Dirk Vanden. The author's official homepage.

HI! This is Dirk –
on Dirk Vanden's personal website – a companion to, but not closely associated with, www.dirkvanden.com which is owned and operated by GLB Publishers, in San Francisco, and features 3 of my novels for sale as downloadable e-books: I WANT IT ALL, ALL OR NOTHING & ALL IS WELL, all written & published between 1971-73. Referred to in reference books as “THE ALL TRILOGY.” Republished by GLB in 2006. You can buy all 3 for $20! That’s a saving of $10 over buying each book separately @ $10 each. Select the little white box that says “See the special price arrangement below (white box). ”

In this more-personal space I have posted notes about the above books, how & why they were written, along with reviews published by various Gay magazines & newspapers of the time. (>REVIEWS<) I have been called “A Pioneer of Gay Erotica,” so these published reviews & comments are legitimate parts of Gay History & not merely attempts at my own self-promotion – although, they are admittedly that, as well.

As with all histories, you are likely to discover things you never even knew you wanted to know. Like: “Who the hell is Dirk Vanden? & Why should I care?” Hopefully you'll know the answers to those burning questions when you finish reading these pages.

I will encourage you to download & print anything that interests you, including the artwork & pictures. Keep a looseleaf handy for new additions. Images have all been downsized pixelwise to move them faster through the ethers, so they won't produce framable images, but they'll look OK bulletin boards or refrigerator doors. Framable Art is available via Dirk@DirkVanden.net ask for sizes & rates.

Please note, I capitalize the word “Gay” when it refers to homosexuals & homosexuality, to distinguish it from the adjective “gay” which means "merry, bubbly, carefree, cheerful, chirpy, exhilarated, euphoric, jubilant," etc. I’ve been “Gay. i.e. Queer, Homosexual ” for almost 60 years – all my life, actually (74) – but have rarely been “gay,” i.e., "carefree, elated, rapturous, & never-ever bubbly or flamboyant!" For a few capricious minutes, now & then, at times, perhaps, I have been giddy enough to be called “gay,” but not for long. The small-g gay doesn’t fit me. But, if Mormons & Catholics & Baptists, etc.- the whole damned bunch of them - can capitalize their names as “proper nouns,” then so can I, because “Homosexuality” has essentially become my “religion.”

There are probably very few Gay men, or women, now living, who know my pseudonym, Dirk Vanden, or my books, from anything besides reference works -- such as THE GAY & LESBIAN LITERARY HERITAGE, 1995, from Henry Holt, edited by Claude J. Summers, which mentions me twice: first by Edmund Miller, in Erotica and Pornography & then in Robert Nashak's Sadomasochistic Literature. Thank you! Thank you! And now on the World-Wide-Web: I just GOOGLED myself (sounds ‘dirty’ doesn’t it? Feels good!!)) & counted 49 hits in 20 pages! My books are still on the market - after 36 years - although the web-prices sometimes amaze me, remembering that they originally sold for $2.95 & $1.95! Long Ago, when we were still “criminals!” Remember? Unless you’re a collector, buy the trilogy from GLB on www.DirkVanden.com & download it. Much cheaper for an exact copy of the original text, spelling errors, lost paragraphs and pages, etc. It’s a Gay History Project. So nothing is changed from the historical original.

* A “newer” revised, printed version of I WANT IT ALL, is also available, online & by mail>www.alibris.com

In 1995 I was encouraged by several sources to try to get the All Trilogy republished. Gay historian, Gayle Rubin, wrote a letter to me which read, in part: “I just want you to know how much these books have meant not only to me but to many of the men I’ve known and/or interviewed. Despite the fact that the books have been so long out of print, they are fondly remembered and quite influential.” She urged me to get the trilogy reprinted & I happily decided to follow her advice. The whole book-writing-publishing episode from 1969 to ‘73 seemed like a sex-dream where you wake up just before ejaculating - & then can’t finish. Like un-cumming! It had seemed like a closed, exciting-but-painful chapter of my life, without the desired ending. I was hoping that republishing the books would reopen that door for me. Maybe this time would be more satisfying.

As the republishing project took shape, I re-read the books - for the first time in twenty years - & decided that I wanted to change a few things. I was planning to revise all three, so some changes were made to make the 3 works more of a whole.

When I WANT IT ALL was written in 1969, I had no idea it would be part of a series. When Frenchy asked for a new novel, he suggested a sequel, and I decided to make the story about the best friend of the hero of the first book. I intended to call it ALL THE WAY because of a certain sex-act in the next-to-last chapter. Instead, for a reason I can't remember, I called it ALL OR NOTHING. Upon re-reading, I decided that the main characters in the two books were too similar. They both swore like sailors & that characteristic seemed more appropriate to the character in ALL OR NOTHING, so I cut much of the gratituitus profanity in I WANT IT ALL.

Also, I realized that I had no black characters, so I changed one of the minor but pivotal roles.

The two versions of I WANT IT ALL are still the same story, with the same events & eventual outcome; they're just different. I prefer the new version.

Jack Fritcher told me that my rewriting I WANT IT ALL was like Margaret Mitchell rewriting GONE WITH THE WIND! Well, hardly!

In 1995, as Brass Ring Books, I republished “Dirk Vanden’s Revised Seminal Gay Classic, I WANT IT ALL.” Copies of that book are currently available at Bolerium Books, both the real store & the virtual one www.bolerium.com as well as www.alibris.com.

One of the sellers on Albiris is me, Richard Fullmer, & if you buy the one for $5.95 (from me), you get a personal note “from the author”(me) about why & when the book was rewritten. You buy it from Alibris with Pay Pal, but I mail it to you personally. Thank you very much!

By the time the printers were ready to print the covers, I had run out of money and couldn't afford a full-color cover, but here's my original painting

What followed publication was bankruptcy & a change of occupations: To File Clerk. Still employed.

I sent review-copies of the book to every Gay publication listed in Gayellow Pages, but they all refused to review the book unless I bought advertising. I had borrowed from relatives & maxed out all my credit cards. I couldn't afford advertising. Still can't. Buy my book on Albiris & I'll include a personal dedication & "Thanks" for helping me pay the rent!

Thirty years ago my books were banned in Canada! Last year a Canadian publisher, Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver, republished Richard Amory's SONG OF THE LOON, one of the most influential Gay books ever written, (see my review on www.amazon.com) & included in a critical appendix, two of my Gay magazine essays about Richard & his groundbreaking book & our doomed attempt to start an all-Gay Publishing Company! (It also features a fascinating & informative Introduction by Michael Bronski.) Thanks again, Richard Love, aka “Amory,” for your support & all-too-brief friendship! His website is www.RichardAmory.com which is manned by his son, Cesar Love. (Who is not Gay.) If you haven’t read Richard’s excellent reviews of other Gay books of the time, PLEASE take the time right now to go there and do so.

When SONG OF THE LOON was republished, Cesar asked me to write a review of his father’s book on www.amazon.com which I did – it’s still there – & I was very pleasantly surprised by the review that followed mine, in real time, but which appeared before mine in the "first = latest" style of e-mail, written by an avid reviewer whom I don’t know, Jessee Monteagudo, who wrote: “I hesitate to follow Dirk Vanden, who is himself one of our greatest gay erotic writers...” Thank you, Jessee! Thank You Very Much!

Most recently, one chapter from I WANT IT ALL was just reprinted in a collection called "HOMOSEX: Sixty Years of Gay Erotica," by Simon Sheppard, www.simonsheppard.com. Also available on Amazon.com, Bolerium.com, Alibris.com & your local Gay bookstore. Thank you, Simon!

Thirty years ago, John Francis Hunter, a Gay author/reviewer for GAY - the New York Gay newspaper - wrote a 2- (newspaper-size) page essay on my book ALL IS WELL, entitled “The New Gay Erotica: ALL IS WELL!" He finished his salute to "The New New Gay Literature:" “It seems to me that ALL IS WELL is presently the Zeitgeist novel of early ‘70's gaydom... It is a paean to a way of life that is counter-culture all the way....with some astoundingly erotic scenes that are as profound a manifesto of the right to discover and be one’s total self as any non-fiction rhetoric on the subject that I’ve heard of or read...I recommend it wholeheartedly as a must to today’s – or tomorrow’s – American male homosexuals.” Thank you very much John Francis! The whole essay is posted on > REVIEWS.

Richard Amory's review in San Francisco's Vector Magazine said: ALL IS WELL "is Vanden’s best book, which makes it a very good book, indeed.” www.RichardAmory.com.

My problem is: “If nobody now living knows what kind of writer Dirk Vanden was – or is: I’m still very much alive – what good does it do me to be “one of our greatest?” I can print & hang that paragraph on my bulletin board - which I did; it's still there - but it won't pay the rent. I may have been a “pioneer” 38 years ago, but now I’m a “has-been” who can't find a publisher! Now I'm a file clerk in the computer industry. Am I condemned to remain a footnote in Gay History? Current Gay Publishers seem to think that none of their readers would buy anything new by Dirk Vanden, specifically: “ALL OF ME - The Dirty Book Murders - a Gay Romance.”

ALL OF ME, a work in progress, will be posted chapter by chapter as it progresses & may be downloaded without charge, i.e. free. However, I invite your comments as the story progresses. Please express your reactions to Dirk@DirkVanden.net. (I may print some of those responses here.) & when you share those chapters with friends - as I hope you will - I ask only that you respect my copyright & give proper authorship credit as it is presented on the title-page. Then share-away! When finished, the entire book will be available for downloading as PDF files, or by mail on CDs. To start Chapter One "The Letter" > ALL OF ME,

It might even be published on paper if the right reader reads it online! I hope!

Most of the Gay men who would remember my books are dead now, of AIDS, most likely. Thanks to Ronald Reagan's legacy to the world there are very few older Gays, my age, still living. I believe that several generations of Gay Men are missing because someone in Washington decided to get rid of the Niggers & Queers using an experimental Germ Warfare virus they'd been studying from Africa. I'm not alone in that belief.

If nothing else, Reagan deliberately & knowingly did nothing to stop the spread of AIDS.

My Life-Partner, Herb Finger, too-briefly known as "Sacramento's Celebrity Chef," died of AIDS 20 years ago, after we’d been together 18 years. All of our friends who took part in those coast-to-coast Hepatitis B tests back in the late 70s, are now dead of AIDS. I didn't take the tests; I'm still alive. I've survived ever since on the love of dogs: Frankie & Ernie, Buddy, Andy, and my current “Significant Other:” Buddy Jr., who looks like the result of a tryst between Buddy #1, my wonderful Aussie-shepherd & an Australian-cattle-dog ("Queensland Heeler") mom.

Even fewer of my still-alive fans know or knew (or cared) that they were possibly influenced by my artwork in the Gay media on the west coast: paintings, drawings, posters published for several years as advertising in Gay magazines & newspapers & posters, during the late 1960s & early ‘70s, in Los Angeles & San Francisco. I've posted most of my artwork, from the early '6o's to last year > IMAGESBYDIRK< Please feel free to downlaod anything that interests or pleases you. Just give me credit if anyone asks. & maybe send me an email saying “Thanks.”

Also I have posted the first several chapters of my “official” autobiography, PISSING IN THE OCEAN > AUTOBIO < An earlier version of that opus is available in the Collections of Robert Prager, which he donated to the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society upon his death in 2003. It was written shortly after Herb Finger, died of AIDS in 1987, & I was convinced that “I had nothing to live for,"& would be dying soon, myself. I wrote what I considered “an extended but unfinished outline”of my life, which I committed to CD & shared with my self-chosen biographers, Edmund Miller & Robert Prager, who had declared himself my “number-one fan!” (I've just discovered he died recently. He had saved all of my letters & stuff! They’re in a vault somewhere! That amazes me.) Thank you, Robert.

Fortunately one dog after another has kept me alive since Herb's death. So here I am, still very much alive, albeit 20 years "older," with even more experience in, memory of, and insight into my 74 years of life on Planet Earth – 60 of them sexually & romantically involved with other men, Gay & otherwise – & have decided to revise that earlier version accordingly. I’m still reasonably healthy. I have known many wonderful men - my True Loves, Winn & Herb chief among them. I've lived with Luv & Frankie & Ernie & Buddy & Andy & now Buddy Jr. ("If you've never had the love of a dog, you have never experienced LOVE in its purest form." Gabriel Horny ) With a wonderful dog and several dependable “gentlemen callers,” I have as much love as my spirit needs & as much sex as my body can handle. Sorting & filing invoices & delivering the mail pays the rent & stuff.

In 1976, The Advocate ran a story about two Mormon boys, students at BYU, both of them getting ready to go on Missions, who confessed to their Bishop that they were both Gay & in love with each other. He told them they were both "Abominations in the sight of God" & to repent the feeling they had for each other & never indulge it. They went out in the canyons beyond Provo and killed themselves. The article made me so angry that I finally did what I had only thought about doing for many years. I sent a package to the president of the LDS Church, including a copy of ALL IS WELL, & told him that in my experience, Gay people were vastly better people than Mormon bigots & hypocrites & that I did not want to belong to a religion that caused young men to kill themselves because they loved each other. I concluded that my enclosed book, ALL IS WELL, (the title taken from the refrain of an old Mormon hymn, "Come, Come, Ye Saints!") should provide sufficient reasons to give me my walking papers. I'm quite sure that the president never read my little opus, but SOMEBODY down the ladder did, & contacted the Bishop of the ward I was living in, in Roseville, CA, and told him to give me my requested "release" which he did, just after my 43rd birthday. (See my official "excommunication" at the end of The Gospel According to Gabriel Horny.)

I met some young Mormons Missionaries the other day, out pedaling their bicycles around the neighborhood where Bud & I walk. I even crossed over to the other sidewalk to avoid them, but they were unavoidable, of course, that's their mission. Smiling the patented ("Show-me-your-braces") Mormon smile, one of them said "Hi, I'm Elder Smith & this is Elder Jones," and I said "No you're not!" They said "What?" & I said "You're not elders. I'm an elder. You're still boys. You won't be elders for another 50 years!" They wished me "Good Day" & pedaled away.

For a wonderful depiction of that Mormon Smile, see the cover of CONFESSIONS OF A MORMON BOY, by Steven Fales, then see his show, or read his book, or both: all about another Gay Brother set free from Eternal Servitude. @ real & virtual bookstores & mormonboyprod@aol.com . I highly recommend it.

Eventually, if there is any interest, I may also decide to convert one or more of my earlier-published novels: LEATHER, THE LEATHER QUEENS, TWIN ORBS &, WHO KILLED QUEEN TOM? (no image is available of WKQT? but it, too, was red with a phony woodcut illustration & upside-down on the back of the book - for some bizarre, reason known only to the publishers) to digital files which can be downloaded as e-books or mailed on CDs. These titles are the "FAG-HOT" titles assigned by the publisher, Greenleaf Classics, in San Diego, for the books I originally called HATTERS & HARES, THE STAG IN THE TREE, EXILE IN PARADISE (& TOM, TOM, THE PIPER’S SON, once briefly known as WHO KILLED QUEEN TOM? RIP!) All are long since out of print but sometimes show up for sale on the web for a great deal more than they cost 30 years ago: $1.95 & $2.95!

One last note & then, Goodnight: ALL OF ME - The Dirty Book Murders - a Gay Romance, will be a multi-media novel. The “appendix” will be an online e-book called THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO GABRIEL HORNY. If you want to read it now. click above.^ ^ ^

Mormons, especially, will hate it! Ex-Mormons will love it (I hope). "Abominations" - those trying to be both Gay and Saintly - may find wisdom & solace or even help to get out from the entanglement of tentacles called Mormonism.

THIS IS DIRK VANDEN'S PERSONAL WEBSITE. WELCOME!