ABOVE: Beverly's center — Leslie Jordan reflects on the abs he had in 1980.
BELOW: Keep reading for the death of Richard Buckley, Biden on Trump, Jonathan Tucker's hot crotch and more ...
ABOVE: Priscilla Presley's hot piece had a big mouth. Hope he also had a big ... heart.
ABOVE: Not sure he was as impressed with it as I am.
ABOVE: Every day should be Roxie Roker Day.
ABOVE: This group, to which I belong, has good taste.
ABOVE: I urge you to follow Todd Lien on IG. He's great! He has a small part in Boy Culture: The Series and was a delight to work with.
ABOVE: It's nuts to think about how long Arnold Schwarzenegger has been in the culture, and how far he went from a Mr. Universe showing off exercises at home in the '60s (above) to being a pretty terrible governor of California. Also worth noting: He is one of the least conservative of bodybuilders — you don't wanna check too closely those IG feeds you're following. Yikes.
BELOW: Keep reading for zaddy abs, a trans “institutional murder,” Dershowitz vs. Ingraham and more ...
The golden age of smut (Image via Mandate, circa 1979)
Pre-COVID-19, I had the pleasure of speaking with Freeman Gunter, a man who came before me in a very specific way: He was the editor of the groundbreaking gay glossy Mandate and all of its “brother” publications 20 years before I worked for the same company — and for the same mercurial straight man, George Mavety, who died in 2001.
Gunter was a seminal figure in the early years of gay publishing just as it was becoming both more mainstream and more erotic. Working first for the queer entertainment publication Michael’s Thing, he switched to Mandate at a time when it was moving over 100,000 copies a month, and attracting interviews with figures like Bette Midler and Mae West alongside the more expected sex stars like Al Parker and, well ... Mae West. He says he was EIC starting in 1984.
Gunter's contributions to gay publishing — and his experiences in gay NYC from pre-Stonewall on — are unique, and his take on being an openly gay employee 45 years before the Supreme Court made it illegal to fire us for who we are is just one of many reasons to spend an afternoon talking with this natural-born storyteller ...
