Rough Trade

by Todd Gregory (Editor)

'Rough Trade' once signaled a risky encounter with dangerous straight men who were 'gay for pay'. Since then the term has come to mean everything from S&M to wrestling, and this collection of stories explores hot, nasty and sexy encounters penned by some of gay fiction's top writers.

Genres: Anthologies, M M Romance, Erotica, LGBT

230 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2009

Reviews

[Arya · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rating is based solely on the first story by Aaron Travis. Holy shit, not for the faint of heart.
However, they were all good, some more so than others.
(Skimmed over the last few. Will come back to those later.)

UPDATE: That 1st story has made me obsessed with everything written by Aaron Travis.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't read all of the stories in the books since the ones I did weren't all that compelling. I did skim through all of them, however. I would describe these stories as disturbing, rather then erotic, but perhaps that is to be expected considering the theme of the collection. The stories are all very well written, but not what I would describe as literary. "The Fratboy and The Faggot" by Aaron Travis is typical of the collection focusing on the sexual pleasure a gay man derives from being used and debased by a - at least in theory - straight frat guy who sees the gay man as merely an object to be used. The chief emotion the story invoked in was pity, followed by distaste. A lot of the stories deal with prostitution. "Tricked" by Jonathon Asche was my favorite of the ones I read. It was about a man who thought he was hooking up discovering he was the trick of an derisive prostitute and how he got his revenge. It was hot and very disturbing and captured what I think this collection was trying to do.

[Ted Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good. Some not so good. All very well written. At times it felt too far fetch to believe but fun none the less. would have enjoyed more danger in the stories. They sometimes felt too clean cut to be rough trade. I enjoyed them. Favorites include: Under the Table, Frisco and Blueboy.