Items

• Aphrodisiac : fiction from Christopher Street
  This anthology of “the best fiction from Christopher Street” was praised for its “literary excellence” by ‘Publishers Weekly’. It compiles eighteen short stories published in “America’s leading gay magazine”, from authors including Jane Rule, Edmund White, Tennessee Williams and Kate Millett. The magazine, named after the location of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, was founded in 1976 and published monthly until the mid-1990s. As well as original fiction, it featured writing on gay politics and culture, interviews and satirical cartoons. A series of essays about the unfolding AIDS crisis in New York by Andrew Holleran – one of the featured authors in this collection – was later published as ‘Ground Zero’.
• Cruise to win
  “This book is about making contact” is the opening declaration of this self-help guide to successful and confident cruising for gay men. Written by Lenny Giteck, assistant editor and columnist at ‘The Advocate’, the book is based on interviews with fifty pseudonymous gay men and seventeen mental health professionals. In chapters on the principles of cruising, ‘dealing with rejection’ (and ‘rejecting others’), ‘sex and intimacy’ and older men and cruising, among others, the book aims to bolster self-worth and reduce anxiety around meeting other men, especially in bars. The inside back cover includes a statement that the book now comes with an ‘AIDS Supplement’. This suggests that this is a later edition of the book – an exact date of publication is not given – as this kind of material would not have been available on first publication in 1982. The supplement is unfortunately not included with this copy.
• New York native. Issue 82, January 30-February 12, 1984
  Published biweekly between 1980 and 1997, this is a relatively early edition of ‘New York Native’. Much of the paper’s reporting at this time concentrated on the growing AIDS crisis, and this issue is no exception, with headline statistics and an editorial concerned with a potential link between the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the African Swine Fever virus. While a paper supporting this theory appeared two years later in medical journal ‘The Lancet’, it was later discredited. Also featured are music, theatre, film, gallery and restaurant reviews, guides to New York and San Francisco, a letters page, classified ads and personal ads.
• New York native. Issue 83, February 13-26, 1984
  The ‘New York Native’ newspaper was published by Charles Ortleb (1950?-) between 1980 and 1997. This issue contains articles, reviews, personal listings, adverts, a fashion spread and a winter travel supplement. Most notable is the range of reports on AIDS, which begin with an editorial critiquing the racism and homophobia in press reports of the crisis. Other articles in this issue focus on the first European conference on AIDS and lists of numbers of cases reported in New York. The paper first reported on AIDS in 1981, after the ‘New York Times’ broke the story on 3 July that year. ‘New York Native’ had been pioneering in its coverage, although it later fell out of favour and was boycotted by some activists when it began to promote conspiracy theories regarding the cause of AIDS.
• The AIDS epidemic
  In spring 1983, a “devastating, puzzling and fatal” new illness was spreading rapidly throughout the United States. At that time, some three to four years after the first cases of HIV/AIDS had emerged and under two years since the first cases were reported in the ‘New York Times’, New York City was the hardest-hit metropolitan area with 595 cases and 228 deaths. This astonishingly prescient book edited by physician Kevin Cahill (1936-2022) comprises the published proceedings of a symposium that took place at Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City. Doctors, epidemiologists and policy-makers gathered to discuss how they might combat the disease, stating that “there is every indication that we will soon be in the midst of a worldwide epidemic”. As of 2024, HIV has claimed over 40 million lives worldwide.
• The joy of gay sex : an intimate guide for gay men to the pleasures of a gay lifestyle
  A collaboration between Dr Charles Silverstein (1935-2023) and novelist Edmund White (1940-), “by gays, for gays”. Structured as an A-to-Z guide to gay life, from Androgyny to Wrestling, plus a short bibliography, it is illustrated throughout by Michael Leonard, Ian Beck and Julian Graddon. Riding high on the popularity of ‘The Joy of Sex’ (1972), it sold out its first print run of 75,000 copies. Some commentators, however, were critical of this apparent mainstreaming. “If we have reached a point where cultural interests include the marketing of our sex lives, it would be nice for some basic civil rights to come along with that,” wrote Michael Bronski in ‘Gay Community News’ in November 1977. “You can still get arrested for having a good time.” The book was later used in healthcare during the AIDS crisis, and ‘The New Joy of Gay Sex’ (1993) was substantially updated with safe sex information.