BONUS NUMBER 98: CAN YOU TAKE DICK...tation?
(Did You Sleep With the Models?)
A few days ago I revisited some of my early posts on Did You Sleep With the Models? It was not quite two years ago that the first one went up: on December 22, 2022, with a degree of uncertainty, I posted the “Introduction.”
That “degree of uncertainty” is an understatement. Make it 99 degrees out of 100. I had never blogged; I was then, and still am, a stranger to social media; and I didn’t know how to scan, meaning how to transfer layouts and feature articles from Mandate, Honcho, and Playguy to the computer screen.
Lucky me; I had Ron Pyatt by my side. He has been my IT instructor and computer go-to for a number of years, and he assured me that I could master the subtleties of Substack. With his help (and his occasional raised eyebrow meaning “I can’t believe you asked such a question!”), I’m still at it. I haven’t missed a week, and early on I posted bonus chapters, and extras, in addition to those regular weekly chapters from the book.
The book? Yes, during the pandemic I wrote Did You Sleep With the Models? as a book intended for traditional hardcover publication. My previous editors — at St. Martin’s Press and at Kensington Books — rejected the manuscript, but a small publishing company gave the green light. Soon I found out that I was dealing with an inept assembly line of editors who would have trashed my copy and censored most of the illustrations I proposed. I flashed a red light to their green one, and the manuscript lay idle for a year or so, until…
Substack has been a happy experience, one reason being that for my work I’m art director as well as author — a dual role never allowed in traditional book publishing. Furthermore, any mistakes are mine and not inserted by an overworked, or less than brilliant, editor, copy editor, office intern, or printer. Early on I asked readers to alert me to typos, factual errors, and anything else that might need correction. That request still stands.
I now have hundreds more subscribers than I imagined at the outset. Many of these have joined during the past year, and for that reason it’s possible that they haven’t gone back to December 22, 2022 — the Introduction — nor to the many chapters that chronicled my years as editor-in-chief of those legendary magazines. If you’re new to Did You Sleep With the Models? and missed out on the early days, you might enjoy the drama — make that the melodrama — of my debut at the magazines. The cast of characters is unlike any you’ll find at the movies, on Tik Tok, Instagram, Bluesky…or Grindr, Squirt, and the other hook-up apps. Spicing up the narrative chapters, of course, are acres of male flesh.
As I revisited those early Substacks, I realized that in one instance I shortchanged readers. It was the post of March 3, 2023, titled “Dirty Words,” in which I discussed such terms as “pornography” vs. “triple X,” and the many four-letter words like “fuck” that not so long ago were forbidden in print except in the most underground publications.
I ended the discussion with this paragraph: “In editing the magazines, my intention was bifocal: four-letter words for fiction, standard English for interviews, feature articles, reviews of books, films, CDs, and videos. In photo layouts, let dick, balls, and ass speak for themselves.”
From there I segued to an explanation of why our photo layouts, like those in most magazines, required model copy: “For design purposes, these layouts need a certain amount of writing on the page. Typically, the layout has a title and at least a few words somewhere on the image. I’m looking right now at a spread titled “DICKtation” in the November 1985 issue of Mandate. The model, photographed by one of our regulars who used the name Usher, is first seen in business attire: gray herringbone sports jacket, gray trousers, pale gray shirt and matching tie. The model has blue eyes, curly reddish-blond hair and a darker moustache.
Under the title is this model copy intro: “ ‘ Mrs. Shellnut, come into my office!’ the boss yelled at 8:45 Monday morning. But the secretary was out; she had arranged for a temp to fill in for her today. The temp wasn’t what the boss expected — the temp was me, and I’m 6’ 2”, 190 lbs., 27 years old, hot, hung, hairy, and type 69 words per minute.”
You see where it’s headed. This is a better example of model copy than others I might quote. It’s a genre that is camp adjacent — meaning coy and self-conscious; in other words, self-parody. I don’t recall who wrote this, though in retrospect I wish I had required of myself and other editors a similar strong story line for all model copy.
[PS on November 17, 2024: Thinking back, I’m almost certain that associate editor George De Stefano gets the credit.]
Pages two and three: a centerfold, with small inset photo of the model in upper left, still dressed for business but — he is exposing his tumescence! In the centerfold, he has removed his trousers but kept on his shirt and tie. What sort of office is this, anyway? Quick, let’s find out.
“A couple of phone calls interrupted; I sat patiently while the boss took care of his wheeling and dealing. Calls from the Coast; somebody lost a shipment of goods; everything fucked up. The boss needed a cup of coffee, so I made him one. Then I rubbed his shoulders to release his tension. Pretty soon, the boss got my message. I wanted him to give me some dicktation.”
On the following pages, more insets — he has changed into tight black jeans and pulled them below the waist. Then another centerfold and a small paragraph at top right: “He gave me dicktation for an hour. He fucked my mouth, beat my face with his dick, rammed his hot fuck stick down my throat, and made me take his load three times. And he called me back into his office several times during the day. By the time five o’clock came, I was exhausted. It had been a very hard day — for me and the boss. And you know what? He liked me so much, he fired Mrs. Shellnut the next day, and made me his personal secretary. Now I take dicktation all day long, five days a week, and often on weekends.”
The final centerfold shows our hardworking temp in a chair, naked, and making eye contact with the spectator. Did those who lingered over these pages bother perusing the model copy? Probably not, but without it the layout would have looked stark, as in stark naked; with it, graphically nude. The eye finds it boring, and so does the mind, to see photos slapped down on a page minus some typographical element to balance the composition.
But, you may ask, how about that final centerfold? I suppose the art director omitted model copy there for the sake of contrast.
Owing to space limitations on Substack in 2023, I didn’t reproduce the entire layout. Here it is at last, along with our model on the cover.
Did you read the model copy, or were you taking dicktation?
