Acknowledgements and History
The author expresses acknowledgment and gratitude to the many magazine publishers and editors who have framed these stories into print over the years, and to the art directors and artists who illustrated the stories. Their roles in periodical publishing are often overlooked, underestimated, or lost to history. Appreciation is also owed to the hundreds of magazine readers who have encouraged versions of these stories with letters, requests, suggestions, and edits coming from their personal desire.
“That Boy That Summer” appeared as “Anticipation: That Long Hot Summer” in Skin, Volume 2, #3, May-June 1981: Editor, Bob Johnson, Los Angeles , illustrated with a full-page color photograph by John Cox, Jr. The same issue contained Jack Fritscher’s interview with filmmaker, J. Brian, who handled a stable of hustlers who serviced clientele such as Rock Hudson: “Boys for Hire.” Also appeared in Man2Man Quarterly #7, Spring/March 1981: Publisher, Mark Hemry; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco; also appeared in The California Action Guide, Volume 1, #1, July 1982: Publisher, Michael Redman; Editor, Jack Fritscher; Art Director, Mark Hemry. Action Guide photographs by David Hurles’ Old Reliable Studio, Los Angeles, and David Sparrow/Jack Fritscher, San Francisco.
“I’m a Sucker for Uncut Meat” appeared in Skin, Volume 2 #4, July-August 1981: Editor, Bob Johnson, Los Angeles. Also appeared in Man2Man Quarterly #2, Winter/December 1980: Publisher, Mark Hemry; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco. Appeared as well in The California Action Guide, Volume 1, #1, July 1982: Publisher, Michael Redman; Editor, Jack Fritscher; Art Director, Mark Hemry, San Francisco. The story provided the concept for the video, Tom’s Gloryhole: Foreskin Obsession, Palm Drive Video. Straight businessman Michael Redman was the successful San Francisco publisher of the straight tabloid, California Pleasure Guide, sold in adult stores and vending machines on the streets of San Francisco. He advertised in the Sunday Chronicle for an experienced editor to conceptualize and start-up a companion adult tabloid, the gay California Action Guide. Redman and Fritscher interviewed at the Noe Valley coffee-shop and deli, the Meat Market, on 24th Street a few doors west of Castro, May 14, 1982.
“Big Beefy College Jocks” appeared in Man2Man Quarterly #2, Winter/December 1980: Publisher, Mark Hemry; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco.
“The Princeton Rub”appeared in Skin, Volume 2, #1, January-February 1980: Editor, Bob Johnson, Los Angeles; and as “Speedos, Jockstraps, and the Princeton Rub” in Man2Man Quarterly #4, Summer/June 1981: Publisher, Mark Hemry; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco.
“Corporal in Charge of Taking Care of Captain O’Malley” appeared serialized in two installments. The first act, published in Drummer #22, May 1978, was illustrated with a Bob Mizer photograph from Athletic Model Guild and a drawing created by Al Shapiro, the artist A. Jay, who was also art director; the second act appeared in Drummer #23, July 1978, with an opening illustration by Al Shapiro/A. Jay: Publisher, John Embry; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco. Inspiring director David Hurles, Old Reliable studios, created an audiotape of an early version of this written piece in its first performance-art origination in Los Angeles in 1977. The art of A. Jay/Al Shapiro appears in this volume at the suggestion of “the Widow Shapiro,” Dick Kriegmont. A unique collection of A. Jay’s art is the subject of The A. Jay Video Gallery: Spit, 60 minutes, Palm Drive Video.
“USMC Slap Captain” is both a pioneer story and a famously reprinted story of iconic, archetypal gay myth. It was the first story in the gay press introducing slapping as a fetish, and initially appeared as “USMC Slapcaptain: How The Corporal Came to Be in Charge of Taking Care of Captain O’Malley” in Man2Man Quarterly #7, Spring/March 1982: Publisher, Mark Hemry; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco. “Slap Captain” also appeared in Dungeonmaster #47, January 1994: Publisher, Martyn Bakker; Editor, Anthony F. DeBlase; illustrated with two photographs by Jack Fritscher: one of actor Terry Kelly from the Palm Drive Video, Hot Lunch (Dungeonmaster, page 24), and a second from the Palm Drive Video, Gut Punchers, starring Dan Dufort, 2nd-Place Winner of Physique Contest, Gay Games II, San Francisco, August 15, 1986. Mark Hemry and Jack Fritscher, as Palm Drive Video, shot the only video of the physique contest at the Castro Theater for Gay Games I (at that time called “The Gay Olympics”). The same gut-puncher photograph, requested specifically by Brian Pronger, was also featured (unindexed) in Brian Pronger’s Gay Sports: The Arena of Masculinity (St Martin’s Press, 1990).“Slap Captain” also appeared in Powerplay #10, May 1996, Brush Creek Media, San Francisco, with illustration drawn by DadeUrsus, with color cover shot by Jack Fritscher from the cover of the photography book, Jack Fritscher’s American Men (GMP, London, 1995), including two pages of five photographs by Jack Fritscher titled “Slap Shots.” Publisher, Bear-Dog Hoffman; Editor, Alec Wagner. Confer also the Palm Drive Video, Slap Happy. “USMC Slapcaptain” also was featured in Best Gay Literary Erotica 1998, Edited by Richard LaBonté, Selected and Introduced by Christopher Bram, Cleis Press. Editor LaBonté combined “USMC Slapcaptain” with Jack Fritscher’s “Cigar Sarge” under the Fritscher title, “Sexual Harassment in the Military: 2 Performance Pieces for 4 Actors in 3 Lovely Costumes.” Christopher Bram is the author of the novel, Father of Frankenstein, upon which was based the Academy-Award winning movie, Gods and Monsters, starring Ian McKellen, Lynn Redgrave, and Brendan Fraser.
“Officer Mike: San Francisco’s Finest” appeared in Just Men, Volume 1 #4, May-June 1984: Editor, Bob Johnson. Illustrated with a Rapidograph drawing by Rex. Fritscher and Rex collaborated in a Tenderloin coffee shop in San Francisco to discuss the concept, as an experiment for the gay press, so that words and illustration would match organically, rather than the usual paste-up of slapping almost any illustration to almost any text. A very early “leather” draft appeared as “Mike: Solo” in Skin, Volume 2 #2, November 1980: Editor, Bob Johnson, Los Angeles. Illustrated with a color photograph from Western Man Studio, San Francisco. The same issue featured Jack Fritscher’s long poem, “In Praise of Fuckabilly Butt,” illustrated with a charcoal drawing by the artist Kit whose narrative cartoon strip, “The Adventures of Billy Joe”–a leathery Huckleberry Finn, appeared episodically in Skin (Eg.: Skin, Volume 2 #1, 1980).
“Black-and-White-and-Brown Doublefuck” appeared in Just Men, Volume 1 #1, June 1982: Founding Editor, Bob Johnson, Los Angeles.
“Hustler Bars” appeared in Skin, Volume 2 #5, September-October 1981: Editor, Bob Johnson, Los Angeles; appeared also as “Paying For Sex” in The California Action Guide, Volume 1 #6, December 1982, San Francisco, with four photographs by David Hurles’ Old Reliable Studio, Los Angeles; and as the (by-lined on-cover) cover feature, “Hustler Bars: Show Me the Money!” in International Drummer #204, June 1997, San Francisco, which continued to list Jack Fritscher on the masthead as a continuously “Contributing Writer,” twenty years after he first edited Drummer. This issue also featured four color pages (22-25) of photographs reproduced electronically from Jack Fritscher’s Palm Drive Video feature, Dave Gold’s Gym Workout. The issue of Skin, Volume 2 #5, was written by Jack Fritscher whose two other gay-history articles in this issue were “AMG’s Duos: Bob Mizer’s Physique Pictorial Studio” with 15 AMG photographs in color and black and white, and “Old Reliable: The Company That Dirty Talk Built,” illustrated with a drawing by Rex and with 23 David Hurles’ Old Reliable Studio photographs in color and black-and-white. Also appeared as “Patron of the Arts” in the anthology Bar Stories, edited by Scott Brassart, Alyson Publications, 2000, Los Angeles/New York.
“Young Deputy K-9 Cop” first appeared as “Dog Master” in the premiere issue of Man2Man Quarterly #1, October 1980, “The Documentary Journal of Homomasculine Gay Popular Culture”: Publisher, Mark Hemry; Editor, Jack Fritscher; Cover model, Jim Enger. Also appeared as “Dog Dik” in The California Action Guide, Volume 1 #3, September 1982: Publisher, Michael Redman; Editor, Jack Fritscher; Art Director, Mark Hemry.
“Fisting the Selfsucker” first appeared in the premiere issue of Skin, Volume 1 #3, May-June 1980: Editor, Bob Johnson, Los Angeles; illustrated with a full-page color photograph of autofellatio by Richard Lyle. This story was pre-amble to a larger feature article written by Jack Fritscher titled “Solo Sex” that appeared as the cover feature in Drummer #123, November 1988.
“Caro Ricardo” appeared, as gift to Robert Mapplethorpe, in the first edition of Corporal in Charge. Transposed to a nonfiction memoir–a feature-article obituary, “Caro Ricardo” appeared as “Pentimento for Robert Mapplethorpe” in Drummer #133, August 1989. Publisher, Anthony DeBlase, in May 1989, two months after Robert’s death in March 1989, welcomed the feature two months before the Mapplethorpe censorship controversy broke out, July 1989. The piece appeared as “Chapter Two: Pentimento for Robert Mapplethorpe” in the hard-cover nonfiction memoir, Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera, Hastings House, 1994. A similar feature- article obituary of the artist A. Jay appeared in Drummer #107, October 1987: Publisher, Anthony DeBlase; Editor, JimEd Thompson. A. Jay was the artist who created the original artwork for the first magazine publication of “Corporal in Charge.” Robert Mapplethorpe’s first cover was cast, designed, and commissioned by Jack Fritscher for the cover of Drummer #24, October 1978. The intended Mapplethorpe-Fritscher book was to be titled, Rimshots: Inside the Fetish Factor.
“B-Movie on Castro Street” appeared in In Touch # 57, July 1981: Editor-in-Chief, John Calendo, Los Angeles. The story is a 1981 draft of a scene for, but not used in, the 1990 novel, Some Dance to Remember, which was fully complete as a book manuscript in February, 1984, and first published as a whole by Tim Barrus and Elizabeth Gershman, Knights Press, Stamford, Connecticut.
“The Best Dirty-Blond Carpenter in Texas” appeared in Man2Man Quarterly #8, Summer/June 1981: Publisher, Mark Hemry; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco; also appeared as the cover feature, “Fiction by Fritscher,” in The Target Album # 3, Winter 1982: Publisher, Lou Thomas, Target Studios, New York, with drawing created specifically for this story by Dom Orejudos aka “Etienne/Stephan,” Chicago. A second drawing was created by the New York artist, Domino, posing Jack Fritscher’s bodybuilder-lover, Jim Enger, as the model for the fictional story. The drawing appears also in The Domino Video Gallery: New York Natives, 2000, Palm Drive Video, Jack Fritscher, director; Mark Hemry, producer.
“Earthorse, written in 1973, first appeared in Man2Man Quarterly #3, Spring/March 1981: Publisher, Mark Hemry; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco. “Earthorse” was written the week the UPI reported one of the world’s first successful human-transplant stories about a woman suing to take a body-part for herself from her institutionalized, insane brother.
“Titsports: Our Pecs Belong to the Sundance, Kid” appeared as “Tit Torture Blues” in Drummer #30, June 1979: Publisher, John Embry; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco. Photographic illustrations by Richard Moore, Philip Beard, Mikal Bales’ Zeus Studios, and Joe Tiffenbach; line drawing illustration of “Pecs O’Toole” created for the article by Al Shapiro, the artist A. Jay, who was the art director; Al Shapiro introduced his “Pecs O’Toole” comic strip when he was art director for Queen’s Quarterly, New York. Also appeared in Man2Man Quarterly #5, Fall/September 1981: Publisher, Mark Hemry; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco; also appeared in The California Action Guide, Volume 1 #5, November 1982: Publisher, Michael Redman; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco. Illustrated with a drawing titled “Nipples with Boot” (dated 4-28-81) created for this piece by Rex, New York. Continuing the nipple theme, Fritscher wrote, “Tits: Radical Nipples,” for Drummer #143, October 1990, illustrations by Zeus Studio. The original story also served as the treatment for the video feature, Tit Torture Blues, 1988, Palm Drive Video, San Francisco.
“Wet Dreams and Golden Showers” appeared as the cover feature, “Pissing in the Wind,” in Drummer #20, December 1977: Publisher, John Embry; Editor, Jack Fritscher, San Francisco. Photographic illustrations by the Gage Brothers from their feature film, El Paso Wrecking Company.
“Fetish Noir” was written as the introductory editorial for the premiere issue of Fetish Noir magazine (Volume 1 #1, February 1998) at the request of the editing art director, Armando Aguilar, Royce Publications Distributing, Los Angeles. “Fetish Noir: Pansexual Pleasures for the Perverse.” Also included was a review by Jack Fritscher of Japanese straight erotic-bondage video; the review was titled, “Asian Market Crisis Ties Madame Butterfly in Knots.” “The List” first appeared in a 1979 brochure announcing the premiere issue of Man2Man Quarterly, and then in the California Action Guide, Volume 1 #2, August 1982, as well as in the first edition of Corporal in Charge with the introductory lead line incorrectly laid out at Gay Sunshine Press. The author did not submit “The List” for the Prowler Press edition in the U.K. “The List” in this edition restores the first edition.
“Nooner Sex,” “By Blonds Obsessed,” and “Cruising the Merchant Marines” are original to the first edition of Corporal in Charge. “Nooner Sex” was written as a companion piece to Jack Fritscher’s cover-feature, “The Daddy Mystique,” In Touch #56, June 1981: Editor, John Calendo. “By Blonds Obsessed” was written in October 1981 at David Hurles’ Old Reliable apartment, Hollywood. “Cruising the Merchant Marines” was written in San Francisco, January 1983.
All these stories, scripts, and articles were first printed in book form in the sold-out best-seller (10,000 copies), Corporal in Charge of Taking Care of Captain O’Malley and Other Stories, produced by publisher Winston Leyland, Gay Sunshine Press, San Francisco, 1984. In England, in 1998, Corporal in Charge, with some stories transposed, was published in a paperback edition by Prowler Press, London. For further gay popular culture information and literary history, visit