Strapped for Cash is a popular history of male and transgender sex work in the United States. Author Mack Friedman explores the evolution of hustler culture over the past 400 years—from food-for-sex exchanges between British sailors and desperate Jamestown colonists to the ravages of the AIDS and crack epidemics and the dawn of a new social conservatism at the beginning of the 21st century.
Friedman constructs his narrative from historical documents, scholarly research on sex work and urban culture, and field notes from his interviews with more than 50 current and former male and transgendered sex workers. He also examines the representation of hustler culture in early-20th-century erotic photography, the work of pre- and post-World War II artists (including Paul Cadmus and Larry Clark), publications such as Physique Pictorial and Grecian Guild Quarterly, and the flourishing gay male pornography industry of the 1960s and 1970s.
Friedman's confident mastery of his subject allows us to see the interplay between the experiences of sex workers and the shifting cultural forces that alternately erode and reinforce the boundaries of social taboo. What emerges from his work is a mosaic portrait of a fascinating and often shrouded aspect of American social history.
Mack Friedman (pictured above) is an independent scholar who has conducted public-health interventions and community-based research with street populations since 1995. His publications run from erotic fiction to socio-logical research, and his performance art has been showcased at the Andy Warhol Museum. A native of Chicago and a graduate of the University of Minnesota, he currently lives in Pennsylvania.