Did the Boy Think He Was a Girl?
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I’ve often wondered about the cover of Carl Corley’s Brazen Image.
Most sleazy trash fiction of the time simply used drawings of women for books about transvestites or transsexuals. This old paperback is much more subtle. Suggesting anything from androgyny to confusion.
I had little hope of learning about Carl Corley. Most of these books were written as fast as the author could type. The writer had an assignment from an edito and felt no personal interest. And the names were always pen names.
Not Carl Corley. That really was his name. And while he was a commercial writer his fiction was created with sincere good intent. The youth on the cover may have been feeling confusion on just discovering his erotic love of other men. Gay men used to feel substantial confusion about their gender role since in society at large lovers of men were women.
Maybe I’ll run across a copy of Brazen Image and find out.
Corley did his own cover art. And had ambitions to be a physique artist. Here’s a drawing of his to two masculine young farm boys relaxing in a barn.
