Items

• A brother's touch
  Angus Rivers, a young Vietnam veteran from upstate New York, ventures to the city to discover the truth about his teenage brother’s death. Earl, a gay sex worker, has been found dead of a heroin overdose on the West Side piers (a notorious cruising ground), his body “stuffed into a rusty oil drum”. This mass-market crime paperback depicts the New York gay scene as a sleazy underworld of addicts, hustlers, self-serving politicians and corrupt priests. But it also introduces gay politics and campaigning, through the activities of the ‘GLP’ or Gay Liberation Party. Positively reviewed in the ‘New York Times’ on publication, Owen Levy’s debut went on to sell very well. His second novel, ‘Goodbye Heiko, Goodbye Berlin’, was published in 2015.
• A comfortable corner
  Set in 1980s New York, this second novel by Vincent Virga (1942-) deals with the issue of alcoholism within the gay community and how it affects couple Terence and Christopher. Reviews of the novel acknowledged the importance of the theme, but noted it was presented in a florid style, described by one reviewer as “‘purple’ (lavender?) prose”. The novel is dedicated to the memory of American artist, Jackson Pollock, who suffered from alcoholism. The book was published in a mass market edition by Avon Books, publishers of Virga’s first novel, ‘Gaywyck’, which was also seized during ‘Operation Tiger’.
• Annie on my mind
  One of the first lesbian young adult novels with an unequivocally happy ending, this is the semi-autobiographical story of Liza and Annie, two teenage girls who fall in love before their relationship is discovered by the school secretary. Nancy Garden (1938-2014), who received an award for lifetime achievement in young adult literature in 2003, met her partner, Sandy, at high school in the 1950s. They remained together until Garden’s death. In 1993, copies of ‘Annie on My Mind’, which had been donated to high schools by an LGBT advocacy organisation, were burned in Kansas City. Following a lawsuit and trial, the book was returned to libraries in 1999. Now considered a classic, it has never been out of print. Garden disliked this cover artwork, preferring the 1992 edition which showed “the two girls really relating to each other equally”.
• 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.
• 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.
• Burton and Speke
  A historical novel of colonial East Africa in the mid-nineteenth century. Explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke drink gin, hunt big game and search for the source of the Nile. Burton is depicted as possibly closeted, Speke as probably gay, but the novel’s racist and imperialist overtones are all too blatant (note the unpleasant reference to “primitive Africa” in the inside book-jacket blurb). There is in addition a deeply misogynistic streak running through the book, including an episode featuring Female Genital Mutilation. The seventh novel from William Harrison (1933-2013), it was received positively by contemporary reviewers, one crediting Harrison with “uncovering a part of lost gay history”. Unusually for the time, ‘Burton and Speke’ was not aimed at a distinctly ‘gay market’. Harrison, who was himself heterosexual, also wrote short stories, nonfiction and screenplays, including for the adaption of this book as ‘Mountains of the Moon’ (1990).
• Circles on the water : selected poems of Marge Piercy
  Marge Piercy (1936-) is perhaps best known for her speculative feminist tale ‘Woman on the Edge of Time’ (1976), although she has authored many other novels, short stories and poems. This book collects in one volume 150 of Piercy’s poems from seven titles published between 1963 and 1982. As a result of the twenty-year span, the poems reflect Piercy’s developing ideas and changing themes including her involvement in the USA activist group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), her enjoyment of growing fruit and vegetables in Cape Cod, her involvement in second-wave feminism and her Tarot poems. The book has been continuously in print ever since its first publication by Alfred A. Knopf.
• Cross sections from a decade of change
  Elizabeth Janeway (1913-2005) was a novelist, pro-abortion campaigner and prominent second-wave feminist. In this book, which has minimal LGBTQ+ content, Janeway discusses the process of social change regarding women’s personal and public lives and rights in sections entitled ‘History’, ‘Work’, ‘Sexuality’, ‘Literature’ and ‘Dailyness’ (which she describes as “the homely details of ordinary life”). Published in 1983, the book is an unillustrated collection of Janeway’s writings, including essays and reviews, with one piece – a review of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel ‘Lolita’ – dating from 1958. A book named ‘Cross Sections’ was listed, minus author and publisher, in a Defend Gay’s the Word briefing document about the seized titles. It is likely it was this book.
• 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.
• Cry to heaven
  ‘Cry to Heaven’ is a historical novel set in the world of eighteenth-century Italian opera. It follows castrato singer Guido Maffeo and his star student, the young Venetian nobleman Tonio Treschi, as they navigate same-sex love affairs, incestuous seductions and melodrama both on and off-stage. Anne Rice (1941-2021) was a prolific writer of gothic, erotic, and Christian fiction, perhaps best known for her 1976 debut, ‘Interview with the Vampire’, which was adapted into a feature film in 1994. ‘The Sleeping Beauty Quartet’, written under the pen name A.N. Roquelaure, explored sadomasochism and a range of sexualities and sexual practices. Rice has commented that “From the beginning, [...] gay readers [...] felt that my works involved a sustained gay allegory [...] I didn't set out to do that, but that was what they perceived.”
• 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.
• Flaunting it! : a decade of gay journalism from The Body Politic : an anthology
  ‘The Body Politic’ (TBP) was a collectively run gay liberation journal founded in Toronto in 1971. Initially sold locally, it developed national distribution, and this anthology collects writing and illustrations from thirty-six contributors covering the publication’s first decade. Even at the time of publication, the anthology was considered a historical record of a key decade in gay liberation, which is expressed across sections including those entitled ‘Risks’, ‘Living Our Lives’, ‘Cruising and Censorship’, and ‘Into the Eighties’. The book is published by Pink Triangle Press (which still exists), the publishing organisation behind ‘TBP’, with financial support from New Star Books. This copy is inscribed to Gay’s the Word from six members of the collective, who note that “the seizure of your stock is a tribute to your success”.
• 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”.
• 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 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”.
• If this isn't love! : (two men--twenty years--in three acts)
  Part of the ‘JH Press Gay Play Script’ series, this was one of the most successful plays performed at The Glines, a not-for-profit gay theatre company in New York. Written by Sidney Morris (Fineberg) (1929-2002), the play follows couple Eric and Adam across three acts representing three decades of gay life and experience, entitled ‘The Fearful Fifties’, ‘The Seeking Sixties’, and ‘The Succulent Seventies’. As the men age, they respond to increasing societal liberation and changes in their own relationship. Morris, whose own youth was in the 1950s, wanted to ensure that the gay community did “not forget our dark and absurd past”. Morris wrote a number of other plays with gay male themes. Terry Helbing from JH Press, the play’s publisher, was also the general manager of the play’s first run. Morris died from AIDS in 2002.
• Ioläus : an anthology of friendship
  First published in 1902, this book contains selections from multiple texts, including poetry and essays, which present romantic friendships between men. The collection is edited by Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), a writer and socialist who campaigned for sexual freedom and homosexual equality. This collection covers three centuries, beginning with examples of male love from pagan and early worlds, and features the words of some English canonical writers, including William Shakespeare. This is a reprint of a 1917 Mitchell Kennerley edition and was the first book published by John Lauritsen’s Pagan Press which aimed to introduce a new audience to classical, “pro-male” texts.
• Jack and Jim : a personal journal of the 70's
  In January 1970, Jim Brogan (1941-), a young college professor at San Francisco State University (SFSU), is about to be fired for participating in strike action. He is considering going back into therapy and thinks 1970 might be the year he finds love. By December, he has a permanent post. In August 1972, he meets the handsome Jack, and they begin seeing each other. These diaries, revised for publication by an extensive ensemble of Brogan’s friends, cover the decade up to 1981. They are a remarkable chronicle of long-term love and an ongoing search for personal, sexual and spiritual fulfilment. Brogan taught SFSU’s first lesbian and gay studies course and, with husband Jack Post, established three scholarships for the study and teaching of literature and sexuality.
• Moritz! : a comic novel
  A review of this novel described it as “a trashy book” but one that was nonetheless enjoyable thanks to its absurdist and silly humour. This satirical novel follows Jellico Moritz, a “well-endowed” young man, who travels from rural America to a new life and sexual awakening in New York City. The final chapter, entitled ‘Moritz Goes to a Garden Party’, was first published in ‘A True Likeness’ which was edited by Felice Picano. The book was published by Larry Mitchell’s Calamus Books which was one third of the Gay Presses of New York collective.
• Perfect freedom
  This is another of Gordon Merrick’s (1916-1988) romance and sex novels published in paperback by Avon, with Victor Gadino illustrated covers. Avon was the paperback division of the Hearst Corporation, and ‘Gay Times’ claimed that publishing these novels was Avon's attempt to “cash in on the post-Stonewall gay market”. Based on one of his earlier novels, ‘Demon of Noon’ (1954) – an at-times-coded gay novel which is less explicit than his later work – this story is set in 1938 on a cruise in the Greek Islands and features Robbie’s sexual awakening with multiple partners. Some of the men he meets during his journey are listed and briefly described before the novel’s title page, including an “Italian deckhand”, a “Greek Adonis”, and a “brooding biker”. The title of the novel is a quote from E.M. Forster’s ‘The Longest Journey’.
• 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”.
• 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’.
• Street theater : the twenty-seventh of June, 1969, in two acts
  Part of the ‘JH Press Gay Play Script’ series, the play is set on Christopher Street on the eve of the police raids on the Stonewall Inn bar which led to the Stonewall Uprising, in which Doric Wilson (1939-2011) was a participant. The “street theater” of the title is created by the characters including a “flower child”, “street queens”, a “vice cop”, a “student radical” and a “politically incorrect lesbian”. First performed in 1982 in San Francisco, the play later moved to New York. Wilson also worked as a barman, the tips from which helped support his theatrical endeavours, including TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence) an Off Off-Broadway theatre space.
• 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 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.