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.
