Samuel Steward was born in 1909 and was a very unusual man. I had never heard of him before until reading this book. He went by lots of different pseudonyms in his different professions— he was a columnist, an erotica writer, an English professor, and a tattoo artist. He lived alone for most of his life, and was never interested in committed romantic relationships. He was an alcoholic. He was an extremely thorough record-keeper, which included keeping a “Stud File” of every sexual encounter he ever had (and there were a lot—more than 2,000 encounters with more than 800 people). In reading just the introduction of the book, I was left wondering, how can one person literally fit all of that into one life? The partial answer is that professor and tattoo artist were not simultaneous careers, and he happened to live in a variety of different situations that lent themselves to a lot of potential for sex (for example, growing up in a boarding house— he slept with many of the tenants, and many of his classmates in high school, some of his students, many of his tattoo clients, and had a relationship with a porn studio where they would send him hustlers and in return he would give them discounted tattoos). He was also the go-to artist for Hell’s Angels for awhile, and assisted Kinsey in his research. Kinsey couldn’t officially have out gay co-researchers, for fear of being accused of biasing the results, but Steward was an unofficial collaborator. They talked often, and Steward agreed to engage in some S&M sessions while being observed, since Kinsey was interested in that. Kinsey was also interested in why people get tattoos, so Steward kept a detailed log of all of his clients and the tattoos he gave them, and passed along the info to Kinsey.
He wrote an autobiography, but it was published in a highly abridged form. This book is a combination of text from the original longer draft, the final shorter published version, and text from his diaries and letters.
The only part that pissed me off is how easily Steward just traipsed around getting academic jobs. At one point he literally walked into someone’s office and asked if there were openings. The idea of doing that now is just laughable. But I feel this way about any academic talking about their job market experience if that experience happened more than 30 years ago.
Stuff I Marked
p.8- quote from a sociologist studying Chicago gay culture in the 30s who found that in most of his interviews, the people emphasized their discovery of gay culture over their private realization of attraction, and how joining the gay world in Chicago also meant joining a new community of living, working, and socializing in different places/with different people. Participating in gay culture and adopting a gay identity as part of one’s sense of self (separately from one’s actual previous sexual activity) were often concurrent. This is similar to in Look Both Ways— being where it’s okay/cool to be gay makes it more likely you’ll feel comfortable/want to be part of it!
p.10- autobiography as rhetorical rather than “strictly factual” accounts
p.193— Kinsey absolutely rejected the words “normal” and “usual.” Instead, he said “majority practice.”
p.194— Steward’s memories are that Kinsey was either straight or very good at keeping his non-straightness a secret. He certainly had no indication Kinsey was straight. But a different book I read recently (maybe Baumgartner?) said very casually that Kinsey had male lovers in addition to loving his wife.
p.195- apparently the Vatican has a huge collection of porn
p.202— “generalizations about tattoos are extremely dangerous and unreliable. Your reaction to a tattoo is established only be the fashion in which your own emotions and observations, your backgrounds and personality, are fused together.” He also notes 32 different motivations for why people get tattoos, 25 of which were sexual in some way, and the most common of which was to assert your masculinity.
p.210— accounts of some of the strangest and/or most overtly homosexual tattoos he gave