True Homosexual Experiences

Boyd McDonald had the makings of a successful career in the 1950s but after 20 years of resentful conformity and worsening alcoholism, McDonald dried out, pawned all of his suits and went on welfare. It was then that his life truly began. From a tiny room in a New York hotel, McDonald published Straight to Hell, a series of chapbooks collecting readers' 'true homosexual experiences'. Through interviews and images, this book tells McDonald's story as a key figure in gay underground history and pioneer of the queer zine scene.

“Move over Maxwell Perkins, here's another editor who deserves to be more famous than you. Boyd McDonald may have been an alcoholic lunatic who masturbated chronically while encouraging readers to send in endless descriptions of their sex lives but he remained pure in spirit. -John Waters”

"Move over Maxwell Perkins, here's another editor who deserves to be more famous than you. Boyd McDonald may have been an alcoholic lunatic who masturbated chronically while encouraging readers to send in endless descriptions of their sex lives, but he remained pure in spirit." -- John Waters

William E. Jones is an artist, filmmaker, and writer who was born in Ohio and now lives in Los Angeles. He has made two feature length films, Massillon (1991) and Finished (1997) which won a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, the documentary Is It Really So Strange? (2004). His work has been the subject of retrospectives at Tate Modern and Anthology Film Archives, and has been included in the 1993 and 2008 Whitney Biennials. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Bidoun, Frieze and Little Joe. His book Imitation of Christ was named one of the best photo books of 2013 by Time magazine.

Boyd McDonald (1925-1993) had the makings of a successful life in the 1950san education at Harvard, a job at Time/Lifebut things didn't turn out as planned. After 20 years of resentful conformity and desperate alcoholism, McDonald dried out, pawned all of his suits, and went on welfare; it was then that his life truly began. From a room in a New York SRO hotel, McDonald published Straight to Hell, a series of chapbooks collecting readers' "true homosexual experiences." Following the example of Alfred Kinsey, McDonald obsessively pursued the truth about sex between men just as gay liberation began to tame America's sexual outlaws for the sake of legal recognition. Admired by such figures as Gore Vidal and William S. Burroughs, Straight to Hell combined a vigorous contempt for authority with a keen literary style, and was the precursor of the first queer 'zines decades later. Containing in-depth interviews with friends and family members and a wealth of previously unpublished material, True Homosexual Experiences: Boyd McDonald and Straight to Hell is the first book devoted to this key figure of the American underground.

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