Art – Page 3 – Brian Ferrari's Blog

Don Herron’s Tub Shots – Part III

Three years ago, I posted two collections of artist / photographer Don Herron’s Tub Shots, a series of photographs featuring the famous and near famous posing in their bathtubs. This coincided with an exhibition of 65 of the images at the Daniel Coon ey Gallery here in NYC. My blog posts (Pt. 1 and Pt. II) still garner a considerable amount of traffic, so I thought I would share more of these photos – ones that didn’t make it into those original posts and others that have resurfaced since that time.

*Signed poster for a 1991 exhibition in Provincetown.*

Writer/Performer/Filmmaker John Heys as Diana Vreeland (1992). Looking back at the photo in 2018, Heys commented, “Simply put, as Diana Vreeland often said… ‘A bit of alright!’ Of course that is how I felt in my divine penthouse bath.”

*Tales of the City* Author **Armistead Maupin** – San Francisco (1978)

**Cassandra**, Photographer – Houston, Texas (1979)

Queer San Francisco performer Harmodious, aka Anthony J. Rogers (1947-1992) was photographed in 1978 at Fey Way Gallery in the same tub used for the portraits of his sometime boyfriend Robert Opel, and gallery employee Christine McCabe.

**Bill Dodd,** Jeweler – Austin, Texas (1980)

**Victor Bockris** – author of many rock biographies who also wrote for Andy Warhol’s *Interview* magazine.

**Warner Jepson** (1930-2011), Composer – San Francisco (1980)

When McCabe’s photo was published in the 1980 Village Voice layout, she sued Herron and the newspaper. Although the signature on the model release was questionable, McCabe admitted that Herron did tell her that he wanted to publish a book of the photos. The suit was settled with McCabe receiving an undisclosed sum.

A selection of Tub Shots were featured in the April, 1980 issue of Christopher Street, with football player **David Kopay**‘s photo on the cover.

Actor/Playwright/Visual Artist/Puppeteer and Singer-songwriter **Winston Tong** – San Francisco, CA

When the Village Voice Online edition posted an article about the Daniel Cooney gallery exhibition in 2018, they chose to post just 3 of the 23 photos from the original layout: Robert Mapplethorpe and McCabe’s photos were 2 of them. Whether or not this was a random occurrence or a belated turn of the screw towards McCabe, the photos have since been removed.

**Jerry Burchard** (1931-2011) Photographer, San Francisco (1978)

**Liz Derringer** – ex-wife of Rick Derringer, she is a rock journalist & publicist who also wrote for *Interview*, NYC (1979)

**Ron Jehu** (1937-2007) was a San Francisco gallery owner who also hosted avant-garde exhibitions and events featuring Sylvester, Divine and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Everett Quinton (1952-2023) was an actor, director, & artistic director of the Ridiculous Theatre Company. “I’m not sure if Don was a friend of a friend or how he got my number. I only know that he asked me if I would like to be photographed in the bathtub and that seemed fun and I said yes. I remember the smell of the chlorine in my nose for days after the shoot as I laid still under the water for a while… waiting for the bubbles to go away so it would look creepy. I love the picture very much and I remember Don standing on the sides of the bathtub to get the shot. And I remember it was a fun experience.”

**Charles Henri Ford** (1908-2002) was a surrealist poet, magazine editor, filmmaker, photographer, collage artist and diarist. He was also the partner of artist Pavel Tchelitchew. NYC (1980)

**International Chrysis** (1951-1990) was a transgender entertainer and protege to Salvador Dali. She is the subject of the 1993 documentary *Split*. NYC (1988)

Pat Loud (1926-2021) was the matriarch of the Loud family, subject of the first reality series on American television. She later recalled that she only agreed to Don Herron’s request for a photo shoot if her friend and interior designer Richard Ridge (1928-2021) posed as well. NYC (1978)

**Richard Erker** (1945-2004) was an artist, sculptor and jewelry maker. He owned a shop in SoHo in the early 1980’s and later moved to Palm Springs, where he was the victim of an unsolved murder.

**Richard Hartenstein** (1945-1988) Makeup artist, NYC (1980)

Cornelius Conboy was the owner of 8BC, an East Village nightclub, performance space and gallery. “Don was gloriously set in his own universe yet welcomed everyone to join. I see that the photo is dated 1987 yet am certain it was taken earlier than that. 1986 at the latest. I lived in Italy in 1987 and that bathtub is from my apartment above 8BC, when Donald’s famous mural “Civilization Teeters” hung above the bar.

“My memory is that while he was very meticulous about the lighting he was rather laissez-faire about posing. There was a vase of those bodega flowers that last forever after they dry out – baby’s breath and purple statice. I’ve always considered myself a romantic and here I seem to be channeling my best inner Ophelia.”

Fashion designer Geoffrey Mac‘s (unintentional?) homage to the “Tub Shots” series, as recently posted on Instagram.

On The Life Of Brian… During The Pandemic

Artist / writer Adam Donaldson Powell asked if I would contribute to his latest project, in which he invites artists, writers, musicians, and other performing artists from around the world to contribute essays about their work and lives during the COVID-19 pandemic and aftermath. Here is my contribution:

https://adam-donaldson-powell.blog/2021/05/11/on-the-life-of-brian-during-the-pandemic/

Photographer Lucas Murnaghan Has Died at 45

Dr. Lucas Murnaghan, a celebrated underwater photographer and orthopedic surgeon, passed away in his Toronto home on March 21, 2021. According to his longtime partner Antonio Lennert, Murnaghan succumbed to cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lucas Murnaghan (@lucasmurnaghan)

In a Ted Talk posted last year, Murnaghan charted his path as an uptight overachiever following the family tradition by becoming a doctor, coming to terms with his sexuality and the circumstances that led him to become a full-time photographer and entrepreneur in recent years.

I started following Lucas on Instagram a couple of years ago. I knew nothing about him but his photographs spoke for themselves: stark, striking images that often played with what he described as “the balance between vulnerability and confidence, pride and shame, solitude and connection.”

Murnaghan’s photo *Suspended Animation* on the cover of Bruno Capinan’s 2018 CD.

When he began to promote his photography, his initial impulse was to hide his “day job” as a medical doctor, feeling that it prohibited him from being taken seriously as a photographer, or having an artistic point of view.

“I felt like I was entering the art world from the side door. Well, as it turns out, there is no front door. As an artist, that’s all we can do… gather up our entire lives and transmit it into our work. To do anything less than that is to not be honest with ourselves or our audience.”

For more images and information regarding his book Beneath The Surface, please visit www.lucasmurnaghan.com/

Whatever Happened To The Kid Who Boiled John Crouse’s Head?

I was a freshman theatre major at Syracuse University when I scribbled this in my journal one bright spring day in 1988:

I’m writing at Oakwood Cemetery, where we are sitting on the steps of the Brown Mausoleum. People might think it’s morbid to hang out in a cemetery, but I love it here – so beautiful and peaceful. If we were sitting in the Quad, with radios blaring and frisbees flying around, I couldn’t relax – it always feels like a fight is just waiting to break out. There’s no judgement here. Other kids walk by every so often but it’s very quiet. I’ve heard that drug deals go on here at night though.

So young. So innocent. So little insight. Then again, I was 19 years old and this was before that kid boiled John Crouse Jr.’s head.

*Hanging out with friends at the mortuary chapel in Oakwood Cemetery (Spring 1988)*

Oakwood is a 160 acre cemetery adjacent to the Syracuse University campus. Their website advertises “a grand array of monuments and mausoleums which form a virtual outdoor museum of funerary sculpture and architecture while mirroring the lives of Syracuse’s Victorian families.”

The cemetery was an alternative hangout for us – actors and artists clad in vintage chic attire, toting journals, sketchbooks and cameras. We didn’t come to SU for the sports or fraternity life. The typical campus hangout spots weren’t always the best places to relax, so we went to the cemetery. We were respectful, but not everyone else subscribed to the ‘Take only pictures, leave only footprints’ credo. This is why we can’t have nice things.

In October of that year, freshman art student Kevin McQuain thought it would be cool to steal a human head from a mausoleum “to use as a model for sculpture class,” he would later say. He brought it back to his dorm – the nearby Flint Hall – and proceeded to try and clean the cranium by boiling it with bleach in a trashcan placed on the stove of the 3rd floor common area. Residents were alarmed by the stench and even more so when they discovered the source. McQuain was arrested along with his friends, Seth Prince and Omar Kutty.

*Flint and Day Halls – two Syracuse University dorms adjacent to Oakwood Cemetery*

Two factors helped this gruesome crime to become a national news story:

a) It was Halloween season.

b) It wasn’t just any old skull in the trashcan.

The vandalized mausoleum contained John and Catherine Crouse and their two sons. The Crouse family was a wealthy philanthropic clan that loomed large in the area for generations. A fair percentage of the city of Syracuse bears the Crouse name. John Sr. funded the University’s Crouse College to honor his wife. Their son, John Jacob Crouse, Jr. served as the mayor of Syracuse. All of the coffins in the tomb were vandalized, but the cranium in question belonged to John Jr.

From The Syracuse Herald, 10/21/88 and a vintage postcard for Crouse College:

While this macabre news story placed the University in the national spotlight, it would soon be forgotten – replaced by an unfathomable tragedy. Two months after this incident, the Lockerbie bombing took place. Thirty-five Syracuse students perished on Flight 103 in a terrorist attack that divided campus life with a definitive line of before and after.

By the time Kevin McQuain and his friends went to court in early 1989, all but local news outlets had lost interest in the macabre little “Art Student Boils Founder’s Head” story. McQuain pled guilty and was properly contrite under advice of counsel. The charges against Seth Prince and Omar Kutty were dropped, yet all three received the same sentence: 200 hours of community service.

From The Syracuse Times, 1/26/89:

*Kevin McQuain at sentencing. (Herald Journal photo by Carl J. Single)*

Universities tend to frown upon students who cook the heads of their benefactors. Following McQuain’s sentencing, his scholarship was revoked. Later newspaper articles state that he left Syracuse due to a lack of funds, but he did complete his undergraduate degree at Alfred University, which is not exactly the Dollar Tree of higher education. Perhaps it was best for all concerned that he made a fresh start outside of Onondaga County.

There is a 2002 follow-up piece from the Syracuse Post Standard that keeps getting… ahem… dug up… every few years and reprinted around Halloween. It’s about how poor Kevin McQuain got stuck with a nickname that he could not shake. His friends dubbed him “Skully.” And he decided “to embrace it.” He went on to form a Goth/Rockabilly record label called Skully Records, which he apparently still runs himself as a side hustle to his every day technical services job.

In 2015, he self-published a vampire/punk novel under the name Kevin Skully McQuain. He also designs t-shirts.

Somehow, the unavoidable “Skully” handle does not force itself onto his professional resume: it just leaks into his side projects where the macabre notoriety might help bump things up a notch.

But oh, how the nickname plagues him! He CANNOT escape it.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been called several things throughout my life that I have hated. I assume that you, dear reader, have had one or two unwanted nicknames as well. But I don’t know yours… and you don’t know mine… because we did not hyphenate them into our names.

How contrite is a person if he is still trying to milk the last ounce of notoriety out of something he stupidly did over 30 years ago? If you made a mistake at 18 – and who hasn’t? – would you allow that thing to be the defining moment of your life? Would you still call yourself “Farty” because you once let one rip in gym class? Is that all ya got?

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McQuain is married and a father now, and I can’t help but wonder: at what point in the dating process does one explain the origin of “Skully”? Third date? Over dinner? And what is the appropriate age to sit your child down to explain that you once desecrated a corpse? “Yes, Jayden, Skully-daddy did once boil the head of the mayor of Syracuse, but listen…. that was a bad idea, ok?”

Back in 2002, McQuain said “That was a mistake I made when I was young, and I’m fortunate that it didn’t stigmatize me for the rest of my life.” And yet, at 50 years old, he still holds on to the “Skully” nickname, with the backstory tucked into the pocket of his aging punk-rock jeans, ready to whip out and exploit whenever he has a new artistic endeavor that might need a little publicity boost.

In 1988, Kevin McQuain walked out of Oakwood Cemetery with the head of John Crouse in a paper bag, intent on using it as a prop for his art. Over 30 years later, he still finds it quite useful.

Artist’s Muse: Ted Starkowski

Although photographer George Platt Lynes passed away of lung cancer at age 48 in 1955, it took another 30 years before the majority of his male nude photographs were celebrated and widely released. Virtually every collection of his work now features photos of a model named Ted Starkowski. His nude images are featured on the covers of several collections of Lynes’ work – in solo shots or posed with Mel Fellini:

So who was Ted Starkowski?

Lynes biographer David Leddick wrote:

Ted Starkowski worked the streets. Hustling by night, he regaled Bernard Perlin and George Platt Lynes with his adventures while he posed for them during the day. They created unique images with his cat-like face and lithe body.

Perlin later recalled; “He looked like an old tomcat – you know, after the battle. But he just loved the way he looked…. he was a star whore, he aimed for people with money and he got it.”

(Above) George Platt Lynes photographed Ted Starkowski flanked by Bernard Perlin’s sketches.

Teodor Francis Starkowski was born in Hartford, Connecticut on April 4, 1927- the eighth child of Polish immigrants. When he was 6 years old, Ted was critically injured when he was struck by a car in front of his family’s home. He eventually made a full recovery, but the incident would foreshadow another auto accident forty-four years later.

His Army registration in September of 1945 indicates that he had attended three years of high school and was working at St. Thomas Seminary in Bloomfield.

After his stint in the military he relocated to New York City, where he became a favorite subject for Lynes and his circle of artist friends, including Paul Cadmus and Jared French.

(Above) Six images of Ted Starkowski by Jared French.

Thomas D. Baynes of The Univeristy of Western Ontario wrote extensively of one particular George Platt Lynes 1954 photograph in his thesis More than a Spasm, Less than a Sign: Queer Masculinity in American Visual Culture, 1915-1955:

Few other photographs by Lynes do as much to cast the model as an actor. In his tight jeans, bulging conspicuously at the crotch, fisherman-rib sweater worn without an undershirt, and workaday watchman’s cap relegated to the status of an ornament, Starkowski looks like a longshoreman snatched from the imagination of Tom of Finland … Lynes’s studio provides only the minimum furniture required to support Starkowski in a posture that manages to be solicitous and pensive at the same time, welcoming an evaluating view despite being absorbed in thought.

This photograph extends rough trade as a portable structure of fantasy that discovers erotic opportunities in ambiguities of dress and pose…. Evidently, Starkowski had a knack for acting like a straight man, or at least like a fantasy version thereof.

*Ted Starkowski as drawn by Paul Cadmus (Male Nude, TS5, 1954)*

*A reader sent a photo of this Paul Cadmus drawing titled “Ted Reading” – posted with permission.*

Another model who posed for many of the same artists was fellow ex-military man Chuck Howard, George Platt Lynes’ live-in boyfriend. After their split in January, 1951, Howard and Starkowski became involved in what David Leddick described as “a tempestuous affair.” The couple were photographed together on Fire Island while vacationing with Paul Cadmus, Jared and Margaret French: artists who called their collective photography work PaJaMa, an acronym of the first letters of their first names. See more of their work here.

The year after George Platt Lynes’ death, Starkowski was photographed by Carl Van Vechten. These photos are dated April 3, 1956:

Ted Starkowski by Paul Cadmus 1963 — *Portrait of Ted Starkowski at age 36 by Paul Cadmus. (1963)*

Thanks to a wealthy benefactor, Starkowski traveled extensively in the second half of the 1950’s. Perlin recalled; “There was this old boy who picked him up on 42nd Street. Ted enthralled him – kept him drunk and kept him out of money, with which Ted bought diamonds, which he wore. Both hands glittered with diamonds.”

Leddick relays a story of Starkowski showing off a new diamond ring to artist George Tooker. Asking if he thought it was too big. Tooker replied “Yes, it is too large for a woman to wear.”

And then… the trail goes dark for the next 14 years. If more images or information come to light, I will update this post. What we do know is that on Friday May 13, 1977, Ted Starkowski was leaving a New York City bar when he was struck and killed by a car. He was 50 years old.

An obituary ran in the Hartford Courant the following Tuesday, May 17th. He was buried in Mount Saint Benedict Cemetery in Bloomfield, Connecticut.

It was a sad end to a man who had inspired many artists.

Bernard Perlin recalled, “Despite his nefariousness, he did good in the art world. My drawings are comparatively negligible, but many of George’s photographs are just absolutely wonderful.”

Guys with iPhones. In Masks. On Subways.

Earlier this year, I began posting photos I snapped around New York City – just as the pandemic was taking hold and then again when it started to reopen. As we teeter on the edge of another necessary lockdown, lets pay tribute to these intrepid commuters – men who have navigated the subways sporting face coverage while still putting forth a sense of style as well as a certain…. je ne sais quois.

This post goes out to KennethInThe212 blog, which recently celebrated its 15th anniversary. Prior to the pandemic, Kenneth Walsh (who lives in Manhattan so you don’t have to) regularly featured snapshots of stylish men photographed in transit. Alas, he doesn’t need to take the subway while working from home, so I began taking photos that I imagined would have fit comfortably into his oeuvre (despite a lack of mustaches and singlets).

Then again… who knows what facial hair grows behind these masks?

Congratulations to Kenneth on 15 years! Stay safe New York.

The Men of St. Mary’s Pre-Flight School

One of my socially distant pastimes of 2020 has been searching for jpegs of WWII U.S. Navy Pre-Flight Training photos. These images of naked or jockstrap-clad cadets were taken at St. Mary’s College in California when it was requisitioned for the war effort between 1942-1946. I first became aware of these black and white 5″x7″ triptych photos through posts on a Facebook photo group. Listings often turn up on eBay and other auction sites, where the photos are sometimes accompanied by an index card which was used to record the physical training progress of each cadet.

It has been speculated that this was tied to a study on race purity/eugenics, as were the infamous Yale student posture photos. I choose to believe that it was merely a matter of recording alignment and physical fitness as part of the overall medical examination process.

Comparative fitness photos for a cadet taken on 6/27 & 8/31 1942

Call me naïve, but if we are to appreciate the photos of these fine young men who were training to fight for our country, it’s a lot less icky to ignore a potential ulterior motive on the part of those taking the photos.

Comparative fitness photos for a cadet taken on 7/27 & 9/29 1942

The earliest photos – dated June 13, 1942 – feature the men completely nude. When the subjects were photographed in profile, they appear to be holding hands with someone off-camera – presumably to help them obtain proper… positioning?

All subsequent photos feature the cadets in jockstraps, standing behind some sort of grid fence to better detect misalignment and spinal curvature. Note that, although cropped here, all of these photos contain a visible U.S. Navy / St. Mary’s Pre-Flight School placard.

Most of the photos shown here were gathered from various sources around the internet with the subject’s name cropped out: God forbid someone ran across a picture of near-naked PeePaw and suffered conflicting feelings.

My collection includes nearly 200 jpegs of different cadets with the names intact. I have taken my pastime a step further by researching who these men were and where they ended up. As expected, some did perish during the war – just a year or two after these photos were taken. Others reenlisted for the Korean War and did not survive that conflict. But the largest majority went on to successful careers, families and lived to ripe old ages. Any surviving cadets would now be in their late 90’s.

Whether the photos of these handsome young men are literal snapshots near the beginnings of their lives or tragically close to the end, all of the subjects are equally, timelessly captured here in prime physical condition as they trained to serve our country. 75+ years later, we salute their fine forms and dedication.

See more photos here:
Christmas At St.Mary’s Pre-Flight School
Boys of Summer: St. Mary’s Pre-Flight School
Christmas At St. Mary’s Pre-Flight School, Pt. II
Christmas At St. Mary’s Pre-Flisht School, Pt. III
80 Years Ago: The Men Of St. Mary’s Pre-Flight School
More Men of St. Mary’s Pre-Flight School
1944: The Men of St. Mary’s Pre-Flight School
The Yale Posture Photos: James Franciscus
The Yale Posture Photos: Bill Hinnant

Buddy & Johnny: A Historic Photo Shoot

Last week I posted this photo on a vintage beefcake Facebook page and people lost their minds: Over 2,200 likes and 200 comments from members young and old, tripping over their tongues… and not a negative post in the bunch, if you can believe that. “Who is he?” many wanted to know.

It’s hard to place the date just by looking at the photo – the hirsute young man looks modern – this could be taken today and filtered in sepia tone. And while many a vintage photo of presumably heterosexual men are co-opted by gay men who like to spin fictional tales speculating the circumstances surrounding an image, there are a few clues here that give the subject away: The artwork – on the wall and nightstand – seem to corroborate that this guy is very well aware of who he is and why you are looking at him.

The model is Robert X. (Buddy) McCarthy – a WWII veteran described by author David Leddick as “a former gymnast from Boston with a sharp Irish wit.” The photo dates 1952 and was taken by George Platt Lynes in the boudoir of his own NYC apartment. The painting on the wall behind Buddy is Conversation Piece by Paul Cadmus (1940) and depicts Platt Lynes with museum curator Monroe Wheeler and writer Glenway Wescott, a couple with whom he was romantically involved. In the background is Stone-Blossom, the New Jersey farm the three of them shared for over a decade.

In his letters, Platt Lynes referred to McCarthy affectionately as “The Baby Blacksmith.” He writes to friend Bernard Perlin; “(He) does me the honor of declared infatuation. And I purr like a tiger puss.”

While it is McCarthy’s body hair that garners immediate attention in this and a couple of other studio photos taken by Platt Lynes, the photographer apparently was not happy with the results.

He wrote in November, 1952: “Months ago I took nudes of Buddy… told him at the time that all that hair, though fun to play around with, wasn’t photogenic and under it he (probably) had a beautiful body.

“We made a vague date to remove some and to re-photograph… I meant, of course, to strip him except for the armpits and pubic bush. IMAGINE MY HORROR when he turned up on Friday evening with his pubes shaved clean like a baby’s. It wasn’t pretty…. It took two hours to get all (the rest of) that fuzz off him… contrary to expectation, it was neither a pleasant or erotic occupation.

“Halfway through the job Johnny phoned… I asked Buddy if he’d be willing to pose with him. A little to my surprise he said yes.”

Portrait of John Leapheart by George Platt Lynes

“Johnny” was John Leapheart, an African-American model who was equally familiar with Platt Lynes’ bed and photography studio. The resulting photos of Buddy and John are now some of the most popular of Platt Lynes’ work, although they were not published until decades after his death. David Leddick’s Pioneering Male Nudes notes “Their black and white bodies, interwoven, create strong abstract shapes. The photographs were particularly daring because they broke nudity, homosexual and racist taboos of the time.”

George Platt Lynes recounted the photo session in a letter:

“I photographed them together in all sorts of close-contact suggestive sentimental sensuous poses—-but no (what Dr. K. [Kinsey] would call) action pictures. (Leaphart) would have been willing, but I thought (Buddy) wouldn’t…But then we all went back to (the apartment) where everything did happen…and the sight of that big black boy screwing that super-naked little white bundle of brawn was one of the finest I’ve ever seen”

There is little information about John Leapheart (sometimes spelled Leaphart), aside from his professional and personal involvement with Platt Lynes, where he is always described in the most flattering terms. Bernard Perlin’s biographer Michael Schreiber wrote “John Leapheart remained a good friend (and occasional bedmate) of Bernard’s. Lucky Bernard, indeed!”

Buddy McCarthy is easier to trace, as there is a 1997 photo in Pioneering Male Nudes along with an update on his life after his association with Platt Lynes, who died of lung cancer at age 48 in 1955.

In 1966, Buddy and his partner Ned Kell opened Treasures and Trifles, an antique shop on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, where they stayed in business for 44 years. The website Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York covered their retirement in 2010.

The note in their shop window at 409 Bleecker Street read:

After 44 years in the village, East & West, and 26 Years at this location, we’ve decided to fold our tent and move-on to the next phase of our lives.

It’s not because of a vindictive, greedy landlord, nor because of a Shylock Attorney. On the contrary, our landlady is every storeowner’s dream come true! An honest, caring landlady, a true Villager -born and raised in the Village.

It’s too bad that this generation never experienced the Village of yore. Bleecker Street was world-renowned for its variety of antique shops, visited by the likes of Jackie & Ari, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, etc. Bette Midler lived up to her name: “Divine!”.

We’re saddened at leaving our friends and neighbors such as Leo Design’s Kimo, John, Ed & Kyle, and Barry & Arlington. They all helped us, shoveling snow and lifting the gates.

Adieu, Ned & Buddy

Ned Kell died 2 years later. Buddy McCarthy passed away at the age of 91 on 11/19/2017. They are buried together in Peabody, Massachusetts.

Armistead Maupin in Blueboy Magazine (1980)

Back in the early aughts, an older friend of mine was preparing to move out of his NYC apartment and gifted me with a gay time capsule: a closet full of porn magazines dating back to the mid-1970’s. He had moved into this rent stabilized 5th floor walk-up in college and stayed there for 30 years. Roommates and boyfriends came and went – leaving a trail of old magazines in their wake. But my friend stayed in this spacious top floor railroad apartment in the last remaining tenement building on a stretch of East 59th street, with a living room facing the Queensboro Bridge. Why move? The landlord finally offered him a sizable cash settlement to leave, unaware that he was ready to depart NYC anyway. But it was a nice parting gift.

I, in turn was given a King’s Chamber of gay erotica: 7 file boxes full of near-pristine old smut.

Shocker: porn is lucrative. For a few years I supplemented my income by selling them singly on eBay. The shrinking collection has now moved through 4 different apartments in the last dozen years. Unfortunately I did not have my friend’s tenacity (or luck) when it came to NYC real estate.

Recently I cracked the boxes open again and came across an article I thought was worth sharing. Yes, an article. As the old joke goes – I like these old porn mags for the articles. Well… the photo layouts are nice too, but… the articles do give a window into what gay life was like before the plague.

The September, 1980 issue of Blueboy Magazine was dedicated to the city of San Francisco – The Promised Land for gays. Presented below is an article titled “The City That Dare Not Speak Its Name” penned by Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin.

Armistead 1980a — *Author Armistead Maupin at the San Francisco Chronicle.*

Although this was written just before the AIDS epidemic blew the gay community sky high, San Francisco had already been through some shit, as Maupin mentions in his opening paragraph. The Zodiac Killer, Jonestown Massacre, Patty Hearst kidnapping, the murders of Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone… followed by Dan White’s acquittal…. I am unclear what “Decadence” he is referring to, but surely it was a bloodbath.

Maupin sensed that the press was sharpening its knives to criticize his beloved city. And he wasn’t wrong in his assessment. Like his Tales of the City series, the article is a love letter to San Francisco, capturing the time and place as nobody else could. It was the best of times… it was the worst of times….

A couple of notes: The mayor mentioned in the article is Dianne Feinstein, now the senior California senator. And the 30-inch girlfriend he refers to was Tamara De Treaux, basis for the main character in his novel Maybe The Moon.

M39389-3 001 — *Armistead Maupin photographed in 1978 as part of Don Herron’s Tub Shots photo series.*

In the spirit of “everything old is new again,” Maupin observes “…. some local lavender ward healers (that) propagate the Cult of the Politically Correct can grow tedious beyond belief, and I wonder, in my heart of hearts, whether the immeasurable joys of cocksucking are worth the price of being either political or correct.” Yes, he ultimately concludes that nobody embraces eccentricity as unconditionally and as joyously as do San Franciscans.

40 years later, I think those who love the city would agree… even if they do complain about all the human feces in the streets.

The article concludes with a reference to a novel Maupin was working on: Jackie Old – a fictional piece about Jacqueline Onassis at age 70. Unfortunately she did not live to see 70 and this novella – initially published as a 5 part series in New West magazine – would not get an official release until a 2014 Kindle edition. Even so, it is not included in his bibliographies.

Also featured in this mag is an extensive piece by another prominent gay San Franciscan: the late great Randy Shilts, author of And The Band Played On. I will post this piece – “What If They Gave A Backlash And Nobody Came?” -if there is interest. Lemme know if you want it. (UPDATE: I posted it HERE)

Or… I could post more photos of these guys:

This ‘n That – 10/24/19

I have written about late photographer Don Herron’s Tub Shots photo series here and here. Every once in a while I come across one that I’ve never seen. Here is Tales Of The City author Armistead Maupin in 1978:

There’s a show on after the 11pm local news here in NYC called NBC Sports Night. To be honest, I only watch for the snacks. This was last Sunday: 10/20/19 – A discussion about football or rugby or something…. over a radiant bowl of fresh Nacho Doritos.

74566695_10157873879731908_113567185938415616_n — The Empire State Building in a to go cup (10/18/19)

Neil Patrick Harris recently posted this photo of his injured hand. No word on whether that swelling has been attended to. 😮

“Goodnight Mr. Walters!” “MMMmmmm.” (10/18/19)

Category: Art