The Brass Bed (Starsky & Hutch story)

See The Brass Bed for other fandom uses.

Fanfiction
Title:	The Brass Bed
Author(s):	Billie Fowler
Date(s):	pre-1982
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Starsky and Hutch
Relationship(s):
External Links:
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The Brass Bed is a very, very early slash pass-around Starsky and Hutch novel by Billie Fowler. It was never reprinted in a zine.

It has been called by some one of the “Holy Grails of Starsky & Hutch fandom.”

The brass bed in this fandom refers to Hutch's bed frame in canon.

History of the Term

the Starsky/brass bed poster sold in the 1970s

Brass bed frames were a common decorating element in the United States in the 1970s.

The brass bed was a prominent background fixture in Starsky & Hutch. Hutch's brass bed sat in his bedroom/living room in his canal-side cottage.

The brass bed theme in Starsky & Hutch fandom was also flamed by a well-known poster that was sold at the time, one that showed Starsky/Paul Michael Glaser leaning on the headboard of a brass bed. Some fans comment upon a supposed pair of handcuffs that are shown in the photo. The title of "The Brass Bed" almost certainly is homage to this poster.

A fan in 2002 wrote:

Joy of joys!! I got mail today.......and that poster of Starsky (AKA PMG) sitting on that brass bed (Hutch's bed?-- What a remarkable thing that he'd pose THERE!) and looking so serious and sexy. How many guesses as to the identity of the person he was staring at when the photo was snapped.......

Maybe it's just my imagination but I can just imagine that Starsky is sitting on the bed and watching intently as Hutch does a bit of a strip tease...... Whoa! Did the temperature suddenly go up? I thought South Texas was expecting a cold front........

History of the Story and Other Fanworks It Inspired

Ruth Kurz stated that "The Brass Bed story "Surrender" is by Paula Smith, a rewrite of one by Billie Fowler."

Paula Smith, the author of the controversial story Surrender in the zine Strokes, confirms this and 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.

Rumor has it that Leslie Fish was planning to write a sequel to "The Brass Bed," but this fic was never completed.

Fan Comments

1985

From a fan who'd written Right Between the Eyes, a responsefic to "The Brass Bed":

Like many another S/H reader/writer 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.

2002

There were quite a number of Billie's stories circulating in those days -- extremely oddly characterized, fairly illiterate.

2006

Billie's stories were not zine-published, just passed around by hand, like Pros circuit stories. I'll make you a copy of mine if you like, but I think you'll find it doesn't live up to its legend.