CHAPTER SIX -- ARSENIC AND OLD FAKES
(Did You Sleep With the Models?)
Be careful whom you reject and how you do it. It can prove dangerous, especially in the high-octane culture of gay publishing and filmmaking where looks are crucial in career advancment, in getting laid, in finding affection or something that resembles love, and in being accepted by the tribe. After my unnerving nighttime visitor back in Chapter One, I heard stories from colleagues at other publications about stalkers, paranoics, and angry supplicants who threatened and harangued.
The editor of a West Coast gay monthly told of a man in high dudgeon who contacted him with the outrageous claim that the magazine had published his photos without permission, and demanding that they remove their hidden cameras from his bedroom and shower. After the phone calls, he showed up one afternoon in a twitching rage -- and of course bore no resemblance to the model he claimed to be. "He looked like Freddy Krueger, not Freddie Mercury," sniffed my colleague. "We called the police."
After running a Honcho story set in the Mineshaft, I received a phone call from an outraged bartender in that establishment. His beef: "You didn't use my name in the story, and I saw everything that went on!"
How do you counter such overstuffed naivté? I explained that the story he had read was just that: a story, fiction. He seemed nonplussed by anything so rational. I added that for legal reasons no writer, and no publication, would use the name of a living person in a fictional context without a compelling reason, and then only with written permission. Finally he simmered down, and mumbled that it was a hot story even if we didn't give him credit. I thanked him for his call as I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling.
I sometimes received letters from writers claiming that we had stolen their ideas or their plot line in a story we published. I responded that, given the narrow range of possibilities for erotic fiction, overlap was inevitable in plots and settings. I might have added that copyright protection rarely extends to ideas and plots.
More common, and more wearing on the nerves than escapees from a Stephen King tale, are the outright pests. This species, also somewhat unhinged, operates on the outermost boundaries of reality. My most flamboyant example of the genre is a man I call the Psycho Scribbler. I first encountered his unbalanced aspirations during my second month as editor-in-chief.
Puzzled by a stern letter from a lawyer in London to my predecessor, Joe Arsenault, I asked John Devere what he knew about the case. John, founding editor of the magazines, still popped in once or twice a week as consultant, and perhaps as George's spy as well. I enjoyed these visits, for John bubbled with energy leavened with a touch of malice. When I say that he popped in, there was indeed a Mary Poppins feel to his sudden apparitions — even without an umbrella. He would appear at my office door, peering in, a smile of cunning mischief on his merry face, and always the melodious greeting of "Hello, hello!" He would roll his eyes like a vaudeville entertainer, plop into a seat, and deliver some morsel of gossip or scandal in a stage whisper. John's visits would attract various colleagues, and our hectic workday would segue to a gabfest.
A brief digression: In 2020, when I began writing Did You Sleep With the Models?, I located Joe Arsenault, whose time at the magazines overlapped mine by a couple of months. We knew each other slightly, but I remember him as polite, soft-spoken, and droll. Almost four decades later, he proved his generosity by supplying photographs and information that otherwise would have gone begging. We stayed in touch until shortly before his death in 2021.
This is what Joe told me about the photo above: “It was shot in Brooklyn in 1978. Alain Resnais was in New York promoting Mon Oncle d’Amérique (My American Uncle) at the New York Film Festival. Jürgen Vollmer, a Mandate contributor, was Resnais’ still photographer and he arranged for him to meet John and me. I remember so vividly that day when I chatted not only with Resnais but with his wife, Florence Malraux, the daughter of André Malraux, acclaimed novelist and also Minister of Culture under President de Gaulle from 1958 to 1969.”
Joe, who was French Canadian, would have spoken with them in French and John was also fluent in the language. I have tried to locate Jürgen Vollmer, whom I met several times when I was editor of the magazines. So far I have been unsuccessful. If anyone reading this has contact information, please let me know.
Back to the London lawyer's letter. John explained that a year or so earlier a free lancer had submitted what purported to be a one-on-one interview with the British actor Alan Bates. Upon publication, it turned out that the spurious interview was just that -- made up. The actor's lawyer wrote to Modernismo informing of the falsity of this feature, and warning of legal action against the writer and against Modernismo in the event of further misinformation about his client.
The purveyor of this fictitious interview, it turned out, was adept at such misrepresentation; he made it his unscrupulous stock-in-trade. He tricked the editor of After Dark, and other editors, with "interviews" of big name stars that took place only on his typewriter. His celebrity victims, if living, were often British or French. These, he guessed, were far enough distant to ignore his prevarications. Indeed, he often got away with it. The Redgraves had more pressing business than pursuit of a small time charlatan; so did the likes of Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo.
As for his American targets, they were safely dead and buried before he interviewed them. In monotonous prose he intimated that each dying celebrity summoned him to the bedside to gasp out startling revelations about their sex lives. Leading candidates for these breathtaking disclosures were of course actors long reputed to be gay but not officially out. These men supposedly flung open the closet door for this necrophiliac journalist mere moments before sinking into the grave.
Learning from John Devere the shady reputation of this mountebank, I wrote him a frank letter. For, in the meantime, under a slightly different name, he had submitted other articles for my consideration. But he was a transparent crook. All of his pen names resembled each other; some were anagrams of his real name. Besides that, the torpor of his writing never varied. He had a style, but a deadly one. He was the George Santos/ “Kitara Ravache” of 1982.
Rejecting his latest submission, I wrote, "I must inform you that we cannot accept any of the articles you have recently submitted to us. The reason, which I have discussed with our publisher, George Mavety, is that certain ones of the celebrity profiles which Mandate published in years past were represented as real interviews with a particular star when, in fact, they were somewhat less than an actual conversation between you and the star in question. Since I was not employed at Modernismo at that time, I do not have all the details, but I must of course accept the policies of our publisher."
A week or so later, I received a furious letter from this person, threatening to sue me, to sue Modernismo, to sue Alan Bates, and so on. Bullies like this imagine themselves striking terror. This character, however, was not even a paper tiger. More like a paper rodent.
He was a rat who gnawed without letup. In 1984, I received another submission from him, this under one of his easily recognizable pseudonyms. I returned it with a less cordial note than the previous one: "Please spare yourself the disappointment of submitting anything else to me, either under the name ____ or under any other alias."
Forty years later, he's still at it. A brazen, pathetic, vicious fraud who, having self-published several flaccid volumes, has grown old in hopeless, aggressive self-promotion. But what is there to promote? His reputation has long since preceded him as liar, fantasist, antagonizer and oppressor. An example: for years, he has written fawning fan letters to virtually every gay writer who publishes a book, including me. Receiving no answer -- the word spread about him long ago -- he often follows up with a second letter, this one by a female alter ego. Other tricks continue, each one sadly childish and pathetically bilious.
A few years ago he began ordering magazine subscriptions sent to gay writers who failed to respond to his blandishments, and to their agents. Then he crossed the line with an activity that could earn a criminal conviction. He developed an animus toward an elderly celebrity who resided for many years with a companion of the same sex. Angry that the celebrity did not come out in several late-life interviews, he made a series of harassing, even threatening, phone calls. At that point, a friend of the celebrity sent a chilling message to the harasser: Do this once again and the police will be informed, you will be arrested for stalking, and I will see to it that you serve time in jail.
Since then, he seems to have shrunk back into the fetid shadows that breed such vampiric types. I've been spared his desperate communiqués in recent years, as have other colleagues and acquaintances. The irony is that he might have had a minor legitimate career if he had invested the energy in it that he wasted as a hack on sham endeavors.
His techniques are those of all petty tyrants whose cowardice is fueled by sociopathic personalities, drugs, even mental decay. Such bullying is the mark of a scoundrel, and the way to counter it is with muscle. Or laughter. In the case of Psycho Scribbler, if he reads this he will learn that he, and his pitiful ploys, have become a laughing stock among gay writers, their agents, and their editors. Mere mention of his name, or names, is code for all that is fraudulent and squalid in the tarnished El Dorado of his dreams.
No, it's not Donald Trump despite the resemblance.
Dear Sam. I love your writing. You asked that typos be brought to your attention. In the penultimate sentence of the penultimate paragraph, laughing should be spelt without a t.
nice closer there with Trump!