One of my goals as editor-in-chief was to rebrand Modernismo's gay magazines. I hoped that readers would soon look upon us as the MGM or Paramount of gay erotic journalism and not a low-rent Poverty Row outfit like Republic Pictures. I use this Hollywood analogy because publishing -- whether it’s books, newspapers, or magazines rolling off the press -- chimes in many ways with picture making. The publishing industry, centered in New York, is a form of show business: widely considered glamorous, especially by outsiders; you're only as good as your latest sales; and don't call us, sweetheart, we'll call you. Nor is the casting couch an unknown item of furniture on either coast. Regular auditions are held for a new face in town. You won't read it in the Times, but these parallels include mainstream genres as well as erotica.
George Mavety, had he come along a few decades earlier, could have run a movie studio and raked in the dough. My colleagues and I joked that he was our Harry Cohn, a reference to the notorious head of Columbia Pictures from the thirties to the fifties. Like studio moguls of legend, George was a vulgarian with a patina of class who parlayed minimum cash into millions and who financed creativity though devoid of it himself. He was ruthless but sentimental; smart but not sensitive. He possessed oily charm that vanished under stress; suspected that employees and distributors were out to cheat him; and deserved admiration despite his venality. He chased women of dubious repute and was rumored to have a nodding acquaintance with certain families. I soon learned to read his mood swings and unpredictability, which were childish and of limited duration.
Sometimes I despised him, I often pitied him, and on occasion, glimpsing his vulnerability, I liked him. Once, in a moment of candor, he confessed that he envied the sexual success of his gay staff members. I said, "George, you're still young (he was not yet fifty), you have a good personality when you let it show -- it's certainly not too late. And by the way, you have a wife and -- correct me if I'm wrong -- a girlfriend or two."
He laughed, and I couldn't resist a bit of ribbing. "That wasn't your sister, was it, hanging on your arm last week?"
"Ah, Mr. Staggs, you are a veddy naughty young man." Lowering his voice as though offering a bribe in a back alley, he said, "We like to fuck but I don't want to live with her."
I often puzzled, back then and even now, over John Devere's sibylline remark: "There's a lot that's gay in George Mavety, and I don't want to be here when it comes out." Whatever he meant, I saw no evidence to back it.
I must have said in an interview at the time that I intended to turn Mandate, our flagship publication, into the gay equivalent of Playboy, for that statement turns up online. My impossible dream was of course naive, for Hugh Hefner poured mega money into his pages, while my budget remained microscopic. Class or ass, we continued as X-rated, unlike Playboy, whose big-name editorial content had, by the eighties, brought a measure of respectability. It should surprise no one that increased tolerance for Playboy by media and public, but not for gay publications, pointed to society's deep-seated homophobia. Widespread changes in recent decades notwithstanding, general aversion to gay erotica remains in place.
I inherited, as part of my team, two associate editors and two art directors. I will refer to the art directors by their first names, Clif and Tony, for they worked and thought as a package, like Abbott and Costello and Martin and Lewis. The art department was their bailiwick. There they selected, from twenty, thirty, fifty or more photos submitted by a given photographer, the five, six, or more shots of a model for a particular layout. Next, they sized these pictures, measured them, and wrote down exact specifications for the printer. Then, depending on photo quality, color, lighting, backgrounds, and the erotic potential of the model, they chose cover shots and centerfolds vs. shorter spreads -- for instance, black and white rather than blazing color -- for placement toward the back pages of an issue.
Many readers imagined that every model pictured in the magazines came to our offices to be photographed, then stripped and posed while we ogled and clapped and then, to show his gratitude for having been chosen, indulged sexual fantasies for us, the insatiable staff. Not the case. The majority of these photo shoots took place far from our New York offices, either in such famous California studios as Colt, Falcon, Zeus, or else at venues around the country and abroad where contributors lived. From time to time, however, one of us would attend a shoot in New York and perhaps take the model out on the town for dinner and an evening's entertainment.
Those fantasies on the part of readers explain the title of this memoir.
In those years before digital photography, every day's mail brought to my office packages of slides, transparencies, and prints from our regular photographers, along with submissions from freelancers and would-be models. Occasionally one of these men would be a knock-out. More often, unfortunately, the prospective model had been snapped by a lover or a trick in front of a TV in a location such as Motel 6, a corporate name to match his endowment.
More on the knock-outs in later chapters.
Clif and Tony were rather childlike in their simplicity, and like chattering schoolboys they rarely ran out of talk -- in their case wisecracks, bitchy remarks that were often funny and sometimes cruel, and shouts of joy when a favorite teen hit came on the radio near their work tables.
They differed in disposition, for Tony was congenial, fair-minded, and pleasant company, especially when away from Clif. Who, by contrast, had a waspish temperament and tended toward arrogance and high-handedness. Both were in their late twenties. They were self-described disco queens, using the title of a hit song of the period. The term "disco queen" also described superstars such as Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Diana Ross, and Thelma Houston, whose music, then and now, is synonymous with the disco phenomenon. Beginning in mid-week, Clif and Tony began making plans for Saturday night at the Saint, or Limelight, or whatever the latest hot spot. Then, from Monday to Wednesday, they rehashed the previous
Saturday night's hilarity and recited names of their pals on the dance floor. Their gossip and repartee reminded me of the characters in George Cukor's 1939 film, The Women. (A third art director, sour and unpleasant and whose work was mediocre, was soon deemed expendable. Others came and went like the flipping of calendar pages.)
Personal liabilities notwithstanding, Clif and Tony knew their craft and we eventually learned to work together in spite of our differences. I respected their experience in art direction, and seldom overruled their decisions on which models to use in the magazines or how to show them to best advantage.
Joe Smenyak, associate editor of Mandate when I arrived and then editor of Honcho for a short time, reminded me of relentless missionaries in Hollywood films, for instance Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen or Walter Huston in Rain. Zealous in his
propagation of leather, he talked of establishing a gay country complete with lavender flag, where all would be brothers -- even the lesbians, he added incongruously -- and the folk costume would presumably comprise motorcycle jackets, torn Levi’s, cock rings, and rear-pocket hankies. I never heard him say where this lavender Liberia might be founded, though Fire Island was probably as distant as our George Washington wished to go. But how would Joe endure his new country, I wondered, since he complained that he didn’t like "working with queens." Eventually I had to dismiss him, because his evangelistic efforts -- lengthy phone calls to organizations such as the Diaper Pail Fraternity, inordinate time spent tracking the latest Mr. Leather Contest, careless writing, and meandering polemics about leather liberation in Honcho's pages -- had superceded whatever editorial acumen he once had.
The other associate editor was Freeman Gunter, whose status was ambiguous when I arrived at the magazines. He had recently been fired -- or almost. For several years, Freeman was Modernismo's advertising director. Although George relieved him of his duties around the time of my arrival at the company, he was not exactly made redundant. Ghostlike, he lingered as a shadow in the meager light of George's charity. Freeman now had no office, only a forlorn desk in the hallway where he sat, disconsolate, like Little Jack Horner. George regularly came by to taunt him like a tomcat toying with a masochistic mouse.
Though his ad sales had remained unimpressive, Freeman was the humiliated victim of a dirty trick played by a master of low cunning, a vicious article named Don Beavers, the one colleague at Modernismo whose ways were disagreeable to me as no one else’s were -- an opportunist from the back streets of Los Angeles who schemed to make the editorial department ancillary to his advertising plans. If George, at his most Dickensian, was a mix of Mr. McCawber, Ebenezer Scrooge, Fagin, and Aunt Betsy Trotwood, Beavers was Uriah Heep: oily and oozing faux humility. Uninformed and nonlinear in his thinking, in his talk, and in his work, he was less articulate than the likes of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Beavers had convinced George -- easily convincible, as we've seen -- that he could do as much for the company as a top-flight ad firm on Madison Avenue. He was passionate about bartenders and deejays, and a master of the malapropism: someone told a funny "antidote"....in the dead body, "metamorphosis" had set in..."use your own discrepancy."
I wondered why Freeman didn’t look for other employment. Instead he clung to Modernismo like a barnacle to a moving ship. I agreed to give him an editorial job, and he rose from disgrace to become a staff writer whose wit and irony could brighten a hopeless day. His interview/profiles of Peggy Lee, Mamie Van Doren, Leontyne Price, Patti Page, and many other once and future divas helped increase Mandate’s circulation. He also wrote fiction and articles on various subjects.
Our packaging of seductive men, stories, and features on subjects of interest to gay men led to success. For many gay men like to read, though I knew that they bought the magazines to satisfy cravings not definable as literary. One reader told me in a letter --- and I’m sure it applied to others -- that when his passion was spent, he read every article. Leaving nothing to the imagination, he called it "my way of learning about gay life with cum on my fingers."
Again in the devious style of Uriah Heep, Beavers persuaded George to bring in a creative director. This title must have resounded in George's ear like the chimes of Big Ben. The fact that Clif and Tony, Freeman, Joe Smenyak, and I so far had a fractious working relationship made George nervous. Beavers, who wished to become George's Number One, stoked his anxieties. A creative director! "Ah yes, Mr. Beavers, a brilliant suggestion. Whom do you envision in this veddy important capacity?"
An instance of Clif and me with daggers drawn illustrates the sparring relationship I referred to. From the start, he and I irritated each other. I don't know what he mistrusted in me, but from my point of view his icy blue eyes, pale Sherwin Williams skin, oval face and the slightly recessive chin of a Vladimir Putin, along with tactless remarks and lack of office decorum -- these suggested a serpent in Perry Ellis casuals.
I don't recall the fuse of our first volcanic blow-up, but I do remember that it took place around ten o'clock one morning. Those horrendous profanities clang in my ear even now: "Eat shit, Sam!" he yelled.
"Get the fuck out of my office and don't come back, you son-of-a-bitch!"
I know it was early in the day because just then Freeman arrived for work, and as Clif stormed out Freeman popped his head in the door and queried, like a character in a Noël Coward comedy, "Did I hear an unusual menu suggestion?”
I'm sure I fumed a bit despite laughing at Freeman's quip. Although Clif had indeed gotten the fuck out and was fuming in the art department, I remember my own silly retort in a British accent: "Thanks awfully, Clif old chap, but I had a bit of chocolate at the pictures."
Still on script, Freeman muttered a recent headline from the Post: "Another scissor killing at the Saint Moritz."
Later that day, Clif returned and, with a slight smile, said, "I wish to apologize."
"So do I." We shook hands. I added, "It was early in the day and we hadn't had coffee. Maybe we can be friends?"
Years later, when Clif left us to go to California, we exchanged a warm hug along with wishes for health and happiness. After his departure Tony became executive art director. Soon the photo layouts lost their element of surprise. Each one began to resemble the previous one, and the one after that. I thought of it as monkey-see, monkey-do art direction. By then, however, I was updating my own resumé.
Clif and I disagreed periodically, although without the screaming invective of that A.M. encounter. I also fought the occasional battle with other colleagues. Now, looking back across the years, if I could see Clif, Tony, George, Freeman, or anyone else from Modernismo Publications, I would kiss them on both cheeks.
To George's question, "Whom do you envision for the veddy important position of creative director?" Beavers answered, "John C." (I abbreviate his surname to spare the gentleman embarrassment.) This was a Beavers accomplice from California whose resumé included work at In Touch, Blueboy, and Hustler. Beavers, a Nebraskan before washing up in L.A., apparently felt threatened by New Yorkers. Like others of his ilk, he foolishly considered anyone east of Omaha a snob, a phony, a pseudo-intellectual. John C. represented no threat. He would also serve a useful Beavers purpose: an easily manipulated tool to overrule everyone but George himself.
George was malleable, usually to the wrong hands. He also enjoyed drama, often created it himself out of boredom or else to prove that he pulled the strings of his puppets. I soon learned that a reasonable argument -- a rarity in his own brain -- and well-constructed sentences would sway George to my way of thinking. These worked better than outrage, which I often felt but seldom expressed.
One Monday morning in February 1982, there stood the creative director. Who didn't seem especially creative. We were stunned -- we, meaning Clif and Tony, Freeman, Joe Smenyak, and I. What could we do? We huddled and considered resigning en masse. We mistrusted the intruder. Unlike my sullen colleagues, however, I welcomed him with a cordial smile. "We're happy to have you aboard," I said. And why the hell not, I thought, since I was planning to abandon ship in a week or two.
His mistake was to believe me. In a cutthroat environment, you learn to cut throats. Meanwhile, whispered conferences in my office, cloak and dagger powwows in the art department...It was apparent from the newcomer’s blithe attitude that he didn't understand New York snobs, phonies, and pseudo-intellectuals like us -- meaning, the Borgias of gay office politics. It was also obvious that he had not bothered to familiarize himself with the magazines. He was a tugboat puller suddenly promoted to captain— of the Titanic.
Mr. C. was probably innocent of the plots and schemes we accused him of. In retrospect, it's clear that for him to work at Modernismo was an advance, and one engineered by Beavers. He believed, naively, that his ill-defined job description would be as pleasant as a long afternoon under the palm trees in laid-back L.A. He brought nothing new to his newly created job. His lack of direction, and of savoir-faire, made him vulnerable. He galvanized the pack of us, who previously were snapping and biting at one another. Now we turned on him.
An urgent closed-door meeting in George's office. "He will ruin your magazines, for we cannot work with him." This was the message we hammered until George grasped the danger. The meeting was short; George easily convinced; the five of us marched out as allies, and our nemesis was summoned. The coup succeeded. This time, George listened to wise counsel. Exit John C.
Reluctant as ever to give someone the boot, George suffered his usual qualms. A few days later he told me to write a letter to our former creative director inviting him to contribute articles to the magazines. I phrased the letter with cool cordiality. He returned it to me with "No thanks" scrawled across the page. His patron and crony, Don Beavers, was thwarted and furious. Sputter and rage as he might, he was impotent to impose his third-rate notions on us. He had lost his ill-advised campaign, though he was too arrogant to acknowledge defeat.
From that day forward, whatever fisticuffs took place among ourselves -- Clif and Tony, Freeman, and I, along with editors and art directors yet to come -- we maintained a united front. Squabbles, when they happened, were muffled behind closed doors. Yelling and intrigues, upheavals, the fear that one's job was under threat -- such instability receded, and our eleventh floor became a calmer place, though never a haven of brotherly love.
Fast forward to the present: John C.’s curriculum vitae contains no mention of his brief Modernismo sojourn. As for my venomous profile of Don Beavers, it reflects long ago conflicts. Looking today at some of his advertising pages, especially those designed by Clif in Mandate, I confess that I find much to admire.