Marion Zimmer Bradley ~ The Catch Trap
From: Ballantine Books

UPDATE: NOW ON KINDLE!

The first rule is when falling not to miss the net.

I was a closeted teenage gay geek. Yep, I was being raised in a very strict “Holy Roller” household and far too aware of my homosexuality and the pain it would eventually cause me and those around me and (Thank god!) I had a ravenous curiosity to read. One day after finding a suitable library far enough away from my parents and my neighborhood and with librarians who were… how shall I say this… “not worried as to my exact age” I started picking up and reading any and all gay literature I could get my grubby hands on.

Let me tell you, most of the gay “coming-out” literature out there is depressing!

Sorry but even as young and inexperienced as I was I knew I in no way wanted to become a depressed stage actor, a flighty screen director, sing show tunes in drag, worry about my cloths or hair, hang with the tawdry scandalous rich and famous, or be involved with men who hold such things in much import. 
Unfortunately in most gay literature shelves in a small public library filled to the brim with “dead white guys” even back in the late 70s, early 80s, this leaves you with pretty much nothing but the porno section to hold your interest.

This leads me here, to probably the one book that even came close to having any meaning for me at that time. You might know of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s highly entertaining writings like the vast Darkover science fiction series and the gorgeous Avalon Arthurian fantasy series of books. You might even know that she helped found the Society for Creative Anachronism here in the Bay Area. You might be aware of the real life scandals surrounding her involving the two husbands she married both of whom were considered to be gay and one of whom was an accused pedophile.

I highly doubt though that you have ever read her most ambitious work and the best damn teenage gay male romance I have ever come across.

The Catch Trap was originally titled The Flyers and was actually written and completed in first draft back in 1948 but not published until 1979.

This particular book (considered by her family and close friends to be her best work) was unfortunately hidden in the fiction stacks well away from public view, to be kept away from curious children and sensitive adults, due to the fact that unlike her science fiction and fantasy stories this one was very above board in it’s gay romance subject matter.

In fact it was one of the first gay romances I ever read, between two young masculine kids, with a realistic well researched circus setting and containing a very taboo topic, and most threatening of all it was entertaining. The story is heavily populated with factual historical circus minutia and lots of Italian family members and assorted characters both gay and straight, the real “core” story centers on Mario Santelli (of The Flying Santelli’s) and Tommy Zane Jr. (the Lion Tamer’s kid) both living and training (in the beginning of the book) at a second tier circus during the 1940’s.
 Mario is 20 and Tommy is 14 when they meet, Mario allows Tommy to start working with him on the trapeze. Tommy’s dreams of becoming a flyer like Mario are quickly realized when he starts to show a real talent. Tommy slowly evolves from a typical boyish childhood crush on Mario to an almost heart aching first love that culminates in eventual notice and reciprocation from Mario.

Sexual tension leads to a few stolen kisses to some heavy petting, then proceeds from there.

Which brings on the whole still taboo subject matter involving sex between a very young adult man and a teenage boy, even though it is entirely impromptu and consensual, given Tommy could have very publicly rejected Mario in my opinion, and very much a part of the gay teenage coming of age story being told. The whole concern I hear over this is just overblown and silly, at this age these kids were both pretty bad at sex anyway. We are not talking anywhere near the level of pornographic description I have read in most straight historical romance books having this same age setup of only a six years age difference, here it was just more awkward and emotional and tense than any real heavy breathing sexy action.

Now don’t go getting the idea this is all about Mario, the senior of the two, leading Tommy on, a lot of the initial seduction is fully on Tommy’s part seen with his POV front and center with Mario scared witless that they will be caught (He’s right they are) and he alone will be blamed (Right again).
 I was rooting for Tommy to keep hitting on the guy and thinking to myself, yum, muscular Italian stud in tights, I’d hit it!
 (At the time I kept picturing Mikhail Baryshnikov from the movie The Turning Point, hubba hubba, whenever he turned his back to the camera in those tights and showed those round perky luscious buttocks that I had the distinct urge to plant my face firmly between them and… Never mind)

The book falls into two large sections the 1940’s and the 1950’s.

Remember this was written over a long period of time during these years and should be considered contemporary in subject for that period. So do not be surprised by the obvious non-politically correct homosexual points of view. It was hard enough just to be a homosexual, to just have any type of contact with another man without getting thrown into jail, then add to that actually having a long term relationship or being very accepting of one’s self, well…

The first section is of Tommy and Mario meeting and training together and falling in love, then the eventual heartbreak and realization when The Flying Santelli’s troupe they are in falls apart that they too will have to break up and leave each other.

The second section takes place later in their lives when Tommy purposefully seeks Mario out and helps to not only rebuild the troupe (The Flying Santelli’s) but also rebuild a life in which he and Mario can remain together as an adult homosexual male couple.

The Catch Trap in my opinion is more than just the average gay or even straight epic historical romantic codpiece ripper. 
Sure there is sex and heartache and drama and lots of heavy sighs and a couple of very violent moments but they are not the best part. 
There are distinct gay life lessons, real valid messages falling out of these pages even though it is written by an obviously intelligent but none the less straight woman.

-Just because you fall in love with an older guy does not mean that his age will automatically make him the more mature of the two parties involved.

-Violence will eventually destroy any relationship and most likely your life.

-Sexuality should be an extension of your life and goals not the focus of it.

-Just because you can have sex with a woman does not mean you should and having a child won’t make you straight.

And last but not least…

-No matter how desperate and painful life gets because you were being honest about yourself, and who you really are, accept that you will survive and be better for it.

Pretty good stuff for a romance book huh?

All I know is a copy of this book remains forever in my library.

Besides All That…

Don’t get me wrong, the writing in The Catch Trap ain’t in any way, shape, or form, perfect and we are talking about a very very long book. Some of the early parts of the book have a little too much foreshadowing for real comfort. Lines like…

“It was the only promise to one another they never broke.”

I mean come on I’m 1/3 of the way through the book, I know there is more to this story, stop hinting about that and get on with it. Some of the later parts of the book get so philosophical and full of over justification I was cringing for some of the characters going so far outside of how they had been initially written.

Tommy turns into a thought bubble context factory in the second half of the book.

“It’s my job to get him back to the Coast in one piece. But it’s because I need to have him in one piece. But we’ve got to find a way to live together without tearing each other up this way. And it’s my job, because his nerves are all to pieces, and mine are in pretty good shape.”

It gets especially obvious that some of these internal discussions were not something that the character would actually be thinking and was planned to provide the required nice and tidy HEA ending Marion was going for.
 It just can become damn awkward reading.
 As far as endings go sometimes loose ends and unforgiving homophobic view points of secondary characters towards the couple left intact make a book more realistic for me, not everyone should become accepting at the romantic outcome or resolution of the story, just like real life is not perfect.

It’s just my guess that the bigger the book is the more glaring and lengthy the mistakes a writer may make. The Catch Trap is a huge book and still pays off ten times over despite these quibbles. This in my view really was Marion Zimmer Bradley’s best. So even though this book is out of print, all I can hope is for you to click over to Alibris and maybe pick up an old used copy for yourself Grade A.

Marion Zimmer Bradley ~ The Forbidden Circle
From: DAW

The Forbidden Tower (published 1977) is set in her well known world of Darkover and is the second book in the unofficially recognized Forbidden Tower “sub cycle”. Marion Zimmer Bradley never actually designated The Spell Sword, The Forbidden Tower (both found here in this newly published book called The Forbidden Circle) and The Bloody Sun as a true trilogy within the series but since she made the effort in 1979 to re-write The Bloody Sun with a new first chapter explaining how the events in The Forbidden Tower lead to the story found in The Bloody Sun… I for one, lump all three books together when talking about them. Now why did the publisher want to add to the confusion and call this The Forbidden Circle is beyond me but at least you are getting two of the three books.

Series wise, the most interesting thing about this grouping is way it tracks Marion as a writer The Spell Sword was written when Marion was 16 and is the first book about Darkover she ever wrote and the story’s simplicity reflects her age. The Bloody Sun is considered by fans the first “adult” Darkover novel that defined a style and a formula that would bring Marion a huge fan base. Placed smack dab in the middle, The Forbidden Tower is Marion at her peak writing skills and is a prime example of the writing done during her most creative period right before the 80′s. As a warning though, Marion Zimmer Bradley along with several other of the well known sci-fi series writers (Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey) follows an unfortunate rule in the fact that I stop recommending anything by the author after about oh 1981 or so. It may seem to be an arbitrary cut off date but take it from me, the golden era of Sci-fi fantasy series seems to end with the late 70′s in my opinion.

Our hero the lonely, misunderstood, man from outer space (typical Marion Zimmer Bradley trademark) Andrew Carr comes to Darkover and rescues the “damsel in distress”… and hey, this all was really gone over in The Spell Sword but you get a quick summary in The Forbidden Tower too. He ends up married to said “damsel in distress” Callista and living in her father’s castle with sister in law Ellemir and brother in law Damon, who stay over in the next room. Now if this all seems like the end to some children’s fairy tale and if you stop reading after The Spell Sword you would be correct in thinking that it all sounds pretty unexciting and well worn plot wise, no surprises there. This next book though, The Forbidden Tower then starts turning the whole “happily ever after” on it’s head while beating it severely around the head and shoulders till it screams for mercy.

Turns out that the “damsel in distress” is a highly trained telepath with a couple of serious sex issues and the other members in the family are telepathic too. Our poor heterosexual hero, farm boy, space man, Andrew Carr turns out to be telepathic also but he has no idea how an alien society like Darkover makes all this work. He has to come to grips with relatives who can read his every thought and every emotion as he learns more about the strange world he has chosen to live in and do all this while trying to fit himself into this noble alien family. While we are at it he also has to learn the politics, the expectations, and the cultural taboos and last but not least their sexuality.

Now notice; I told you that Andrew Carr was heterosexual and that the in-laws were in the next room and that they were all newly married and telepathic and teaching Andrew to be OK with all this? Um, well think about it and you will understand why I love this book. Pure pot boiler!

The Forbidden Tower in my opinion was Marion Zimmer Bradley at her peak writing skills in the 20 or so books she wrote in the Darkover series, what gets written about the Darkover society here is much more detailed than she had ever been up until this point and that is probably why she decided to rewrite the older book The Bloody Sun in 1979 in order to give it a more consistent flow with the world she evolved and elaborated on. The Forbidden Tower is more than just a sequel to a simplistic story she wrote at 16, it’s an exploration of how even in the fictional world she built the characters lives do not come with easy answers, convenient labels, and every decision has a sometimes unknown price even after the story ends. She also goes to great lengths to intelligently explain her worlds culture and I don’t think you can get more intimate culturally than learning about their sexuality and how they express it. The typical sci-fi cliche telepathy aspects provided Marion with a springboard for why the Darkovan culture is so alien in contrast to our own even though it is familiar on the surface but what she explores even sexually here is never graphic or vulgar like say your Robert Heinlein.

Now about this sexuality that gets talked about in the book… This is the only book in the whole series that contains more than a brief mention of how these Darkover people express sexuality in their married lives and only because they are having to explain these things to Andrew. I am not talking about out and out pornography just intelligent discussion of the facts not descriptions of the acts. In a nutshell, sexuality is simply an expression of intimacy and a persons sexual preference only designates the emotional needs not the physical events that may occur. In other words, on Darkover whatever gender you would choose to marry may not be the only gender you will ever have sex with. Especially if you have a truly intimate friendship with someone, it is accepted and also somewhat expected if you share such intimacy it will also be expressed sexually even with the same gender. Their society has a very fluid idea of sexuality that allows for those gray areas in life to exist and occasional events to happen without being absolutely traumatic to your sense of self or what others may think of you. Marion expresses this whole quagmire of complex and hard to define human sexuality so well that this unique perspective has stayed with me since I read this book many years ago. It made sense to me as a teenager and I still appreciate Marion’s thoughts about it all now.

The most memorable part of this whole book in my opinion is the reactions of our poor heterosexual hero, farm boy, space man, Andrew Carr in learning all this twisted and perverted stuff. Here he was playing the traditional story book role of macho hero and faithful husband only to find the culture he married into has an entirely different set of expectations of him. The scene I will never forget is close to the end of the book when Damon confronts Andrew after he gets used to the fact he likes the whole sharing a bed with the other couple setup and keys him into the fact that Damon (Another man!) is in that bed too and Andrew needs to get over that particular aspect.

What is hilarious in hindsight is Marion Zimmer Bradley was a woman writing sci-fi novels back when women were not supposed to do such things who also ended up writing more intelligent gay or bisexual male characters with a natural masculinity and believable motives and realistic relationships with other men and women than most of the “real” Gay authors of the time period. It is incredibly sad but since her death a lot of people are missing out on a very unique amalgamation of space ships and technology, and sword & sorcery (well OK… psychic, mental matrix magic, oh whatever!) done in a fashion that is quite entertaining even if it can seem that it is heavily borrowing from the typical pulp sci-fi genre. Give this “Happily Ever After” a shot you might like it with your M/M Romance.

Dull chimes ringing
Like an empty voice
A distant smile framed
Her lips are soft and moist
With your whispers
Whispering whispers
Elton John ~ Whispers

We don’t expect to have it up before September, but it might go faster than we expect.

Pssst! Look at that original front cover. September 11th is my guess.