the lord won’t mind

The Lord Won’t Mind by Gordon Merrick (Bernard Geis Associates, 1970)

Spoilers! The first in Merrick’s trilogy of Peter and Charles. Set mostly in New York on the eve of WWII (although politics and world events are rarely mentioned), this very readable and sexually explicit book chronicles the dramatic and bumpy beginning of the love affair of these two golden (literally) men. Charlie’s weird, racist grandmother sets the two boys up at her summer home in New Jersey and follows them back to the city in the fall. Peter accepts his fagdom but Charlie, a fag at heart, learns the hard way the perils of having sex with women (his big beautiful penis is nearly bitten off by his kooky theatrical wife Hattie). Meanwhile, Peter is kept by a wealthy older millionaire who only likes to watch — or more aptly only see, but the penis-biting episode brings them back together (after C.B., the Auntie Mame-ish grandmother reveals that she’s half “nigra” thus explaining her oft-mentioned flaring nostrils). This is all a lot of sick fun, albeit misogynistic, racist, antediluvian, faggoty fun.