Page 334 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

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316 Gay Pioneers: How Drummer Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

2. In the midst of the culture war over art and homosexuality in
America, the 1989 “Pentimento” rose like a flare over the memory
of the sinking Titanic 1970s.
3. Its publication in Drummer 133 (September 1989) com-
pleted the eleven-year “circle of life” I had begun by reporting on
Mapplethorpe in Drummer 24 and Son of Drummer (both September
1978).
4. On May 9, 1990, Mark Thompson, who was collecting authors
for his landmark anthology, Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People,
Politics, and Practice, wrote:

Dear Jack, Thank you for the...[article] on Robert
Mapplethorpe. I sat down and read the essay last night
and was completely overwhelmed by the power and the
beautiful writing of the piece. You’ve caught something
extremely important. So, a thought occurs: What would
you think about including the “Arnett” [an article I’d writ-
ten on artist, Chuck Arnett, in Drummer 134 (October
1989)] and “Mapplethorpe” pieces together, back to back,
in the leather anthology? Both are very personal pieces
about two important artists, from different decades and
coasts, yet who had immense influence over the culture
of the time. Furthermore, each man liberated the leather
image, advanced its meaning, each in his own particular
way....Having both pieces of your articles together would
also express an historical continuity as well....
—Warmly, Mark Thompson

If Embry had still owned Drummer in 1989 his Blacklist would
not, in my opinion, have allowed any obituary of his nemesis
Mapplethorpe to darken the pages of Drummer, much less one writ-
ten by me, his “rogue” editor. The consequence of Embry’s “embry-
onic 180 degrees of separation from the evolving soul of Drummer”
would have segregated Drummer into a marginal ghetto of sex fan-
tasies, with one less connection to the real world of erotic art and
politics.
When Embry’s hired gun of a book critic, John F. Karr, reviewed
Leatherfolk in Manifest Reader 16 (1992), page 88, Karr extended
himself into liking the book of essays even though he could not resist
one flick of his vanilla wrist: “At times this collection makes S/M
sound like a civic duty.” Nevertheless he listed ten of the twenty-five
contributors, mostly Drummer authors, by name: John Preston, Pat
Califia, Scott Tucker, Jack Fritscher, Sam Steward, Dorothy Allison,
Arnie Kantrowitz, Joseph Bean, Geoff Mains, and Mark Thompson.

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