< Previous264 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK pre-quel to the bearish Some Dance to Remember is his new 2001 novel of teenagers coming of age in a 1950’s Catholic boys’ school, What They Did to the Kid: Confessions of an Altar Boy. www.JackFritscher.com 265 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK Shaun Levin Shaun Levin lives in London where his short stories appear in Does the Sun Rise Over Dagenham? (Fourth Estate), The Slow Mirror: New Fiction by Jewish Writers (Five Leaves Press), The Gay Times Book of Short Stories, and in the journals Stand and Kunapipi. In the USA and Canada, his work can be found in the Queer View Mirror anthologies, Bad Jobs, Quickies 2, Best Gay Erotica 2000, Slow Grind, and in Mach, Indulge, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, The Evergreen Chronicles, and Venue. He also has stories in the e-zines, Mind Caviar and Suspect Thoughts. He runs “Gay Men Writing,” a creative writing workshop for gay men.266 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK ©Greg “Beast” Garcia George Madison aka Furr My “bearness” has roots deep in my childhood. My dad was in the redwood logging business, and would occasionally take me out and show me where the crew was working, or take me with him to the logging hardware store. There’s a connection between the kind of men I idealized at an early age, and the kind I prefer now: big, burly men, often bearded, in dirty, sweaty work clothes with dirt and grease under their fingernails and sawdust caught in their arm hairs. My fourth-grade math teacher was a chunky man with a nice full beard and hairy forearms. He was one of two coaches. I was so enamored of him that I became a sports team “manager.” I was the lucky go-fer staying late to pick up jockstraps and equipment in the locker rooms when the two coaches took their showers. Both men were bearded 267 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK and furry: my math teacher with dark fur and the other coach with blond body fur. At that age, it never occurred to me to pay much attention to their crotches. Their beards and hairy chests fascinated me. In college I realized I was gay, and my long fascination with bearded and hairy men finally made sense. By then I myself was bearded and hairy. Genetics granted a childhood wish. Not long afterwards, I discovered the world of erotica where the kind of man I liked wasn’t exactly common. Most of the stories dissatisfied me, so I began writing my own jerkoff material. I figured writing down some of my more heated fantasies would help get them off my mind. And then came Bear. I’m not sure it’s possible to relate the impact finding that magazine had on me back before bears were popular. I scraped up my nerve and sent off some stories...and got published! Karl von Uhl, one of the Bear editors at the time, gave me valuable advice: “Make me taste it; make me smell it!” My story “Down & Dirty” pro- voked the biggest reaction from readers, possibly because it printed alongside pictures of me whacking off smoking a cigar. Readers got the story plus the twisted hairball who wrote it, all in one package. After years of fantasy and fiction, I finally got my first motorcycle, a Honda Shadow ACE 750 Deluxe, in December 1999. My scoot is a chain-drive bike. So in the name of ser- vicing the chain, I have a perfectly legitimate opportunity to get greasy, and I wipe that grease all over my jeans the same as the bikers in my stories.268 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK Jay Neal By day, Jay Neal is a rocket scientist; by night, a bear pornographer. Born in 1956, Jay Neal has always been attracted to husky, hairy men. He’s written about bears since 1998. After his youth in Kansas, college in Iowa, and graduate school in New Eng land and the South, he received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1984, after which he worked on NASA projects for the U.S. Space Shuttle and Hubble Space Telescope. Later he moved into satellite-communications technology research for the twenty-first century. Under a pseudonym, he has published a number of technical papers with remarkably silly titles. Words have long been his obsession. Actually, so has sex. Together, they’re a pretty potent combination. With his scientific background, he never expected to find himself at a keyboard typing sentences like, “Fuck me! Fuck me! Oh yeah! Fuck me harder!” Happily, life is full of surprises. He’d like to reassure his readers that most of his writing is indeed done in the nude. Besides the science, which pays the bills, and the porn, which doesn’t, but helps keep him warm, Jay Neal enjoys 269 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK music. As a child, he played cello when he was smaller than the cello. Recently he realized a life-long nightmare and appeared on stage as the leading man in an amateur musical-theater production. The experience convinced him that he’s better off behind the scenes than in them. He’s at work now on his advanced degree in sex, but feels it could be some time before he really masters the subject. Several of his research findings have appeared so far in American Bear and American Grizzly magazines. He hopes in the near future to obtain a grant to study the relationship between self-organizing pattern formation in chest fur and chaos theory. In the meantime, he con- tinues his course of studies with his partner in suburban Washington, D.C., where they collaborate on experimental research with friends and guests.270 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK Simon Sheppard Simon Sheppard is the author of Hotter Than Hell and Other Stories, Alyson Books, and the co-editor with M. Christian, of the best-selling anthology, Rough Stuff: Tales of Gay Men, Sex, and Power . His work has appeared in two editions of Best Gay Erotica, and has also been published in over fifty other anthologies including, lately, Guilty Plea- sures, Aqua Erotica, The Burning Pen, Strange Bedfellows, and Noirotica 3 , as well as in a bunch of magazines. He is currently working on a non-fiction book about kink, to be published by Alyson. His column, “Sex Talk,” appears in queer newspapers nationwide and on several websites. He lives, happily and hairily, in San Francisco. 271 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK Ron Suresha Ron Suresha grew up in and around Detroit, where his first sexual encounters with adults occurred in the downstairs tearoom of his neighborhood mall. He studied creative writ- ing and journalism at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and edited several alternative periodicals. Converted to vegetarianism, he ran a community switchboard, went to India, and lived in yoga ashrams for ten years. Over the past twelve years, he has contributed freelance editorial work to scores of book projects at Shambhala Publications and other book publishers specializing in Eastern studies, philosophy, and psychology. Ron has been involved with the bear community since the late 80s when he lived in San Francisco with one of the creators of Bear magazine. He designed signs, graph- ics, and promotions for the Lone Star Saloon, including the famous barn sign on the Lone Star patio. He also studied 272 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK Sign Language at Vista College in Berkeley for three years. Since leaving San Francisco in 1994, he has been a member of the Chesapeake Bay Bears, New England Bears, Rhode Island Grizzlies, and Motor City Bears. He acted as a judge for the International Mr. Bear 2000 in San Francisco. His interview column for American Bear magazine has featured discussions with comedian Bruce Vilanch, New Hampshire State Senator Sen. Rick Trombly, artist Tim Barela, and authors Eric Rofes, David Bergman, and Michael Bronski. He has also written for Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, Lambda Book Report, White Crane Journal, Art & Understanding, Southern Voice, Gay Com- munity News, In Newsweekly, Darshan, Siddha Path, and Visionary , as well as for the anthologies The Bear Book , Bear Book 2, My First Time 2, Quickies 2, and Bar Stories. He is finishing work on two books: Bears on Bears, a collection of interviews and discussions; and an anthology of bear-themed erotic fiction, both forthcoming from Alyson Publications. He’s also working on a recipé book, and a col- lection of Persian folk tales. Ron lives by the verdant Emerald Necklace in Boston. 273 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK Bob Vickery Bob Vickery has been writing erotica prolifically since the 1980s. His stories have been published in numerous magazines, and he is a regular contributor to Men and Freshmen magazines. Two anthologies containing only his stories are: Skin Deep, Masquerade Publishers, and Cock Tales, Leyland Publications. Other Vickery stories appear in a wide number of other anthologies, including Best American Erotica 1997 and 2000; Best Gay Erotica 1999 and 2001; The Friction series, 1-4; Up All Hours, Quickies, Quickies 2 , and Queer Dharma (Voices of Gay Buddhists) . A motion picture, Love, Lust, and Repetition, based on his stories, is currently in production with independent film maker, Edgar Bravo. Bob can often be found in his favorite coffee shop in the Haight Ashbury, pounding out his prose on his lap top. In his spare time, he bakes muffins for a Zen Buddhist mon- astery a few miles north of San Francisco. www.BobVickery.comNext >