Call Me Gay — 1965 Vintage Gay Pulp Novel Poster

Published in 1965 by Brandon House and credited to Peter Kanto, Call Me Gay belongs to that wonderfully disreputable world of mid-century gay pulp paperbacks: cheap, provocative little books sold in drugstores, bus terminals, and back corners of places where respectable society pretended not to look.

Which, naturally, makes them even better.

This was the pre-Stonewall era, when homosexuality was still criminalized, pathologized, and treated like some sort of national emergency. Gay men weren’t exactly being handed affirming literature at the local library. So these paperbacks, however sensational, exploitative, or melodramatic they might be, became part of an underground queer culture that helped people find hints of themselves in print.

Sometimes campy, sometimes tragic, and often a little filthy, they offered a glimpse into a world that polite America preferred to keep hidden.

And the covers were half the fun.

Bold typography, dramatic illustrations, lurid color, and just enough scandal to let you know you were holding something slightly dangerous. A book like Call Me Gay wasn’t just a paperback. It was a coded artifact from a time when even the act of buying something like this could feel like a tiny act of rebellion.