‘A Good Gay Item’

I remember when I first saw a copy of an International Male catalog. It was in the mid-1980s, when I was a senior in high school. My mother, a librarian, found a copy in the library’s catalog bin and brought it home. Most of the family—save my dad, who has no interest in fashion and dresses accordingly—flipped through the catalog, making fun of the clothes, though no one made fun of them more loudly than me. Yet inside I couldn’t wait to get the catalog alone, in the privacy of my room, so I could fully appreciate its contents.

But it wasn’t meant to be. After we all had a laugh at International Male’s expense, my mother promptly tucked the catalog back into her tote bag and returned it to the library the next morning. It was a good decade before I came out, but in retrospect it was clear that even then she had her suspicions. Her allowing only a limited, supervised viewing of that International Male catalog confirmed it. She also inadvertently elevated it from a mere clothing catalog to pornography in my mind.

The 2022 documentary ALL MAN: THE INTERNATIONAL MALE STORY may not be a perfect, but it perfectly encapsulates the clothing brand’s importance to, in the words of the late David Rakoff, “a certain kind of boy,” specifically those who came of age between the latter days of disco and the height of grunge.

Directors Bryan Darling and Jesse Finley Reed, with narrator Matt Bomer’s help, give us a (mostly) breezy tour of International Male’s founding, subsequent success and slow decline, as well as commentary on IM’s cultural impact, which means of course Carson Kressley and Simon Doonan are on hand to give their two cents, with an un-needed assist from stylist and “influencer”🙄 William Graper, to appeal to the kids, I guess. It’s like an episode of VH-1: Behind the Music, except instead of the pressures of recording a new hit single and touring relentlessly while battling drug addition, it’s about the pressures of selling Buns™  underwear and trying to look butch while modeling gold lamé thongs. Call it Behind the Baskets.

Fitness wear or fetish wear? The California Splits shorts allow for easy access when you go to Probe, while the handles of the digital jump rope could easily double as butt plugs. And exactly who was wearing that jock strap pendant on the lower right page? No straight (or gay) man that I know.

Luckily, Darling and Reed were able to get on-camera interviews with IM founder Gene Burkard before his death in December 2020. After a stint in the Air Force during the Korean war, Burkard took a job as a European sales rep for a liquor distributor selling exclusively to American military bases. The job afforded Burkhard, who was gay, an opportunity to not only experience the queer bars of Europe, but European culture as well (“I was always on the prowl,” he says, adding wryly: “learning, of course.”) Though the documentary makes special mention of the fact that men’s underwear design was becoming more daring in 1960s Europe, it was an item spotted in the display window of a medical supply store in London that inspired Burkard.

From left: Gene Burkard in the Air Force in the 1950s; on an appearance on the game show
What’s My Line? in 1974; and being interviewed for All Man: The International Male Story.

“There was this strange garment there. It was called a suspensory,” Burkard recalls. “I said, ‘You know, this would make a good gay item.’ So, I went and bought one.”

It wasn’t until after Burkhard returned to the U.S. in the early 1970s, settling in San Diego, Calif., that a lightbulb went off. After reading How to Make $1,000,000 in Mail Order, he designed, with the help of a pattern maker, the product that would ultimately lead to the creation of International Male: the Jock Sock.

From medical garment to sexy underwear to fashion (?) empire: the Jock Sock.

As described by IM’s former Senior Art Director Dennis Mori, the Jock Sock “is a waist band with a cup in front that hooks around your balls.” Or, as a friend of mine described it: a bag for your balls. The initial advertising for the item was restricted to publications like The Advocate (“They’d take any ad,” Burkard says), but Burkard wanted to expand his reach, so he borrowed money from a friend to place an ad in Playboy. That’s when, Burkard says, all hell broke loose. “We had so many orders, and I had one guy helping me, and he was stoned half the time.”

The timing couldn’t have been better. The recent sexual revolution had relaxed attitudes, and Playgirl was sexualizing men for women’s enjoyment (sure). Burkard decided he wanted to launch a clothing company that would, ironically, butch up how it presented men’s sexy fashions, and its catalog would be like a magazine. And so, International Male was born.

The cover and inside pages of an early issue—possibly the debut issue—of the International
Male catalog.

‘PG-13 Porn’ vs. ‘a Fag Magazine’

As portrayed by All Man, International Male, with a staff of predominantly gay men and a few straight women, was a fun, if disorganized, place to work. None of the former employees have any dirt to dish on Gene, and it’s inspiring to hear how this group of people, almost all learning on the job, were able to create such a successful company—so successful that it opened brick and mortar stores in San Diego and West Hollywood. The clientele was predominantly, but not exclusively, gay. Even superstars Cher and Barbra Streisand shopped there (that tracks).

Another one of International Male's signature items, Buns™ underwear.

Yet the patronage divas wanting something sexy for their boyfriends did little to earn International Male much respect. The IM catalog was alternately dismissed as selling sex or, per one former employee, a “fag magazine.” Yet Burkard saw it as neither. The catalog was for all men. As for sex: “You never saw the words ‘hot’ or ‘sexy.’ I didn’t want that emphasis on sex.”

But sex was certainly on the minds of many of us who got the catalog. “The day the International Male catalog would come was on par with the Sears Christmas catalog coming when you were a kid,” says writer, comedian and one-time Daily Show correspondent Frank DeCaro. “You were going to be transported into this gay fantasy. And then you were going to spank one out.”

The Undergear section (later spun off into a separate catalog) was likely a highlight for many
a horny homosexual. This section here is notable for featuring an Asian model.

Scissor Sisters’ lead singer Jake Shears details his baffling IM jack-off ritual of tearing off tiny bits of toilet paper to cover up the models’ crotches to better imagine them naked. Not judging, but this extra work seems unnecessary, given that one of the appealing aspects of the IM catalog was the models’ bulging crotches, often with the outlines of their junk plainly visible. Well, whatever works for you, Jake. (Also, the strappy bodysuit Jake wears in Scissor Sisters’ “Any Which Way” video looks like it was inspired by one of IM’s creations, if not purchased directly from the company itself.)

Actor Parvesh Cheena recalls the catalog just showing up in the mail one day. “I never signed up for it. I was never that bold. I was never, like, ‘Please, send me PG-13 porn.’”

As, um, inspiring as the models could be, few of the people featured in the documentary were taking style cues from the International Male catalog. Says actor Drew Doerge: “I’d feel ridiculous wearing this stuff, but there’s something really sexy about a model who doesn’t feel ridiculous wearing it.”

To be fair, Dalmatian print boxers with matching robe aren't the silliest of
International Male’s fashions.

Except, they did. Frequent IM model Brian Buzzini (who also posed for Playgirl) describes IM clothing as “clothes you had to be paid to wear.” Another former model, Robert Goold, says models would often try to trade assigned outfits and describes trying to affect a masculine pose while wearing them as “a professional challenge.” And those smiles on the models’ faces? That was laughter over the silly outfits they were asked to wear. Even the people putting the catalog together express astonishment that people were buying what IM is selling.

Brian Buzzini, then and now, looking just as good.

AIDS, Selling Out and the Puffy Shirt

International Male’s success continued from the hedonistic ’70s into the 1980s, when Miami Vice and MTV dominated pop culture, people were getting into shape, and paradoxically, cocaine. The ’80s also saw the emergence of HIV and AIDS, and its impact on IM was substantial. The frothy tone of All Man turns bleak as it includes a slide show of all the staff members the company lost to the virus. I counted at least 16 who died. And as the death toll from AIDS increased, so did homophobia, making it more difficult to market IM to straight men.

It was during this time that Burkard, no longer finding the business he started fun, sold the company to Hanover Direct for $25 million. (The specific year of the sale was 1987, something I had to Google as All Man isn’t big on providing specific dates.) The sale to Hanover made IM employees nervous, with good reason. “There was a terrible day in the office where they fired almost everybody,” art director Maureen Dalton-Wolf recalls.

“One day I was walking past the vice president’s door, and one of the people from Hanover was there,” says Mori. “I heard this gentleman say, ‘So, what are we going to do about the gay problem?’” Mori says he confronted them, asking, “What do you mean, ‘the gay problem?’” Unfortunately, the VP and the Hanover rep’s response is not shared on camera, though it’s clear Mori wasn’t with the company much longer.

IM’s new creative director Peter Karoll brought in a straight photographer and support crew for the catalog shoots to put the models, who were mostly straight, at ease. “There was a big gay crew who worked there, and it made me uncomfortable—it made me uncomfortable for the models.”

David Knight says he was one of two openly gay models when he worked for International Male. Goddamn, do these guys not age like normal people?

I’ll admit I found Karoll’s concern for the straight dudes’ comfort a punchable offense, especially in an age when “Don’t Say Gay” laws are a thing. My gay rage was tempered a bit when the documentary points out that Karoll employed more diverse models (including, per Wikipedia, Shemar Moore). 

Dennis Mori admits that in the six years he was art director for International Male, he only
  used two Black models. The reason: clothes modeled by POC supposedly didn’t sell as well.

As the 1990s progressed, IM faced a more competitive marketplace. The cheesiness of IM’s colorful prints, Baroque designs and synthetic fabrics was amplified when compared to Abercrombie & Fitch and Calvin Klein’s more sophisticated designs and artful marketing. Not helping was the Seinfeld episode, “The Puffy Shirt” (sold as “The Ultimate Poet’s Shirt” in the IM catalog), and the 2001 male modeling spoof Zoolander. Having entered the mainstream, IM was now a laughingstock. And yet, as All Man makes plain, so many of us (i.e., gay Boomers and Gen X’ers, with possibly a few older queer Millennials) still have a certain nostalgia for the days when we got a new edition of the catalog. Yeah, we laughed at the clothes, but the bodies that filled them we took very seriously. It wasn’t just PG-13 porn, it was starter porn.

These days, of course, kids have the Internet, so they don't need to bother imagining what treasures are stuffed in an Aussie Rower or what they’d do with the guy modeling the Brawn Bikini. They certainly can’t imagine ordering clothing from a printed catalog that arrives in the mail (what is mail?) It’s a fact that International Male, like so many retailers in the early days of the Internet, was slow to realize, and had to play catch-up when it finally started selling online. Today, the only remnant of the company is online, at undergear.com. The clothes are still cheesy (or just plain hideous), but its PG-13 porn days are clearly far behind it. 

Consider UnderGear when deciding what to wear to your next sex party: the Male Power Hose Thong, the Wicked Web Thong, or the Male Power Mesh Thong. Incidentally, these photos show more dick than you’ll see in All Man, yet the documentary does include full-frontal footage of a nude woman, as well as several pictorials from Playboy, presumably so all the straight guys watching (it’s a possibility!) don’t get too uncomfortable.

Short Takes: ‘Jobriath A.D.’ (2012) ★★★ 1/2

I first learned about Jobriath in the 1980s, when I checked out the book Kitsch from my local library. One of the chapters featured the cover to Jobriath’s failed self-titled debut album, which depicted the singer in profile, face down on the ground, nude, with his legs crumbling away like he was a classic sculpture being chipped away by the ravages of time. The book presented the album cover as an example of bad taste, but I thought it was cool. From what I recall, author Gillo Dorfles’ accompanying text about Jobriath was kind of dismissive: he was an openly gay David Bowie wannabe who never lived up to his hype.

However, Jobriath was more than a glam rock no hit wonder, as director Kieran Turner’s 2012 documentary Jobriath A.D. proves, with interviews from people who knew him as Bruce Wayne Campbell, a child prodigy growing up in Pennsylvania; as Jobriath Salisbury, the wildly talented (and just plain wild) cast member of the Los Angeles production of Hair; and, of course, as his most famous incarnation, Jobriath Boone—or simply Jobriath—“the true fairy of rock and roll.”

One thing that becomes clear as Jobriath A.D. goes along is that as badly as the musician wanted to be famous, he did not want to be known, making an intimate portrait a bit of a challenge. Most of the people interviewed are people who worked with him, or who are fans, like Ann Magnuson, who released a Jobriath tribute EP the same year as this doc, and Scissor Sisters’ lead singer Jake Shears. The recollections shared by Jobriath’s younger brother, Willie Fogle, give us a sense of what life with their emotionally distant mother was like, but he hardly knew his brother any better than anyone else. 

Much of the documentary is dedicated to exploring how this musician who, per Rolling Stone, had “talent to burn,” failed to make a spark on the 1970s music scene. Homophobia is brought up, but fingers are also pointed at the gay community, which at the time, according to Jayne County, “was very, very negative against the whole androgynous, gender-glitter movement of the ’70s.” Most of the blame for fucking up Jobriath’s career is directed toward his manager, promoter and club owner Jerry Brandt, who once upon a time also managed Carly Simon. Brandt has a lot to say on the subject of Jobriath in the documentary, which isn't surprising. One of the criticisms lobbed at Brandt is that he often commandeered interviews with Jobriath, with the singer barely given a chance to answer a question, and Turner provides the receipts. (Brandt argues that Jobriath wasn't comfortable giving answers, and some of the clips showing a somewhat stiff Jobriath responding to an interviewer’s questions suggest there’s some truth to that, as well.) What comes out is that Brandt seemed more enthusiastic about promoting the persona Jobriath had created than building an audience for his music, so by the time his debut album dropped people were more familiar with its cover than the music contained therein. It was like Jobriath was a vanity project, only it was Brandt’s vanity being served.

For all the finger pointing, I think timing might have been Jobriath’s biggest enemy. I don’t think he’d have fared much better if he had beat Bowie to the punch, but maybe, with some tweaking of his sound, he could’ve made a bigger splash in the New Wave era. Instead, Jobriath found success in the Manhattan cabaret scene, performing as Cole Berlin or Bryce Campbell, though he did sex work on the side when money was tight. But his second act was short-lived: Jobriath died from AIDS complications August 3, 1983. Singer Will Sheff summarizes Jobriath's career—and the arc of this documentary—thusly: “He got to be the mega star, then he got to be the joke, and then he got to be forgotten. And now he gets to be the beacon for so many great artists out there who didn’t get their due.” 

A Woman of (Four) Letters

Jackie Collins was the Lady Boss of
trash fiction in the 1970s and ’80s.

One of the many depressing aspects about the success of Fifty Shades of Grey was that it highlighted how adult fiction had become so tame by 2011 that E.L. James’ rape-y Twilight fan fic could not only became a pop culture phenomenon but also be discussed by the amnesiac media as if smut had never before dirtied the New York Times Best Seller list.

The NYT Best Sellers had been sullied long before James came along, and on a monthly basis, too. Among those regularly defiling popular literature in the 1970s and ’80s were Harold Robbins and Jackie Collins. Though Rosemary Rogers and Judith Krantz gave them a run for their money, Robbins and Collins had succeeded in making their names synonymous with raunch. Rogers and Krantz wrote racy romances; Robbins and Collins wrote trash.

I was more of a fan of Harold Robbins’ books, but Jackie always seemed a far more likable person, and watching the 2021 documentary LADY BOSS: THE JACKIE COLLINS STORY, currently streaming on Netflix in the U.S., confirmed the late author’s likability. She’s so likable, in fact, that no fewer than four women interviewed identify themselves as Jackie’s best friend.

Jackie’s story is told through interviews with her older sister (you know who), her three daughters, Tracy, Tiffany and Rory, and numerous friends and business associates. Director Laura Fairrie’s best source, however, is Jackie herself, not only from archive footage but from a treasure trove of diary entries, journals and an unfinished autobiography, Reform School or Hollywood.

Teen-aged Joan and Jackie Collins.

Jackie failed to make a
splash in the 1957
movie All at Sea.

Of course, much of Jackie’s story has likely already found its way into her novels in one way or another as her life could be the basis of a Jackie Collins book. It’s a life that includes a domineering father (Joe Collins was temperamental theater agent prone to flying into rages at the dinner table), sibling rivalry (Jackie struggled to establish an identity beyond “Joan Collins’ little sister”), an ugly duckling-to-swan transformation (Jackie matured into a shapely young woman, helping things along with a nose job in 1959), wild times in Hollywood (including a fling with Marlon Brando, whom Jackie describes in a diary entry as “kind of fat”), an acting career that goes nowhere (appearing in the Alec Guinness film All at Sea and a guest spot on TV show The Saint are her more notable credits), and an unhappy marriage (Jackie’s first husband Wallace Austin was a bipolar drug addict who committed suicide a year after their divorce in 1964).

Look back in leopard print: Jackie with her first born, Tracy,
and Jackie’s mother, Elsa Collins.

It’s not until Jackie’s second husband, nightclub owner Oscar Lerman, encourages Jackie to finish a novel she’s all but given up on that Jackie pursues writing with any real ambition. “I’d been writing all my life,” Jackie recalls. “I’d written a lot of half-books that I never finished, and he was the first person that said to me, ‘It’s absolutely terrific and you can do it’.”

That book was The World is Full of Married Men, and Jackie sold it to a publisher for £400 ($536 U.S.). To say that the publisher got a huge return on its investment is an understatement. The book’s mix of strong women and sizzling sex made it an instant—and controversial—best seller in 1968.

Jackie at work, exactly as you imagine.

As the documentary details Jackie’s ascension on the best seller lists, it focuses more on Jackie as a celebrity than a writer. Even her former agent Morton Janklow puts more stock in Jackie’s TV appearances than her prose: “It was one of the reasons she was so successful. She could go out there and promote those books and not be embarrassed.” Her Mob Wives aesthetic—big hair, big shoulder pads, lots of leopard print—was just another aspect of her branding. She looked like a character from one of her books, making her their ideal spokesperson. Lady Boss is peppered with clips of Jackie promoting her work, including a 1980s TV ad in which Jackie urges readers to “get Lucky.” (The voice heard at the end of the clip below is Jackie’s oldest daughter, Tracy.)

Two aspects where I feel Lady Boss drops the ball is that it fails to give viewers a sense of the book market of the 1970s and ’80s (timing plays a role in Jackie’s success as much as her storytelling talent) or acknowledge those who came before her. It’s admirable that Jackie was an active participant in the marketing of her books, but she was hardly the first author—or the first Jackie—to do so. That the documentary fails to pick up on the many similarities between Jackie’s and Jacqueline Susann’s lives and careers is Lady Boss’s biggest oversight. 

Jackie looms over Hollywood.

Lady Boss makes it abundantly clear that Jackie took a lot of shit for her books. The documentary tries to attribute this as mere sexism, i.e., people disapproved of a woman writing bluntly described sex scenes (Fairrie includes plenty of footage of Jackie being scolded and/or belittled by male talk show hosts). Lady Boss even tries to frame Jackie as some sort of feminist icon. Though the author did self-identify as a feminist, her brand of feminism didn’t seem to go beyond speaking out against the double standard. Women should be permitted to be as shitty as men, while true, is not the sort of rallying cry that would land her on the cover of Ms. magazine. 

The 1980s, when Jackie ruled trash fiction and Joan ruled
Prime Time.

The documentary also touches on the rivalry between Jackie and her older sister. Joan says that Jackie hated a couple men in her life (she doesn’t name names), and that these men also hated Jackie, and so things were a bit chilly between the sisters during these relationships. Though they teamed up to adapt one of Jackie’s bestsellers, The Stud, into a movie vehicle for Joan in 1978, and its sequel The Bitch in 1979, things were again reportedly tense in the 1980s when Joan, at the peak of her Dynasty career revival, tried her hand at trash fiction, starting with her 1988 debut novel Prime Time. Jackie was none too happy that Joan was trespassing in her territory, so it’s not surprising she felt some schadenfreude when Joan’s subsequent books for Random House were deemed “unpublishable.” 

On the subject of Joan—excuse me, Dame Joan—I did not always believe she was speaking candidly. Though she doesn’t appear to view her and Jackie’s relationship through rose-colored glasses, she’s careful to present herself as the ever-supportive older sister. (People without siblings might believe that, but rest of us aren’t buying it, Joan.) I also got the idea—through tone of voice and body language—that a few people interviewed didn’t have particularly high opinions of Jackie’s famous sibling. When Joan’s anecdote about Jackie’s spirit inhabiting a persistent fruit fly (seriously) is referenced, Jackie’s former assistant all but rolls her eyes and says her former boss's sister is full of shit.

From the Lost Years: A Supplemental Book Review

Jackie’s 2009 novel Poor Little Bitch
Girl. Love the title, hate the book.

Jackie’s life wasn’t as rosy during the 1990s and 2000s. In 1992 her husband Oscar died of prostate cancer. And though it’s only briefly touched on, Jackie was also losing her mojo as an author. Her books in the latter half of her career, while still best sellers, weren’t selling as well as they once had. “We changed as a world,” says Jackie’s publicist Melody Korenbrot, adding that Jackie tried to change with it. “She sat down and wrote, but eventually she became completely confused and lost.”

Judging by her 2009 novel, POOR LITTLE BITCH GIRL, Jackie was still lost in the late 2000s.

I’ve enjoyed a few of Jackie’s books, including The Hollywood Zoo, the 1975 a.k.a. of Sunday Simmons & Charlie Brick (the title later changed again to Sinners) and her 1983 mega-hit Hollywood Wives, perhaps the best thing she’s ever written (but still trash). Unlike grump Harold Robbins, Jackie didn’t take herself too seriously, her writing giving the impression she was chuckling right along with the reader.

Reading Poor Little Bitch Girl, you still get the impression she’s not taking herself too seriously, only this time the tone is less a conspiratorial chuckle and more of a “Whatever,” sighed under her breath.   

Poor Little Bitch Girl is the ninth installment in the Lucky Santangelo series, but the story pretty much stands on its own. Lucky herself is hardly in the thing. Instead, the novel revolves around four separate main characters: Annabelle Maestro, the estranged daughter of movie star parents, now running an escort service in New York with her cokehead boyfriend Frankie; Denver Jones (these names...), a one-time classmate of Annabelle’s, now a lawyer for an elite L.A. firm; Carolyn Henderson, a longtime friend of Denver’s, working in Washington, D.C. as Sen. Stoneman’s assistant (and his mistress); and Lucky’s son Bobby Santangelo Stanislopoulos, who runs a successful NYC nightclub and who was also once a classmate of Annabelle’s and Denver’s. None of these characters are older than 26, all of them are hot, and they all have the emotional maturity of junior high students.

The murder of Annabelle’s mother, Gemma Summer, is what sets the book’s story in motion, with Denver—whose firm is representing Annabelle’s father, the prime suspect—sent to New York to retrieve the titular poor little bitch girl. Denver hates the assignment, until she runs into Bobby. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Carolyn is kidnapped just days after telling Sen. Stoneman that she’s pregnant with his baby. It’s a good thing Bobby, who is just as smitten with Denver, has a private plane and thinks nothing of using it to fly her to D.C. to look for her missing friend.

If you read the above paragraph and asked yourself, Wait, shouldn’t the driver of the story be Denver trying to solve Gemma Summer’s murder? then you clearly aren’t in the right headspace for a Jackie Collins novel. That murder is merely incidental. What matters is that Denver bangs a hunky journalist in L.A., then a sensitive screenwriter in New York, and then falls for Bobby Santangelo Stanislopoulos (though she has trouble forgiving him getting a b.j. from pop singer Zeena, a Cher/Madonna hybrid who speaks of herself in the third person). Even Carolyn’s disappearance is secondary to Denver finding a man. Why waste time cutting into the meat of the story when you can eat Reddi-Wip directly from the can?

Worse than the book’s mishandled plot is its one-note characterizations. Annabelle is selfish and bitchy; Frankie is an asshole; Bobby is charming; Denver is headstrong and kind of kooky (and evidently meant to be a Julia Roberts-type character as Denver is compared to Julia in more than once instance); Carolyn is a hopeless romantic. Jackie, preferring to tell rather than show, often assigns labels for her characters, declaring that Denver and Carolyn are independent and smart, yet Denver is always getting rescued by men and Carolyn just wants Sen. Stoneman to leave his wife for her, and the idea that either of these women have more than a high school education strains credulity. You’d have an easier time believing Denver, whose chapters are written in the first person, is a 16-year-old inhabiting the body of her attorney older sister, Freaky Friday-style, than buy her as a member of the bar. 

Why waste time cutting into the meat of the story when you can eat Reddi-Wip directly from the can?

But, hey, at least there’s all that graphic sex Jackie is known for, except, nope, not in Poor Little Bitch Girl. Sex may be at the forefront of every character’s mind—second only to money—but Jackie backs away from detailing any bedroom activity, preferring to just have her characters give generalized postmortems instead (“I liked that he took his time, kissing me everywhere—and I do mean everywhere”). Considering the first Lucky Santangelo novel, 1981’s Chances, includes a scene in which Lucky’s father, Gino, slurps his spooge out of the pussy he’s freshly plowed—and described about as delicately—Poor Little Bitch Girl is practically PG-13. But then, we didn’t have PornHub in 1981, so maybe by the 2000s Jackie figured she’d just let the Internet fuel the horny imaginations of her readers.

In the book’s defense, it does have an awesome title. Also, it’s fairly well-paced and I was invested in the story enough to want to keep reading. Except, by the time I reached the end I regretted wasting my time with it. Jackie never pretended to be a great writer, but she wasn’t even trying here. This wasn’t the work of an author trying to push herself to be better than her last book; this was a brand name trying to fill enough pages to get a new hardcover on shelves before her previous best-seller landed in the remainder bin. It’s not a novel, it’s product.

Admire Her Spirit if Not Her Books

After her husband’s death Jackie eventually took up with businessman Frank Calcagnini for a very long engagement (the pair never married). If Lady Boss interviewees can’t say enough good things about Oscar Lerman, they struggle to say anything nice about Calcagnini. The way Tita Cahn, one of Jackie’s many best friends, describes him, he could well have been the inspiration for the character of Frankie in Poor Little Bitch Girl: “He was a gambler, a drugger [sic], an alcoholic and an abuser.” About the kindest words anyone can muster for Calcagnini is that he could be charming. When Calcagnini died of a brain tumor in 1998 few people—other than Jackie—mourned his passing.

Jackie Collins in a British TV appearance
shortly before her death.

Unlike her late fiancée, Jackie’s passing was deeply felt by all who knew her. Jackie had been diagnosed with breast cancer years before her death, but like her mother before her, she kept her illness a secret, and like her late-husband Oscar, chose to keep working until the very end. Lady Boss includes a clip of Jackie on the British talk show Loose Women made during her final days and her appearance is startling. She looks gaunt, frail, a good ten years older than her older sister. Still, she never lets on that she’s sick. Nine days after this TV appearance, on Sept. 15, 2015, Jackie Collins died. She was 77.

In watching Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story I came to see Jackie as an entertainer, just one who wrote tawdry beach reads instead of performing live at Caesar’s Palace. The documentary also strengthened my appreciation of her as a person. I just wish I could like her books as much as I like her. Still, I’d read Jackie over E.L. James any day.

The Reality, Fiction and Fantasy of Fire Island

Cherry Grove Stories is
currently streaming on Tubi.

Though we got a welcome—and, frankly, surprising—Supreme Court ruling this month that extends federal workplace protections to the LGBTQ community, there’s been very little about this June to remind you it’s Gay Pride Month. Given the ongoing Dumpster fire that is America 2020, you’d be forgiven for just wanting to get away from it all. Unfortunately, the only traveling we should be doing is vicariously (though some remain unconcerned). Luckily, that’s also the cheapest way to travel. So, let’s go to Fire Island, specifically, Fire Island of the past.

I was aware of Fire Island being a popular vacation destination for gay New Yorkers as far back as my freshman year of high school, well before I ever came out. I’m not sure how I knew this. My best guess is it was referenced in some sleazy bestseller I read, or possibly it was mentioned in one of the two books by Fran Lebowitz that I read. Regardless, the reputation of this island off Long Island’s south shore was great enough that it even reached me, a teenager in Mississippi (or maybe I was still in California; my family moved around a lot).

Michael Fisher’s 2018 documentary CHERRY GROVE STORIES provides a good overview of life on Fire Island’s gay beach. Using home movies, archival news footage and interviews with frequent vacationers and longtime residents, Fisher not only provides the audience with an informal history of Cherry Grove, but of gay life as well.

“We arrived at the dock and I looked down and I saw all of these beautiful men in high heels and Speedos, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven,” says one of the interviewees. Another describes the island as a “gay Shangri La.” Some of the people interviewed remember vacationing on the island as far back as the late 1940s, when the houses didn’t have running water and were lit by kerosene lanterns (the island didn’t get electricity until 1960s; “I can’t imagine putting on a drag show with a generator,” quips one of the interview subjects).

Photos from the documentary Cherry Grove Stories.

The documentary never delves into exactly when or why Cherry Grove became a gay destination. Even interviewees who vacationed on the island as children with their families only refer to Cherry Grove as this wonderful oasis that was just there for discovery. “I knew it was a queer community,” says one. Another says he learned of Cherry Grove in high school when he saw a picture of two guys holding hands on its beach.

Cherry Grove draws a gay crowd but not
a diverse one. This is one of the few people of
color shown in Cherry Grove Stories.

As one would expect, especially in the decades pre-dating AIDS, sex was very easy to come by in Cherry Grove, especially for the men. “Coming out here with a boyfriend was like going to a whorehouse with your wife,” says an interviewee who first came to the island in 1957. (By the way, interview subjects not being named isn’t laziness on my part; it’s because Fisher doesn’t identify any of them onscreen.) I remember being aware of the island’s cruising grounds—the Meat Rack, a.k.a. the Rack—shortly after learning about the island’s existence, before I even knew what cruising meant. There is a rumored spot for lesbians, a so-called Donut Rack, but no one interviewed believed it existed. “There were maybe 24 lesbians when we were there,” says one woman. There are even fewer people of color. One of the men interviewed is of Asian descent, and there are a couple Black men shown in the home movies, but otherwise Cherry Grove is an all-white community, a fact I wish Fisher had touched on.

Once Cherry Grove Stories got on the subject of the Meat Rack I thought the documentary would devolve into a litany of people recounting how they did rails of cocaine and sucked a mile of cocks, but more is made about how the Rack was targeted by police. One bartender even kept a reserve of cash on hand to bail out anyone unfortunate to be caught in a police raid. Of course, by the time a man was bailed out of jail the damage had been done as the man’s name, address and telephone number (holy shit!) would have already been published in the newspaper.

Cherry Grove still retains its status as a prime “gaycation” spot today, though it’s changed considerably. AIDS, understandably, hit the island hard. “We invited some straight relatives out here,” recounts an interviewee, “and they came home thinking it was sort of a leper’s colony.” Yet the AIDS crisis led to an even greater sense of community on the island. It also changed the Meat Rack, which is still there but not the “free-for-all” it once was, a fact not only attributed to AIDS, but the Internet as well. “With all the gay apps, no one needs to go out and see each other anymore,” remarks one of the younger men interviewed.

These changes aren’t necessarily seen as being for the better, with several people remarking that for all the freedoms gained by the LGBTQ community over the past two decades, the island has become less free, with the police more vigilant about ticketing people for public nudity and loitering. Says an island old timer: “We’re going right back to the way things were 50 years ago.” Yet the affection Fisher’s subjects have for the island remains as strong today as when they first got off the ferry. As one puts it: “If I could never return to Cherry Grove, then I would die.”

‘The Biggest Camp of the Season’

The 1970 movie STICKS AND STONES also provides a snapshot of life in Cherry Grove, albeit a fictional one. The central characters in this ensemble piece are Buddy (J. Will Deane, a.k.a. Jesse Deane), a playwright who’s retreated to the island with his young “English” boyfriend, Peter (Craig Dudley) to drink away the memories of his failed play. He also might be cheating on Peter, but then, as we get to know Peter, who can blame him? Peter is a whining nag who’s got a stick so firmly planted in his ass that he likely can't bottom anymore. Dudley’s attempt at an English accent, which lands somewhere between Joan Fontaine in Rebecca and Baltimore, doesn’t help Peter’s cause. Conversely, though Buddy’s a cad, Deane’s talent for dry sarcasm makes him a more enjoyable screen presence.

“George is dressed differently
than we are.”

It’s clear within minutes of being introduced to Buddy and Peter that the couple has no future and needs to break up pronto. But since there would be no movie if they did, the couple goes ahead with their planned Fourth of July party, the “biggest camp of the season.” On the guest list are George, a middle-aged leather queen who’s bought a new leather vest for the occasion (“George is dressed differently than we are,” warns a mutual friend); Bobby, a newly out man making his “virgin trip” to the island (“I wish you’d call it something else”); Jimmy, a dizzy queen with a mop of blonde hair who, along with his mustachioed friend, makes homosexuality appear classifiable as a mental disability (watching these two attempt to change a flat tire is like the set-up to a homophobic joke); the Lavender Guru, a cute caftan-wearing hippie who only shuts up when he’s got a dick in his mouth (sample dialog: “I’m not sure some days whether the world that I live in is a world I created, psychologically, or whether it’s a world everyone else has created”); and June (adult film actress Kim Pope), the femme to butch Lou, though she’s about as staunch a lesbian as Anne Heche.

Before the party George gives Bobby a brief tour of Cherry Grove, noting that every house has a name, like Lust and Found and Olay, a house which was actually referenced in Cherry Grove Stories. Bobby is overwhelmed by it all, but mostly he’s just creeped out by George. They are joined by Jimmy and his friend, whereupon Jimmy, claws extended, starts making bitchy jokes at George’s expense (“You’ll never live to be as old as you look, dahling”). I got the idea the two may have had a fling that turned sour, though that’s strictly conjecture on my part (this movie isn’t big on backstory). What I couldn’t excuse was Bobby acting like Jimmy was rescuing him from a serial killer’s basement, his only reason for not liking George, who had been perfectly nice if a tad flirtatious, was Bobby found his being into leather weird. Well, fuck you, Bobby!

Peter (left) has the better body but Buddy has the better line delivery—
and the bigger bulge.

Meanwhile, back at Buddy and Peter’s house, the Lavender Guru goes on and on (and on) about some existential bullshit for the benefit of his handsome acolyte Gary, a sequence that would’ve been unwatchable had it not been intercut with the two having some spirited softcore sex. As for Buddy and Peter, they’re walking around the island in their Speedos, first to greet their guests at the dock, then to buy supplies for the party, though they’re never shown shopping for any. Of course, Peter has a lot to say, making it clear why Buddy always has a drink in hand. A favorite exchange during this banana hammock walkabout: Peter whines that Buddy just doesn’t understand the social pressures he’s under, to which Buddy, after waiting a beat, deadpans: “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

Kim Pope is sick of the Lavender Guru’s shit.

The party itself is a bit underwhelming. A dark-haired hunk in flowered pants sings and strums a guitar, and later deflects a pass from Buddy. Outside on the deck the Lavender Guru lectures a group too polite to flee (Kim Pope’s expression during this scene is priceless). George is wearing a pair of fishnet bell bottoms, commando, but he's upstaged by another leather queen, Fernando, showing off his Prince Albert. Jimmy sings a show tune, then tries to get Peter, sulking in the bedroom, to return to the party, a good deed that is sufficiently punished. “You’re nothing but a goddamned queen!” Peter screams (can’t say I disagree). Peter quickly begs forgiveness, then tells Jimmy about killing his pet dog when he lived in London (“I loved that dog”). Back in the living room, June dances nude with Fernando because why hire Kim Pope if she’s not going to get naked? Buddy, not to be outdone, then strips so his guests can appreciate his skinny, leathery body and, I must say, decent-sized cock. The fireworks for this Fourth of July bash don’t go off until after the party, however, when the hosts fight, possibly to the end of their relationship.

Sticks and Stones was written by Tom O’Keefe, but its loose structure and the rambling nature of the dialog suggests much of the movie was improvised. If that’s the case, director Stan Lopresto did a commendable job of getting something approximating The Boys in the Band Go to the Beach, which is to say Sticks and Stones, while not a good movie, isn’t the total piece of shit it could have been. The characters are all types—the leather queen, the swish, the nervous Nelly—rather than fully formed people, and the acting is strictly amateur hour (Pope and Deane, who also appeared in a couple hardcore films, deliver the best performances). On the plus side, the movie is leagues above the crap Jeff London cranks out. The gratuitous nudity, some of which is quite nice, also helped.

‘I Should’ve Known I was in the Wrong Place’

The last movie on our tour of Fire Island is nothing but gratuitous nudity, though I guess the nudity isn’t exactly gratuitous when said movie is a porno, namely director Jack Deveau’s 1978 film DUNE BUDDIES. Bet you thought I was going to write about Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand, didn’t you? I’ll get to Wakefield, but not today. Besides, Dune Buddies has something that makes it just as noteworthy in the annals (yes, with two n’s; just because it’s a porn movie doesn’t mean our minds have to stay in the gutter) of gay porn: a connection to Brian DePalma’s Scarface.

Dune Buddies’ main character is a guy named Paul Hazzard (Malo), a dramatic arts professor who’s wanting to escape New York because he can’t walk three feet in the city without tripping over a hot guy begging for Paul’s hot beef injection. (“It got so crazy, in fact, that I stopped enjoying it.”) So, yeah, our hearts bleed for him. Anyway, to get away from all those beckoning dicks in the city, he heads to Fire Island. If you think that’s a stupid vacation destination for a man seeking solitude, Paul agrees with you, but his real estate pal Ed got him a good deal on a rental in the Pines so, what’re you gonna do?

Paul’s plans for a quiet vacation-for-one are dashed the moment he enters the bedroom of his rented beach house and finds one of his students, Dennis (Larry Page), passed out and pants-less on the bed. When Dennis comes-to, he explains Paul’s secretary revealed his itinerary when Dennis bribed her with three Quaaludes (this movie is very 1978). Paul quickly forgives his student (you would, too, if you saw Page’s ass), but they’ve barely gotten into foreplay when Paul’s friend Gordon (Hugh Allen) cock blocks him with a phone call. I wouldn’t have answered, personally, but Paul does, learning that Gordon’s at the ferry landing, waiting for him. (“If you meet me at the dock in the Grove in 45 minutes, I’ll let you buy me a drink at the Monster.”)

Maybe it’s just me, but Larry Page looks a lot like a young Thomas Haden Church.
(No, I’m not suggesting THC has a secret.)

And so begins what is supposed to be a comedy of errors. Paul heads out for Cherry Grove, leaving Dennis to juggle tennis balls and jack off in an outdoor shower. But Gordon, who’s a bit of an asshole, gets cruised by hunky John (Will Seagers, billed as Matt Harper here) and decides he’d rather ride in John’s boat—and on John’s cock—than wait for Paul. Paul, annoyed at having missed Gordon, heads back home, only to be intercepted by his real estate friend Ed (Gary Hunt), who needs a voyeur if the two cute young exhibitionists back at his house (Pepe Brazil and D. Paolo Gorsky) are to perform. No, seriously. Paul’s resistant, but Ed pours liquor down his throat until he agrees to stay. Despite being recruited to watch and having downed three glasses of vodka, Paul is an active participant in the scene, at least for a while. By nightfall he’s stumbling over the dunes and into the camp of another one of those hot, horny men Paul’s always running into. The camper is Ed Wiley (billed as Myles Longue), though given the scene’s minimal lighting and iffy focus it could be Tom Selleck for all we know.

Gordon (Hugh Allen) spreads for Will Seagers.

Meanwhile, Gordon finds his way to Paul’s pad. Dennis isn’t too enamored by Paul’s new guest, however: “After giving it some thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that you, Gordon, are an inconsiderate fuck.” Gordon counters with, yeah, but you know we’re going to make it anyway. And this argument works, because of course it does. But Gordon is just something to keep him occupied until the movie’s (mild) surprise ending.

Dune Buddies doesn’t come close to matching Boys in the Sand’s artsy erotica, but it’s very close to matching the Fire Island of my fantasies, including the royalty-free disco. And unlike the previous gay porn film I reviewed, almost all the men of the cast have a sexiness that stands the test of time, provided you have a high tolerance for ’70s hairstyles—and really, by now you should because, honey, we all have ’70s hair at this point. I just wish some scenes were better lit. The scene between Malo and Wiley is like watching two shadow puppets fucking.

About that Scarface connection: Dune Buddies’ star, Malo, later found some mainstream success as Arnaldo Santana, appearing in two Al Pacino movies, Cruising and Scarface. He also had a small part in the 1983 TV movie Rage of Angels and was a regular cast member in the failed Norman Lear sitcom a.k.a. Pablo. Amusingly, the trivia section on Santana’s IMDb page states that it was the actor’s weight gain—hey, maintaining that Dune Buddies physique had to be exhausting—that prevented him from landing bigger roles, not his gay porn past. Santana passed away in 1987 at age 37. No cause of death was given, and I found nothing online to confirm my suspicions, so I won’t speculate here.

From Dune Buddies to Scarface, from Malo to Arnaldo Santana.

An actor’s death is a sad conclusion to a blog post, but, then again, who isn’t at least a little sad at the end of a vacation, even a vicarious one? Especially when we know we have to return to 2020. <sigh>