The Daddies
The Leathermen, Seminary dropouts, Vietnam vets, and Signal Corps bohemians who came to our aid
The pseudo-feminist puritans did succeed in driving On Our Backs into the arms of charming pornographers— the very infidelity they accused us of.
All we did was answer the phone.
I picked up the office receiver one day, expecting a weary creditor— and instead it was this fellow who sounded like he had just arranged for a pumpkin coach to come pick us up with a glass slipper.
“My name is John Preston, I'm from Drummer magazine, and I think you are absolutely brilliant.”
Drummer was a gay men’s leather magazine. They were the first to publish Mapplethorpe, and stories by Steven Saylor. They were hardcore as hell and yet they had aesthetic standards like the Algonquin Room.
I waved my hands frantically at Nan and Debi. It was our first message from a peer, or someone we’d like to be a peer, who could see we weren’t just taking off our underwear for the hell of it.
Preston was pointed. “N…