Items

• A thirsty evil : seven short stories
  Gore Vidal (1925-2012) was a writer of novels, short stories, plays, essays, and screenplays, on a diverse range of subjects, published across many decades. Some of Vidal’s works centre on gay characters or themes, including some of the tales featured in this collection of seven stories. This edition, which was seized in the raids, was published by Gay Sunshine Press, although it is a reprint of the 1956 first edition published by Zero Press. Additionally, some of the stories had originally been published in magazines. Readers, therefore, had twenty-five years of access to this book’s contents prior to the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids. The front cover shows an illustration by Joe Fuoco.
• Adonis García : a picaresque novel
  Set in Mexico City’s Roma district, home to students, bohemians, the marginalised and impoverished, this radical experimental novel by Luis Zapata (1951-2020) follows Adonis García as he makes his “shameless and impudent” way through life, as José Joaquin Blanco puts it in the introduction to this edition. Refusing convention in both content and form, Zapata’s eponymous Adonis sets out his sexually adventurous story as if transcribed from a set of tapes, in a freewheeling, verbatim style which makes bold use of white space. The novel was first published in Mexico in 1979 by Editorial Grijalbo as ‘Las Aventuras, Desventuras y Sueños de Adonis García, El Vampiro de la Colonia Roma’. Translator E.A. Lacey (1938-1995) was also a noted gay poet of the post-Stonewall generation.
• Below the belt : & other stories
  These stories were written by Samuel M. Steward (1909-1993) under the pseudonym Phil Andros. Andros is also the central character – a drifter and hustler, intelligent and well-read, and as handsome as a Greek god – who recounts his sexual exploits in these erotic stories. This book contains an introductory note which flips the interlinked identities of author and subject by suggesting that Andros has lived these experiences, and Steward is an “alter ego” writing them for him. This was the first of seven Andros titles published by Donald Allen of Grey Fox Press, who created the Perineum Press imprint for this purpose. This copy is inscribed by Andros to Gay’s the Word, with hopes that they overcome the “hypocritical, archaic, stupid, and middle-class” Customs officials.
• Black men/white men : a gay anthology
  A collection of forty poems, short fiction and non-fiction pieces which explore the intersections of race and sexuality “from the most scholarly to the most explicit”, by authors such as Langston Hughes, Eric Garber and Bruce Nugent. Contributions on sexual stereotyping, discrimination and anti-Black racism within the white gay community are interspersed with several high-quality monochrome photographs and drawings of gay men, both Black and white, pictured separately and in couples. Editor Michael J. Smith founded the advocacy organisation Black and White Men Together in 1980. Chapters sprung up in cities across the United States – there was even, briefly, a Dalston-Hackney branch in London – and the organisation continues today. Smith died of AIDS in 1989 aged 45.
• Bom-Crioulo : the Black man and the cabin boy
  Brazilian novelist Adolfo Caminha (1867-1897) wrote in the Romantic Naturalist tradition. His work, “polemic, provocative, misunderstood”, according to Raul de Sá Barbosa, who introduces this edition, was largely overlooked in conservative Brazil until it began to be revived in the early 1980s. ‘Bom-Crioulo’, which roughly translates as ‘the Good Black Man’, was first published in Rio de Janeiro in 1895, the same year as Oscar Wilde’s trial and just seven years after the abolition of slavery in Brazil. It depicts, frankly and without moralising, the relationship between a formerly enslaved Black man and a fifteen-year-old white cabin boy. E.A. Lacey, a noted gay poet of the post-Stonewall era, who translated ‘Bom-Crioulo’ from Portuguese, also translated Luis Zapata’s ‘Adonis García’ (another seized book) from Spanish.
• 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.
• Cum : true homosexual experiences from S.T.H. Volume 4
  This volume of “more than 100 sexually explicit stories” is one of a few anthologies culled from ‘Straight to Hell’, the magazine self-published by Boyd McDonald (1925-1993), that were seized during the raids. The collection gathers ‘true’ stories of sexual experiences, sent to the magazine by its readers, interspersed with black-and-white photographs. The book notes that the pictures are posed by professional models, and their inclusion “does not imply that they are necessarily homosexual”. The humour of these publications is reflected in the title of the cover photograph, taken by Mike Arlen – ‘A typical laundry scene in present-day London’.
• Cute : and other poems
  A collection of around thirty poems, many of which had previously appeared in gay publications such as ‘Fag Rag’ and ‘Gay Sunshine Journal’ as well as the avant-garde literary review ‘New – American and Canadian Poetry’. Everhard’s writing is moving, personal and direct. ‘For Marcie’ details the complicated feelings of the speaker on sleeping with a woman to whom he is unable to come out. ‘Reasons Why I Love You’ and ‘Enemy’ explore a love affair with a man named Richard – and its aftermath. The book’s cover features a drawing of a boy, face-on and in the foetal position, and on the inside flyleaf there is a sketch of a nude young man, all by Joe Fuoco. Born in 1946, Everhard died of AIDS in 1986.
• Ed Dean is queer : a novel
  Praised on publication for its “grabbing and lucid style”, ‘Ed Dean is Queer’ was the first novel by N.A. Diaman (1936-2022). Set in 1983, this tale of political intrigue grapples with pro- and anti-gay politics to provide a vision of a “meaningful future” for queer people, according to one reviewer. The book’s layout and typesetting are noticeably DIY in style, and Diaman set up Persona Press in order to self-publish, driven by the conviction that “straight people are not going to tell our stories.” He would go on to write another nine books. Timothy Thompson’s cover design features a striking monochrome graphic of two moustachioed men and a woman looking suspiciously on behind them. The copy on display here is dated “4 December 1984” and is inscribed “Best wishes to Gay’s the Word and its fight against censorship.”
• Enemy : a novel
  First published in the UK in 1981 as ‘The Deserters’, ‘Enemy’ was based initially on Robin Maugham’s play of the same name, which premiered in Guildford in 1969 before transferring to London. Maugham (1916-1981), the nephew of the novelist W. Somerset Maugham, drew on his experience in the Sahara during the Second World War for this tale of two soldiers, one British and one German, who stumble across each other in the desert. Maugham depicts a friendship that crosses boundaries of class, sexuality and nationality. Supported by Peter Burton, who edited Maugham’s short-story collection ‘The Boy from Beirut’, another of the books seized in ‘Operation Tiger’, ‘Enemy’ was the last book Maugham published before he died.
• Flesh : true homosexual experiences from S.T.H. Volume 2
  The second anthology of readers’ real-life sexual experiences from Boyd McDonald (1925-1993), compiled from his self-published magazine, ‘S.T.H. (Straight to Hell)’ and illustrated with explicit black-and-white nude photographs posed by models. McDonald used newspaper headlines to frame stories, interspersed with "demented interviews with diverse groups of homosexual men”, according to one reviewer, featuring quick-fire questions about sexual likes, dislikes and exploits. Other ‘S.T.H.’ anthologies seized in the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids included ‘Meat’, ‘Cum’ and ‘Sex’. ‘Juice’, the fifth volume in the series, continued to cause problems with the establishment. A review in ‘OUT! New Zealand’s Alternative Lifestyle Magazine’ from December 1991 includes the info “Just released by customs”.
• From violent men : a novel
  In 1978, gay politician Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated in San Francisco by former city Supervisor Dan White. Daniel Curzon (1938-) self-published this loosely fictionalised version of the aftermath of these deaths through IGNA (or International Gay News Agency). He had experienced “a decade of frustration with publishing houses” over this and other works, according to a 1983 article in ‘Out’ magazine. This copy is inscribed by the author, “Give ‘em hell at Customs! Long live Oscar Wilde, D.H. Lawrence and gay rights!”, and dated 27 February 1985. “D.H. Lawrence” is a reference to the ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ trial in 1960, when the amended Obscene Publications Act 1959 allowed for a work to be defended on the grounds of literary merit for the first time. Curzon’s short story collection ‘Human Warmth and Other Stories’ was also seized in ‘Operation Tiger’.
• Game-texts : a Guatemalan journal
  This meditative travelogue is written in a fragmentary style, combining quasi-spiritual musings on the natural world (“See that a stone is a stoning in the same sense that a flower is a flowering”) with casual accounts of sexual encounters with various Guatemalan teenagers. The 1982 mail-order catalogue of Los Angeles bookstore A Different Light puts it bluntly – “Personal reflections & sex with Latin American boys.” Although Erskine Lane (1940-) was awarded a 1976 Fels award for the best non-fiction published by a small-press magazine (‘Gay Sunshine Journal’ no. 26/27, in which it first appeared), the lack of reflection on race, class, colonialism and the power dynamics at play make this an uncomfortable read. Lane also worked for Gay Sunshine Press as a translator from Portuguese and Spanish into English.
• Gay fiction journal. No. 47 : anthology of fiction/poetry/prose
  ‘Gay Sunshine’ was published, in tabloid newspaper format, between 1970 and 1982. The first issues focussed on radical gay politics and liberation, but when Winston Leyland (1940-) became editor in 1971, he included an emphasis on literature. Leyland made the decision to publish this issue, which became the final one, in book format, as it was less ephemeral and easier to preserve than a newspaper. The issue contains poetry, fiction and prose, most of it previously unpublished, including the first English translation of Paul Verlaine’s story ‘A Draw’. The book also features illustrations, and the cover is by Joe Fuoco, who also illustrated other seized books, Gore Vidal’s ‘A Thirsty Evil’ and Jim Everhard’s ‘Cute’.
• Gay sunshine interviews. Volume 1
  In 1975, the editor of the ‘Gay Sunshine Journal’, Winston Leyland (1940-), founded the related book imprint Gay Sunshine Press, which published volumes of interviews. Most of the interviews had originally been published in the journal, which began its interview series with gay writers, artists and performers in 1973. This first volume includes interviews with William Burroughs, Jean Genet and Christopher Isherwood. Leyland conducted several of the interviews and noted that they all highlight “a definite gay sensibility in the arts”.
• Gay sunshine interviews. Volume 2
  This volume contains interviews with gay artists and cultural figures, including Ned Rorem, John Wieners and Samuel M. Steward. It also features Harry Britt, who was a gay member of the legislative San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and succeeded Harvey Milk, who had been the first openly gay man in such a role. Winston Leyland (1940-), the publisher of this book, had been ordained as a priest, a role he abandoned as he became more involved in radical and gay politics. This is most clearly seen in his work as a publisher, which he described as follows – “I see Gay Sunshine Press as a catalyst in the evolving Gay Cultural Renaissance and myself as deeply involved in that process”.
• Human warmth : & other stories
  Twelve short stories featuring gay and lesbian characters, which strive for “some kind of universality, even when dealing with very specific homosexual content”, according to the author’s preface. Daniel Curzon (1938-) is a former journalist for publications such as ‘Gay News’, and a now-retired professor of English. In the mid-1970s, Curzon edited and published ‘Gay Literature – A New Journal’, a literary quarterly which folded after eighteen months. Following ‘Something You Do in the Dark’ (Putnam’s,1971), dubbed the “first gay protest novel”, Curzon wrote (and sometimes self-published) several other short story collections, novels, plays, poems and humorous titles, including ‘The Joyful Blue Book of Gracious Gay Etiquette’. His novel ‘From Violent Men’ was also seized in ‘Operation Tiger’.
• Meat : how men look, act, walk, talk, dress, undress, taste & smell
  Described in the introduction by ‘Fag Rag’ co-founder and Walt Whitman scholar Charles Shively as “an unprecedented piece of literature”, ‘Meat’ is an anthology of writing from the first forty-seven issues of ‘Straight to Hell (S.T.H.)’, a self-published magazine sometimes known by other titles including ‘The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts’. Created by Boyd McDonald (1925-1993), the publication predominantly contains explicit true stories of gay men’s sexual experiences which have been submitted by readers. These are accompanied by photos of muscular men, not unlike those published in physique magazines, often posed by models from agencies such as the Athletic Model Guild. This collection is published by Gay Sunshine Press, and the back cover includes quotes from readers including Gore Vidal, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.
• Men loving men : a gay sex guide and consciousness book
  Disappointed by the heterosexism of ‘The Joy of Sex’ (1972), Mitch Walker (1951-) produced this practical sex guide for men “who want to love other men” and “be themselves”, in the same year as Charles Silverstein and Edmund White published ‘The Joy of Gay Sex’. Walker also emphasises queer kinship, distinguishing a more emotionally and socially encompassing “gayness” from a medico-scientific “homosexuality”. Explanations of sexual acts such as masturbation and fellatio are interspersed with quotations and images on love and sex between men from other times and cultures. The book is illustrated with expressive line drawings by Bill Warwick and black-and-white photography by David Greene. Copies of ‘Men Loving Men’ sent to ‘Gay News’ in the late 1970s were destroyed by Customs. It also met with Customs’ disapproval in Canada and New Zealand, where it was banned as indecent in 1983.
• My brother, my self
  This is the second of three Phil Andros (pseudonym of Samuel M. Steward, 1909-1993) titles seized during the raids. As with the other Andros titles published by Perineum Press, the cover is a specially commissioned Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen) illustration of the Phil Andros character (Steward was very pleased with these drawings). This novel was first published in 1970 by pulp publisher Gay Parisian Press under the title ‘My Brother, the Hustler’, so the title was altered to avoid legal issues. Featuring more sexual exploits of the character Phil Andros, the “brother” of the title is his doppelgänger, Denny. The two men can psychically communicate and are often confused for one another.
• My deep dark pain is love : a collection of Latin American gay fiction
  This anthology, edited by Winston Leyland (1940-), presents a selection of short stories, novellas and excerpts from longer works from a wide range of male Argentinian, Mexican, Cuban, Chilean and Brazilian authors. It is illustrated with graphic line-drawings by Argentian artist Jorge Gumier Maier and is a follow up to Gay Sunshine Press’s ‘Now the Volcano’ (1979) which focused on Mexico, Brazil and Colombia. Like the first anthology, Brazilian literature predominates in this collection. It is a collaboration between Leyland, who travelled extensively in Latin America, and frequent Gay Sunshine translator, E. A. Lacey (1938-1995). The two anthologies form part of a small body of books from Gay Sunshine Press with a Latin American focus, including Luis Zapata’s ‘Adonis García’ and Adolfo Caminha’s ‘Bom-Crioulo’, both of which were also seized in the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids.
• My first satyrnalia
  One of two Michael Rumaker (1932-2019) books seized, this novel follows a narrator through a night in New York, on the streets, in the bookshops and in “make-out booths”. The narrator’s ultimate destination is an apartment where a Fairy (Faerie) Circle is gathering for the Saturnalia of the book’s title, an “orgiastic celebration” of the Winter Solstice. The Fairy Circle refers to a meeting of the Radical Faeries, a countercultural movement founded in 1979. The novel is scattered with references to non-fictional locations, books and music, including the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on Christopher Street, Donna Summer and Arthur Evans’s book ‘Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture’ (also seized in ‘Operation Tiger’). The novel, therefore, provides a sense of gay culture in Greenwich Village as it was forty years ago.
• Now the volcano : an anthology of Latin American gay literature
  Edited by Winston Leyland (1940-) and published by his Gay Sunshine Press imprint, this book is an anthology of short stories, poems, novel excerpts and a memoir, interspersed with illustrations. The collection presents a snapshot of gay male writing from Latin America, with an emphasis on Brazilian literature, which Leyland notes is the richest, including ‘Bom-Crioulo’ which was first published in 1895 (and which was also seized during ‘Operation Tiger’ as a separate title). The book’s title refers to Malcolm Lowry’s Mexican-set novel ‘Under the Volcano’. Translator Erskine Lane’s own novel, ‘Game-Texts – a Guatemalan Journal’, was also published by Gay Sunshine Press and seized during the raids.
• Roman conquests
  The third Phil Andros (pseudonym of Samuel M. Steward, 1909-1993) book seized during the raids, this erotic novel is set in Rome where Andros meets and has sex with a range of characters, some of whom are described on the back cover, including “a sexton with a feeling for ritual” and “a carabiniere in black boots”. The book was first published in 1971 by the pulp publisher Gay Parisian Press under the title ‘When in Rome, Do...’ In keeping with his tendency to merge fact and fiction, Steward has dedicated this book to another of his alter egos, Ward Stames. This copy has an inscription from Andros to Gay’s the Word which refers to supposedly ‘obscene’ Roman classical works held at the British Museum.
• Second crossing : a novel
  N.A. (Nikos) Diaman (1936-2020), also known as Tony, was a novelist, video filmmaker, photographer, writer and magazine editor. Amongst the many groups he joined were the San Francisco Radical Faeries and the New York Gay Liberation Front (some of his work was published in the associated newspaper ‘Come Out!’). Based for many years in San Francisco, Diaman self-published novels under the imprint Persona Press which allowed him the space to tell stories about the gay community. This novel is set in the 1950s and follows a young writer as he explores his sexuality among San Francisco’s North Beach gay and literary circles. This copy is inscribed by Diaman to Gay’s the Word, wishing them well “in the battle against homophobia and censorship”.