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Boyd E. McDonald
(July 11,1925 - September 18, 1993) USA

Boyd McDonald

Writer, anthologist

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Boyd McDonald was born in Lake Preston, South Dakota. He attended Lake Preston, South Dakota High School, but did not graduate. Despite his lack of a high school diploma, he was admitted to Harvard and given a small scholarship. His "first serious lover" was a straight football player, met at a party/orgy. He was soon drafted into the Army. He served in the US Army in World War II. After discharge from the Army he returned to Harvard (Eliot House) and earned a degree in American history and literature.

Boyd McDonaldAfter graduation, he worked for Time , IBM, and several Wall Street firms.

Boyd's main intention was to expose hypocrisy and let people know what male sex in this country really was. As such, he was particularly interested in celebrities, because attention was already being given to celebrities and their sexuality, along with their lies, would more rapidly achieve his goal. Many famous people appear in the pages of STH, some voluntarily, others not at all.

He also published a number of anthologies of reader-contributed true sex histories. He was involved in the publication of Boston-based The Guide: Gay travel, entertainment, politics, & sex and Alibi .

In later years, diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder, agoraphobic and obsessive compulsive, his horizons narrowed considerably. He saw few people. After twenty years of what Boyd described as "hack work", writing and editing copy for large corporations and nearly drinking himself to death, he dried out and went on welfare.

Boyd McDonald

In 1973, while living on welfare in an Upper West Side SRO (= Single Roome Occupancy - for years before his death he was living in "Riverside Studios" at 342 West 71st St.), he founded his long-running zine Straight to Hell (STH ), which consisted primarily of readers' submissions of their sexual experiences, together with Boyd's sexual or political commentary and single male pictures, reader-sent or from studios such as Old Reliable or Athletic Model Guild (always credited).

His activities were limited to what he could do in his room, which resembled a monk's cell: mail, telephone, television, and editing his publications. There he watched old movies at all hours of the day and night on a small black and white television set.

He pursued freelance writing up until the time of his death. McDonald died two months after completing his final book, Scum . The cause was pneumococcal distress complicated by emphysema. All of the voluminous correspondence and papers in his room - many unpublished sex confessions - was discarded by his relatives.

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Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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