Acclaim for The Tomcat Chronicles: Erotic Adventures of a Gay Liberation Pioneer
This ruggedly handsome youth with short, curly dark hair had caught the eye of many.... From cruising on 42nd Street at Times Square to encountering the vagaries of Clark and Diversy Streets, The Tomcat Chronicles is a gay pioneers version of City of Night.
James T. Sears, PhD Author, Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South; Editor, Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education
During this era of Will & Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, The Tomcat Chronicles focuses on a dramatically different era in the evolution of Gay America. 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 antisodomy laws had been banned. Indeed, this charming memoir illuminates a time when merely to acknowledge ones desiresmuch less to act on themwas an act of supreme courage.
The narrative is at its most compelling when the author describes the erotic scenes that dotted his years as a randy young man. For Jack Nichols, unlike many less daring gay rights activists, is not afraid to acknowledge that sexual escapades always have been an integral element in the gay experienceand three cheers for that!
Rodger Streitmatter, PhD, Professor, American University; Author, Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America
Jack Nichols and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky are two geniuses who not only gave pleasure to the world; they made sure they got their share of pleasure at every stage of their lives. Both sought sexual pleasure with males. Tchaikovsky recorded his myriad escapades only in his diary but Jack Nichols, the gay liberation pioneer, gives us his unembarrassed sexual log, The Tomcat Chronicles, with all its wrinkles, twists, and ecstasies. Jack has been a lifelong friend who helped to illuminate my concept of homophobia as an illness. Oscar Wilde believed ones life should be a work of art. Jacks life, which has always combined courage, social awareness, and sexual passion, is certainly such a work.
George Weinberg, PhD, Author, Society and the Healthy Homosexual and 13 other books (the psychotherapist credited with coining the term homophobia)
Many people know the gay pioneer Jack Nichols who argued that homosexuality is not a disease, who with Frank Kameny formed the Mattachine Society of Washington, DC, who contributed an early column on homosexuality to SCREW, who co-edited the weekly GAY, and who with Lige Clarke wrote a number of pathbreaking books on homosexuality. This is a different side of Jack and it might be called his version of Kerouacs beat classic On the Road. With a variety of companions, and with little money in his pocket, in the early 1960s, 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, managing to find sex partners who put him up, brought him meals, and had sex with him in bedrooms, automobiles, buses, and the great outdoors. In this book, he recalls in considerable detail a variety of individuals with whom he had erotic encounters. The title The Tomcat Chronicles is fully descriptive.
Vern L. Bullough, PhD, RN, State University of New York Distinguished Professor Emeritus; Editor, Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context
Gay liberation pioneer Jack Nichols sexual escapades prove that facts can be more exciting than the wildest fictions. Jack takes his reader on the road with him (Jack often hitchhiking in only T-shirt and jeans)from Florida to Washington, DC, to Huntington (West Virginia) to Pittsburgh to Cleveland to Detroit to Miami, and to New York Citywhere he encounters, beds down (and sometimes hustles), dozens of attractive numbers who come his way. But Jack gives as well as takes, bringing closet queens into the gay subculture, helping bisexuals enjoy gay sex, teaching the art of cruising; and he falls in love more than once! The story visits Illinois State Park and its dunes along Lake Michigan; the bushes behind Googies bar in Miami; DCs Dupont Circle; the nude beach on Virginia Key; and countless other gay cruising places of the early 1960s.
Donn Teal Author, The Gay Militants: 1971 & 1994
Nichols The Tomcat Chronicles is not what fans of erotica might expect: never prurient, the story charms the reader because of the authors candor and idealism. Part bildungsroman, part picaresque adventure story, this is a memoir of a young man in quest of romance but open to sexual adventure. It is a narrative made all the more interesting because it took place in the early 1960s and several of the people portrayed, including the author, played an important role first in the homophile movement and later in the gay liberation movement.
David Carter Author, Stonewall: The Riot That Sparked the Gay Revolution; Editor, Allen Ginsbergs Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958-1996
First published 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580.
This edition published 2014 by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
PUBLISHERS NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Brooke R. Stiles.
Yoga photo of Lige Clarke by Roy Blakey.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nichols, Jack.
The tomcat chronicles : erotic adventures of a gay liberation pioneer / Jack Nichols.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-56023-487-3 (alk. paper) ISBN 1-56023-488-1 (alk. paper)
1. Nichols, Jack. 2. Gay menUnited StatesBiography. 3. Gay menUnited States Sexual behavior. I. Title.
HQ75.8.N53A3 2004
306.76'62'0973dc22
2003018001
