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Mechanical Fantasy Box: The Homoerotic Journal of Patrick Cowley
Chronicles of sex and disco in ’70s San Francisco, from the revolutionary musician behind “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).”
Patrick Cowley (1950–82) was one of the most revolutionary and influential figures in electronic dance music. Born in Buffalo, Cowley moved to San Francisco in 1971 to study music at the City College of San Francisco. By the mid '70s, his synthesizer techniques landed him a job composing and producing songs for disco diva Sylvester, including hits such as "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)." Cowley created his own brand of peak-time party music known as Hi-NRG, dubbed "the San Francisco Sound." His life was cut short on November 12, 1982, when he died shortly after his 32nd birthday from AIDS-related illness.
Mechanical Fantasy Box is Cowley's homoerotic journal, or, as he called it, "graphic accounts of one man's sex life." The journal begins in 1974 and ends in 1980 on his 30th birthday. It chronicles his slow rise to fame from lighting technician at the City Disco to crafting his ground-breaking 16-minute remix of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" to performing with Sylvester at the SF Opera House. Vivid descriptions are told of cruising in '70s SoMA sex venues, ecstatic highs in Buena Vista Park and composing "pornophonics" in his Castro apartment. For this book, artist Gwenaël Rattke created 25 original illustrations inspired by selected entries, three street maps documenting locations mentioned herein, and four collages of photos, ephemera and notes that Cowley had inserted in the journal. This book shows a very out-front, alive person going through the throes of gay liberation post-Stonewall.
Patrick Cowley (1950–82) was one of the most revolutionary and influential figures in electronic dance music. Born in Buffalo, Cowley moved to San Francisco in 1971 to study music at the City College of San Francisco. By the mid '70s, his synthesizer techniques landed him a job composing and producing songs for disco diva Sylvester, including hits such as "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)." Cowley created his own brand of peak-time party music known as Hi-NRG, dubbed "the San Francisco Sound." His life was cut short on November 12, 1982, when he died shortly after his 32nd birthday from AIDS-related illness.
Mechanical Fantasy Box is Cowley's homoerotic journal, or, as he called it, "graphic accounts of one man's sex life." The journal begins in 1974 and ends in 1980 on his 30th birthday. It chronicles his slow rise to fame from lighting technician at the City Disco to crafting his ground-breaking 16-minute remix of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" to performing with Sylvester at the SF Opera House. Vivid descriptions are told of cruising in '70s SoMA sex venues, ecstatic highs in Buena Vista Park and composing "pornophonics" in his Castro apartment. For this book, artist Gwenaël Rattke created 25 original illustrations inspired by selected entries, three street maps documenting locations mentioned herein, and four collages of photos, ephemera and notes that Cowley had inserted in the journal. This book shows a very out-front, alive person going through the throes of gay liberation post-Stonewall.
128 pages, Paperback
First published November 26, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 4, 2024
Guys, I promise I don’t intend on logging just gay erotica from now on, but I borrowed a shit ton of books from the library, so it might be a long time… Cruising full-speed ahead on the “Titanic ’70s,” this diary is an ecstatic paean to the glories of casual gay sex, with not a hint of the iceberg of AIDS that lies ahead. It’s wonderfully pretentious and flashes a certain lyrical swagger, careening from glory holes to dark rooms to the circulating passages of Cowley’s “mechanical fantasy box” that open to ever-changing bedmates. A lapsed Catholic, men are Cowley’s true communion, his sacrament, his altar, his Holy Grail. Here are a few random entries (not the smuttiest or the most intelligible in the book; erratic punctuation and misspellings in the original):
NOV 12, ‘75 St. Michael & St. Patrick, their halos slightly a-tilt, made a real stir when they appeared to a small gathering of devotees tonight. Their dimly lit forms gave off a warm glow as they preformed ancient erotic rituals. One to another, both to each other, an offering and a sacrifice, the boundaries indistinguishable – one saint astride another, bent to his thrust, churning to a transubstantiate rhythm. Until, Speaking in tongues, erotic litanies and the tongues of flame grow hot and hotter – all heaven breaks loose —————
NOV 23, ‘75 Who is this octopus – this starfish all arms and suction. Silent type but traces of temerity shine through. Rocks off on an army cot – army shoes – in Castro uniform. An army of lovers did they say? Spits in your mouth no class, no nothin but traces shining. He might have held me this one, even after I say emphatically No. On my way out I see a painting with tentacles waving behind a chair. An octopus sure as shit.
NOV 24, ‘75 Rush Hour. Dim waiting rooms are crowded with expectancy. My back is to the wall & suddenly they converge on me purring & clicking – THREE ON ONE. I have to move it. A mustache with soft straight hair spots me & hovers awhile. He gives me deep throat & I branch out toward a familiar face. A pliable carved statue who moans while it’s soft. I’d like to but I can’t wait – can’t wait – can’t wait.
NOV 12, ‘75 St. Michael & St. Patrick, their halos slightly a-tilt, made a real stir when they appeared to a small gathering of devotees tonight. Their dimly lit forms gave off a warm glow as they preformed ancient erotic rituals. One to another, both to each other, an offering and a sacrifice, the boundaries indistinguishable – one saint astride another, bent to his thrust, churning to a transubstantiate rhythm. Until, Speaking in tongues, erotic litanies and the tongues of flame grow hot and hotter – all heaven breaks loose —————
NOV 23, ‘75 Who is this octopus – this starfish all arms and suction. Silent type but traces of temerity shine through. Rocks off on an army cot – army shoes – in Castro uniform. An army of lovers did they say? Spits in your mouth no class, no nothin but traces shining. He might have held me this one, even after I say emphatically No. On my way out I see a painting with tentacles waving behind a chair. An octopus sure as shit.
NOV 24, ‘75 Rush Hour. Dim waiting rooms are crowded with expectancy. My back is to the wall & suddenly they converge on me purring & clicking – THREE ON ONE. I have to move it. A mustache with soft straight hair spots me & hovers awhile. He gives me deep throat & I branch out toward a familiar face. A pliable carved statue who moans while it’s soft. I’d like to but I can’t wait – can’t wait – can’t wait.
January 11, 2023
"Homoerotic journal" is perhaps a bit of an understatement—this is a straight-up a sex diary. I had expected more details about gay life in 1970's San Francisco, but once I realized that this was the ecstatic documentation of sexual encounters I was able to get on its wavelength (I had it on my nightstand & read entries over the course of a year or so). Sexy & surprisingly spiritual, qualities terrifically complimented by the newly added illustrations by Gwenaël Rattke. A queer historical treasure.
"Remember the guy in the mesh shirt at the Fair — We give each other the longing looks again and this time I walk right up. 'You've given me a hard-on with your eyes' 'Now you'll have to do something about it'"
"Remember the guy in the mesh shirt at the Fair — We give each other the longing looks again and this time I walk right up. 'You've given me a hard-on with your eyes' 'Now you'll have to do something about it'"
October 10, 2020
Hot and haunting sex diaries that vacillate between explicit and esoteric. Extreme mood and sense of time that is only enhanced by listening to Crowley's disco tracks while reading. Also: the new artwork is divine.
June 21, 2021
The obsession, the devotion, the worship. These are the things that make desire—and especially queer desire—not just thrilling but sacred.
And the illustrations are everything!
And the illustrations are everything!
April 13, 2022
A MECHANICAL FANTASY BOX WITH NO LID
We gay men of a certain age danced in the late 1970s and early 1980s to Patrick Cowley’s music but were not aware of the name of the man who composed, produced, and performed it. We were familiar with Sylvester, for whom Cowley wrote several hits and with whom Cowley performed and toured. Marty Blecman writes in his liner notes to “Patrick Cowley: The Ultimate Collection” (2010): “Today his music is still fresh, contemporary, and is currently being rediscovered by a new generation of dance enthusiasts, aerobics instructors, and clubs.” I will add to Blecman’s remarks that Patrick Cowley’s homoerotic journal is a valuable and candid document of gay male life prior to the AIDS epidemic, which destroyed “sexual liberation.”
When I first saw the photograph of Patrick Cowley on the cover of Mechanical Fantasy Box: The Homoerotic Journal of Patrick Cowley, I thought he was wearing a face mask like we are during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, I realized that Cowley is just pulling up his black t-shirt around his face, probably at the direction of the photographer. Even so, the photograph gives me a chill. Patrick Cowley died much too young at the age of thirty-two on November 12, 1982, an early casualty of the AIDS scourge. Two months before his death, the CDC released the first case definition of AIDS.
Dark Entries Editions has done a fine job of publishing Patrick Cowley’s sex journal, as it has been called. The cover and interior design, the sturdy paper, and the fabulous illustrations by Gwenaël Rattke make the book a treasure to own.
In his introduction to Mechanical Fantasy Box, Jorge Socarrás makes the following observations: “[Patrick’s journal] is an affirmation that his artistry and his sexuality cannot be analyzed separately, but spring from the same creative force.” Each page of Patrick Cowley’s beautiful and provocative journal proves the truth of what Socarrás says.
The journal entries begin on August 18, 1974 and end with October 19, 1980. Throughout the 1970s, the entries are frequent, sometimes daily. Then, he has only one, atypically long, entry for 1979: “JAN 2, ’79 Time to re-open? I’m not sure what I feel after months of ignoring these graphic accounts of one man’s sex life. Does it cheapen to verbalize or more, to write about it. – Do I care?” Cowley only includes five entries for 1980. He was either tired of keeping the journal, or he was becoming much more successful with his music. Most likely the latter. I doubt that his sex life had decreased in quantity.
Patrick Cowley’s journal entries are wonderfully poetic. They teem with Catholic religious imagery. And, of course, they are pornographic. Cowley often refers to the men he meets, many of them anonymously, as “a tribe” and “his men.” In a couple of entries, he describes his dreams, which, unsurprisingly, are erotic. Cowley can compose quite intriguing phrases, for example, “JAN 23, ’76 In a sewer, a shining underworld cave where a lost race fulfills an ancient prophecy.” This sewer, this cave, is where his men, his tribe, perform their acts of brotherhood.
I particularly like the following entry in which Cowley expresses his excitement when he is in a bathhouse and his own music is playing while he is having sex: “Nov 5, ’76 . . . ‘Breakdown’ comes on the speakers and I’m at the controls once again. ALL MINE!”
The last journal entry, made on his birthday, is ultimate Patrick Cowley; it illustrates Socarrás’s observations about Cowley’s artistry and sexuality: “OCT 19, ’80 The big three-o—the wave of happiness that breaks over me—the realization that my life, body, music is so beautiful. Working like a possessed man this past week.” In this entry, Cowley mentions that all the while “porno-phonic” music (his own?) has been raving.
Patrick Cowley must have had a photographic memory. How else did could he have remembered so many of his sexual encounters and who put what where? It’s almost as if he was writing down his journal entries at the time the events he describes were happening. Although his journal does contain a great deal of bravado, I do believe that Cowley is telling the unembellished truth.
Cowley frequently uses the phrase “mechanical fantasy box” to describe the men and the scenarios in which he participates in the bathhouses. He mentions several men that he particularly relished being with and whom he saw several times, but he never seems to have had a boyfriend or a lover for any length of time. For whatever reason, Cowley must have put up barriers to getting involved with any one person. His mechanical fantasy box was large and seems to have had no lid on it.
We gay men of a certain age danced in the late 1970s and early 1980s to Patrick Cowley’s music but were not aware of the name of the man who composed, produced, and performed it. We were familiar with Sylvester, for whom Cowley wrote several hits and with whom Cowley performed and toured. Marty Blecman writes in his liner notes to “Patrick Cowley: The Ultimate Collection” (2010): “Today his music is still fresh, contemporary, and is currently being rediscovered by a new generation of dance enthusiasts, aerobics instructors, and clubs.” I will add to Blecman’s remarks that Patrick Cowley’s homoerotic journal is a valuable and candid document of gay male life prior to the AIDS epidemic, which destroyed “sexual liberation.”
When I first saw the photograph of Patrick Cowley on the cover of Mechanical Fantasy Box: The Homoerotic Journal of Patrick Cowley, I thought he was wearing a face mask like we are during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, I realized that Cowley is just pulling up his black t-shirt around his face, probably at the direction of the photographer. Even so, the photograph gives me a chill. Patrick Cowley died much too young at the age of thirty-two on November 12, 1982, an early casualty of the AIDS scourge. Two months before his death, the CDC released the first case definition of AIDS.
Dark Entries Editions has done a fine job of publishing Patrick Cowley’s sex journal, as it has been called. The cover and interior design, the sturdy paper, and the fabulous illustrations by Gwenaël Rattke make the book a treasure to own.
In his introduction to Mechanical Fantasy Box, Jorge Socarrás makes the following observations: “[Patrick’s journal] is an affirmation that his artistry and his sexuality cannot be analyzed separately, but spring from the same creative force.” Each page of Patrick Cowley’s beautiful and provocative journal proves the truth of what Socarrás says.
The journal entries begin on August 18, 1974 and end with October 19, 1980. Throughout the 1970s, the entries are frequent, sometimes daily. Then, he has only one, atypically long, entry for 1979: “JAN 2, ’79 Time to re-open? I’m not sure what I feel after months of ignoring these graphic accounts of one man’s sex life. Does it cheapen to verbalize or more, to write about it. – Do I care?” Cowley only includes five entries for 1980. He was either tired of keeping the journal, or he was becoming much more successful with his music. Most likely the latter. I doubt that his sex life had decreased in quantity.
Patrick Cowley’s journal entries are wonderfully poetic. They teem with Catholic religious imagery. And, of course, they are pornographic. Cowley often refers to the men he meets, many of them anonymously, as “a tribe” and “his men.” In a couple of entries, he describes his dreams, which, unsurprisingly, are erotic. Cowley can compose quite intriguing phrases, for example, “JAN 23, ’76 In a sewer, a shining underworld cave where a lost race fulfills an ancient prophecy.” This sewer, this cave, is where his men, his tribe, perform their acts of brotherhood.
I particularly like the following entry in which Cowley expresses his excitement when he is in a bathhouse and his own music is playing while he is having sex: “Nov 5, ’76 . . . ‘Breakdown’ comes on the speakers and I’m at the controls once again. ALL MINE!”
The last journal entry, made on his birthday, is ultimate Patrick Cowley; it illustrates Socarrás’s observations about Cowley’s artistry and sexuality: “OCT 19, ’80 The big three-o—the wave of happiness that breaks over me—the realization that my life, body, music is so beautiful. Working like a possessed man this past week.” In this entry, Cowley mentions that all the while “porno-phonic” music (his own?) has been raving.
Patrick Cowley must have had a photographic memory. How else did could he have remembered so many of his sexual encounters and who put what where? It’s almost as if he was writing down his journal entries at the time the events he describes were happening. Although his journal does contain a great deal of bravado, I do believe that Cowley is telling the unembellished truth.
Cowley frequently uses the phrase “mechanical fantasy box” to describe the men and the scenarios in which he participates in the bathhouses. He mentions several men that he particularly relished being with and whom he saw several times, but he never seems to have had a boyfriend or a lover for any length of time. For whatever reason, Cowley must have put up barriers to getting involved with any one person. His mechanical fantasy box was large and seems to have had no lid on it.
January 27, 2021
Loved this quick fun read, this great music maker's sexual diaries of San Francisco pre HIV era is so energetic and hysterical in his erotic excesses its almost funny, but his descriptions of partners and locations are so witty as to keep the episodes from becoming tiring. In 2021 he would have been dragged to Sex Addicts, Narcotics Anonymous and AA meetings before the 20th page for good reason but somehow his ongoing drug fueled orgy seems oddly life affirming.
February 28, 2020
Fascinating diary from time to time but a bit repetitive in the long run.
April 19, 2020
A stylishly and well designed publication.
Charming and uncomplicated.
And a pleasant reminder about the joy, wonder and sense of liberation sex can bring.
Charming and uncomplicated.
And a pleasant reminder about the joy, wonder and sense of liberation sex can bring.
Read
May 1, 2024I ♥️ Patrick 🎉
December 15, 2025
Captures a bygone scene of 70s sexually liberated San Francisco in hot and haunting entries, paired with wonderful illustrations. It’s more than a “coffee table” book (as the person who bought it for me described it as). So much love, sex, potential, art, bliss and enlightenment is captured in these scrawling and ephemeral entries, tinged with an ironic sadness knowing that the love & energy will be taken away.
March 8, 2023
In a funny way, I wish Cowley's sex diary was more detailed and graphic, but then again it wasn't his goal to write porn. Also wish there was a little more honesty about STI experience that inevitably goes along with this much sex. But, this was a private diary, I don't think it was written with a later audience in mind or even trying to "document a time" that holds lots of nostalgia for contemporary queers.. More likely, it was just a way for him to savor the enjoyment, all the countless public and private sexual encounters. Fun sexy read.
January 16, 2023
NSFW
Just your average sex journal which provides a fascinating look into the glory days of LGBTQ society of San Francisco including some lovely maps and business cards of Polk, Folsom, and Castro.
Just your average sex journal which provides a fascinating look into the glory days of LGBTQ society of San Francisco including some lovely maps and business cards of Polk, Folsom, and Castro.
October 13, 2023
The religious fervor that he has for hooking up and bodies is so intense and refreshing! Many entries blur the line between (very well written) smut and poetry, and the illustrations so perfectly fit the vibe!! I am excited to lend this out to friends :)
December 27, 2023
Given the author, there is ample beauty and transcendence to be found in the poetic eruptions of this diary. At a minimum, we get a spicy little reminder that San Francisco used to be a lot more gay, and sex used to be a lot more fun in the 70s.
December 12, 2025
If you’re interested in…
- San Francisco gay histories in the ‘70s
- fascinatingly written sex memoirs
- the brilliant disco producer / musician Patrick Cowley
…you need to read this book. You’ve likely never read anything quite like it.
- San Francisco gay histories in the ‘70s
- fascinatingly written sex memoirs
- the brilliant disco producer / musician Patrick Cowley
…you need to read this book. You’ve likely never read anything quite like it.
May 7, 2022
Such a gift
January 14, 2024
I appreciated the brevity and immediacy- the thrill is in the rawness of these journal entries. If they had been polished I don't think we'd have as much insight into Patrick's magical sexual world.
Read
December 3, 2024Unrateable, gorgeous history. Aspirational!
December 6, 2025
:( does pleasure like he describes really exist?
May 16, 2022
Mechanical Fantasy Box is a personal diary about the end of an era – the pre-AIDS era. It felt liberating to read a gay man's sex diary that was about pleasure, without even hints of shame, guilt, or fear. There are only a few passages where Patrick wonders whether the lifestyle of hookups and cruising is empty and meaningless (something that many gay men still contemplate today), and the reader is haunted by the knowledge of what happened only a few months after the last ecstatic diary entries.
The repetition didn't bother me, but instead served to create the literary equivalent of the repetitive Hi-NRG dance music Patrick produced during his lifetime.
I feel like this book might set the scene for a possible future for gay men in what I would call the post-AIDS era (thanks to testing, TasP and PrEP).
The repetition didn't bother me, but instead served to create the literary equivalent of the repetitive Hi-NRG dance music Patrick produced during his lifetime.
I feel like this book might set the scene for a possible future for gay men in what I would call the post-AIDS era (thanks to testing, TasP and PrEP).
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews