Jack Rinella's Kinky Info Page

Remembering John Preston
Issue 20, 1994

Day to day living is filled with thoughts and actions that are soon over and forgotten. With the passing of years, even fond memories tend to fade. Name the children who were in your fourth grade class, or the minister who confirmed you. What was day to day life like when you were a high school freshman?

On the other hand there are those rare moments and special people who are forever etched in our hearts. I think of the nun that taught me journalism, or my first same-sex orgasm.

Reading the book Mr. Benson, in the late summer of '83, was a memorable event for me. I had just left my wife and children, moved into my own apartment, was going through a divorce, and coming to terms with my homosexuality. The men in John Preston's story offered me the consolation that not only was there a lifestyle true to my own feelings, but that it was attainable, and honorable. Mr. Benson and his Jamie lived "happily ever after" and so could I.

I was also relieved to know that others thought as I did, had a fantasy life filled with sadomasochism, domination, and affection.

In the succeeding years, Preston's fiction offered me ideas, almost visions, of the kind of man I wanted to be, the kind I wanted to know and love. Most were leather men of the heroic type: adventuresome, courageous, and well-made in all their parts.

Yes, it was fiction, but fiction with more than a grain of truth. It was credible, motivating, satisfying, and empowering.

Let me to be quick to add that Preston's best book is Franny, the Queen of Provincetown. She's no leather man as she sits on the porch regaling the men who filled the sandy streets of that Cape Cod town, but beneath the drag and the accent was a warm and honest Gay man, one who had the strength to be who s/he was.

Preston's foreword to the book reminds us that Franny never existed, but was instead a composite of the hundreds of Gay men and women whom he had known in the years surrounding the Stonewall riots. It makes no matter, like Jamie and Mr. Benson, Franny had her effect on me.

Likewise it makes no matter that John wrote fiction. His contribution to the world of leather is undeniable. He gave it existence in the minds of thousands of readers, gave image to the dreams we all thought and to the men for whom we searched.

We look around us today and see all kinds of leather folk, some admirable, others negligible. There are clubs and leather bars of all kinds, SM magazines and videos by the score. Leather has shown itself to be a movement, not a fad, a lifestyle, not a fantasy.

The transformation of leather from the early biker clubs of the Old Guard to the strong presence it is today is the work of many men and women: the early adventurers and renegades, the bar owners, promoters, club founders and rank and file volunteers.

The passage of time has taken its toll. Leather folk come and go, join in and drop out. Live and die. They are just as much a part of life's cycles as anything else.

Preston's contribution to today's leather world is significant. He gave it voice and image. He shared, through the written word, the dreams, the aspirations, and, yes, the fantasies which underlay the events. His life was filled as well with action, with giving, with a strong desire to live his homosexuality with strength and courage.

I met John at a bookseller's convention in New Orleans in 1986. I'm sure he wouldn't have remembered that meeting. In later years we had a bit of correspondence. I wrote some ideas about Franny and told him I was a columnist but that he had probably never heard of me. Fact was he had, and often read my column in the San Francisco Sentinel.

John past away on April 27th, but his legacy is more than a dozen books on my bookshelf. It's not the books, of course, that matter, but rather their effect. We were strangers and newcomers to leather and he gave us images that nurtured our hopes. He showed those of us in the hinterland, in the suburbs, in the closet, what it could be like in the centers of SM like the Gold Coast, the Mineshaft, and the Eagle.

Preston's obituary says that he was born in Medfield, MA in 1945. I find that surprising, since when we met, I assumed he was much older than me. In reality he was my senior by only one year. His forty-eight years, though, were filled with enough accomplishment for a person twice his age. He was a certified sexual health consultant, attended United Theological Seminary and North Western Lutheran Seminary. He was a founder of America's first Gay and Lesbian Community Center, located in Minneapolis.

He served as editor of The Advocate magazine from 1974 to 75 and wrote extensively for Gay periodicals, authored 16 books of fiction, three non-fiction titles, and wrote introductions to three other books. At the time of his death, Preston wrote regularly for eight periodicals.

Beyond having shaken hands with John once, and written to him twice, I can't say I knew him. Others, of course, did. I spoke with a friend the other day who was debating as to whether or not he should go to a memorial service being held that night in an Episcopal church in New York.

He commented on the differences he saw between the Preston of literature and the Preston of reality. He much preferred the man he saw in the pages of fiction. I suppose that's the way life is, though I am quick to add that my friend's appreciation of Preston may reflect more on my friend than on Preston.

Image and reality often clash. After all, perceptions being as limited as they are, there may not be any reality except the ones we create in our minds.

We live in the realities are able to create. In the case of Preston's fiction, I found fodder for my own existence, a way to live and prosper in a post-marriage world of Gay men. Whoever he was in his home town of Portland, Maine, in his writing he was a master story-teller and the shaper of a lifestyle.

When the annuals of Leather history are written, Preston will be remembered as a man who shared a vision, who fostered a community coming of age, and gave what he could as best he could.

You did a fine job, John Preston. May you rest in peace. --- Jack Rinella