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"vintage" porn stars

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It is amazing to me that he had such a big porn career then as he got older her married singer Margaret Whiting (who denied all knowledge of his gay porn career). As long as he was happy.

She didn’t ‘deny’ it, she just wouldn’t stay with him unless he gave it up. And I’m sure the few straight things he did, I think I saw one with Samantha Fox. I believe I recall they lived together for many years before finally getting married. I met them at a wedding party and the wedding itself a day or two later at which Margaret was singing, and I played piano They were both very likable, and lots of people around town got to know them a little bit at various clubs or parties. This was 1990 and our mutual friends got married at Marble Collegiate Church. Margaret sang ‘My Ideal’ unaccompanied, it was pretty fabulous and she was very sweet. Jack was still campy and funny and we flirted some, I managed to get into a cab with them from the church to the reception party (the first one was at a rest. called ‘The Blue Hen’, a short-lived and not very distinguished place on 7th about 18th. Dreadful food. In the cab, Jack sat in the middle and knew I was interested in him, but liked me well enough and my Debussy which I’d played, so started in on talking about some drug that ‘people use for sex’. I guess that was supposed to be my ‘prize’, and it was very funny because so predictable ‘early reverting to type’. I had liked his movies for years before ever meeting him, and never expected to meet him. There was this one film ‘A Night at the Adonis’ in which he jerks off in one of the balcony seats, and when I saw it, I found the exact seat and jerked off myself. I used to do things like that, thought it was arty, I guess. I saw him once more at Don’t Tell Mama’s (he coached my friends in their comedy act, we know he was a director of off-b’way things during those early years with Margaret.) I didn’t speak to him that time, he looked a bit sad and was drinking too much beer (insofar as it had begun to show, and he knew he was getting older.) Still, I was quite shocked when I saw he was dead in the NYTimes. I had been totally out of touch with the mutual friends, but I imagine they’d stayed in touch with them–the guy was very interested in Gershwin, and Margaret obviously too. Yes, just looked it up, they didn’t actually marry till 1994, but were very famous as a couple from back in the 80s, even by the time of his autobio ‘What’s a Nice Boy Like You Doing?’ which had lots of campy things in it, from Ruth Roman on tour with him before he even started porno, until well into meeting Margaret. She was never sexy even when young, but I guess he thought so. Outlived him by 2 years, which is also a bit sad, she was 86. 22 years older than Jack. There was a period in the mid-70s when he was in literally every gay porno mag, and things like ‘Gemini’ were always opening. Top male star for awhile. Rare among male pornstars to come from well-to-do family, and the autobio is very interesting on that too, they never condemned him at all. A sweet guy.

I remember seeing him once in an off-Broadway play, must have been summer 1980 or so. Pretty much my first gay “date” with my first male FWB. Don’t remember the play at all, but midway through Jack W showed up onstage, got naked, and the audience suddenly came alive. Guys craning to see, standing up, somebody had binoculars, yknow, but all very silent, tense and closety, as if we really wanted to hear the dialogue and follow the plot. My FWB and I looked at eachother making fools of ourselves and laughed. Maybe the moment when my closet door finally opened wide, and the excuses were abandoned.

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