Page 343 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

Jack Fritscher Chapter 13 325

visitors, including San Francisco Democratic Congressman Leo Ryan. Jackie
Speier, Ryan’s congressional staff person, was shot five times and left bleed-
ing on the tarmac for twenty-two hours. The gay-ally Speier later became
California state senator. The People’s Temple on Geary Boulevard was only
a few blocks around the corner from the Drummer office on Divisadero.

November 28, 1978 (Tuesday): Ten days after the Jonestown Massacre,
Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by
Golden Gloves boxer Dan White who was not a fan of the People’s Temple
or of gays. (For details, see “Dan White” in Some Dance to Remember, Reel
1, Scene 16, and Reel 3, Scene 1.) Assassination made Dianne Feinstein
mayor. My lover, Drummer photographer David Sparrow, was in City Hall
at the time of the shootings and witnessed the two bodies being wheeled
out. As editor, I regretted that the SFPD had confiscated his film from his
camera the way the LAPD had confiscated all the Drummer photographs
shot at the Slave Auction two years earlier. At the moment of the murders,
the latest issue of Drummer was almost out the door to the printer. Despite
the tragedy, I had always wanted to shout, “Stop the presses!” I told Embry I
needed a couple hours to write a new last-page editorial eulogy for Drummer
26 (January 1979): “Harvey Milk and Gay Courage.”

December 1978: Mapplethorpe and I, loving New York nightlife, com-
miserated that Studio 54 was being raided eighteen months after opening
April 26, 1977. Mafia lawyer Roy Cohn was the attorney for Studio 54
owners, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. The ever-shrewd Mapplethorpe pho-
tographed all three gay men in separate portraits.

December 1978: Publication of Drummer 25, “The Christmas Issue.”
Editing this entire 104-page issue celebrating the holidays, I contributed sev-
enteen pieces of writing and thirty-four photographs, including the 35mm
color cover shot of Mike Glassman, the future Colt Model “Ed Dinakos”—
who took direction nicely—with a big smile on his face, and a rimmy tip
of tongue provocatively extended. Among my features and fiction were
“Sleep in Heavenly Peace,” “Afraid You’re Not Butch Enough,” “Looking for
Mr. Drummer,” “Drummer Gift Guide,” “Astrologic,” “Fetishes: Horses,”
“Horsemaster: Come to the Stable,” “Part 2, In Hot Blood: Ex-Cons: We
Abuse Fags,” film review of The Norsemen, “Scottish Games: Men in Kilts,”
“Dr. Dick: Amoebiasis, Your Ass Is Falling Out,” and the debut, the first
installment, of my ongoing column “Tough Customers.”

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 03-16-2017
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