35 Cents is the story of a straight, young, white boy growing up and coming of age as he hustles his way both through the gay community and the juvenile-detention system of South Florida in the late 1980s. It's also the amount he made when he turned his first trick at 13. Will he find home? Will he find love? All it costs is 35 cents.

Author Photograph by Jennifer Bua

"My book is not asking you to feel sorry for me because of my sordid past, but rather asking you to rethink sordid pasts altogether. It's about how the things that other people might consider abusive or scary turned out to be the very things that saved my life. It's about how gay men helped to raise and nurture an otherwise unloved and ignored straight kid. And although my childhood was not always rosy, I wouldn't trade it for any other. When I wrote this book I was growing extremely tired of hearing people blaming their pasts for their present failures. I was also tired of reading about people's seedy drug abuse. So I tried to write about how drugs calmed my nerves and seediness gave me an identity. Most importantly, 35 Cents is about how goodness is everywhere, even in the darkest of parked cars and leather bars. Although I'm sure people will disagree, my book is a celebration of this life and the strange and beautiful people in it."

Read an excerpt from 35 Cents at Velvet Mafia.

Author Photograph by Dana Bilhimer

Matty Lee received his GED from the Dade County School Board some time in the late eighties. He went on to attend Los Angeles Community College but lost interest after Spanish I. He's been employed as a tree climber, a bartender, a medical-research patient, a deckhand, a telephone repairman, a salesman, a fabric librarian, a night watchman, a customer-service representative, and on and on. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he loves to surf, read, and play with small furry animals.

Read
"Eighteen Essential Questions for Matty Lee
from Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland"
at Velvet Mafia.

Read
"Sordid Pasts, Sexual Ambiguity, and Georgio Armani's Room:
Tim Miller Talks with Matty Less about 35 Cents." .

Visit the Matty Lee website.