The Brig

by Mason Powell

Ebook & print on demand editions coming soon from FFP's imprint, ForbiddenFiction.

Novel (66,000 words)
Genre(s): Gay, Historical, BDSM Drama

This classic gay BDSM novel, set near the end of the Viet Nam war, has been out of print for almost 20 years. Long before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” being queer in the military was a one-way ticket to dishonorable discharge and a psychiatric diagnosis for mental disorder. In The Brig, a young sailor awaiting discharge as a Conscientious Objector is confined to a military prison where he tortured with pain, fear, sexuality, and mind games to force changes in his psyche and break his spirit. Yet, the sailor learns things about himself and his captors that will transform him and challenge those who hold him.

Genres: M M Romance, BDSM, Dark, Abuse, Historical, Military Fiction, Erotica

191 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[JustJen "Miss Conduct" · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so torn in saying how fabulous this story is, given the events are so horrendous. There is really no other way for me to describe it. The writing is fantastic. I was riveted from the start, hanging on every detail, even though many made me cringe.

I absolutely love when a book totally engages my mind and feelings and leaves me slightly drained at the end. The Brig is definitely on that list. I did not want to put this down once I started, couldn't wait to get to the end, but was sad it was over when I got there. I wanted to see so much more of the story and will definitely be taking a closer look at Mason's other work.

[Elizabetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

The young, unnamed naval officer in ‘The Brig’ has his world turned completely upside-down when his conscience gets the best of him. It’s the Vietnam war era and he can no longer be part of a war he doesn’t believe in, he wants nothing to do with killing. Many young men found themselves in this position during a frightening time when the draft forced them into an untenable situation. The officer’s asking for CO status and a discharge gets him into trouble with the higher-ups and he is disciplined by being sent to ‘the brig’.

Apparently the author has based part of the story on the experience of his partner, Kelson, so some of what we read is real, some fabricated. True or not, this is a total mind-fuck...know as you’re reading it that you’ll yearn for the best, wanting something positive, some squeak of hope for the young unnamed soldier; but the author has you in the palm of his hand in an ultimate manipulation.

The writing is so very good, lucid and plain, and the main character compelling: we see him go from devout and celibate seminarian to naval officer to deviant. What issue I have is with the men who abuse the officer and call him ‘faggot’. They are themselves obviously not heterosexual. For me, the perpetrators lose much of their power because of this.

"Some men feel it so strongly and are such cowards about facing it, that they come to hate those who can face it. They go around bashing queers, trying to destroy in others what they have come to loathe in themselves. Itʼs the same mechanism that makes the ugly hate the beautiful, the cowardly hate the brave, and the evil undermine the good, never realizing that the beauty, the bravery, and the goodness have been purchased with hard work, not inherited from providence."

The story really kicks into gear about three-quarters of the way in. It’s not that the beginning wasn’t engrossing. What started as predominantly BDSM porn shows deeper waters as the unnamed officer starts to examine the abuse, his reaction to it, and to his tormentors. What draws me more to him is how he clings to his humanity in the face of extreme physical and mental torture, how he continually tries to turn the abuse into something positive (little though it is) to keep from cracking completely. This is not done facilely, it's revealed in small, simple ways, to show its earning. He has to come out as a changed man from this ‘punishment’ but he uses the experience to reshape himself to a more truthful understanding. Other readers may see this in a different way, that maybe this is my own need for some positivity. (I kept oscillating between 3 and 5 stars during my reading, another example of the clever manipulation.)

This is not a romance, it is a very tough read made by a skilled hand. ‘The Brig’ has well done BDSM scenes and mind-play as well as examines some real issues during the time of the civil rights movement and before ‘don’t ask/don’t tell’.

[Don Bradshaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was harsh and yet the unnamed soldier gained a lot of insight into himself especially when he had to torture other prisoners. I was 17 when Viet Nam and the draft ended but would have gotten an agricultural deferment. I can't imagine how this man in the story went from seminary to the brutal hell he managed to live through. Based on a true story which made it even more engrossing and real, the story was gut wrenching . I was horrified, amazed and happy as I followed the unnamed soldier through his ordeal and watched him crawl out of the rabbit hole alive. Not a book for the squeamish and I recommend that the reader read the author's notes as the author was the soldier's partner.

[Steelwhisper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhere between 2 and 2.5*, as in "it was okay, not bad, but I also did not like it."

I took a variety of things away from this, mainly that it bored me to distraction, that it dripped with hidden misogyny, that some people have a grave problem with bodily wastes, and that I could finally pinpoint why I dislike Leather to quite a degree. It also was way too dressed-up with religion for my taste, and maybe also too US-centric for me.

But let us start at the beginning. Of course this is no book about BDSM, for which you'd need SSC/RACK present. Instead it's abuse, assault and rape, start to finish. Just to clarify, that I am absolutely not okay with the attempt of selling what happens as being anything else but rape and assault.

Now, I do like reading such content, if presented in an either interesting, or in a titillating manner, or even bringing both of that together. Unfortunately already the "interesting" is a full failure here. Apart from the first few chapters, there is endless repetition of bodily wastes being ingested, of whippings, ejaculations and a long, long, very long series of improbable or impossible acts involving balls and penes. For me it got very old already around the 30% mark.

Having studied quite extensively a variety of brainwashing techniques, gay-conversion therapy, aversion training/therapy, operant conditioning and for instance also prison and male rape, and real torture, I have trouble believing in what is described taking place as is described. The inner monologue was quite simply too pat, too easy, too willing. As if sexual orientation can be trained. And as such this was very distasteful to read:

Men, who've been raped for years in prison, and treated as "wives" by their rapists, get out of prison and are as heterosexual as before. Victims of severe sexual torture can develop a number of problems, illnesses and idiosyncrasies, but they don't change sexual orientations. Gay-conversion therapy is known to fail. This book was written before the fact that you get born with your sexual orientation was well-known. But even knowing this doesn't make it any less offensive on that count. Spreading such a message and seen with today's knowledge, this book is in my opinion deeply homophobic.

I'd have possibly forgiven these issues, The Brig is 30 years old after all, if at least I'd have found it erotic. I didn't. There were one or two twinges, but on the whole I was neither turned on by that most times very simple, child-like inner monologue of the soldier, which to me kept insisting he can't be adult, nor enamoured with all that religious stuff and pseudo-philosophic musing. Urine, shit, sweat and ejaculate and playing with them like a toddler doesn’t turn me on. That is no taboo for me, so I do not even get a frisson of the forbidden. And in the amount described here it’s simply—very.very.boring.

The magically ever-growing penis sizes, whole quarts of semen shot up like cannonballs into poor sodding rectums (and those guys aren’t even described as having milk-can-sized balls!), beatings without the least bit of finesse, all that male posing: it all got old very fast and none of it was even slightly erotic. The subject of all that attention may tell me a hundred times how aroused he is by all that, if he can’t bring it over to me in a manner so I get aroused, I’m not. I guess you have to have those taboos to be titillated.

Two things left me with a distinctly bad taste in my mouth. One was the hidden, yet constant misogyny, which culminated in the scene with the soldier wearing a dress. Yuck. The other was my dislike for the glorification of the military, and the leather scene building on it. The attempts at subversion were too feeble and half-hearted for my taste.

It was adequately written, the prose nothing I noticed any which way, meaning it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good either. The story arc itself was held and worked with, but try as I might I cannot see the main character evolving or changing. He was as placid and simple at the end as at the start.

Would I rec this? Maybe as a curiosity of bygone time to some. Others, who get off on body wastes might get more out of it.

[Sue bowdley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really shouldn't have like this book but I hang my head and say I absolutely loved it..It was quite a hard read to think that this actually happened even if not all than some.....Some of the things our poor MC had done to him was absolutely disgusting and degrading....Turning him from human to dog.....why would anyone want to do something like that to a fellow forces guy...He was ripped apart but the author also gave him a reprieve...The end....oh did he get his own back on his sergeant oh yes....fucking him senseless...making him say Sir.Yes Sir I totally felt for him and what he went through but I still think he got what he wanted in the end x

[Lynn Kelling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gripping. Powerful. Unforgettable. Loved it.

[S.M. Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't decided if this one is three stars or four stars. Maybe 3 and a half?

I enjoyed the first 2/3 or so more than the last 1/3... umm... when it was just the 3 sergeant and two corporals in charge of this one prisoner making his life hell, I thought the story flowed and I dreaded each new day along with the narrator.

There were certain things promised to the prisoner/narrator that didn't come to pass, and I found myself strangely disappointed, in my depraved kind of way.

But once things turned sort of fantastical (i.e. every officer involved with The Brig was on-board with the torturing of prisoners in bizarre ways), my ability to buy into the story was damaged. It became a credibility issue.

I could believe the system might turn a blind eye to what was happening in the first 2/3 of the book, but to believe the WHOLE SYSTEM itself was this corrupt, through and through - yeah. I had trouble with that.

Is the story depraved? Hell yeah. Did I chew it up and spit it out within 24 hours? Yeppers.

Did I love the narrator and want him to survive this? Yes, again.

So, okay, I'll go with 4 stars.

[Page Crusherz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This books is a supposedly true story of rape and abuse in an effort by the US Gov to "turn" someone gay as a form of dehumanization. If you are looking for a book that is a noncon sexual romp, then check this out.

You cannot separate this book and the ideas of sexuality from the fact that it was written 30 years ago. There is a present lack of understanding about sexuality and identity, but clearly it was not written down in an effort to deconstruct that development of identity.

I am fascinated with queer books that were written many years ago, and I think it is interesting to look at the messages of sexuality. I don't know quite what this message is supposed to be, but in the end I gave up trying to find one.

Though it purports to be a "true" chronicle of events, the voice is so removed and complacent in its descriptions it neither titillated nor horrified me. It reminded me of A Child Called It, in the sense that it became not much more than a list of horrible things that can be done to one person by others, albeit in a sexual way. This is put out by a publishing house of fiction, and I am sure that the intro is as much of the fiction as is the rest. This narrative was shocking to many in the 70's I am sure, but in this age we know and understand much more, and I couldn't shut off the part of my brain about that glaring issue.

If you want an interesting book that still has some conflicting issues with queerness, but has a plot and characters that intrigue, check out some of Gordon Merrick's work.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. M/M. Brutal, dark book about a young man who realizes he cannot stomach what is happening in the Vietnam war and asks for an honorable discharge from the Navy. The book says this is a real story, I hope it isn't, but the higher ups in the Navy throw the man in "The Brig" for the eight weeks they say it will take to process his discharge papers and he is then subject to brutal, horrible torture and Pavlov-like training to turn him into a masochist homosexual who can only get aroused under severe pain. The man had no, known homosexual tendencies before his stint in "The Brig."

This book is brutal, depressing and every other horrible thing you can think. But, it is a deep look into the brain of a young man as he tries to cope and justify what is happening to him. Shouldn't be read by anyone trying to have a nice day.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is certainly not good, but it's weirdly intriguing. It's filled with severely outdated conceptions of how attraction, sexual orientation, and the human everything actually work, but if it were 40 years ago and I didn't know that, I might think "This is pretty percipient."

It's not percipient. But it would have seemed so at the time.

It's gross too. Don't read it if you don't like imagining people floating in pee.

[Moony Eliver]

This isn't working for me. It's PWP, no real story or character development, so I'm not caring about any of it. DNF @ 27%.

And waaaay too many exclamation points.

[Nadeesha]

If something like this happened to me those who did these things should either kill me or watch their backs for life because I would hunt them to the ends of earth and beyond and take my revenge tenfold even if it is the last thing I did.

[Foxy Vixen · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.7

So fucking good! And horrible. And hot!
Great sex, interesting character study.

My only wish was for a romantic happy ending, which we sadly don't get, as this isn't a classical "couple-story."

It's about a guy who gets mentally and physically abused in prison, but kind of learns to like it.

He personally has a kind of happy ending, as he seems content in his life when the story ends, and the book ends with an interesting sexual encounter, (that I would love to read more about!) But he doesn't have a steady romantic partner, the way I want my stories to end. But it wasn't that kind of story, and it certainly wont effect my score, since the book is amazing, and I wont let my personal preference influence my objectivity concerning the quality of a great tale.

One tiny gripe. Alot of times when people talk, there is exclamation points at the end of their sentences, even if they aren't warranted. It bugged me a little, but not enough to detract from the amazing ride.

It was interesting, different, and creative. And hot, did I mention hot?🔥

I want a sequel!!!!

[Franklin]

This is the first time that I recall of the thousands of books I have considered reading that the Author's Forward made me decide NOT to read it.

The general description of "The Brig" is as a "gay erotic BDSM novel".

The problem I have with that is from the Forward:

"'The Brig" is a real story, based upon real events that happened to a real human being."

That real human being was the author's now-dead partner of 18 years.

The author goes on to explain "Kelson... was indeed incarcerated in the brig for objecting to the war and was brutally used by his Marine guards.... He considered that they *did* break him."

It took Kelson years before he was able to tell his partner, the author, about what happened.

For the author to turn such a truly horrific, private, deeply, deep personal event in his dead partner's life -- one which left Kelson with traumatic emotional injury until his death -- into an "erotic BDSM novel" I think is disgusting and revolting.
. . .

[Juxian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the very beginning and the very end of the book where the author speaks about his partner, Kelson. Well, and some beginning and ending scenes in the story itself, where we see glimpses of personality of the narrator. The rest was, unfortunately, repetitive, overblown, unrealistic sadomasochistic fantasies. I don't think anything is wrong with fantasies of whatever variety but they really were boring. But out of respect to Kelson, who seemed to be a really amazing guy, three stars.

[Kym]

“A novel of punishment and discipline by a Military gone mad with power”…yeah…I admit it…it’s porn…with no females in sight! Just some bad bad boys!

[Michael Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can find my full review of The Brig on my web site.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is art not pornography. Okay, it's also pornography. I've read very few things that function so well on both levels.

[Danielle]

It's hard to rate a book knowing that it's loosely based on true events or someones life.

[S.F. Tanner · Rating 5 out of 5]

As hot now as the day it was published.

[Tully Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow... this was awful and exceptional at the same time.

[Ed Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense.