THE TWELFTH ACOLYTE READER

The Twelfth Acolyte Reader was published by the Acolyte Press, a publisher in Amsterdam dedicated to “boy-love” publications, in June 1996. It is the last in a series of sixteen anthologies. The stories are by various authors, but all the volumes were edited by the American writer Frank Torey (1928-96). This article serves as both a synopsis and a review of the volume’s content. It had no introduction.

Contents [list, synopsis and review]

by Edmund Marlowe, 2025

 

This turned out to be the very last publication of the Acolyte Press, as early the very next month (July 1996), its founder and owner, Frank Torey (pen name of Francis Duffield Shelden) died, leading to its liquidation. Taking associated happenings on board, the event was far more momentous than this. Torey had been a true giant of the boysexual literary world, having also (besides scholarly endeavours) been editor of Acolyte’s predecessor, the Coltsfoot Press owned by his colleague John Stamford, who had significantly died the previous year in a Belgian prison, awaiting trial on essentially political charges suddenly arising from his encouragement over twenty years of Greek love. All this highlighted the desperate straits to which this form of love had been reduced since the late seventies, when writing on the subject had blossomed in a display of what turned out to have been unwarranted optimism. The transformation was especially severe in the Netherlands, whither, as a land of supposedly exceptional tolerance, Torey, Stamford and others from the already deeply-repressive anglosphere had resorted as sexual refugees. So badly did the tide there turn in the 1990s that one must wonder if the Acolyte Press could anyway have gone on much longer.

Like all the others in the series, the twelfth Acolyte Reader is very much a mixed bag, on which the only general comment I would make is that the stories exhibit an increased but understandable reluctance to address the utterly miserable circumstances surrounding the kind of love depicted in the real world. I shall summarise each story briefly. Edward’s offering, whimsical with amusing banter as usual, but without his characteristic clever twist at the end, is rather inconsequential, as even more so is Ingles’s first strangely simple story. Freedman’s silly and boring story, crudely sexual without being at all erotic and apparently supposed to be funny, is a contender for the worst Acolyte story ever. At this point, it is with enormous relief that one can turn to a tale by Bob Henderson, possibly the best of all the Acolyte writers, the great strength of whose well-written and autobiographical-sounding stories had always been unusually realistic portrayal of the emotional and sexual dynamics of Greek love affairs – in his case Greek in both senses. This one, Selem, is every bit as mesmerising whilst otherwise being deeply uncharacteristic. The beloved here is Turkish and far younger than any other boy in Henderson’s writings. As madly over-the-top (until near its bizarre conclusion) as the happiest dream, an alternative title might be Paradise Rejected. I am not sure quite what to make of it except that it is anyway the best story here.

Descending from Henderson’s heights, “odd but quite interesting” is more than enough comment on Bunda’s tiny contribution. Kochany’s March-Past is adequately amusing. Medley’s readable story of friends initiated by an older brother is one of the three overtly erotic ones. Ingles stands out from other Acolyte authors as one who, in a peculiarly late-20^th-century manner, insists in his writing on trying to identify Greek love with being gay, which is deeply annoying for those, historically a huge majority I believe, who know themselves to be drawn to one and not the other. Kit, his second story in this volume, is typical of this, as well as being unpleasantly anti-romantic. Fortunately, the remaining stories are much better. The Balcony, richly evocative of 1950s Texas, is an entertaining and convincing depiction of a boy’s initiation at the hands of his small town’s most admired youth. Primos is equally evocative of Spain, unabashedly erotic and the second-best story. Secret Brothers depicts well a boy of fifteen becoming conscious of special feelings for much younger boys. The South African story, Freddy, is refreshing, in that the two boy protagonists (aged fourteen and fifteen) make passionate love with barely any hang-ups or other fears, and delightfully uncharacteristic of recent times in that they also never let themselves be defined by conscious sexual orientation. One could, however, question whether their love is Greek.

Unlike all the other books in this series, it included no list of its contents, but they were as follows:

Playing to the Gallery / Alan Edward 

A head prefect at a British boarding-school plays Romeo in the school play with his pretty and very keen 13-year-old fag as Juliet, and the rehearsals are for more than just the play. PDF.

Statues Can't Wink, Can They? / I. L. Ingles

Also set in Britain, Losithan, a dim and naive boy of thirteen confused by the onset of spermarche and his consequent new feelings for his own sex, is introduced by his helpful best friend to a boy-loving teacher encountered by chance. PDF.

The Incarnation of Txarstk Vxraplst / B. J. Freedman

A 10-year-old American boy living in the care of a boysexual uncle goes to live in Tibet after being told he is a reincarnated lama and continues to receive crude sexual attention. PDF.

Selem / Bob Henderson

A young Australian man visiting Istanbul for the first time is more or less hand-picked as his lover by an exquisitely warm and sensual upper-class boy of ten whose Old Harrovian father is extremely anxious to secure him as his son’s private tutor.

Tully Curtis's Weakness / Jared Bunda

A two-page description of the emotions surrounding a teacher’s regular caning of a twelve-year-old schoolboy he fancies.

March-Past / Mario Kochany

A comedy in which “Nero”, 15, the most deliberately-provocative boy in his school in Britain, plots how overcome the teacher-narrator’s resistance to his charms.

In Coyote Canyon / James Medley

Newly-moved to California, twelve-year-old Steven senses a secret between his new best friend, Ben, and the latter’s fifteen-year-old brother. All is revealed when the three camp out together.

Kit / I. L. Ingles

Two friends aged 13 begin a liaison, and an only-arguably Greek love element is introduced when one is threatened by exposure into letting his gay-identifying step-father have his way with him.

The Balcony / Graham Day

Set in Texas in the 1950s, 11-year-old Billy is thrilled by the unexpected attention he receives from the 18-year-old town stud. What ensues in the back row of the darkened cinema leaves him feeling much empowered.

Primos / Edward Bangor

Twelve-year-old English Andy goes to stay in Spain with his cousins aged ten and fourteen. His reluctance to be there, along with his inhibitions, is fast melted by their warmth, hurtling him into initiation in the full rites of Greek love both ways.

Secret Brothers / C. R. LaBarge

Fifteen-year-old Chuck gets to know his new neighbours from New York, two brothers, and gets on far better with the younger, aged nine.

Freddy / Marcel Wright

A passionate and fully consummated love affair on a farm between (implicitly white) South African boys of fifteen and fourteen, barely at all inhibited by fear of discovery.

A Word About the Authors

Alan Edward has turned his gifted hand to many kinds of boy-love-fiction: serious, comic, erotic. His now-classic novel, Kit (The Coltsfoot Press, 1983), set in an English psychiatric institution, deftly and entertainingly examined social worker and psychiatric attitudes toward "paedophilia" and "autism". In 1993 we published his second novel, The Fire-Worshipper, about alternate world England in which the old pagan religions have prevailed, where a thirteen-year-old chorister is the story's hero. A steady flow of Alan Edward's short stories have appeared over the years: First of the Month, (PAN No. 3, 1979); Will o’ the Wisp, (Panthology One, 1981); The Keeper, (PAN 9, 1981); The Stake and High Doh, (Panthology Two, 1982); The Thing, (Panthology Three, 1984); Pacific 4-6-0, (P.A.N. 19, 1984); Wild Horizon, (The Fifth Acolyte Reader, 1991); Tromp-l'Oeil, (The Sixth Acolyte Reader, 1991); Old Spanish Customs and Spotters, (The Seventh Acolyte Reader, 1992); I Love My Little Brother and King of the Castle, (The Ninth Acolyte Reader, 1993); Empathies (The Tenth Acolyte Reader, 1994); and Keeping Pets, (The Eleventh Acolyte Reader, 1995).

The English Writer, I. L. Ingles is well known to Acolyte Press readers. His first story published with us (The Third Acolyte Reader, 1988) was P. D. It told of a dysfunctional marriage and its effect upon the two boys who were its issue, one of them sexually attracted to his father. Since then, many successive Readers have had stories by him: Lost Property in the Fourth (a light-hearted tale about a teacher and a London street boy); Uncle George in the Fifth (how a sympathetic boy helps pull a depressed blind man back to the world of the living); Marvin's Double Revenge in the Seventh (erotic tricks by a pair of twins who were identical except in one critical way); Rabin in the Ninth (about an Indian boy finding his erotic way in an English Public School); Camp Diary and Niko in the Tenth (boy-love developing in a Japanese internment camp and flourishing in a gay household); Qualifying Rounds and Special Offer (a boy who loves boys coming out with brothers in suburbia, and juvenile pilfering in London supermarket) in The Eleventh Acolyte Reader. He is also the author of the Acolyte novel of 1994, Explosion, about how a group of boys survive on an African mountainside following the ultimate nuclear holocaust.

B. J. Freedman is the author of our 1994 novel, A Natural Lizard Activity, about a thirteen-year-old California counterculture boy, his Pop whose brains have been addled by too many magic mushrooms, and 31-year-old Bernie who swiftly becomes the boy's lover. The author has played in American rock bands similar to the one described in Runaway (The Tenth Acolyte Reader). In the same collection, his story Ephebes juxtaposed boy-porn literature with the formidable Oprah Winfrey. In The Eleventh Acolyte Reader he did a bit of wishful future-peeking in The News, 2005 and some intimate boy-peeking in Brian's Dick. He teaches English as a foreign language to Third World students – all of them over the age of eighteen, he assures us.

Bob Henderson is something of an English-speaking jack of all trades – and lands. An Australian by birth, he has lived in various Mediterranean countries, working as actor, tutor, script writer, film-dubber, and over the years written many charming stories about Greek boys – falling in love with them, tutoring them in English, coaching them in football, watching them grow up: Takis (Panthology One, 1981), Pavlos (PAN Magazine No. 12, 1982), Pericles, (First Acolyte Reader, 1986), Angelos (Second Acolyte Reader, 1987), Afters (Third Acolyte Reader, 1988), Getting Over It (Sixth Acolyte Reader, 1991). Attic Adolescent, a collection of his short stories about Athenian boys, was published by The Coltsfoot Press in 1983, and two years later we brought out his gay mystery novel, Hard Core Murder.

Jared Bunda has written two boy-love novels published by The Acolyte Press, St. Matthews Passion (1988) and The Well-Tempered Schoolboy (1992), both about the adventures of an American fourteen-year-old at a British boarding school and in Amsterdam. Tully Curtis's Weakness, in this book, takes a hard look at the shadow side of a gifted teacher's sexual attraction to boys: how in a repressive society it can express itself in cruelty and so remain unnoticed and safe.

Mario Kochany will be remembered for his novel As Schoolboys From Their Books (Acolyte Press, 1993), an erotic romp through a British boarding school for prepubescent boys run by a kindly headmaster who has one notable vice: spanking their bare bottoms on almost any disciplinary pretext. This eccentric practice does little to tame the boys' healthy exploratory spirits...

Edward Bangor has written many short stories about English boys: Norfolk Pirates (The Seventh Acolyte Reader, 1992), Piccalilli Rub (The Eighth Acolyte Reader, 1992), Casper (The Ninth Acolyte Reader, 1993), Nanny Knows Best (The Eleventh Acolyte Reader, 1995). In America his story Jailbait appeared in Country Boys/City Boys (STARbooks, 1995).

The Balcony is the first boy-love story published by Graham Day. A native of the Southwest of The United States, he now lives in Northern Europe.

Operation Jock is C. R. LaBarge's first boy-love novel, Secret Brothers his first published boy-love short story. Growing up in the northeast of the U.S., he has lived rough in the Rocky Mountains and now earns his living as a journalist in upstate New York.

James Medley is a prolific writer of gay and boy-love fiction. Many of his gay stories have appeared in STARbooks anthologies over the years. One ephebephilic novel, Gypsy Boy, can be found in Country Boys/City Boys (STARbooks, 1995). Brooklyn Kid and The White Hotel appeared in The Eleventh Acolyte Reader.

Marcel Wright is a newcomer to The Acolyte Press, and the first writer we have published who lives in South Africa. Freddy is adapted from the first chapters of a novel he is working on.