Page 489 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

Jack Fritscher Chapter 18 471

magazine as part of its benefits. Later, after being cut off by
Drummer and two of its distributors for nonpayment, she is substi-
tuting a multilithed “Newsletter,” promised monthly and contain-
ing offers of merchandise in the “Fraternity’s” name, membership
pitches and solicitation of contributions as well as scurrilous attacks
on ALTERNATE PUBLISHING and its people. Notice is hereby
given that THE LEATHER FRATERNITY is a fully protected
name since 1973 [Again, this claim of the specific word protected
which he may have chosen because it is illegal to say something is
trademarked when in fact it is not] and has no connection whatever
with Mrs. Barney’s effort.....It does not publish names of members...
as Mrs. Barney has done. Mrs. Barney is offering remnants of her
unpaid-for [with Embry, it’s always about the money] Drummer
inventory at inflated prices....We would appreciate being noti-
fied of any checks to Drummer or ALTERNATE PUBLISHING
endorsed...by anyone other than this company [spinning a charge
of embezzlement Barney never did].

When I asked Jeanne Barney in 2006 about this slam in 1979, she
wrote: “Oh, for Christ’s sake! There are so many inaccuracies in his rant as
to be laughable!”

5. AGAINST OTHER GAY MAGAZINES: LITERARY FEUDS

Is it good business for feuding publishers to trash other magazines to gin
up publicity and controversy? Embry took potshots gratuitously attacking
magazines such as Blueboy (Drummer 9), In Touch, Honcho, and Man2Man
Quarterly. For instance, the minute after Man2Man first hit the stands,
claim-jumper Embry added this new tag line to Drummer: “More Man-to-
Man Personals Than Any Other Magazine.” He also added it to his Manifest
Reader. The phrase “man-to-man” was a commonplace of American lan-
guage. My father often said it to me. But it had not been mentioned in con-
nection with post-Stonewall homosexuality, and, except for my announce-
ment in Drummer 30 (June 1979, page 18) about the arrival of a new
magazine, it was likely never written in Drummer before the first publica-
tion of Man2Man. (By 1982, Mark Hemry had bought MAN2MAN as the
vanity license plate for our red Ford F-100 truck used in so many photo and
video shoots, including the cover of Drummer 140, June 1990.)
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but, with his light-fin-
gered co-optation of my coinage, I figured Embry gave envious evidence he

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