The Rope Above, the Bed Below

By Jason Fury

When The Rope Above, the Bed Below first appeared in 1994, Jason Fury’s memoirs of a wild, sexually free Manhattan of 1980 before the AIDS epidemic became an overnight bestseller—first in America, and then around the world. Although beset with censorship problems, critics and fans quickly hailed the novel for its “feverish writing,” its breathless plot of a mad killer stalking New York’s male strippers, and its hypnotic remembrance of a sex-filled world now vanished. Fury’s memoir is recognized today as a parable of the “Plague Years” that soon swept the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504029926

Jason Fury

Jason Fury is the pen name of cult author Jery Tillotson, whose tales of passion, drama and mystery have created fans around the world. His latest book, His Eyes Were Dark, He Licked His Lips, has become an international bestseller. He lives near the East River in Manhattan.

Book preview

PART I

The Curtain Rises

The death scene was so grisly that even veteran cops became sick. Two had to leave the room, they were so overcome. The victim, Alex Tart, was sexually butchered and hung from an old radiator pipe like a carcass. An expert on serial murders, Dr. Jacob Livingston of Columbia University, told me that this is only the beginning; for when a psychopath tastes blood, it whets his appetite for more.

—Bert Colman, WCBS–TV,

November 22, 1980

CHAPTER ONE

I was the hottest male stripper on the Gay White Way.

And if you were among the thousands passing along 46th Street and Broadway in late November 1980, you couldn’t have missed me.

There I was, bigger than life on the huge billboard above the marquee of the Ritz Male Follies: BRETT, THE BODY BEAUTIFUL! PLUS, THE BIGGEST DISCO BOYS ON BROADWAY! I was shown wearing as little as the law would allow: short-shorts cut high up on the hip and hanging down to my cock, a leather vest, a cowboy hat and me, winking invitingly, flashing a wicked smile and two six-shooters aimed at the