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The Tomcat Chronicles The Book Nook |
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The Tomcat Chronicles: Erotic Adventures of a Gay Liberation Pioneer by Jack Nichols; Harrington Park Press; 240 pages; $19.95.
The Tomcat Chronicles: Erotic Adventures of a Gay Liberation Pioneer give us a different side of Jack Nichols. This erotic romp through the early 1960's might surprise some readers who only know Nichols from his more scholarly and political books Men's Liberation (1975) and The Gay Agenda (1996). But as Nichols himself writes, "I've never been one to make a distinction between what strikes me as proper in private and what I'm willing to say about it in public. I honestly believe, after all, that the personal is political." Nichols began compiling his Tomcat Chronicles when Bill Watson, publisher of South Florida's gay community newspapertwn (The Weekly News), invited Nichols to contribute some sex stories to his new weekly, Contax. But truth is hotter than fiction, and Nichols promised Watson instead that "I'll write about my true life adventures, telling about wild and wooly escapades and romances, hitchhiking across America in the early 1960s with a handsome hillbilly, traveling from town to town and often depending on what Tennessee Williams called 'the kindness of strangers.'" Though the remainder of Nichols's stories never made it to Contax, he has since expanded them into this current volume. The Tomcat Chronicles is an exciting, erotic treat; Nichols's most enjoyable book since the classic I Have More Fun With You Than Anybody (1972), which he wrote with his late partner, Lige Clarke. The Tomcat Chronicles cover the years between 1961 and 1964, a period in his life that Nichols refers to as his "belated adolescence." It begins when the then 23-year old Nichols, visiting his relatives in Neptune Beach, Florida, has a life-changing encounter with Warren, a "handsome youth, dark-haired and tanned." Though Nichols was still living with his first lover, Tom, their partnership had since evolved into an open relationship and a life-long friendship. The attractive Warren, a hillbilly from West Virginia, begins Nichols's lifelong fascination with mountain folk. Nichols's subsequent search for Warren takes him from his Washington, D.C. home to Warren's home town of Huntington, West Virginia and a lasting friendship with Warren's fascinating sister, "Donna Dyke."
Having come out in the midst of Miami's bustling gay scene, I could not help but compare Nichols's Miami experiences in 1962 with my own 12 years later. Though Miami Beach's 21st Street Beach and Mayflower and Frenchie's bars were still around in 1974, I came out too late to enjoy the legendary Googie's, which Nichols fondly remembers as "a dilapidated little 27th Avenue bar...named for and managed by a retired octogenarian vaudevillian. Each night at 10 p.m. Googie would arrive as patrons greeted her with applause, and Butch [a bartender whom Nichols was then seeing] would lift her frail little body over the bar top." Googie was also (in)famous for the bushes in the back, which attracted a special, male-only "clientele" until they were demolished by a hostile tornado. Though Nichols had the time of his life in Miami, he does not ignore the gay bar raids and police harassment that were rampant in "the Magic City" during the early 1960's. The Tomcat Chronicles is an important contribution to gay history and erotic literature; and worth reading on several levels. First of all, they are by and about Jack Nichols; and we are always interested in the lives of famous community members. Second, they chronicle a period in gay history that took place before many of us were born or came of age. Contrary to post-Stonewall myth, gay life in the early 1960's was not one big, miserable closet. Young, attractive gay men like Nichols had a great time, if they took precautions. In some ways, things were better off in 1961 than they are in 2004. Not only was AIDS nonexistent, but it was easier to pick up "straight" men, even straight hillbillies. This is no longer the case today, when even the youngest boy knows what "gay" is and man-to-man contact is assiduously avoided as a sure sign of queerness. Finally, of course, The Tomcat Chronicles is worth reading because the stories are HOT. Nichols makes sex fun, and those readers who want their activists to be celibate should look elsewhere. From reading parts of The Tomcat Chronicles out of context, one would think that Nichols did nothing in the early sixties but have lots of sex. But this was also the period when Nichols, along with his good friend Franklin Kameny, founded the Mattachine Society of Washington. Anyway, in spite of his promiscuity, Nichols remained a romantic at heart. Disillusioned by Warren, Nichols searched for another cute hillbilly boy who would stimulate his groin and his brain; and fill his heart. He found him at the Hideaway Bar in Washington, D.C.; and this youth's handsome form, taken in a rear-view shot alongside Nichols, graces the cover of this book. His name was Lige Clarke, and Nichols's first meeting with his most famous partner on July 8, 1964 closes The Tomcat Chronicles. My Favorite Book: lists several books, all favorites of Bo Young, the Editor and Publisher of White Crane, a journal exploring gay men's spirituality. ( www.whitecranejournal.com ): "The Man Who Fell In Love With the Moon by Tom Spanbauer has to be one of my all time favorites. I don't read much fiction and Tom's work in this one is more than storytelling, it's channeling. Fenton Johnson is one of my new favorites. Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey is one of the smartest discussions of personal spirituality I've read in a while with a fascinating "compare and contrast" between Christian monastic tradition and Buddhist. I was also fascinated by David Guy's The Red Thread of Passion and Will Roscoe's The Zuni Man-Woman is one of the most important books I've read for my personal spiritual growth." If you have a favorite book to share, send us the title and the author, along with a couple of sentences telling us why that book is your favorite, to jessemonteagudo@aol.com . Subject: "Book Nook Favorite Book."
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Jack Nichols is one of our community's greats; with a career as an author and activist that goes back to 1960. Nichols's contributions to the GLBT and men's movement have been chronicled in his own books and in studies ranging from Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker's 1972 classic The Gay Crusaders to James T. Sears's Southern gay histories, Lonely Hunters (1997) and Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones (2001).
Jack Nichols at his home in Cocoa Beach, 2001 
Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance writer and gay book lover who lives in South Florida with his life partner. Write him a note at