A LETTER TO SUBSCRIBERS
Did You Sleep With the Models?
Welcome! I’m glad you’re here, and I’m delighted that you like hearing about my adventures in the gay world of New York in the 1980s. Before Substack, I never imagined that posting a book online, chapter by chapter, could be such a lively challenge as well as so much fun.
As I explain in my Introduction, this memoir was intended as a hardcover book. It remains a book, of course, although you are reading it in a radically different format. I’m still fine-tuning various parts, especially illustrations and options for readers such as the Comments button, which is now enabled. I look forward to hearing from you.
I hope the chapter titles will amuse and intrigue you. Have you guessed that I like a punchy title? You can’t judge this book by its cover, since there isn’t one, but I hope that readers, those present and those yet to come, will judge it favorably by its unfolding chapters.
Beyond that…May I tempt you with an hors d’oeuvre? After Did You Sleep With the Models? I plan to post another book. That one, also completed during the pandemic, is similar (e.g., it has a celebrity conga line and a villain list) but also quite different and again with what I’m told is a fetching title, one word of which is “Sodom.” I can’t reveal more at this point, but if Sodom comes, can Gomorrah be far behind? One editor called it “the best title I’ve seen all year” before deeming the manuscript too hot to handle. I trust you won’t have the same concerns.
Cheers,
Sam
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: DID YOU SLEEP WITH THE MODELS?
Chapter One — Thank You for Dropping Dead
Chapter Two — A Famous Artist Sets My Story in Motion
Chapter Three — Tu che le vanità
BONUS NUMBER 1 — Al Parker Interview, Mandate October 1984
Chapter Four — Conniptions
A LETTER TO SUBSCRIBERS
Chapter Five — All Right, Mr. Mavety, I'm Ready for My Close-up
BONUS NUMBER 2 — A Snake in the Collards
Chapter Six — Arsenic and Old Fakes
Chapter Seven — Limited Warfare
BONUS NUMBER 3 — Mae West, the Patron Saint of Gays
Chapter Eight — Putting It Together
Chapter Nine — Mid-Century Modernismo; or, How to Succeed in Publishing Without Really Decorating
BONUS NUMBER 4 — Someone’s in the Kitchen with Bette
Chapter Ten — Kristen Bjorn on Both Sides of the Camera
BONUS NUMBER 5 — The Happiest Gay Couple in America
Chapter Eleven — Dirty Words
BONUS NUMBER 6 — How to Be Joan Fontaine
Chapter Twelve — Diplomacy; or, How to Say Nasty Things in the Nicest Way
BONUS NUMBER 7 — Gloria Swanson, Celeste Holm, Vanity Fair, and Why I Was Dropped from the Magazine
SECOND LETTER TO SUBSCRIBERS — Beginning Friday, March 17, There Will Be a Small Monthly Fee
Chapter Thirteen — Al Parker, Maybe the Biggest Star of All
BONUS NUMBER 8 — The Al Parker Fan Club
BONUS NUMBER 9 — Remembering Tennessee Williams
Chapter Fourteen — Mickey Squires, The Nicest Naked Man in the Business
Chapter Fifteen — The Street of Boys
BONUS NUMBER 10 — On Palm Sunday, Sister Missionary Position Explains It All for You
Chapter Sixteen — ICONS: Richard Locke, Casey Donovan, Dick Fisk, Kurt Marshall, Jack Wrangler
BONUS NUMBER 11 — Diva Portraits Lead the Mandate Easter Parade
Chapter Seventeen — Springtime for Rutledge
BONUS NUMBER 12 — A Fan Remembers Natalie Wood
Chapter Eighteen, Part One— Writers, and What They Wrote
Chapter Eighteen, Part Two — How Dare You Call Me a Philatelist!
BONUS NUMBER 13 — “Ok Troop, Turn Your Head and Cough”
Chapter Eighteen, Part Three — A Day at the Opera, “Tales of the City,” Homo Verse, and The Men That Got Away
BONUS NUMBER 14 — Let There Be …Tiffany!
Chapter Nineteen — Here a Bulge, There a Bulge, Everywhere a Bulge Bulge
BONUS NUMBER 15 — The Town Queer
Chapter Twenty — Who’s That Lady? That’s No Lady, That’s Albert Nobbs
Chapter Twenty-one — How We Got That Model: Mandate Attends a Photo Shoot
BONUS NUMBER 16 — Sal Mineo
BONUS NUMBER 17 — Gay Pride à la Française
Chapter Twenty-two — Don’t Put the Blame on Mame
BONUS NUMBER 18 — Midnight in the Garden of Literary Agents
Chapter Twenty-three — Mr. President, Miss Taylor, Mr. Thomson, Our Miss Arden, and Fellini With a Laptop
BONUS NUMBER 19 — Editors as Heroes and Villains
Chapter Twenty-four — Pauline Kael Talks About Gay Men
BONUS NUMBER 20 — Big Enough to Have His Own Zip Code
BONUS NUMBER 21 — The Bonfire of the Book Reviewers’ Vanities
BONUS NUMBER 22 — Florence King, Failed Southern Lady and World’s Wittiest Bisexual Republican
Chapter Twenty-five — Who’s Afraid of Robert Mapplethorpe?
Chapter Twenty-six — Yes, Virginia, There Really Is a George Mavety
Chapter Twenty-seven — Maria Callas, Meet Mamie Van Doren
BONUS NUMBER 23 — Comme des Garçons
Chapter Twenty-eight — Tom of Finland
BONUS NUMBER 24 — The View from the Rear…and from the Opposite Side
Chapter Twenty-nine — Darkness Visible
BONUS NUMBER 25 — Gilded Wings Across the Final Frontier
Chapter Thirty — Confinement
BONUS NUMBER 26 — “Lifeguards,” Fiction by Leigh W. Rutledge
BONUS NUMBER 27 — Marble Musclemen
Chapter Thirty-one — Harvey Fierstein on Broadway
BONUS NUMBER 28 — He Grows Hair in Places Where Men Like to Find It
Chapter Thirty-two — Shots Are Fired, But the Caravan Moves On
BONUS NUMBER 29 — News Flash: The Night Mickey Squires and Bruno Put on a Very Private Show…for a Horny Billionaire
Chapter Thirty-three, Part One — We’re Going, and We’re Gonna Have a Happy Time
BONUS NUMBER 30 — How to Sell Your Assets
SNEAK PEEK NO. 1 — Beautiful Downtown Sodom! Coming Soon on Substack
BONUS NUMBER 31 — E.M. Forster
Chapter Thirty-three, Part Two — Three Continents for the Price of One
SNEAK PEEK NO. 2 — Beautiful Downtown Sodom! Coming Soon on Substack
Chapter Thirty-four — Champions
BONUS NUMBER 32, Part One — The Way They Were
BONUS NUMBER 32, Part Two — The Way They Were
Chapter Thirty-five — An Afternoon with Maureen Stapleton
BONUS NUMBER 33 — Methought I was enamoured of an Ass (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV, scene I)
Chapter Thirty-six — All This, and Fire Island Too
SNEAK PEEK NO 3 — Beautiful Downtown Sodom! Coming in January 2024
Chapter Thirty-seven — USA Confidential
BONUS NUMBER 34 — Lorenzo the Magnificent
Chapter Thirty-eight — Is There Life After California?
Chapter Thirty-nine — What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Chapter Forty — In New Orleans, the Streets Are Paved in Jazz
BONUS NUMBER 34 — Jan Morris: “I was three or four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body.”
BONUS NUMBER 36 — It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Halloween
Chapter Forty-one — Europe on Five Men a Day
SNEAK PEEK NUMBER 4 — Beautiful Downtown Sodom! Coming in January 2024
Chapter Forty-two — In Boston, Please Remain Fully Clothed While Dancing…and Toronto Does Not Like the Word “Suck”
BONUS NUMBER 37 — Halloween
Chapter Forty-three, Part One — “You Stay Long in Greece?”
BONUS NUMBER 38 — Indiana Boner
Chapter Forty-three, Part Two — The Actress Wasn’t at Home
BONUS NUMBER 39 — Michael Caine Talk About Straight Actors Playing Gay Characters
Chapter Forty-four — The House of the Setting Sun
SNEAK PEEK NUMBER 5 — Beautiful Downtown Sodom! Coming in January 2024
BONUS NUMBER 40 — Mike Johnson, Second in Line for the U.S. Presidency, is a… (fill in the blank)
Chapter Forty-five — Bosom Buddies
BONUS NUMBER 41 — Maria Callas at 100
BONUS NUMBER 42 — 201 Things Every Gay Man Should Know About Sex
AN IMPORTANT LETTER TO SUBSCRIBERS — December 1, 2023
Chapter Forty-six — The Passé Recaptured
BONUS NUMBER 42 — The Next 50 Things Every Gay Man Should Know About Sex
BONUS NUMBER 44 — Have Yourself a MAGA Little Christmas
BONUS NUMBER 45 — And Another 50 Things Every Gay Man Should Know About Sex
BONUS NUMBER 46 — The Final 50 Things Every Gay Man Should Know About Sex
BONUS NUMBER 47 — The Mysterious Case of the Lost-and-Found Gay Archive
SNEAK PEEK NUMBER 7 — Beautiful Downtown Sodom! Coming in January 2024
BONUS NUMBER 48 — At Christmas
BONUS NUMBER 49 — At the Ballet! A Happy Way to End the Year
Acknowledgments