The Autobiography Unearthed

a·poc·ry·phal
/əˈpäkrəfəl/
adjective
(of a story or statement) of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true.
“an apocryphal story about a former president”
synonyms: fictitious, made-up, untrue, fabricated, false, spurious

In the late 1970’s, rumors spread that Peter wrote an autobiography and later burned it along with most of his original texts. By digging through what has proven to be a Templeton-esque hoard of paper and office supplies, we have found and resurrected nearly a dozen texts from the master of pornographic prose. This morning, a miracle took place: we found the autobiography. Here is his autobiographical doodle on the cover:

We’re not fond of spoilers here at PS Publishing, so we’ll keep most of it under our hat. In truth, I’m not through reading the entire work. It seems that Peter found that special kind of man-on-man love quite a while before heading off to war in France. He frequented a tea room as a senior in high school. He fell in love at Harvard. Okay, this all smacks of spoilers, so we’re going to leave you with one last tidbit.

We’ll leave it to your imagination what Peter might have used these for:

Boston Garter

How Peter Tamed the Monster

The significance of this bookstrap escaped us at first. Daryn the intern, whose young imaginative mind is capable of great leaps, explained that the straps were for holding Peter’s manhood against his thigh.

“You said he fought in World War I. Do you think he could have made it without something to keep it in place? He would have fallen behind.”

Daryn, we are grateful for your rules of deduction. Reading his autobiography should shed further light on Peter’s “handicap” and his methods of dealing with it.

Strong enough to wrangle a boa constrictor

Peter (Over) Exposed

Our intern’s recent find gave our office the idea to scrape through old drawers in every room of the house. We also checked under rugs, lifted heavy appliances, and sent Roomba under every sofa. We came up empty. Peter’s purge had been thorough. He destroyed every photo, shredded every journal, and basically robbed the world of his persona. In 1980, it would have been hard for him to imagine his work would be celebrated. It is a tragedy.

Peter moved to the San Fernando Valley in 1962. Close friends said he wanted a swimming pool and Santa Monica was too chilly. His tiny office in Santa Monica Canyon held the bulk of his paperwork, which turned out to be nothing but utility bills, blank packing slips and random matchbooks and other ephemera. He destroyed all personal correspondence. It was only through rumors and secondary sources that we learned as much as we did.

We struck gold, however, in his Van Nuys garage. There is a mounted wall shelf with a hinged door, like a wide, short cupboard. It hung open, empty except for exhaust dust from nearby motorways. Long dismissed, it caught our eye during our mad scramble for more materials. The back of the cabinet was painted cardboard. It dislodged easily, revealing a hidden treasure.

There was a typewritten note that said, “Javi, if you are reading this, it means you do love me after all. I knew it all along.”

We are still sorting through the small cache of materials, but we can’t contain our excitement. We found the apocryphal autobiography, which we will need to publish as soon as we are able. Peter annotated everything for the mysterious Javi.

The photo below explains the move from the West Side to the Valley, and it clarifies, without doubts, the truth behind his enormous endowment. It is easy to see why he was so insistent on calling it a handicap. He was remarkably fit at 66 years old when the photo was taken. Unanswered is the question as to who took the photograph. The rest speaks for itself.

We will unveil more artifacts as the weeks and months go by. Many tie in to the upcoming releases “I Was a Slave In a Roman Laundromat” and “Seamen,” both due to be released in 2018 or early 2019.

The legends were true. He was so endowed it became a handicap.

Peter’s Year in the Coal Mines

The period between 1940 when Peter left Hollywood and 1944, when he returned and became a permanent fixture in Tinseltown are clouded with mystery. Daryn, our brilliant intern from Cal State Dominguez Hills, just found a missing puzzle piece…a rare photo of Peter with his notes on the reverse.

This important photo was lodged in the railing of an old filing cabinet from Peter’s office. It sheds light on an important year in his life. It explains how he knew enough about mining to write Dark as a Dungeon. It shows a cheerful Peter on the left with a man named Jim Ivey, who apparently used to give Peter hand jobs, if we can interpret “caresses” in such a bawdy manner. The bulge in Peter’s trousers is too ambiguous to confirm the legend. Still, all he got was caresses, so it gives weight to rumors he was problematically enormous. It also casts a light on his still fragile mental state. To a fan of Peter’s fiction, this is priceless. It will take a place of honor in the archives at PS publishing.

Regulations prevent us from paying our intern in cash, so Daryn will be receiving a 50-dollar gift card to Chili’s, his favorite place to take his girlfriend on date night.

On the reverse:

Two novels released

Two Peter Schutes classics came out in paperback and eBook formats in the past month. The Butt Baby is a comical tale of a man who gets pregnant through a mishap with his high school buddy Nick the Dick. It was written in 1980, after Stonewall, but before the AIDS crisis. An earlier masterpiece, Confessions of a Rodeo Clown , tells the story of Brightie Matthews, rodeo clown, and his huge lover Cody the Bull Rider…who shares a lot in common with the bulls he rides. His dangerously large appendage delights and damages the innocent clown.

Five Erotic Tales

PS Publishing recently made available five of Peter’s best short stories in an anthology called Five Erotic Tales – These are available in one volume, or you can download each separately.

Muscle Beach (free download)

“Muscle Beach” is one of several works of short erotic fiction written by Peter in the 1970s that had been lost to time. PS Publishers stumbled across it in a filing cabinet reserved for taxes. The language and expressions in “Muscle Beach” come directly from the thriving gay community in Los Angeles at the time. Although the story is not dated, it is likely written several years earlier than 1976, when the Big Donut Drive-In Became Randy’s Donuts. This story is set in the burgeoning bodybuilder community that became the center of a movement.

The story deals with many themes that appear in his novels. The matching of a well-endowed everyman with a perfectly sculpted, under-endowed muscleman appears in the earlier novel “Dark as a Dungeon.” Like his contemporary, Tom of Finland, Peter preferred an exaggerated reality. The difference is in the attitude towards size great and small. Extreme size becomes a burden rather than a blessing. Peter suffered from the same problems of over-endowment as the hero of this story, Taryn Rearden.

Miles High

“Miles High” was another story found among the files of unpublished works of Peter Schutes. The original title, “Eight Miles High,” was at risk of copyright infringement, so we took the liberty of changing it to something we believe Peter would have agreed to, given the situation. Peter left a handwritten note stapled to the manuscript. It read, “Like my Panama novel, this story is told primarily from the point of view of a man with a very small appendage. I often fantasized what it would be like to be small like Jeffrey. I have known very few men with small endowments. They are just as rare as the horse hung. Just like I felt with my unwieldy monster, they have all said that they saw their tiny penis as a curse for years. It wasn’t until they discovered that with many men, opposites attract. By embracing their femininity, rather than yearning for masculinity, they became a coveted sexual partner. I have a much harder time finding someone to top me than do they. ”

KwikLube 5000

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“KwikLube 5000” is set in the mid 1970’s on Van Nuys Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. At that time, Van Nuys was the “cruising” street of choice for young drivers. Cruising was outlawed by the quasi-fascist LAPD, who saw fit to curtail freedoms if they were inconvenient, for along with the cruising came fights, accidents, and crime. Jack “Snake” Elgin is a businessman who sought to capitalize on the explosion in car culture in his hometown. This story tells a tale of a man battling inner demons and outer extremities. His employees help bring him out of his own personal hell into a new kind of heaven.

Of this Story, Peter wrote: “KwikLube 5000 was my first attempt at portraying the San Fernando Valley, the capital of pornography and bleach blond hair. The Valley is an enigmatic place. There is no “there” there, as Gertrude Stein would say. It’s just an endless expanse of ugly signs and drive-thru businesses. Nobody leaves his or her car, which is why KwikLube 5000 was such a success. The driver could stay in the car and read the Los Angeles Times while mechanics fiddled with the car one story down. Despite my disparaging words, the Valley is actually dear to my heart. The bathhouses there have the most handsome men, who are much more receptive to an old, well-hung fart like me.”

Dirty Cop

This work of short erotic fiction is another that was found in the tax filing cabinet of Peter Schutes. It features the re-appearance by Shamus Little, the short body builder with a big rear and a tiny endowment. He built his body for one purpose, and he never fails to amaze. Dirty Cop was most likely written in 1977 or 1978. Around this time, there were a number of “buddy cop” stories in movies and television. Peter’s handwritten margin notes mention the inspiration for the characters Ash Hunter and Rocco Pounder came from an Italian polizziotto called “Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man.” Tasked with doing “whatever it takes” to bring down a drug ring in Venice, California, the two cops discover just how close they have become. Ash and Rocco reveal hidden secrets about their friendship and their anatomy.

Enjambment

“Enjambment” is one of the last stories written by Peter before his death in 1981 at the age of 85 years old. It is set in his adopted city, Los Angeles, in the present, which was 1980. The language and expressions are modern. The story deals with modern themes, like sexual hypnosis, exercise and fitness, and the cult of body worship that became synonymous with the 1980’s in the wake of Olivia Newton John’s “Physical.” It is a testament to his skill as a writer that he captured this moment in time so precisely.

The Anaconda Copper

The Anaconda Copper explores the moral quandaries of Sheriff Whelan Dowd, also known as ‘Stack.’ The town folks call him ‘Stack’ in honor of the Anaconda Stack, the tallest masonry smokestack in the world, which looms over the town like a massive phallus. He was gifted and cursed with an appendage so large, it caused real damage with women.

Of The Anaconda Copper, Peter wrote:

The life of a small town sheriff is difficult for different reasons than that of a big city cop. In small townships, the sheriff often becomes the factotum. He may moonlight as a mechanic or run a general store. His budget comes from county taxes, which fall short. He may need to repair the brakes on his cruiser and replace missing letters in the office typewriter. He doesn’t do it for the love of money; he must love the law and the people of the town he has sworn to protect.

Anaconda_Smelter_Stack_1920 The autonomy and power are perks of the job. Most sheriffs will not abuse this privilege, but there are temptations. Autonomy allows the sheriff to budget his time as he sees fit. He makes his own schedule. Far more dangerous is the power he has over the lives of his citizens. Strong morals must prevail over temptation, be it greed, envy, lust or any other sin. This story concerns a sheriff who struggles to balance his personal sense of right and wrong with his primal urges. His morals are his own, but you must judge if they are virtuous or sinful.

This afterword by Peter Schutes was a rare glimpse into the phallic psychology that drove his fantasies. We can only assume after reading it that the man was enormously endowed, and suffered great loneliness because of it. Like the sheriff, his manhood was a legend that preceded him, so that he often became defined by it, rather than by his character, which was just as extraordinary. We glimpse the bitterness that resulted.

Drugs don’t appear in every novel, but they certainly take center stage in this one. Amyl Nitrate and Quaaludes were not illegal in the early 1960s, although both required a prescription. Some of Peter’s books glorify modern drug use and condemn alcohol, which was a common attitude in his early years as an author. He mentions Alcoholics Anonymous. To know what he did about that program may mean he spent time in those rooms. It isn’t explicitly stated, for that would be a violation of one of the traditions.

This Afterword contains spoilers, so be warned:

The modern world despises differences. Most people seek comfort in sameness. Some people cannot seek sameness for any number of reasons. Perhaps they lost an arm in combat. Or maybe, like Cleve, they are two-spirit. Sheriff Dowd was different in several ways. He could not hide his huge appendage any more than a sailor could hide a missing arm. He was teased and ridiculed, yet no one felt sorry for him, for their jeers were covering over a deep insecurity. His cock dwarfed all others. All men felt small around Stack.

Stack was doubly burdened, for his early experiences with women created a complex. After Preston Twomey’s initiation, he started a double life. This was a work of fiction, for every man he encountered wanted to have sex with him, even after seeing his grotesque penis. In truth, such a deformity frightens men. It draws them in with curiosity and fantasy, but once they realize the pain they would endure, it is all too much, and they leave. This is the curse of the extremely endowed.

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Each encounter depicted is a possible situation where the Sheriff might have a chance in the real world. A young man with Amyl and quaaludes or an ex-army man who served many soldiers in the line of duty – both are potential mates. There are men who have spent years inserting large objects in their anus – they, too can handle a man like Whelan Dowd. Luckily, Stack was able to switch roles. This made it easy to find pleasure with a more rigid man like Guido Facchino.

The most preposterous fiction comes with the character of Lars Johnsson. He was teased in Sweden before he got to Anaconda, so he knew to hide his huge shame from others by avoiding showers and other public nudity. He is exactly like Sheriff Dowd, willing to be man or woman, and equally endowed. This is a match made in Hollywood. In life, the men who bear the curse of abnormal size are seldom so lucky.