Originally published in 1968 by Publisher's Export Company as part of its French Line paperback series, Gay Stud's Trip by Bert Shrader was one of those wonderfully sleazy little gay novels that flourished during the final years before Stonewall.
During the 1960s, publishers discovered there was a surprisingly enthusiastic market for stories about homosexual men, forbidden encounters, and the kind of adventures that weren't exactly being discussed around the family dinner table.
These books were inexpensive, sensational, and often filled with enough melodrama to make a daytime soap opera look restrained.
Shrader was responsible for other wonderfully named contributions to gay pulp literature, including House of Male Order (H.O.M.O.) and To Want a Boy.
Publishers like PEC helped create an entire underground industry of gay paperbacks, sold through adult bookstores, mail-order catalogs, and the occasional newsstand willing to stock something a little more adventurous.
And in 1968, buying one of these books could still be a rather daring proposition.
Homosexuality remained criminalized in much of America, police routinely harassed gay establishments, and mainstream publishers weren't exactly lining up to tell stories about men who preferred the company of other men.
So these cheap little novels filled a gap.
They weren't always particularly sophisticated, and their depictions of homosexuality could be sensational or downright ridiculous, but they provided a rare opportunity for gay readers to encounter characters and desires that reflected some part of their own lives.
Even if those characters seemed to spend an extraordinary amount of time getting into trouble.
Gay Stud's Trip proved durable enough to receive a 1970 reissue from Regency Publishing, appearing as Regency No. 1022, complete with the familiar warning that it was intended for adults only.
Today, surviving copies have become collectible pieces of queer literary history, treasured for their sensational covers, wonderfully outrageous titles, and connection to an era when gay culture was still largely forced underground.
