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language: German
country: Germany
year: 2016
form: novel
genre(s): erotica
dates read: 2.10.24-6.10.24
I began this year’s foray into non-anglophone gay erotica — Nick Holzner’s Angeheuert und umgedreht — with very low expectations, and yet it still managed not to meet them.
Silvio Busch is dissatisfied with his life, not least the fact that his girlfriend refuses to have sex with him. (and yes, the book is very sexist about her in the, like, two chapters before we forget she ever existed.) his response to this is to make his way to Le Havre and ship out on a cargo freighter, the Vagevuur (apparently this means “purgatory” in Dutch; it’s literally “weird-fire”, which I think is very funny), captained by the mysterious “Van Hoorn”. after finding himself unexpectedly and irresistibly attracted to the first mate, Silvio discovers that Van Hoorn’s deal is that he has to fuck every guy they take on board, by force if necessary. and also he’s smuggling weapons to South American drug cartels, as revenge(??) for his son dying because of “drug abuse” (Drogenmissbrauch).
there’s a lot to unpack here, but there are four broad things I want to talk about.
overall technical and aesthetic quality. the writing is, on the whole, pretty good! the tone is colloquial and engaging, and it doesn’t get quite as carried away with euphemisms and compounds in the sex scenes as my two previous encounters with German erotica (no “Fickbewegungen” or “megageil” here). German is still fundamentally unsexy, I find, but the writing here wasn’t ridiculous, which is a step up. (if anything it was a bit uncreative / repetitive, but that didn’t bother me.) the most formally interesting aspect of the novel is its use of present tense for (most of) the sex scenes, which creates an effective immediacy.
the sex/romance plotting. this book was published as volume 8 of Bruno Gmünder’s Gay Hardcore series, which is notionally for kinkier stuff, in contrast to the more vanilla Loverboys series. there was certainly a bunch of sadism and masochism in this, plus some leather stuff. frankly, I wasn’t that into it, but that ended up not really mattering, because the book was weirdly also not into it? first in that Silvio’s initiation into gay BDSM (with the first mate) is dubiously consensual, followed by outright rape by the captain. he spends a portion of the second half of the novel specifically avoiding having kinky sex with the captain and his minions (even though we’re told he has come to ~enjoy it~ [vomit emoticon]) and fantasizing about leaving the ship, except that he’s been told if he won’t submit to Van Hoorn’s advances he’ll be thrown overboard. the book is, uh, uncomfortably blasé about sex slavery.
in spite of this, Silvio eventually hits it off with the first mate’s steward and the two of them spend a lot of time cuddling and making out. eventually Van Hoorn gives them a private cabin, where, despite Silvio affectionately calling Nathan a “pig” (Drecksau), they have essentially vanilla sex except that Nathan licks Silvio’s feet one time. it just feels like the book is weirdly uninterested in its “hardcore” premise and maybe shouldn’t have had it at all.
the crew demographics. all of the identified crew members on the Vagevuur are Europeans, and all but one of them (a Turkish-German guy) are white. most of them appear to be German, plus two English guys, a French guy, Van Hoorn being Dutch, and two guys described as “Greeks”, though the named one is called Daniil, so I’m a bit dubious. according to this 2006 report by the US Department of Transportation, 36.6% of maritime trade crews passing through US ports were Filipino, including a whopping 45.8% of non-officers. all told, taking just the top ten countries (accounting for 77.9% of all crew), 55.9% of maritime trade crews are Asian, and no Western European countries are in the top 10. Greeks — the only explicitly identified demographic on the Vagevuur that appear in the top 10 — are only 3.2% of total crew.
what I’m saying is, either: (1) Nick Holzner did no research and automatically assumed it made sense for everyone on the ship to be white Western Europeans (+ two Greeks and one Turkish-German guy) because it didn’t occur to him to write any non-white characters; (2) we are meant to assume that the entirety of the unnamed majority of the crew are all Filipino, Chinese, and Indian and Silvio just never interacted with them; or (3) we are meant to assume that Van Hoorn’s minions are actively recruiting only white Europeans. no matter how you frame it, it’s racist! I think option 1, racism by ignorance and omission, is the most likely, but it’s still not a good look.
the arms smuggling plot. what the fuck was this. it’s dropped on Silvio — and the reader — out of nowhere, and it truly adds nothing to the overarching narrative? Van Hoorn worked just fine as a villain without it — in fact, I would say he worked better as a villain without it, because Silvio’s response to finding out he’s implicated in smuggling weapons is that he thinks it’s cool. the novel ends with a Portuguese coast guard raid while they’re off the Azores — another of Van Hoorn’s victims called in an anonymous tip about the weapons on board. I expected this to function as a way for Silvio (and Nathan) to escape Van Hoorn’s clutches. instead, Silvio decides that he needs to “save” the ship by convincing the tipster to recant. the coast guard are mostly fooled and the Vagevuur makes it to Trinidad, where Silvio gets his €15,000 payoff and lives happily with Nathan until he gambles away all his money, at which point Nathan suggests they ship out on the Vagevuur again. what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
this was the most unhinged book climax I’ve ever read, in a very bad way.
moods: dark, horny, wacky