believe that keeping homosexual attraction locked in the closet is very dangerous - we find that too many gay bashers and murderers are closet-cases), and colder. Now, as people become more cut off from one another, I see this coldness seeping into the American character and the world. I believe that genuine warmth, compassion, and closeness are at the root of many, if not most, gay interactions.

Many gay men coldly want to compartmentalize their sexual feelings from their "real" lives, but so much of the real richness in my life has come from my closeness with other gay men. I see this closeness thwarted all around me and the great unhappiness this brings. That is really the theme of the modern aspects of Angel Lust, when Bert and Tommy have to fight the powers trying to take over New York: the real estate and corporate interests who will use you to whatever aims they think they can.

Since I live in New York I write about it. I see that there are several gay cultures working in New York, and I'm sure the rest of the country. One is trying to isolate gay men from each other. To see gay men as simply being "like everyone else, only different by what they do in bed." This mentality is as old as the hills, and I remember hearing this refrain when I first came out. Then living in the closet was considered not only normal but desirable. This faction will sell itself out to any politician who throws a bone to it.

The idea that gay men actually have a destiny and role in the universe, is completely foreign to them. When Alan Hubris says about the current of New York-at the turn of the Millennium-"The Mayor loves gays, especially those with money," he is hitting the nail on the head. We will find lots of politicians ready to buy gay votes and gay power, if they can do it for the lowest price possible. And, like any other minority, you will find plenty of very self-satisfied gays and lesbians ready to sell us out.

But I think there are other gay men who believe that we do have a role and importance of our own. Part of that role is our own sexuality, and we use that to reach out to each other. This does not mean that I am in favor of what I call "brain-dead promiscuity," that is, sex without a heart or brain behind it. But I do believe that gay men need their own avenues of safe sexuality, and that without these avenues, our lives become harder, colder, and less emotionally satisfying.

Therefore, I wrote this very erotic book, with a big helping of spirituality and politics in it. It is also very humorous at time, and I wanted it to be an entertaining thriller as well. A lot to ask for in a fairly short book, but then the readers I write for ask a lot from me. I hope that this book will satisfy them as much as I has me in the writing.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherBelhue Pr
  • Publication date2000
  • ISBN 10 1892149001
  • ISBN 13 9781892149008
  • BindingPaperback
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages216
  • Rating

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