The other day, a reader asked how I decide which models to feature on Did You Sleep With the Models? His follow-up question was, “Do you use the same criteria now as you did when editing Mandate, Honcho, and Playguy?”
The answer to the second question is, “Probably, up to a point, although in many cases I don’t actually recall how I made choices at the magazines.” I’m sure personal taste always enters into the selection, although I remind myself now, as I did then, that pleasing an audience requires variety and diversity. As editor-in-chief, I was always on a seesaw; this young blond might have a thousand readers salivating — and another thousand saying “Yuck.” The same with a bodybuilder, a man with fashion model looks, a black, a Latino, an Asian, or a Caucasian. It’s a tribute to our readers that compliments and raves far exceeded the occasional gripe.
I do remember my reaction to Justin Cade (see Bonus Number 67, posted on April 10, 2024) as if it were yesterday (and I wish it were!). I asked Dennis Forbes, who photographed him, whether he might introduce us next time I was in San Francisco. To my sorrow, schedules didn’t coincide.
Like countless others, I swooned over Lorenzo the Magnificent (Bonus Number 34, September 27, 2023). After his appearence in Mandate and Honcho, we ran into each other several times here and there, and almost had a tête-à-tête after I left the magazines. Lorenzo, if you’re reading this — it’s not too late!
Another model whose pictures remain alluring is the man in “Big Enough to Have His Own Zip Code” (Bonus Number 20, June 19, 2023).
I sometimes find that I’ve overlooked a stunner while searching the magazines for layouts to post on Substack. Today’s model, Tony Bronte, is one example. A few days ago I flipped through the January 1983 issue of Mandate to check on a nonfiction article that’s coming up soon. Pow! I saw this Zeus Studio layout and said to myself, “How did I bypass him?”
For a moment, that model copy titled “Winter Heat” made me hesitate…It’s July, after all. On the other hand, no one pays attention to model copy anyway, not when it’s in competition with male flesh. As I explained in an earlier post, model copy is a design feature to keep the page from looking stark and unfinished, as if it were slapped down like pizza on a take-out counter.
I confess, also, that the first photo is unfortunate: muscles, good definition, but the endowment leaves an inch or two to be desired. Turning the pages, however, I realized that he’s a grower, not a shower. By the second centerfold, he’s almost fully grown.
A NOTE TO READERS re: MANDATE, HONCHO, PLAYGUY, and Beyond
Matthew Rettenmund came to the magazines ten years after I left. We became acquainted only a few years ago, and we have stayed in touch since then. You might want to check out Matthew’s latest article in Esquire, published online on July 16. (It’s too long, he tells me, for the print edition, and you’ll understand when you see how vast and detailed it is.) You’ll find it at esquire.com; the title is “Making History One Dick at a Time: The Rise and Fall of a Gay Porn Empire.”
It’s based on extensive interviews that Matthew conducted with a number of employees of George Mavety’s magazines, including Torso, Inches, and such hetero publications as Juggs and Leg Show.
Matthew, as chronicler, of course recorded what he was told. I must correct, however, a couple of errors made by those interviewed and also by Esquire. Freeman Gunter, for instance, is identified as “editor-in-chief 1975-1986.” Before my tenure as editor-in-chief from 1982 to 1986, he was advertising manager, and during my years at the magazine he was one of several associate editors. Only after my departure in 1986 did he become editor-in-chief for a short time.
Never one for sticking to the truth, Freeman Gunter states the following: “My lover David had AIDS, and George [Mavety] was afraid I would get it and he would have to carry me to save face in the gay community. He couldn’t just kick me to the curb, so he fired me on some pretence.” As I pointed out in an early chapter of Did You Sleep With the Models?, when I arrived at the magazines Freeman had been replaced as advertising manager but kept on owing to George Mavety’s odd reluctance to fire anyone. Freeman sat at a forlorn desk in a dark hallway with no job title and no duties, a ne’er-do-well still on the payroll until I agreed to take him on as associate editor.
So the bullshit about George’s getting rid of him on “some pretense” is a blatant lie. Freeman dared to attack George verbally over the amount of his annual raise, and that’s what led to his firing.
His own devotion to David, his lover, struck me as questionable owing to something he said when David was in the throes of AIDS. In 1987, when I learned that David was ill, I sent Freeman a check for $100 with this message: “I am so sorry to hear the news. Please use this for something that David might enjoy.”
We had not parted on especially good terms, so I was surprised that Freeman phoned to thank me. His gratitude, however, was double-edged. Using a movie camp line that he and I had often joked about in the years when we were colleagues — Zsa Zsa Gabor in Moulin Rouge (1952) at the deathbed of Toulouse-Lautrec: “Ve heard you vere dying and ve came to say goodbye.” Alas, it was no longer funny, certainly not in this context. I considered it disrespectful to David and to others who suffered so terribly. I wished Freeman and and David well and ended the call as quickly as possible.
Esquire, I see, is still as closety as ever: dick photos from the gay magazines used in the article are covered by produce! This is as vieux chapeau as homosexuals on early television interviewed behind potted palms. I’m surprised they didn’t title the piece “Making History One Phallus At a Time.”
Who do the editors think they’re fooling? This magazine always seemed unsure whether it was aimed at one hundred percent straight men, or winking at the wavering. There was always a gay subtext. I hadn’t seen it for a long time, neither print nor digital, until Matthew’s article came out. I was surprised that in 2024 the magazine would attempt a touristy account of an important segment of gay history
as if it were peering through the bars of a cage at those queer exotic creatures on exhibit. (“Some of them do have white tails, you know.”)
Fact checkers from Esquire contacted me regarding several points about my tenure at the magazines, but managed not to get it quite right after all.
Matthew, of course, is not to blame. Given the state of present-day media, and those who produce and edit it, one is lucky if one’s copy survives only slightly mangled.