Windy City Media Group Frontpage News

THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

home search facebook twitter join
Gay News Sponsor Windy City Times 2023-12-13
DOWNLOAD ISSUE
Donate

Sponsor
Sponsor
Sponsor

  WINDY CITY TIMES

Secret Historian: A lecture with Justin Spring
BOOKS Special to the online edition of Windy City Times
by Joe Franco
2011-09-28

This article shared 4207 times since Wed Sep 28, 2011
facebook twitter pin it google +1 reddit email


Author Justin Spring was on hand recently at the Chicago History Museum to discuss his book on the life of Samuel Steward. Steward's meticulous journals and artwork relating to his adventurous sexual life were the foundation of Spring's biography Secret Historian. Steward's work was also featured in an ongoing exhibition at the New York Museum of Sex entitled "Obscene Diary: The Secret Archive of Samuel Steward: Professor, Tattoo Artist and Pornographer."

Spring said that one factor in writing this biography and taking ten years of his life to research the life of Steward was because "people who bear witness to their sexuality make it possible for the rest of us to live as 'us.'" He said that work focusing on gay artists or writers from Steward's time is typically challenging to research since many artists living in the pre-Stonewall era of gay culture were looked down on like "leprosy or communism. Many artists destroyed all of their records."

Steward was an anomaly in the back-alley and heavily closeted '50s. He collected data and in some cases "souvenirs" of his sexual liaisons from very early on. Spring found records and photographs of a gold monstrance holding the pubic hair of Rudolph Valentino, with whom Steward had sex. Steward also recorded an experience with Rock Hudson in an elevator of the Marshall Field's Store on State Street.

Steward kept what he named the "Stud File." This was a catalog of every single man that Steward had had sex with, including names, availability, physical descriptions, penile measurements, dates of the encounter and what sex acts were actually performed. It was no surprise that Dr. Alfred Kinsey became interested in Steward's sex life from a research standpoint. Kinsey was fascinated with the breadth of Stewards records and asked him to be an unofficial associate in Kinsey's famous study on sex and sexuality, which lead to the development of the "Kinsey Scale."

A former professor at DePaul University, Steward left his work as an educator and devoted his time to the art of tattooing. Spring explained that Steward earned more than twice as much from his work as a tattoo artist as he did as a professor. Phil Sparrow Tattoos opened at 655 S. State St., here in Chicago. Even while tattooing, Steward continued to keep a more than 1,000-page diary of his sex life in the tattoo parlor. For Steward, the act of tattooing—the intimacy of the art itself—was a sexual high. Later, Steward taught Chuck Renslow of IML (International Mr. Leather) fame to tattoo.

In 1965, Steward left Chicago and moved to Oakland, Calif., where he continued to tattoo. In fact, he became the tattoo artist of the Hell's Angels bike gang, who actually became quite close to Steward. Steward eventually shut down the tattoo parlor due to increasing neighborhood violence. At one point, he watched his neighbor bleed to death in front of his shop after a violent attack.

Steward also wrote gay erotica under the pseudonym, Phil Andros. Originally written as pulp fiction during the '40s and '50s, the work was a follow up with his work for "The Circle" magazine in the Netherlands. In the 1970s, Steward's work was republished using cover art from his friend, Tom of Finland.

Towards the end of his life in the 1980s, Steward became very melancholy. He died in obscurity, but as Spring put it, "He lived his life as he saw fit."


This article shared 4207 times since Wed Sep 28, 2011
facebook twitter pin it google +1 reddit email

Out and Aging
Presented By

  ARTICLES YOU MIGHT LIKE

Gay News

Kara Swisher talks truth, power in tech at Chicago Humanities event 2024-03-25
- Lesbian author, award-winning journalist and podcast host Kara Swisher spoke about truth and power in the tech industry through the lens of her most recent book, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, March 21 at First ...


Gay News

RuPaul finds 'Hidden Meanings' in new memoir 2024-03-18
- RuPaul Andre Charles made a rare Chicago appearance for a book tour on March 12 at The Vic Theatre, 3145 N. Sheffield Ave. Presented by National Public Radio station WBEZ 91.5 FM, the talk coincided with ...


Gay News

Without compromise: Holly Baggett explores lives of iconoclasts Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap 2024-03-04
- Jane Heap (1883-1964) and Margaret Anderson (1886-1973), each of them a native Midwesterner, woman of letters and iconoclast, had a profound influence on literary culture in both America and Europe in the early 20th Century. Heap ...


Gay News

There she goes again: Author Alison Cochrun discusses writing journey 2024-02-27
- By Carrie Maxwell When Alison Cochrun began writing her first queer romance novel in 2019, she had no idea it would change the course of her entire life. Cochrun, who spent 11 years as a high ...


Gay News

NATIONAL Women's college, banned books, military initiative, Oregon 2023-12-29
- After backlash regarding a decision to update its anti-discrimination policy and open enrollment to some transgender applicants, a Catholic women's college in Indiana will return to its previous admission policy, per The National Catholic Reporter. In ...


Gay News

NATIONAL School items, Miami attack, Elliot Page, Fire Island 2023-12-22
- In Virginia, new and returning members of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and Fairfax County School Board were inaugurated—with some school board members opting to use banned books on the topics of slavery and LGBTQ+ ...


Gay News

Chicago author's new guide leads lesbian fiction authors toward inspiration and publication 2023-12-07
- From a press release: Award-winning and bestselling lesbian fiction author Elizabeth Andre—the pen name for a Chicago-based interracial lesbian couple—has published her latest book, titled Self-Publishing Lesbian Fiction, Write Your ...


Gay News

NATIONAL Tenn. law, banned books, rainbow complex, journalists quit 2023-12-01
- Under pressure from a lawsuit over an anti-LGBTQ+ city ordinance, officials in Murfreesboro, Tennessee removed language that banned homosexuality in public, MSNBC noted. Passed in June, Murfreesboro's "public decency" ordinance ...


Gay News

BOOKS Lucas Hilderbrand reflects on gay history in 'The Bars Are Ours' 2023-11-29
- In The Bars Are Ours (via Duke University Press), Lucas Hilderbrand, a professor of film and media studies at the University of California-Irvine, takes readers on a historical journey of gay bars, showing how the venues ...


Gay News

BOOKS Owen Keehnen takes readers to an 'oasis of pleasure' in 'Man's Country' 2023-11-27
- In the book Man's Country: More Than a Bathhouse, Chicago historian Owen Keehnen takes a literary microscope to the venue that the late local icon Chuck Renslow opened in 1973. Over decades, until it was demolished ...


Gay News

Photographer Irene Young launches book with stellar concerts 2023-11-20
- "Something About the Women" was appropriately the closing song for two sold-out, stellar concerts at Berkeley's Freight & Salvage November 19, in celebration of the new book of the same name by Irene Young, the legendary ...


Gay News

Rustin film puts a gay pioneer into the spotlight 2023-11-16
- The story of activist Bayard Rustin is one that should be told in classrooms everywhere. Instead, because Rustin was an openly same-gender-loving man, his legacy has gone relatively unnoticed outside of LGBTQ+-focused history books. Netflix hopes ...


Gay News

Billy Masters: The times Streisand failed to make a splash 2023-11-13
- "Fame is a hollow trophy. No matter who you are, you can only eat one pastrami sandwich at a time."—Wise words from Barbra Streisand. You all know that Barbra Streisand's book is out. And I ...


Gay News

Charles Busch dishes on life as a storyteller 2023-11-09
- Performer/writer Charles Busch, who recently penned his autobiography, Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy, said that collecting his most precious and salient memories in a book felt "inevitable." "Storytelling is such an essential ...


Gay News

LGBT HISTORY PROJECT: Exploring 70 years of lesbian publications, from 1940s zines to modern glossy magazines 2023-11-02
- Since the '40s, lesbians have created a vibrant history of publications. From the exploration of daily lesbian life to literary and feminist pursuits, to the modern age of glossy magazines, for over 70 years, lesbians have ...


 


Copyright © 2024 Windy City Media Group. All rights reserved.
Reprint by permission only. PDFs for back issues are downloadable from
our online archives.

Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, drawings, and
photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no
responsibility may be assumed for unsolicited materials.

All rights to letters, art and photos sent to Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago
Gay and Lesbian News and Feature Publication) will be treated
as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and as such,
subject to editing and comment. The opinions expressed by the
columnists, cartoonists, letter writers, and commentators are
their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature Publication).

The appearance of a name, image or photo of a person or group in
Nightspots (Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times
(a Chicago Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature
Publication) does not indicate the sexual orientation of such
individuals or groups. While we encourage readers to support the
advertisers who make this newspaper possible, Nightspots (Chicago
GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay, Lesbian
News and Feature Publication) cannot accept responsibility for
any advertising claims or promotions.

 
 

TRENDINGBREAKINGPHOTOS







Sponsor


 



Donate


About WCMG      Contact Us      Online Front  Page      Windy City  Times      Nightspots
Identity      BLACKlines      En La Vida      Archives      Advanced Search     
Windy City Queercast      Queercast Archives     
Press  Releases      Join WCMG  Email List      Email Blast      Blogs     
Upcoming Events      Todays Events      Ongoing Events      Bar Guide      Community Groups      In Memoriam     
Privacy Policy     

Windy City Media Group publishes Windy City Times,
The Bi-Weekly Voice of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Community.
5315 N. Clark St. #192, Chicago, IL 60640-2113 • PH (773) 871-7610 • FAX (773) 871-7609.