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35 Cents
a memoir by
Matty Lee
Praise for Butch Is a Noun
"Matty Lee's deft and honest voice as a writer is a much-need antidote to the dishonest sleight of hand of the 'J.T. Leroy' literary scandal. Part classic literary waif of the streets right of Dickens and half sacred child hustler Buddha finding his way to enlightenment, Matty Lee's 35 Cents is a welcome addition to our understanding of the coming-of-age memoir. This compelling, funny, and haunting memoir turns a surprising and uncompromising eye on how we tell ourselves stories about our own lives."
—Tim Miller, Bay Area Reporter
"As someone who earns a living by reading and discussing books, I'm surprised to routinely encounter authors with fond memories of childhood hours spent with quality novels by the likes of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens.
For me, childhood reading was all about sensation—and so that usually meant pulp science fiction or murderous gore, the more Helter Skelter the better.
Then, on the cusp of puberty, my greedy hands grabbed a new genre of pulp fiction. It was a memoir called The Happy Hustler. Published in 1975, I later learned it was a complete fabrication meant to capitalize on the massive success of The Happy Hooker.
With the beefy shirtless model on its cover and fairly explicit accounts of the adventures the horny, bisexual guy undertook—and got paid for—my feverish brain conjured up a new and glamorous career path, full of sex and money in alternating tropical and metropolitan locales.
Endless lines of cocaine were part of the fantasy too, but I wasn't quite sure what that meant other than looking sophisticated.
Ever since, I've maintained warm feelings for the charms of the hustler's tale.
Far less trashy and formulaic than that old-school classic The Happy Hustler, 35 Cents by first-time writer Matty Lee is still quite a thrill, offering a foul-mouthed but sweet, insightful and even-tempered account of the hustling life.
Between the street, juvenile detention and rehab in Florida during the late 1980s, Lee (who earned 35 cents when he turned his first trick at 13) was evidently taking detailed note of his surroundings.
Unlike Aidan Shaw's recent memoir, 35 Cents doesn't pose as self-consciously literary or philosophical. Instead, Lee's story is interested in capturing the strange assortment of people and the charged Floridian atmospheres.
And when Lee directs his hard-edged poetic sensibility toward a variety of topics—not least pigeons ("scum of the sky"), occupational hazards ("The little bitch spilled the Rush on the fucking bed!") and aging clientele ("It's not like they ever wanted to wake up one day and be a dried-up old prune that paid twenty bucks to suck some detached kid's penis. Nobody chooses to end up like that")—he keeps you enthralled."
—Brett Josef Grubisic, XTRA! WEST
"Others have praised this pitch-perfect account by a damaged straight boy of surviving days of hustling men for money and affection—and of a boy who grew into a man who understood that what society views as sordid saved his life. Almost everything published by Suspect Thoughts stands tall in the sometimes-shrubby field of queer-interest lit; this was the year's standout."
—Richard Labonte, Books to Watch Out For
"This is one of the finest, most frank memoirs I've read in years. Hustling since he was a kid, (Lee got 35 cents for his first trick, thus the title), Matty recounts a harrowing tale of growing up on the street, juvenile hall and various other unsavory addresses, relying always on his own wit, an amazing ability to remain self-reflective and hopeful when most people would simply shut down for good, and ultimately his belief in the kindness of strangers. What is most incredible about this book is Matty's unwavering faith in the goodness of people, and his gratefulness for those who helped him out, even in the smallest ways. Lee made me think a little more highly of people, and not because he was in any way pollyanna about his description or assessment of them. He just has an amazing ability to appreciate. Lee's humor and candor made me feel like I was just sitting in a bar with him, and I read the whole book in one sitting. A really good, authentic book from someone who's been there and who clearly has no desire to exploit himself or the reader."
—Trebor Healey, Books to Watch Out For
"It's a hard knock life, it is, but Matty Lee tells it with the clearest eyes in the world; you can see what made him a hit on the streets."
—Kevin Killian, Books to Watch Out For
"Matty Lee says in his memoir 35 Cents: "I only
know that some sex is considered beautiful and uplifting and some is
considered ugly and sick. To be honest with you, sometimes it's hard
for me to tell the difference." His early years in a broken family in
south Florida were rough, and the years that followed were about
hustling and survival. For his first trick, he got only bus fair, 35¢. Basically straight, he drifted into hustling and the gay underworld
because that's what worked. "'Okay' became my mantra. Okay to this,
okay to that… You just pretty much say okay and then deal with the
situation as it comes." Plenty of non-gay men find themselves
hustling, but Matty Lee has written well about the experiences and the
people and, yes, the sex. Beyond the sex, he understands how
desperately everyone needs the human touch. He survived the juvenile
justice system and the streets. Yet, as a member of Narcotics
Anonymous, after he spoke a to high school class about the dangers of
drugs, something compelled him to seduce a middle-aged timid
schoolteacher into giving him a blowjob in the restroom—not as a hustle
but because he saw how desperately the man wanted it. When
writer/director Richard Glatzer asked Matty Lee what he wanted 35 Cents
to accomplish, he answered, "To muddy the waters of sexual orientation
a bit." He says he doesn't know or necessarily care if he writes
another book. Yet he has a gift for straightforward clear prose and
glaring honesty. A writer can't do much better than that."
—Jerry Roscoe, Mandate
"As I said in a previous review, prison has always held a special place in the minds of gay men—that all male world of sensuousness replete with gang rapes and lots of male only activities. Let me clarify that statement—the fantasies of gay men include thoughts of prison and those hot writhing bodies engaged in man sex has always fueled the minds of gay men. But of course fantasizing about prison is just that—no one really wants to go there but it does provide stimuli for erotic dreams. 35 Cents is the tale of a young white boy who made his way through life hustling and ending up in juvenile detention. It is not a pretty story but it is a read that is not easily forgotten.
"Matthew began turning tricks at 13. He had a lousy home life and he just did not seem to care about very much. The abuse and terrible home life he encountered led him to rent out his body; in fact, his first trick got him for only 35 cents. I bet you are thinking that this book sounds somewhat sordid. IT IS and I loved it. All of us love fantasy and like I have said many times, there is something about an all male environment that makes for really good fantasies. But as sordid as it, there is great warmth, wit and humor in the novel. Somehow Matthew manages to turn the tables on what is abusive to others and allow those very abuses to be the things that save his life. He had been unloved and he tells how gay men taught him what love is. Now what you must understand is that Matthew is basically straight and is based upon Lee's own experiences.
"Lee's writing his crystal clear and honest to the point that it reads somewhat painfully. He says he wrote this book because he was tired of hearing people complain about how the past made the present unbearable, how present failures have been blamed on the past. The message that I got was that as bad as the past may be, the future can be that much better.
Lee writes about an "underground culture" which once was but now seems to have risen from the underground to be a part of the way we live now. There still is something of an underground but it is not what it was-the values may still be there but the mainstream has adopted what so many refer to as underground.
"This is not a gay book per se. Gender lines here become amorphous. What we read about is the blending of labels and differences. Lee does not play down the drug culture and writes of it as it should be dealt with-with brutal honesty. And I respect that. This book is so brutally honest and just plain brutal that it makes you sit up and take notice. This is not the kind of book you read and forget. Its message like its language is strong. I feel so much better for having read it."
—Amos Lassen, Eureka Pride
"Young Matty Lee led a rough life. Neglected by his parents and sexually abused since childhood, Matty's lot, it seems, was to come-of-age in a seedy and uncaring world—a world where adults abuse kids and men hire boys for sex, where drugs offer escape from the pain and loneliness and where children face choices they shouldn't.
If there is anything redeeming or heartwarming about the turbulent years Matty spent in south Florida, most would be hard-pressed to find it. But in 35 Cents, Matty Lee's brutally honest memoir of those years, he tries to do just that.
As a child Matty Lee had an undeniable survival instinct. He hustles, initially for 35-cent bus fare, then for food, shelter and later comfort, companionship and possibly, love. He is also often numb to the cruelty and circumstance around him, escaping into daydreams or drugs or to that quiet place children go when they must endure the unbearable.
But Matty also had a haunting desire for something more. That desire alone may be why he was shaped as much by the almost imperceptible gestures of kindness and connection offered to him by gay men as he was by the material and emotional poverty that brought them into his life to begin with. Believe it or not, it is all quite hopeful.
Throughout the book Lee also questions his sexuality, but whatever his orientation it is secondary to his youthful journey through a minefield of bad circumstances. To come through it without questions about where the truth about love lies, and with whom and how, would have been impossible. I suspect it is an issue Lee will wrestle with the rest of his life.
Overall, Lee's story is compelling and it is hard not to root for him. The writing is accessible and well-paced and infused with the author's wit, reflection and candor. He finds humanity in some dark places and ends up celebrating a life most would deem intolerable."
—Will Louis, X-Factor
"He was the victim of a horde of vultures who wouldn't leave him alone. 'Everywhere I went they were there: at the bathrooms in the park, at the YMCA, at family gatherings, everywhere.' He was molested so many times he began to think it was normal human discourse. There must have been something special about this boy, because he was tragically popular. He grew to hate being alone, for instantly they would ruffle their vulture wings, seeking a sacrifice. 'Every time I was alone for five minutes or more, one of them would turn up.' They played a game, pedophile and abandoned boy. 'Always the same game, touch me, let me touch you.' The wonder is that, in recounting these events thirty years on, Matty Lee is able to bring so much humor and clarity to his story. He brings to writing the gifts of a great comedian, the timing, the knowledge of human nature, and the capability for forgiveness and redemption.
"Our narrator learns that 'if you pretend to be something you aren't, sooner or later it will catch up with you.' In Lee's own case, it wasn't so much pretense, it was an honest mistake. His abusive father taught him to solve his problems through alcohol and violence, and his termagant mother, who had him committed to the social services when he was still a little boy, just because she could, was no better. They set him up to try to please as many men as possible by offering his body, often for bargain prices and at least once for only 35 cents. The graphic designer who made a cover for this memoir, showing us the extreme mental poverty of 35 cents, bring it all back home.
"Along the way he meets the pond scum of South Beach (Miami) and the detail is so disgusting that I hope never to find myself in Dade County ever again. And yet somewhere along the way young Matty learned lessons in resilience that help him even now. There were some good people, even among the men who bought his company. He buried his heterosexual desires under a cloud of heavy drugs, believing himself to be gay until he turned seventeen or eighteen. Amazingly he lived, when many of his compadrinos wound up dead, either from drugs, sexual predators, or heroin. Like a cat he wound up on all four feet, and after a difficult beginning with the mysteries of language (he goes to the library and asks for 'Giorgio Armani's Room' by 'James Baldron'), his verbal and imaginative skills skyrocketed. At the end of a long journey he has emerged from a dark and savage tunnel, the author of one of the best memoirs of our century."
—Kevin Killian,
author of Shy
"This memoir cuts through the crap with all the wild, touching, erotic insanity of the truth."
—Todd Haynes,
director of Poison and Far From Heaven
"Lucid, humorous, and blisteringly honest, this book can burn a school down."
—Wash Westmoreland,
co-writer and co-director of Quinceañera
release: August 2006
memoir/gay & lesbian studies
softcover, 5.5X8.5
208 pages, $16.95
0-9771582-2-5
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