Barry Lowe probes two new erotica anthologies with a bigger-than-your-average phallic obsession.

Most of us, at one time or another, have wished we had ten thick inches or else could slide said imperial measure effortlessly up our butt. Especially if said measure is hanging off someone who looks like the model on the cover of Kenneth Harrison’s collection of erotic short stories, Ten Thick Inches. But you don’t come across ’em too often. Even in this 148-page book from Seventh Window.

Harrison, author of Daddy’s Boys and Young, Hung and Ready for Action, is not so much concerned about cock size but about sperm disposal. Just about every ejaculation in this book is on someone’s face or chest, but if this becomes monotonous over time, the various settings and couplings do not.

The eponymous story, for example, concerns a young man who has to smuggle a gold dildo replica of a mobster’s 10-incher in his cavernous arse. ‘An Actor’s Journal’ is a cock-hardener about an older actor lusting after his hot young co-star, while in the science-fictionish ‘Upload’ there’s a dick that’s “eleven inches long and at least seven in circumference”. But the stories also contain humour, particularly ‘Beat the Drum’, an erotic ghost story, and ‘Bodies in Motion’ with big-time appeal to fans of boy bands.

‘Scratching the Itch’ is that most universal of themes, a young guy in lust with his straight roomie; ‘Sucking Hose’ concerns a rookie fireman; and a young man heading off to college has both his best mate and his best mate’s dad in ‘His Best Friend’s Dad’. The anthology is rounded out with ‘Hanging Out’, in which two young mates get turned on by watching a gay neighbour in action; and ‘Masetto’, a handsome and arrogant Roman priest with “nine inches when fully erect and so thick his fingers barely touched once he’d taken hold of it”. And, yeah, for people who are interested in such things, Masetto has a foreskin that clings tight around the head of his dick.

Another single-author erotica anthology, and a bit of a mixed blessing, is Never Enough: The Lost Writings of John Patrick, recently published by STARbooks Press, which Patrick himself set up in 1989, and was initially famed for its annual scuttlebutt books, The Best of Superstars, on the best and worst of gay culture. Patrick, who died in 2001, was also a prolific fiction writer and this book, edited by Eric Summers, collects not so much his ‘lost’ writing but material not available for almost 20 years.

Patrick was a fine writer, not least when he cobbled together stories in praise of the latest pop idol or actor, and the book includes his panegyric for gorgeous blonde singer/actor Jeremy Jordan as well a couple of sex tales related to Patrick: ‘Dick & Dave The Sex Slaves’ and ‘The Canadian Capers’. The Saint, a beautiful man who goes around saving men’s souls by fucking them, has two of his adventures included.

The final 100 pages of the 282-page book are devoted to what John Patrick does best: lets his pen wander through the gutters and alleyways of gay sexuality. ‘Getting Off: The Search for Orgasm’ is one of Patrick’s mammoth collation jobs and his essay quotes from sources as diverse as porn actor/director Gino Colbert and psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich. Never Enough is a book to dip into to make you think as well as jerk off.