RAW collects a trio of tales written when Aaron Travis was in his early twenties and just beginning to explore the power of the erotic imagination, inspired by the freewheeling, frenzied gay scene of San Francisco in the late 1970s.
The audacious, Burroughs-inspired ”Neck Needle Dance” marked Travis’ very first appearance in the pages of the legendary Drummer magazine. “Horn” recounts a wide-eyed first-timer’s experience on a porno movie set, where he finds himself performing a startling act of self-abasement. “New Year’s Eve” is a deceptively complex story about a voyeur and two shameless exhibitionists on the wildest night of the year.
Here are the beginnings of the career that would find Travis, in the words of John Preston, “chronicling the sexual exploits of an entire generation.”
“Whatever their flaws,” says Travis in the Author’s Note, “these earliest stories possess an obsessive, authentic urgency—a rawness—that the older, more skillful author would find it hard to duplicate today.”
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