Paperback 475: Sex in the Shadows / Randy Salem (Beacon B799X)

Paperback 475: Beacon Books B799X (PBO, 1965)

Title: Sex in the Shadows
Author: Randy Salem
Cover artist: Al Rossi

Yours for: $50

Best thing about this cover:

• "Fine, turn away, but you're never going to miss these painted-on capris, baby, I promise you!"
• "'According to Jim!?' You're watching 'According to Jim!?' You disgust me. I'm going to Margo's."
• Wait, is Ivy the older lesbian's name? Or do older lesbians prowl the way that ivy ... prowls ... up the walls of colleges and ballpark walls?
• "Gee, my hair smells terrific."
• I'm still trying to work out the symbolism of the orange throw pillow.

Best things about this back cover:

• "... and certainly no hero ..." is a great line. "Don't worry—no man parts for as far as the eye can see!"
• Searching! Scorching! It's not Frank! But it does have a character named Francine, which is something.
• I know that when I think of lesbians, the first image that pops into my head is: brawls.

Page 123~

I was thinking of Martha and me and how we must look to that wise old moon—just two more grains of sand on a desolate stretch of beach, two flecks of nothingness.

"Two Flecks of Nothingness" should've been the title — "It's like Seuss meets Sartre meets coastal lesbians," says Michiko Kakutani

~RP

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Paperback 418: Tender Torment / Randy Salem (Midwood F172)

Paperback 418: Midwood F172 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Tender Torment
Author: Randy Salem
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $50


Best things about this cover:

• "Next time on 'The Bachelor': The Most Dramatic Rose Ceremony Ever!"
  
• This is a shocking cover—usually with lesbian sex paperbacks the sex angle is played way up, along with the pathology angle. Bodies on display, lust in the air (see here, for instance). But here, aside from a nice wide chunk of ass in the foreground, it's all horror show. Looks like the movie poster for a late-70s slasher flick.
• That tagline really gets to the point. Succinct. No-frills. You know where you stand with this tagline.
• You gotta love a sleaze paperback pen name like "Randy Salem." If you anagram his last name, you describe his ideal audience: Randy Males.

Best things about this back cover:

• "A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR!"—awesome ominous warning. "No one will be seated during the harrowing Rose Scene!" "Bring your own vomit bag!"
• The best phrase on the whole back cover is "We are proud..."

Page 123~

He looked like any other swish in too tight pants and a checkered shirt open at the throat.

Damn swishes, ruining the checkered shirt for the rest of us regular blokes. I want my checkered shirt back, swishes! And my rainbow flag, too!

~RP


[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]