Page 41 - The Life and Times of the Legendary Larry Townsend

Jack Fritscher 25

experiences that in “reality” might be very unpleasant
but which have attractive erotic elements. S&M extracts
the erotic elements and acts them out in a reasonably
safe context.....The elements of drama, play, and magic
are essential to S&M. They are essential to us as human
beings, and in a world which allows fewer and fewer
outlets for these aspects of creativity, S&M is becoming
more popular—like horror movies, mountain climb-
ing, “Dungeons and Dragons.” But S&M also involves
a coming to awareness of different levels of the self, a
revelation, and a sharing. I mentioned the idea of magic.
For me, that’s the third meaning of the letters S&M:
sadist/masochist; slave/master; sex/magic.... I write from
time to time on S&M, and, I hope, help people untangle
their own thoughts about it. But I don’t want to be put
in a position of “defending” S&M, anymore than I want
to “defend” being gay.
My friend Sam Steward (1909-1993) liked to pay to kneel to
straight sailors, cops, and Hells Angels he took to the backroom
of his tattoo parlor. He scorned what he lamented was gay leather-
men’s cheap imitation of real-world domination and submission.
At his cottage in Berkeley where he loved playing the role of
Grand Old Man, he’d ask me, “What are they up to on Folsom
Street?” I’d tell him. He’d say, “That’s the end of everything.”
While he liked Larry and wished his own alter-ego Phil Andros
had written a bestseller like The Leatherman’s Handbook, Sam
insisted on debunking the 1970s leather scene as less authentic
than his own underground S&M sex scenes that began as the
Roaring 1920s crashed into the Depression that made hordes of
hungry blue-collar trade available for hire. “Buddy, can you spare
a dime?” Sam paid for sex. Larry paid for models.
In 1964, four years before he heard of Larry, Sam had pub-
lished his essay, “The Leather Fraternity: Boys Looking for ‘Real’
Men,” which Philadelphia Gay News reprinted in 1982. As the
author of the 1953 novel, The Motorcyclist, Sam cracked wise
about the evolution of leather culture from the war-torn 1940s to
the hippie 1960s which were the life and times when Larry had

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