Author: allen0997

Full Service ~ A Capsule Book Review

Full Service ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Scotty Bowers was born in 1923 and is now 95 years old. He grew up in a small town in Illinois, served in the Marine Corps in World War II and began living in California after the war. He started out as a gas station attendant in Hollywood in the 1940s and became a male prostitute (for either sex), a procurer (for anybody of any sexual orientation who wanted a sex partner), bartender, handyman (repairing anything from plumbing to electrical wiring), husband and father, sexual powerhouse, friend to many, including famous and celebrated people in and out of the movie industry, including Ramon Navarro (silent screen star), Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Harold Lloyd (silent film comedian), George Cukor (movie director), Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Walter Pidgeon, Charles Laughton, Noel Coward (English playwright), Cecil Beaton (English photographer and set designer), Cole Porter, Rita Hayworth, William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, Lana Turner, Errol Flynn, Vincent Price, Rock Hudson, J. Edgar Hoover, Tennessee Williams, Mae West, Edith Piaf (French singer), Tyrone Power and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The list goes on and on. According to Scotty Bowers’ memoir, Full Service, everybody loved Scotty and looked upon him as a great friend. He was the “go-to-guy” for fulfillment of many of their desires and needs. There was nobody ever who didn’t need and love Scotty. He was known as “Mr. Sex.”

If all of Scotty Bowers’ claims are true, he was one of the most extraordinary human beings who ever lived. He was equally accommodating for sex with either gender—of how many heterosexual men have you known this to be true?—and could perform easily at least three times a day. He was never squeamish about bizarre or repellant sexual practices or fetishes and could engage in them without reservation. According to Scotty Bowers, it’s all about giving and receiving pleasure and, as long as those requirements are met, what could possibly be wrong?

Full Service is an entertaining memoir by a man who claims to have “been there,” done it all, and known just about everybody worth knowing in the Hollywood of the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s and ’70s. Whether or not you believe that one man could know so many famous and celebrated people and be as prodigiously sexual as Scotty Bowers claims to have been is up to you. As with Kenneth Anger’s equally entertaining Hollywood Babylon, it might be a good idea to consider large parts of Full Service as pure fiction, especially since all the people mentioned are dead now and can’t be solicited for their opinions (and can’t sue from wherever they are).

Copyright © 2019 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Dream Boy ~ A Capsule Book Review

Dream Boy ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

The novel Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley is set in rural North Carolina. No time is given when the novel takes place, so we’ll assume it’s in the 1950s since it has a 1950s feel. Nathan and Roy live on neighboring farms. Nathan has just moved to the area with his mother and his creepy, alcoholic father, so he’s new to the local high school. Roy is older than Nathan but still in high school. Roy drives the school bus and when they start out in the morning, Nathan is his first passenger. Nathan seems troubled and withdrawn. Roy reaches out to Nathan and they become friends, despite their obvious differences.

Since they live in an isolated farming community, Nathan and Roy have lots of chances to be alone together. They take long walks in the lonely woods where they discover an old cemetery and, later, an abandoned and long-neglected plantation house. Expectedly or not, surprisingly or not, their friendship develops into a furtive sexual relationship. Later, Roy becomes jealous when Nathan seems to be experienced in the practice of being with another man. Where did he learn it, Roy wonders?

Nathan has a secret. We know it if Roy doesn’t. Since he was a small boy, Nathan has been sexual abused by his own father, a person who has plenty of problems of his own, alcoholism being just one of them. Nathan’s mother just hangs in the background and, doing nothing to help, wallows in her own sorrows.

Afraid that his father will come into his room at night and try to rape him, Nathan begins sleeping in Roy’s barn or in the old cemetery that he and Roy discovered on one of their walks. Roy knows that something is wrong with Nathan but doesn’t suspect what it is. He helps Nathan all he can and tries to protect him. When Nathan and Roy go on a weekend camping trip with two other boys, the other boys learn firsthand the nature of Nathan and Roy’s special friendship, leading to the novel’s tragic conclusion.

Jim Grimsley is a talented, interesting writer. Besides Dream Boy, I’ve read some of his other books, including Boulevard, My Drowning, and Winter Birds. Dream Boy is a slim novel, under 200 pages, with elements of the southern gothic. The ending is a little ambiguous, but I suppose that’s the way it’s meant to be. Nathan’s victimhood is to become Roy’s lifelong sorrow.

Copyright © 2019 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997