![]() ![]() In the 1960s he wrote explicit gay pulp fiction under the name “Phil Andros.”Īlthough Secret Historian is carefully documented at every step, Spring tells Steward’s tale with the panache of a private detective turned novelist. ![]() Well before he was outed as homosexual in 1956 and dismissed from DePaul, Steward was also “Phil Sparrow,” who operated a tattoo parlor near Chicago’s Great Lakes Naval Base. Toklas, he was Sammy Steward, an openly gay bon vivant bohemian. To dear friends in Europe, especially Gertrude Stein and Alice B. in literature from Ohio State, he was Professor Steward to students at Carroll College, Washington State, Loyola University of Chicago and DePaul University, while he was also writing about homosexual life, under various pseudonyms, for gay-themed publishers. Most gay men at the time led a double life, but Steward assumed multiple identities. The tale also lay untold because Steward’s story is so complex. (Many passages and photos in Spring’s book are decidedly NC-17.) There is also the matter of Steward’s voracious and unsettling sexual appetite, one that extended to sadomasochism, bondage and relations with minors. Protecting some of the famous names in Steward’s stud file played a big part: Rudolph Valentino, whose homosexuality was carefully hidden for decades Thornton Wilder, who remained closeted Alfred Lord Douglas, whose earlier relations with Oscar Wilde sent the latter to jail and hundreds of U.S. The reasons for secrecy go beyond American society’s reluctance to discuss human sexuality. Why all the secrecy for a man who was a major contributor to Alfred Kinsey’s studies of male sexuality, and who lived 14 years beyond the 1969 Stonewall uprising that launched the modern gay liberation movement? Why is it that no one before Spring assembled the myriad pieces of Steward’s life? Were he alive today, Steward would probably chair a university’s queer studies department, but for most of his days Steward’s sexual behavior was not only considered immoral and psychologically perverse, it was also illegal.Īs Spring notes in a skillful afterword that offers insight into the craft of research, Steward’s papers have been “kept under close guard” by the repositories that held parts of them: the Kinsey Institute, Yale’s Beinecke Library, Brown University’s John Hay Collection and Boston University. Most know Chamberlain’s name, but few have heard of Steward, whose life Justin Spring lays bare for the first time in Secret Historian, which was a 2010 National Book Award finalist. In many instances there was also photographic evidence. Modesty was neither man’s strong suit, but unlike Chamberlain, Steward meticulously documented each of his conquests in a private “stud file” that recorded names, places and graphic details. His gay counterpart, Samuel Steward (1909–93), claimed a more modest 4,647 sexual encounters. ![]() More than a history of the art or a roster of famous - and infamous - tattoo customers and artists, ✻ad Boys and Tough Tattoos« is a raunchy, provocative look at a forgotten subculture.When basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain declared he had slept with 20,000 women, most observers dismissed his assertion as improbable braggadocio. However much tattoo culture has changed, the advice and information is still sound: how to select a good tattoo artist what to expect during a tattooing session how to ensure the artist uses sterile needles and other safety precautions how to care for a new tattoo why people get tattoos - 25 sexual motivations for body art. From studly 19-year-olds who traded blow jobs for tattoos to hard-bitten dykes who scared the sailors out of the shop, the clientele was seedy at best: sailors, con men, drunks, hustlers, and Hell's Angels.These days, when tattoo art is sported by millionaires and the middle class as well as by gang members and punk rockers, the sheer squalor of ✻ad Boys and Tough Tattoos« is a revelation. His lascivious relish for the young sailors swaggering or staggering in for a new tattoo does not blind him to the sordidness of the world they inhabited. The gritty, film-noir details of Skid Row life are rendered with unflinching honesty and furtive tenderness. ✻ad Boys and Tough Tattoos« is anything but politically correct. ![]() During that time he left his mark on a hundred thousand people, from youthful sailors who flaunted their tattoos as a rite of manhood to executives who had to hide their passion for well-ornamented flesh. ✻ad Boys and Tough Tattoos« tells the story of his years working in a squalid arcade on Chicago's tough State Street. Inhalt Explore the dark subculture of 1950s tattoos! In the early 1950s, when tattoos were the indelible mark of a lowlife, an erudite professor of English - a friend of Gertrude Stein, Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, and Thornton Wilder - abandoned his job to become a tattoo artist (and incidentally a researcher for Alfred Kinsey). ![]()
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