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.