Right Between the Eyes

Fanfiction
Title:	Right Between the Eyes
Author(s):	Catherine Siebert: "Cath E. Rine"
Date(s):	1983
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Starsky & Hutch
External Links:
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Right Between the Eyes is a 6-page slash Starsky & Hutch story by "Cath E. Rine."

It was advertised for sale in Pop Stand Express #9 and cost thirty-five cents plus an SASE.

A Rarity

This fanwork is a rarity due to several reasons.

While it was advertised in a very limited way to fans, it is closer to drawerfic than more "formal" zines.

It is also a rarity in that it is a single fic, rather than a zine, for sale. Most fans in the print era procured their fiction in roughly four ways: buy it in a zine, get it from a story circuit , pass it around a small circle of friends, or have someone photocopy or retype a story from the previous three sources. Writing and selling a single fic was something that didn't happen very often.

This story is also a rarity due to the subject matter: partner rape.

From an Ad

From the ad in "Pop Stand Express" in 1986:

...short, erotic, graphic, and all in fun. Not meant to answer serious questions. The purpose is to offer an alternative to the ordinary, and to enjoy. Hutch and Starsky have been partners for nearly seven years and lovers for five. But Starsky finds himself unable to give Hutch what he needs, and Hutch can't understand why. Asks some questions about why they stay together and what all those jokes they play mean.

Regarding This Author's Similar Fanworks

Siebert wrote and sold several fics in this fashion. They were all slash.

In 1983, there was this ad supplement to Slaysu in Universal Translator:

We have some stories available only on a request basis and only to legal adults. This is because many people have strange views on homosexual (or any type of sexual) relationships. If you are offended by such relationships or by stories about such relationships, these stories are not for you. These stories are short, graphic and all in fun. They are not meant to answer serious questions. The whole purpose is to offer an alternative to the ordinary.

• Right Between the Eyes (Starsky & Hutch)
• A Flower Springs Up (Battlestar Galactica)
• A Gathering of Hawks (Battlestar Galactica)

The Author's Foreword

Like many another S/H reader/writers, I had heard of the Brass Bed story. As is usual with me, when I sat down to write my own version, the story took a different turn than I had consciously projected. I ended up trying to figure out more of the motives behind such a story and how the feelings involved would really be handled. I didn't really start out to find evidence to substantiate my view, but my subconscious has a very logical way of going about things and insists that there be a reason for everything a character does, even if I don't know it (or agree with it if I do.)

It threw in the latest on why battered wives often won't bring charges against their husbands and what such women get out of such a relationship and just what all those jokes Starsky and Hutch are always playing on each other meant and how the jokes they played differed.

So you can see this as a story to back up my claims, or you can just enjoy it as a different way of looking at a relationship that has been discussed at some length. In any event it's what came out when I sat down and typed.

Some Context

Paula Smith, the author of the controversial story Surrender in the zine Strokes, notes that special acknowledgments go to The Brass Bed as it was her story's inspiration:

Something slightly unusual about S&H lit is the relative commonness of prequels, sequels, and remakes or "missing scenes" for other S&H stories and the original episodes. Possibly this is because there are fewer stories to be told about two men in one city than about, say, a shipful of folks in a galaxy. The best known example of a story and its spinoffs may be "The Brass Bed" by Billie Fowler, which inspired both Donna McIntosh's "I Read It in the National Enquirer" (unpublished) and my own "Surrender" which in turn inspired Eileen Roy's "Fountain of Sorrow" and Cath A. Rine's "Right Between the Eyes"; three other unpublished stories on the same theme are "The Bound Blintz", "Revenge of the Bound Blintz" and "Bound Blintz: The Motion Picture", by an anonymous author.