Items

• Sex : true homosexual experiences from S.T.H. Volume 3
  “Laughing out loud with a hard-on”, as one reader put it in the back-cover endorsements. This is the third in a series of thirteen anthologies from the self-published magazine ‘S.T.H.’, or ‘Straight to Hell’, which was founded circa 1973 by editor Boyd McDonald (1925-1993) and is still published today. The premise is simple – readers send in their accounts of real-life sexual experiences. These are published with minimal editorial intervention under tongue-in-cheek tabloid-style headlines (‘Priests Expect Students to Put Out’). The articles are illustrated with black-and-white nude photographs posed by models, cut-and-pasted from old magazines. Copies of ‘Sex’ were also seized by Canadian customs officers in the mid-1980s according to newspaper ‘Body Politic’.
• Sex behind bars: a novella, short stories and true accounts
  This Gay Sunshine Press collection is a mix of fictional and non-fictional accounts of the (sexual) experiences of imprisoned gay men. Author Robert N. Boyd, who was a prisoner in Nevada, hoped the book would provide “a true perspective” and believed that this combination of fact and fiction, with some blurring between the two, was the most appropriate method of portraying that truth. Some of the stories and articles had previously been published in magazines such as soft-core pornography lifestyle titles ‘Mandate’ and ‘In Touch’, while others – such as the novella ‘No One Ever Wins’ - are new to this collection. On publication, ‘Sex Behind Bars’ was often advertised as erotica. Although Boyd agreed in an interview that it would be good if the book proved informative, his main aim was to entertain his readers rather than advocate for prison reform.
• Shock value
  This first book from John Waters (1946-) is a memoir of his early filmmaking years from his childhood puppet shows to his 1977 feature film ‘Desperate Living’. As a gay man with a deep and abiding love for both low- and highbrow cinema, his films feature over-the-top LGBTQ+ characters (and actors) and set out to shake up the status quo and shock his audience. As Waters explains in the book’s introduction, “to me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about”. The memoir is illustrated with film stills and photographs of Waters and his friends and associates, including Divine (1945-1988), the actor and drag queen who featured in several Waters films.
• Slashed to ribbons in defense of love : and other stories
  Eleven semi-autobiographical short stories of gay love and sex in New York City (and popular gay beach resort, Fire Island). It was published by the collective Gay Presses of New York (Sea Horse Press, Calamus Press and J.H. Press). Felice Picano (1944-) founded Sea Horse Press in 1977 and the Gay Presses came together – with co-editors Terry Helbing and Larry Mitchell – in 1981. An award-winning writer, Picano had published several novels, short stories and a book of poems before this collection, and has been prolific since, producing memoir, plays, screenplays and co-writing ‘The New Joy of Gay Sex’ with Charles Silverstein in 1993. This copy is signed by the author and inscribed on the titlepage, “In brotherhood – and against censorship!”
• Special teachers/special boys
  “What happens here when a teacher comes out?” is the question this novel explores. The “here” is the fictional Lennox School for troubled boys, who are taught in small groups by a dedicated teacher – the special boys and special teachers of the title. Amongst the teachers is Bob Davidson, who is gay and comes out publicly on a television programme, an act which reverberates through the school and gives courage to two gay pupils. The novel was criticised in some quarters for the style of writing but praised for providing an antidote to prejudicial accounts of gay teachers. The authors, Peter Fisher (1944-2012) and Marc Rubin (1932-2007), were both gay activists. Rubin was also a teacher, and the book draws on his own experiences. It is dedicated to “the staff and boys of ‘The Lennox School’”.
• Straight hearts' delight : love poems and selected letters, 1947-1980
  Containing thirty years of poetry and numerous letters, this book relates the lives and works of two key figures of the Beat Generation. Documenting chronologically the relationship between Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) and Peter Orlovsky (1933-2010), the book is not only a record of their love but also of the milieu in which they lived and worked. The book contains previously unpublished poems and is illustrated, including with a Richard Avedon photograph of the authors naked. Edited by Winston Leyland, the authors were involved in the book’s production and contributed footnotes. As with many Gay Sunshine Press (and Fag Rag) publications, it was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency established by the US Congress.
• Taking care of Mrs. Carroll : a novel
  This first novel by poet and novelist Paul Monette (1945-1995) begins with the sudden death of wealthy estate owner Mrs Beth Carroll and the introduction of her houseboy David who awakens in bed alongside John, the gardener. The narrative that follows, involving unsigned wills, forgery and impersonation, was described by one reviewer as “a most entertaining venture into fantasy, hilarity, and gay sex”. Monette’s later works, including a memoir of his partner Roger Horwitz’s illness and death from AIDS, took a more serious turn. Horwitz’s presence is felt in the novel displayed here – the book is dedicated to him, and the author photograph gracing the back cover was taken by him. Before Monette’s own death from AIDS, he founded the Monette-Horwitz Trust to honour individuals and organisations that fight to eradicate homophobia.
• Teleny : a novel
  This sexually explicit “Physiological Romance” was first published by pornographer Leonard Smithers in 1893 in a two-volume edition of 200 copies, anonymously and with a false place of publication to deter Victorian censors. Although ‘Teleny’ may have been produced collaboratively, strong hints that Oscar Wilde was at least the principal author were already circulating. It has been attributed to Wilde since the Olympia Press edition of 1954. ‘Teleny’ continued to be reprinted in expurgated editions over the course of the twentieth century. The Gay Sunshine Press edition is, according to editor Winston Leyland, “the first unexpurgated version in English based on the original manuscript”.
• The boy from Beirut : and other stories
  Robin Maugham (1916-1981), Second Viscount Maugham of Hartfield and nephew of the novelist W. Somerset Maugham, wrote short stories, novels, screenplays, plays and non-fiction. “Bisexual, though predominantly homosexual”, as he put it, Maugham published his first short story in 1943 (‘The 1946 Ms’, praised by George Orwell), turning more to gay themes in his post-1970 work. Published posthumously, Maugham’s ‘The Boy from Beirut’ consists of eight short stories, introduced by writer and former editor for ‘Gay News’, Peter Burton. These stories draw partly on Maugham’s time in North Africa during the Second World War and had all previously been published in the UK. The volume closes with Burton’s long interview with Maugham, first published in ‘Gay Sunshine’ magazine in the Summer/Fall edition, 1977 (no. 33/34).
• The boy harlequin : and other stories
  Fourteen short stories from a now little-known American author Girard Kent, the nom-de-plume of a Texan writer named Lon Rogers. Though the collection did well enough for Gay Sunshine Press to bring out a second edition in 1985, its mildly distasteful blend of humour and eroticism has not dated well. Several stories feature sexual relationships between adolescent boys and adult men, and as a perceptive contemporary review in New Zealand magazine ‘Pink Triangle’ noted, the characters feel more like “fantasy material” than fully realised protagonists. ‘The Boy Harlequin’ was Kent’s first book, and he seems to have published nothing further, either under his own name or his pen name.
• The boy who picked the bullets up
  Charles Nelson (1942-2003) served as a Marine in the Vietnam War and claimed that some of this novel was autobiographical. The story follows medic Kurt Strom during a year he spent stationed in Vietnam. Strom’s experiences as a gay Marine are relayed via letters he sends home to his family and friends. One reviewer described the novel as containing “endless humour and devastating realism”, while the gay perspective was praised for presenting “decidedly different” insights on war. The novel’s title is taken from the poem of the same name by Arthur Rimbaud. Published by William Morrow, the book’s dust jacket shows a soldier’s trousered backside, with a blue bandana in the left pocket, alluding to ‘flagging’, a coded means of expressing sexual preferences.
• The butch manual : the current drag and how to do it
  A tongue-in-cheek manual for gay men on how to appear more ‘butch’, or stereotypically masculine, written in the style of a women’s magazine – complete with a problem page featuring Gertrude Stein as a fictional agony aunt. Butch men shun smiling, screaming and “misquoting Dorothy Parker” in favour of moustaches, yelling and talking dirty, according to author, model and artist Clark Henley (1950-1988). The book is undoubtedly influenced by the wildly popular contemporary humorous titles ‘The Official Preppy Handbook’ (1980) and ‘The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook’ (1982). Henley also drew the rare 1976 ‘Tails of the City’ ‘Alligator Oz’ map of San Francisco, a gay map of the city populated by cartoon alligators, and ‘A Butch Look at America’ (1982), in which the United States is represented by torn cut-off jeans over bare buttocks. Diagnosed HIV-positive in 1986, Henley died in San Francisco of AIDS-related causes in 1988, aged just 38.
• The coming out party : a novel
  Jaded by West Hollywood gay life, long-term lovers Cal and Sidney yearn for a new distraction. In this queer reworking of ‘My Fair Lady' they find one in a young gay man, overweight college student, Hal. They take him on as a project, schooling him in Tennessee Williams, ‘Brideshead Revisited’ and E.M. Forster’s ‘Maurice’ and putting him through a punishing programme of physical transformation. Republished in 2001 via self-publishing platform iUniverse, this second edition is described as “A novel so outrageous it was banned in England!”, a possible reference to ‘Operation Tiger’. The blurb also claims Caffey won a PEN Award for an Outstanding First Work of Fiction, receiving a Special Commendation in 1983. However, no evidence either for this specific award or this commendation can be found.
• The disrobing : sex and satire
  Poet and author Royal Murdoch, known to friends as Kenneth, was born in California in 1898 and moved to Mexico City in the mid-1960s, where he died in 1981. ‘The Disrobing’, ten copies of which were seized in the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids, is a posthumously published collection spanning fifty years, including poetry, diary extracts, letters and part of an unfinished novel. It was edited by Gay Sunshine’s Winston Leyland. Murdoch himself wrote of ‘Gay Sunshine Journal’ that “I was already an old man when I first saw an issue” and “each issue brings me a renewed sense of liberation”. Murdoch’s prose works in particular describe life in pre-Stonewall America. His papers are now held by the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
• 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.
• The Lord won't mind
  This is the opening book in a gay romance trilogy by Gordon Merrick (1916-1988), first published in 1970. Young, handsome and improbably well-endowed Charlie Mills is introduced to the equally attractive Peter Martin in late 1930s New Jersey. It is love – and lust – at first sight. Advertised in ‘The New York Times’ as “the first homosexual novel with a happy ending”, the book spent sixteen weeks in the ‘Times’ top ten, becoming a bestseller that secured Merrick’s fortunes. Criticised for its misogyny and as “corny, oddly dated and saccharine” by a discerning reviewer for ‘Gay NYC’, it nonetheless became a guilty pleasure for generations of gay men.
• The Nazi extermination of homosexuals
  This book, which is held in several UK academic libraries, outlines the treatment of gay men in Germany during the Third Reich. Much of the research is based on secondary sources which expose increasing societal homophobia, culminating in the imprisonment of gay men in concentration camps where they were forced to wear a pink triangle stitched to their clothing and undergo horrific, brutal treatment. The final two chapters focus on personal, pseudonymous testimony from men who survived, including an extract from a 1972 German book, published in English in 1980, entitled ‘The Men with the Pink Triangle’. By the 1980s, the pink triangle symbol had been reclaimed by LGBTQ+ activists.
• The New York diary of Ned Rorem
  The ‘New York Diary’ begins with Ned Rorem (1923-2022) returning home from Paris and is the second volume of Rorem’s diaries, covering the period 1955-1961. As with the previous volume, Rorem uses the diary form to discuss the – often famous – people he meets, his thoughts on the life of an artist and his own personal life, including his relationships and alcoholism. Rorem noted that these New York diaries were “less frivolous and more outspoken” than those he wrote in Paris. The exhibition shows Rorem’s diaries in two separate volumes, although in the list of books seized from Gay’s The Word they are listed as one title. It is likely, therefore, that the combined edition published by US paperback imprint Avon was the one seized.
• The Paris diary of Ned Rorem
  Ned Rorem (1923-2022) was an American composer of modern classical music, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1976 and a Grammy in 1989. Rorem was also gay, and documented his life in a series of diaries which began with his ‘Paris Diary’, covering the early 1950s when he was in his late twenties. Famed not only for his musical talent but also his good looks, Rorem was a dedicated socialite who gained entry to the Parisian artistic scene under the mentorship of Vicomtesse Marie-Laure de Noailles. This selection of his diaries shows the extent of Rorem’s connections not only via his writing but also through the inclusion of photographs taken of him by artists such as Man Ray and a portrait illustration by Jean Cocteau.
• The rose exterminator : a novel
  This gay sado-masochistic mystery novel was the third and final work of fiction by William Carney (1922-1987), after ‘The Real Thing’ (1968) and ‘A Year in a Closet’ (1974). If it seems a niche subgenre, it was one Carney carved out for himself successfully, alongside employment as a university teacher of French – ‘The Real Thing’ was influenced by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s eighteenth-century epistolary novel ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ – and as a restorer of Victorian and Edwardian houses. As well as being a guide to the S/M lifestyle and the first generation of West Coast ‘leathermen’, Carney’s books provide an insight into late 1960s and 1970s gay life in San Francisco more generally. Carney’s papers are now held at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
• The sunny side of Castro Street : a diary of sorts
  A detailed, first-person account of bars, cruising and bathhouses in 1970s San Francisco by Dan Vojir (1947-). It also includes an extended memoir of growing up gay in a second-generation Czech immigrant family in Berwyn, Illinois, before Vojir moved to San Francisco’s Castro neighbourhood in 1974. “It’s a charmer”, proclaimed one contemporary reviewer. Vojir was a writer for the ‘Castro Times’ newspaper and worked in publishing as well as hosting a radio talk show, ‘Strictly Books’. ‘The Sunny Side of Castro Street’ is illustrated by Ku Fu-Sheng in a distinctive style which combines pencil and pen-and-ink sketches with photographic collage.
• The terminal bar : a novel
  Self-published by Larry Mitchell (1939-2012) of Calamus Books, one third of the Gay Presses of New York collective, this novel is set in a real Times Square bar which was popularly known as the “roughest” in New York but which was a sanctuary for its clientele. Based on Mitchell’s experiences and those of his friends, the novel follows a group of lesbians and gay men against a backdrop of a decaying America, symbolised by the Three Mile Island nuclear incident in 1979. The novel has also been considered the first work of fiction to reference AIDS. The copy of the book on display is inscribed to Gay’s The Word by the author “In defence of the freedom to read”.
• Torch song trilogy : three plays
  ‘Torch Song Trilogy’ has three acts titled ‘International Stud,’ ‘Fugue in a Nursery’ and ‘Widows and Children First!’ Each deals with a different phase in the life of Arnold Beckoff, a gay, Jewish drag queen and torch singer in 1970s and 1980s New York. Receiving criticism from some for upholding ‘family values’, for others, the trilogy’s exploration of gay marriage and adoption was radical during a time of conservative backlash. Harvey Fierstein (1954-) won a Tony Award for Best Play in 1983 as well as for Best Performance by a Leading Actor. First published in 1981 by the Gay Presses of New York, this edition was published in the UK to tie in with its West End premiere at Albery Theatre (now the Noël Coward Theatre) in 1985. Fierstein has since blazed a trail for queer representation on stage and screen.
• Treasures on earth : a novel
  This novel is a fictionalised depiction of a real expedition to Machu Picchu in Peru which was undertaken by Hiram Bingham in 1911. Running parallel to the main narrative is the story of the trip’s photographer, Willie Hickler, who discovers his sexuality when he falls in love with the expedition’s Peruvian assistant, Ernesto. Author Carter Wilson (1942?-), who later became an academic and Professor of Community Studies, described this book as “my coming-out novel”. The book was published by the well-established Knopf imprint and received good reviews, including from Christopher Isherwood who compared it to E. M. Forster’s ‘A Passage to India’.
• Tricks : 25 encounters
  “Homosexuality”, Renaud Camus (1946-) reminds the reader of ‘Tricks’ in his foreword, “has a history, and of course, a geography”. These stories of sexual encounter, translated by distinguished gay poet Richard Howard (1929-2022), move from late 1970s Paris to Milan to the United States. In the preface, literary theorist Roland Barthes notes these short narratives’ simplicity, their repetitive nature, and also their status as literature rather than pornography. Each begins with a name and a date, before detailing a sexual liaison between Camus and a man he has never met before. Each ends with a note on their subsequent relationship (if any). Previously a columnist for ‘Gai Pied’ and a socialist, Camus is now a conspiracy theorist and white nationalist, who developed the far-right ‘Great Replacement’ theory.