Porn Westerns in Print Form

I occasionally like to read a western novel in the same way that I like to occasionally watch a western movie. The western is a genre I love so a well told western tale in print form can be a fun, fast read and never more so than with the long running series books that are still published today. The series I've been most fascinated with in the past couple of years has been the ultra-violent Edge books that ceased publication in 1989 after sixty-one novels of action and blood. So, when I've felt the urge for the genre I've searched used bookstore shelves for any Edge books and scratched that itch in that way. (By the way, it appears Shane Black is a fan of the series as well!)

But I often forget that most of the series westerns have an added exploitative element beyond graphic violence and the joys of western tropes put through their paces. Yep - quite a number of them include straight-out pornography! Series such as Longarm, Buckskin and a dozen others have several explicit sex scenes in each novel and are intended for an adult male audience. These series were mostly begun in the 1970's and are clearly very profitable as were their antecedents, the Spicy Western pulps of the 1930's.  This might shock the uninitiated but I stumbled onto these books when I was quite young. I was eleven or twelve when I was surprised that the Slocum novel I had curiously picked up off a drugstore spinner rack was so dirty! "Whoa! So that's how those things work together, huh?" Porn in prose form was my first actual porn! That might explain a lot about me, huh?

Strangely enough, over the years I had forgotten about the explicit sexual scenes in these books. Completely. I don't know how that is possible but it's true. So, the other day I spotted a Gunsmith novel for fifty cents in a local store and made an impulse buy. I grinned a lot thinking about how much fun it was going to be - six-guns, horses and bad guys in the Old West! Hell yeah! 

I settled in a for an amusing read and was enjoying myself pretty well with the fun tone of the story's dialog when BAM! A four page long sex sequence that reminded me of a 1970's porno loop done in western costumes. Wow! I wasn't expecting that. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Porn has its place, right? And they had sex in the Old West or there wouldn't be a new west, I  guess. But wow! The Old West seems to have had some frisky prostitutes. But I do wonder if anyone else reading my blog occasionally reads one of these series westerns. Are there any closet Slocum or Buckskin fans out there?