Page 358 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

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

close friend of Drummer author, Sam Steward.
Six months previously, in Drummer 26 (January 1979),
intent on “queering the cowboy myth,” and on co-opting the
sex-appeal of the world-famous Marlboro Man, I had written
“Grand National Rodeo Blues: Comes a Horseman.” It was
the first gay feature article panting about straight cowboys
Drummer wished were gay, including cowboy paparazzi
photos shot by Fritscher-Sparrow at the Grand National
Rodeo, inside the Cow Palace, San Francisco, Halloween
weekend, 1978.

August 6, 1979 (Monday): In a letter addressed to Al Shapiro at
Drummer, the scatalogical graffiti artist Martin of Holland (died 2011)
wrote of international rumors about the murder of Robert Opel:

“Martin Van De Logt
P. O. Box 66g
2501 CR Den Haag/Holland

Dear Allen, Thanks for your letter. It was sad to hear about Robert
Opel’s death. A few days earlier, I heard another version of the
shooting. They said it involved the Mafia.... —Martin”

August 23, 1979 (Thursday): Mark Hemry and I began going out socially
as a couple, seeing Patty Lupone and Mandy Patinkin appearing in Evita
previewing at the Orpheum Theater before heading to Broadway. Embry’s
thirty-something lover, the immigrant from Spain, Mario Simon aka “Mrs
Drummer,” whose bejeweled hand was always in the Drummer cashbox and
our paychecks, was, according to Embry, a disco singer “famous in Spain,”
but not in the Bay Area despite the Drummer money Embry spent producing
45-rpm records sold through Drummer, because, Embry told discomusic.
com on May 20, 2010, “of Mario’s heavy accent.” Mario was hardly com-
petition for his San Francisco contemporary, Sylvester James, the African-
American “Queen of Disco” (1947-1988) who was a popular recording star,
and an iconic member of the Cockettes,
Embry referenced his conflicted feelings for Mario in his editorial in
Drummer Rides Again: “The rare great love affairs of my life have been with
guys who were not my type. The ones who were my type (Roberts: Redford,
Conrad, and Mitchum) turned out frequently,” said Robert Payne, “to be
hardly worth knowing.”

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