Page 465 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

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Jack Fritscher Chapter 18 447

Shortly after I exited, Embry told me that he was replacing I Am Curious
(Leather) aka Leather Blues with John Preston’s Mr. Benson, a nice-enough
novella that I had personally edited for serialization which I began publish-
ing in Drummer 29 (May 1979). Trying to pit Preston and me against each
other, he was playing both ends against the middle. That is precisely how
he grew his divisive Blacklist. That bit of intimidation forced the East Coast
Preston, who was motivated by the lust all young writers have to be pub-
lished, to be co-opted on the West Coast. Preston arrived at Drummer with
his Benson draft but no job. After four years as a sex hustler, he claimed he
found it difficult to sell his wares—that had sold in LA—to San Franciscans
swimming laps in more free sex than the world had ever seen.
To make his novice career move seductively into Embry’s Drummer
Plantation, Preston knew that to get what he wanted he had to choose sides
on the Blacklist to rescue his lifebuoy, Mr. Benson. According to Out for
Good (p. 247), it was well known that Goodstein had taught Preston to
be the enforcer of the Blacklist of writers at The Advocate. Preston, who
had “curtly” blacklisted dozens of faithful Advocate writers, including the
famous activist Arthur Evans, knew this divisive credential would appeal to
the tempestuous Embry who envied all things Goodstein. Like most first-
time novelists, Preston was desperate. He truly feared for his Mr. Benson
because in 1979 there was no other existing publisher for it but Embry, and
that manuscript was in bondage because Embry had so many puppet strings
attached. Preston did not want his novel dropped as mine had been. Soon
after Preston submitted and swore fealty, puppeteer Embry, sharpening his
Blacklist words to a stiletto, went on to advertise the magazine-sized “book”
Mr. Benson with the code words “original and unedited.” That phrase was
his cheeky swipe at my serial editing of Benson which readers liked in terms
of the story. Embry’s “book” edition was neither “original” or “unedited.”
In fact, all of Preston’s writing required editing. Preston’s friend, author
Lars Eighner, wrote in “John Preston Goes in Search of an Author’s Lost
Manuscript,” in www.DuskPeterson.com:

Preston was always heavily edited [e.g.: Mr Benson].... Preston’s
stuff, which would have been perfectly clear told at a campfire,
needed major surgery—often at the paragraph level—to put into
print. Preston was very well aware of this, which is why he admired
writers so much. Preston often told (wrote to) me that he needed a
lot of editing. I thought he was being modest...until I was given the
task of editing...his raw copy.

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