Page 103 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

P. 103

Jack Fritscher Chapter 3 85

fiction. Many of the characters (maybe the authors?) can’t function
in sex...unless they are stoned blind? —HM, Bridgeport CT

Drummer assistant editor Paul Martin, an eyewitness bear who defined
himself in Drummer 143, page 59, responded that only four stories depicted
drug use. One was an excerpt from my pal Geoff Mains’ Gentle Warrior,
and another was an excerpt from my own Some Dance to Remember: A
Memoir-Novel of San Francisco 1970-1982. As for Drummer self-censoring
and turning “vanilla,” Martin wrote: “I don’t call the for-real POW torture
in ‘Shadow Soldiers’ [Drummer 127] by Jack Fritscher ‘vanilla.’” Indeed,
the landmark Drummer 100 also dared publish my non-consensual S&M
story “The Lords of Leather” which was later included in the anthology
Rainbow County and Other Stories (1999) and subsequently optioned by
The Advocate through its Alyson Publishing. Alyson’s book editor, how-
ever, freaked out over the sex-torture of American soldiers and censored the
“men’s adventure magazine” story by asking to drop it in favor of one of
my consensual stories. After that judgmental snip, writer Simon Sheppard
dignified “The Shadow Soldiers” in his canonical anthology Homosex: 60
Years of Gay Erotica (2007).
Regarding the “Great Slave Auction,” Embry must have felt he had won
the free- publicity lottery when The National Enquirer ran a two-page spread
titled “The Real Hollywood—Wild, Wicked, & Wide Open.” The authors
were Barbara Stemigin and Malcolm Boyes whose name is similar to vener-
able gay author, Malcolm Boyd, the partner of then Advocate editor, Mark
Thompson. Malcolm Boyes was the British journalist who, after working for
the Enquirer, became the producer of television “tabloid gossip” programs
such as Inside Edition and Extra.
Embry so relished the Enquirer Slave Auction details and photos that
he photostated its two-page coverage and reprinted its copyrighted mate-
rial without permission in Drummer 18 (August 1977), page 6. He even
feigned indignation in his introductory essay about the very existence of the
Enquirer feature, but was he bragging or complaining? It was a major coun-
ter-phobic coup to be covered by the scandal-sucking tabloid, The National
Enquirer, that was published in Florida where Anita Bryant, second runner-
up to Miss America, had revved her Christianist self up with a 1969 “Rally
for Decency” in which she had protested Jim Morrison’s exposing his rock-
star penis on stage before launching her culture-changing Dade County
Children’s Crusade in 1977. As sure as karma can be a pie in the face,
Bryant’s homophobia ended her singing career and her commercial endorse-
ments; her straight marriage split into divorce amidst gay rumors imagining

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