Page 349 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

Jack Fritscher Chapter 13 331

March 20, 1979 (Tuesday): With Embry ill, I heard that my pal Ron
Clute, who led a romantic double-life with a career in the Financial District
and as a bartender at the Leatherneck and at the Black and Blue, had been
killed by the drug PCP. Surrounded by our real life in the 1970s, I assessed
some of the dangers of euphoric gay life and wrote my editorial “The Most
Dangerous Game in the Whole Wide World” for Drummer 29 (May 1979),
page 6. A photograph by Jim Stewart illustrated the obituary for Ron Clute,
page 56. At the same time, health issues also figured into my 1979 story “Caro
Ricardo” aka “Caro Roberto” which was a fictional telling of difficulties I
was witnessing in the style of “dirty gay sex” as practiced by many leather-
men like Mapplethorpe. Eventually Robert and I split amicably because of
my “Irish hypochondria.” I like things clean. A year earlier, in Drummer 21
(March 1978), well aware of the shocking gay men’s health crisis, I had inau-
gurated my cautionary column “Dr. Dick, Drummer Goes to the Doctor”
with the essay “PCP: Short Cut to Suicide,” p. 77. I wrote my monthly col-
umns based on my telephone interviews with Dr. Richard Hamilton.

March 21, 1979 (Wednesday): I visited Embry in hospital and brought
him a goldfish in a small bowl for an amusement. Later at my house, the
180-pound David Sparrow (divorced a total of four days, and high) entered
and threw the 150-pound me to the floor, throwing water on my manu-
scripts, shouting about my not being able to make Embry pay him, as well
as about my affairs with Enger and Mapplethorpe.

March 24, 1979 (Saturday): Enger and I, with others from the Drummer
Salon, attended the opening for the artist Domino hosted by Robert Opel
and Camille O’Grady at Fey-Way Studio.

March 26, 1979 (Monday): I set up my bedroom so that Jim Enger, who
had posed for Tom of Finland, could pose seated on a chair for the artist
Domino during the afternoon to create a drawing that became iconic Domino.

April 1979: Publication of Drummer 28. Editing the 80-page issue, I
contributed six pieces of writing and ten of my photographs. Among my
features were the poem “Wet Stough,” “Bare-Ass Wrestling,” the review of
The Deer Hunter, “Tough Customers,” and “Tough Shit.”

April 8, 1979 (Thursday): On the phone, I talked to Embry who was
feeling better. He told me details of his colostomy which he hoped was
temporary.

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