Frank was incredibly generous, as all his friends know, and he sent me many things over the years: Science Fiction of the 20th Century; Pulp Culture; Waiting; The Donor; and The Robinson Collection, a coffee-table book containing images of the covers of all the pulp magazines he had collected since he was a kid. I was proud to lead a book discussion on his novel Waiting for my local gay science fiction and fantasy book club.
A few months into 2005 I got a call late one night and he started to say his usual greeting of my name in a long and drawn out, “Baaaaaaahb.” But he hung up. He called back moments later and he was crying, apologized, and hung up again. A few minutes after that, he called back again and said, “Hold on until I can get this under control,” and I listened to him sob and get it together.
“I finished your collection,” he said. “It got to me.” He then went on to tell me he’d been bawling on and off all afternoon. He was an emotional man, full of rare empathy, and he would cry at movies and at injustices in the world. He was a real man, honest about who he was, and unapologetic.
We talked almost every day for the last few years of his life. I’d ask him about Harvey, his early life growing up, the pulp years. We talked about aging. He answered every question I had with open honesty and then offered even more personal experiences. Ever aware that he was the elder statesman, and that someday it would fall on the next generation to tell the stories of the way it was, I urged him to write it all down.
Then on August 4, 2011, Frank called me and told me he’s going to finally write his memoir, wants me to help edit it. Marriage equality was heating up, Prop 8 was angering a lot more people than just Californians, and state after state was signing up for gay marriage. It was time he wrote down what it was like before everyone forgot. Frank needed a framework on which to hang his life story, so he told me he would be writing it in the form of a very long letter. “Oh, and by the way, I’m writing it to you. Are you okay with that?” he asked.
For the next two years, he would tell me his stories, going over them again and again. This was not an old man’s forgetfulness and retelling, but it was part of his writing process where he would tell the story over and over, with small changes in phrase or order, until he felt that he got it right. If he hadn’t habitually done this in the past with other things he was writing, I might not have understood what was going on.
On Friday, June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry. Previously, when that right was granted on a state-by-state basis, Frank would invariably say to me, “I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime.” Astonished and pleased, he would reminisce about the way it used to be.
Frank died on June 30, 2014, almost exactly one year before the Supreme Court ruling, and I wish that he had lived to see it.
That you and I have seen it in our lifetimes is a direct result of people such as Frank. Reading his memoir will help you understand not only the pivotal moments in which he had a hand, but also the evolving socioeconomic environment that roughly shaped gays and gay culture since 1926, the year Frank was born. Because of people such as Frank, many kids are growing up incapable of imagining the institutionalized oppression that was our peculiar history.
But this memoir is not just about gay history.
Herein are stories of Frank’s life, vignettes woven together to make up the grand arc of an amazing man’s productive life. He wasn’t just pivotal in the gay movement, an activist in the AIDS pandemic, but he was also a pulp fiction connoisseur who arguably amassed one of the single most important magazine collections in the world. There was his career in the pulps and at Playboy magazine. There were his wonderful books that helped create the thriller genre in print and in the movies.
With a sharp eye for story and character, just as with his novels, he recorded in this autobiography the things he witnessed, participated in, history as it happened, all in his own engaging words. Read this book and, like me, you will understand why Frank M. Robinson will always be the most interesting guy in the room.
Self-portrait of author, photo booth, circa 1948. (Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
Frank M. Robinson, a supporter and speechwriter for Harvey Milk, with city supervisor candidate Milk in his office at Castro Camera, 1976. (Photograph by Daniel Nicoletta, courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
Tom Scortia and Frank M. Robinson at a book signing event for The Nightmare Factor at Books Plus, February 26, 1978. (Photograph by Daniel Nicoletta, courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
Frank M. Robinson looking through the etched glass in the front door of his San Francisco home, which he purchased and remodeled with his proceeds from the film The Towering Inferno, February 21, 1982. (Photograph by Daniel Nicoletta, courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
Frank M. Robinson on the red carpet at the San Francisco premiere of the movie Milk, October 28, 2008. (Photoraph by Robert Moloney, courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
Frank M. Robinson in his writer’s office in his San Francisco home, overlooking the city’s Castro District, the northern hills, and San Francisco Bay, which were often the settings for his thrillers, March 3, 2010. (Photograph by Daniel Nicoletta, courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
Celebration of Dustin Lance Black’s Oscar for Best Screenplay for his film Milk at the Palace Hotel, March 29, 2009. BACK ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: Maggie Weiland, Anne Kronenberg, Adam Kamil, Daniel Nicoletta. FRONT ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: Dustin Lance Black, Frank M. Robinson. (Photograph by Michael Pinatelli, Jr., courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
Frank M. Robinson at the May 2008 unveiling of the memorial bronze bust of assassinated city supervisor Harvey Milk in the rotunda of San Francisco City Hall. (Photograph by David Moloney)
LEFT TO RIGHT: Brian Kamps, Robert Angell, and Frank M. Robinson celebrate Robinson’s 2014 Nebula Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction at their favorite sushi bar in San Francisco. (Courtesy of Brian Kamps)
Frank M. Robinson with his world-class collection of early pulp fiction magazines, photographed for the dust jacket of Robinson’s 2004 thriller, The Donor.
Frank M. Robinson and coauthor John Levin pose for the dust jacket of their 1982 political thriller, The Great Divide. (Photograph by Marvin Lichtner)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FRANK M. ROBINSON (1926–2014) was a journalist and writer best known for his techno-thrillers and his work as a speechwriter for Harvey Milk. He was the author of The Power and Waiting, as well as, with Thomas N. Scortia, The Glass Inferno, the basis for the film The Towering Inferno. He was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2009. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Afterword
Photographs
About the Author
Copyright
Editorial Note: Within this memoir, the reader may note occasional errors, or that some of the recollections do not comport with all historical facts as they are now known. Because this is a posthumously published memoir, we chose to retain, as much as possible, the truth of Robinson’s own writing. When in doubt, we either left Robinson’s words as they were, or deferred to the preferences of his estate.
To the reader: Some names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent if they’re still living.
—The author
NOT SO GOOD A GAY MAN
Copyright © 2017 by Frank M. Robinson
All rights reserved.
Cover photograph: Frank M. Robinson, then executive editor of Rogue, at a fashion photo shoot in Chicago, 1966. Photograph by Ray Komorski. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley.
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-8209-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-8576-9 (ebook)
eISBN 9781466885769
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First Edition: June 2017
Not So Good a Gay Man Page 28