To go to bed with him was hardly the most attractive prospect in the world-it was terrifying, even repulsive. Besides, I was in my twenties and Lord Alfred was by then sixty-seven, and in anyone’s book that’s old. Several (4 or 5) numbered over 200 times each, though I never had a ‘love affair’ with anyone, nor lived with him” (396).įor you celebrity lovers out there, some very notable figures appear within these statistics from Rudolph Valentino to Rock Hudson to Thornton Wilder and even, Lord Alfred Douglas who Steward boinked expressly for the opportunity to go where Oscar Wilde had gone before him.Īs he explains, “I must honestly admit that I had no interest whatsoever in Lord Alfred Douglas as a person or as a writer, but only in the fact that he and Oscar Wilde had been lovers, and back in those shrouded days the name of Wilde had a magic all its own for those of us who had to live without the benefits of liberation or exposure of our wicked lives. As he recalls, “I have had sex with 807 persons for a total of 4647 times. In a questionnaire for Straight to Hell Magazine in 1982, Steward lays out his perhaps final tally (Steward died in 1993 but at 76, things start to slow down). I showed him the file he was fascinated” (116).ĭriven in part by his own obsessions and eventually his friendship with Kinsey, Steward’s record-keeping, as well as his large collection of erotic art and photography, gives contemporary queer historians an entry point to understanding the sexual cultures of a large part of the 20th century, particularly during the years when these types of records were highly illegal.Īnd yes, Steward’s numbers were….ahem….significant. My information like Kinsey’s was coded, but not so unbreakably or exclusively. But I had an accurate count on the number of persons I had been to bed with, the total number of times of ‘releases’ (as he termed them) with other persons, number of repeats, and all the usual statistical information, taken from the ‘Stud File’ that I had kept on three-by-five cards from my very first contact many years before in Ohio. His near obsessive record-keeping interested seminal sex researcher Alfred Kinsey who made Steward an integral collaborator at his Institute of Sex Research.ĭescribing his first meeting with Kinsey, Steward remembers, revealing, as well, the extent of his sexual records, “The thing that amazed him most of all was that I was a ‘record keeper’-’something all too rare,’ he said. Since he was a young man, Steward kept extremely detailed records of all his sexual encounters in what he termed the “Stud File” (don’t you love the name?). However, I know what all you, dear filthy readers, want to hear about: the sex.
A fascinating read, Secret Historian is a sometimes gossipy, sometimes raunchy, sometimes melancholy, sometimes gleeful and always amusing ride through Steward’s life.Īs shown in Spring’s introduction, there are clearly too many details in the biography to insert in this gushing review from his double life as a tattoo artist in Chicago to his lifelong adoration of rough trade (unsurprisingly he was a huge fan of Genet) to his struggles with alcoholism and later, barbituate addiction. Embarking on an enormous amount of research, Spring resurrects Steward’s raucous, rebellious, role model-worthy and ultimately historically significant biography for readers, rendering Secret Historian arguably mandatory for anyone interested in queer history. Spring continues, “Steward’s journals, letters, memoirs, diaries, and archives of published materials brought all these various identities together into one man,” which is exactly what Spring accomplishes in his illuminating biography of Steward (xiii).īefore Secret Historian, few understood Steward’s entire story, mostly knowing one of his many alter egos.
Toklas, and Thornton Wilder Thomas Cave, spiritual seeker Sam Steward, unofficial sex researcher for Alfred Kinsey’s Institute for Sex Research Phil Sparrow, streetwise Chicago tattoo artist “Phil” and “Phillip von Chicago,” homoerotic illustrator Ward Stames, homophile journalist “Doc” Sparrow, official tattoo artist of the Oakland Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang and finally, Phil Andros, the homophile pulp pornographer who described the sexual underground of the American 1950s with passion, good humor, and charm” (xii-iii). Steward, the mild-mannered poet, literary novelist, and professor of English literature at a Catholic university in Chicago “Sammy” Steward, adoring young friend and fan of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. He states, “…I have come to know my subject as a complicated man of many identities. In his introduction to the captivating Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist and Sexual Renegade, author Justin Spring discusses the almost unbelievably vast range of personas, lives and experiences of Sam Steward.
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