Tomcat Chronicles

An uncensored road trip through gay American life in the early sixties!Jack Nichols is now known as a founding father of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, editor of GAY (the first gay weekly newspaper), co-founder of the Mattachine Societies of Washington, DC, and Florida, and a warrior who broke ground for gay equality. In his early twenties, however, he was dedicated to romance, ardor, and wanderlust-living the life of a gypsy and making love with abandon. "e;MORE EXCITING THAN THE WILDEST FICTION. . . . Jack takes his reader on the road with him (Jack often hitchhiking in only T-shirt and jeans) where he encounters, beds down (and sometimes hustles) dozens of attractive 'numbers' who come his way."e;- Donn Teal, Author of The Gay Militants: 1971 & 1994"e;This might be called Jack Nichols' version of Kerouac's beat classic On the Road. With a variety of companions, and with little money in his pocket, in the early 60s, he drove, hitchhiked, rode buses, and even walked for a couple of long stretches from Washington, DC, to New York and then through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. He recalls in considerable detail a variety of individuals with whom he had erotic encounters. The title The Tomcat Chronicles is fully descriptive."e;- Vern L. Bullough, PhD, RN, Editor of Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context"e;Jack Nichols, the gay liberation pioneer, has been a lifelong friend who helped to illuminate my concept of homophobia. Oscar Wilde believed one's life should be a work of art. Jack's life, which has always combined courage, social awareness and sexual passion, is certainly such a work."e;- George Weinberg, PhD, Author of Society and the Healthy Homosexual and 13 other books (the psychotherapist credited with coining the term homophobia)"e;THE VIVID DETAIL AND GRACEFUL PROSE THAT CHARACTERIZE THE WRITING OF JACK NICHOLS open a window into a time long before gay men appeared weekly on tv or before anti-sodomy laws had been banned."e;- Rodger Streitmatter, PhD, Author of Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America"e;The Tomcat Chronicles is a gay pioneer's version of City of Night."e;- James T. Sears, PhD, Author of Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South; Editor of the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education (from the Foreword)