You have discovered the first of thirteen secret pages hidden within Velvet Mafia's 13th issue. Try your best to uncover all thirteen hidden surprises from our family members...

 

“The Founding of the Family” by Sean Meriwether

The idea for Velvet Mafia started back in 1998, when I realized that there were very few homes for the dark/literary/erotic queer fiction I was writing. The market was divided into three camps; high-end literary magazines which no one actually read but writers killed to get in to, online & print zines with questionable content, and stroke magazines that only published formula sex and some non-fiction. There was one alternative, Blithe House Quarterly, which published both gay and lesbian literary fiction from a mix of established and emerging writers; however, it didn’t publish my type of work—dark and dangerous gay fiction where men actually had “on camera” sex. It never made sense to me that gay-lit markets avoided erotica; we’re men, we fuck other men, that’s technically what makes us gay. On the other hand, I wasn’t interested in writing uncomplicated stroke fiction either; although I enjoy a good wank-story, I want to be challenged as well as aroused. Erotic writing is a way for me to explore sexuality in its many diverse and dark forms, sex is a mental play as well as a physical one, so why shouldn’t there be a venue where both aspects were encouraged to exist simultaneously?

I saw a potential market for a like-minded audience, but had only a general idea of how to reach them. At the time I was one of the first members of the fledging Zoetrope writer’s studio, and contacted some of the other members whose work I liked. I got the attention of a couple, turned to Geocities and built myself a website. Too impatient to deal with their constantly failing WYSWIG editor, I started editing HTML code myself, and launched my first online magazine, Water Glass Café, with my own work and that of a few others… only problem was, no one knew about it.

The second incarnation became Outsider Ink, which broadened the spectrum to include all outsiders, not just gay men. Founded in the fall of 1999, Outsider Ink has since taken on a life of its own as a market for alternative literary fiction, poetry and artwork, and has marked a number of milestones over its five year run. Despite its success, it wasn’t what I had started out to do, so I kept the idea of a gay literotica magazine on the shelf for a future project.

Around the same time that Outsider Ink was launched, Greg Wharton started suspect thoughts, an online journal with a similar bent as Outsider Ink, but focused more specifically on erotica. He approached me and my partner, Jack Slomovits, to publish For Hire. He’s seen it on our personal sites, and was drawn to the unique representation of sex in mixed media (photography and fiction), which was the mission of suspect thoughts. Over the course of the next year, Greg and I developed a close relationship, comparing notes on our different projects, writers, and our own fiction, and began looking for a way to collaborate.

Towards the end of 2000, Richard Labonté contacted me to use the fiction from For Hire for Best Gay Erotica 2001. Knowing I also worked on TheGayMaleBody.com, he asked if I knew of any gay websites with quality erotica; he recognized the emerging online market and wanted to include work published on the internet for his series. I looked around and realized that the playing field had not changed, Blithe was still the only contender with a gay audience. It was time to move.

I turned to Greg Wharton and pitched the idea of doing an online site that erased the boundaries between gay-literary fiction and erotica, while incorporating a visual element by using the photography of my partner, Jack Slomovits. The end result would be an online quarterly journal, and an annually printed collection that incorporated new work and some of the online pieces. Although we were both committed to our individual projects, the idea of collaborating on this new venture enticed us both. The problem was the name.

I’d always been drawn to the name Velvet Mafia; originally coined in the 1920’s as a derisive term to describe the supposed gay Mafia, I saw it as a phrase towards self-empowerment, like taking Queer back from the homophobes. Although I would never turn the clock back on the gay rights movement, gay life before Stonewall, especially in a city like New York, was akin to being in a very select and private club. There was a gritty glamour to our gay predecessors who lived in various modes of concealment, meeting men clandestinely in underground clubs and private parties, living the after-hours life of “sex criminal”. The private club aspect was derived from the serious commitment these men had to make in order to join; discovery meant personal ruin or worse. I wanted to tap into that sense of being strong in number, a secret society bent on empowering and protecting itself. Besides, I didn't just want to do an online literary magazine, I wanted to organize a movement.

Unfortunately, we had trouble getting the domain name. It had once belonged to a local punk band, The Velvet Mafia, fronted by the fabulous Dean Johnson; they had abandoned the name and focused their attention on the Homo Corps, the broader gay punk band movement. Although expired, the domain name was locked, and I held out almost eight months waiting for it to be released, I probably got it the first day it was available. I was so set on the name that we may never have launched without it.

Once Greg and I had agreed on a launch date and distribution schedule, we approached Richard Labonté, who had unknowingly set the wheels in motion, and asked him to stand in as Editor at Large. His presence was important to both of us, for not only was he well-heeled in the gay-lit community, he was well versed in the intricacies of publishing and offered a legitimacy for our online project. Although it still exists, at the time there was a much strong print bias among many writers, especially for erotica where we were competing with a large pay market; a lot of people just didn’t trust online magazines, especially unknowns like ours. Richard was very enthusiastic about the project, and was instrumental in getting the word out to other writers to make sure we had enough material to launch with.

On a solemn note, during the time leading up to our launch on November 1st, 2001, we had the events of 9/11. Living in New York was incredibly stressful, not only the uncertainty of living in this new world, but the daily, if not hourly warnings about the next attack. I can claim that working on Velvet Mafia, doing the layout, design and submission solicitation, was one of the few things that kept me sane during that tumultuous time. I literally poured everything I had into the first issue, as a way to focus my constantly distracted attention.

It all happened when it needed to happen. We launched on November 1st, 2001, to a huge and eager audience. Velvet Mafia has since become as a venue for new and established writers of gay male fiction and erotica, as well as a launching pad for small and mid-list authors to promote their published work. The online market is a proven testing ground; stories originally appearing in Velvet Mafia have been included in numerous anthologies including Law of Desire, Best Gay Erotica and Best American Erotica. It has established a global audience that logs over 50,000 reads per issue, and continues to dazzle with literary deviancy. Feed your fist and your mind with the hard-hitting and sizzling stories from today’s hottest queer writers.

Welcome to the Family.

 

© Sean Meriwether - Contributor's Bio