Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade (50 page)

The affair gave Steward a fine, upbeat way of closing his memoirs with a chapter that ruefully admitted his philosophy of “detachment” would forever remain in conflict with his highly romantic nature. “The business between myself and Scott,” he noted in his memoirs, “looms large for every aging homosexual. In what year does a good man stop it all? It seemed somehow unfair to me that so late in life I should once more be put through the—well,
agony
was not the word;
annoyance
might be more fitting—of having my emotions churned.” Steward was, of course, right: just as he had predicted, the affair came to a sudden, unhappy end. Shortly after the memoir went to press, Andrews became involved with a doctor who offered to support him (and, in doing so, to enable his cocaine habit). By the time Steward’s memoir was published, its dedicatee had vanished, and Steward was once again alone.

Chapters from an Autobiography
was strangely produced and barely marketed. Part of its oddness lay in its packaging, for Don Allen had allowed Steward to design the book’s jacket, and Steward had decided upon a semi-abstract red graphic of a phoenix (a tattoo design) on a solid black background. There was no note of explanation about Steward’s identity on the jacket or in the book’s interior. The little attention the book did receive was positive, however, for it was at once funny and shocking, risqué and unique.

Even as he was publishing his memoir, thereby achieving a modest literary success, Steward watched a close friend and neighbor fall apart as the result of literary rejection. The historian and literary critic Roger Austen, who had interviewed Steward extensively for
Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America
, had been trying for some time to publish his second academic study of homosexuality in American literature. An independent scholar who lived in isolation and near poverty, he was so devastated by the rejection of the manuscript
^*
that he became suicidal.

Writing a professional colleague that “dying well may be the Best Revenge,” Austen had picked up a good-natured hustler in Los Angeles and flown with him to Hawaii for a final sex vacation in Waikiki. “Under the influence of Mishima, I have decided to end (?) take (?) the great adventure after a week of perfect bliss here,” he wrote Steward via postcard. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Austen checked into the Hotel Carmel in Santa Monica alone, and there took a massive dose of sleeping pills. He vomited for two days but did not die, and subsequently wrote Steward again, this time asking for Steward’s stash of cyanide pellets, knowing that Steward had set some by in the event that he needed to end his own life.

Saddened, angered, and repulsed by Austen’s desire to self-destruct, Steward replied,

Steward remained friends with Austen in the difficult months that followed, but he was unable to dissuade Austen from his objective. He attempted suicide again two years later in 1983, at a hotel in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, only to have his plan foiled by a friend who panicked and called the police at the last minute. But in July 1984, after checking into a Seattle hotel, he apparently finally succeeded, for his drowned body was subsequently discovered in Lake Sammamish, eight miles east of the city.

•

After
Chapters from an Autobiography
was published, Steward worked with Richard Hall on several further reminiscences, including “George Platt Lynes: The Man.” He also produced a general-readership article on Cardinal Newman’s sexuality. By far his most exciting project, however, involved the republication of the Phil Andros novels in Don Allen’s matched set of luxuriously produced trade paperbacks.

In order to publish the books, Allen decided to create a new imprint at Gray Fox, one Steward playfully suggested calling Perineum Press.
^*
The name stuck. While the creation of the imprint may have seemed at first glance a complimentary gesture toward Steward, Allen probably created it to insulate other authors at Gray Fox (as well as Gray Fox itself) from any direct association with pornography. Since the gay publishing house Alyson Publications had already contracted with Steward to reissue
$TUD
but wanted to omit six stories from the original version, Steward gave the remaining six stories from the original
$TUD
to Allen, who began the Perineum series by publishing them as
Below the Belt and Other Stories
in 1982,
^*
specially commissioning a cover drawing for the book from Tom of Finland. Allen subsequently reissued all the other Phil Andros “pornos” (as Allen called them) with similar Tom of Finland cover drawings, renaming the books to avoid potential nuisance lawsuits from pulp publishers. In 1983
When in Rome, Do
…became
Roman Conquests
, and
My Brother, the Hustler
became
My Brother, My Self
; In 1984,
Renegade Hustler
became
Shuttlecock
;
The Greek Way
became
Greek Ways
; and
San Francisco Hustler
became
The Boys in Blue
.
Different Strokes: Stories by Phil Andros & Co.
, a collection of stories previously published by Steward under various pseudonyms, came later in 1984. For each of the books, Allen advanced Steward five hundred dollars; they would remain in print for approximately five to ten years, and after earning out their advances brought in royalties for Steward in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars a year.

Absolutely delighted with the Phil Andros cover illustrations, Steward wrote to Tom of Finland,

Though a man of few words, Tom of Finland wrote back an equally admiring note: “I feel proud to be privileged to illustrate your novels, because, as I’ve said before, I like them very much and feel [a] relationship to your fantasies.”

With the republication of the Phil Andros novels, Steward found himself anonymous no longer—for while the Perineum books still credited only “Phil Andros” as their author, Gray Fox Press made no secret of Steward’s name to anyone who asked for it. As a result, Steward began receiving letters, phone calls, and even occasional doorstep visits from new fans, many of whom were aspiring young writers hoping for guidance and advice—including the author, editor, and gay activist John Preston, who had himself once worked as a hustler. Since Preston was involved in erotic publishing, Steward soon began sharing news with him of the reissued Phil Andros novels, in one instance asking, “What do you do, or how do you handle, the increasing number of young sprouts (or twits) who want you to read their novels and ‘work with’ them on their
magnum opus
? Or prisoners on death row in Florida who want you to help them get a new hearing or new trial? Honestogod, the phone calls and ‘appeals’ are very distracting.” Though he pretended irritation, Steward was in fact very moved by his fan mail, and responded to every letter he received, no matter how boring or mundane.

In December of 1982, Steward was contacted by Boyd McDonald, the founder and publisher of
Straight to Hell
/
The Manhattan Institute of Unnatural Acts
, a self-published newsletter that consisted of anonymously signed firsthand accounts of real-life homosexual experiences—some confessional, some diaristic, and some written as amateur erotica.
^*
Having heard of Steward through Winston Leyland, McDonald had sent him two highly detailed questionnaires. “I hope you will feel, as I do,” McDonald wrote, “that in our sex-negative culture [they] would provide inspiration and therapy to…thousands of men.” Steward responded, “I’m not sure that the questionnaire will, as you say, ‘provide inspiration & therapy’ to thousands of readers, but temporary and transient giggles and hardons would be enough reward.” Steward had been an interested reader of
Straight to Hell
for some time, and so was pleased to compile an account of his early sexual life for McDonald as well as a further account of his lifelong sexual habits and practices. The latter provided as close to a summation of his sexual contacts as he would ever produce, noting, “I have had sex with 807 persons for a total of 4647 times. Several (4 or 5) numbered over 200 times each, though I never had a ‘love affair’ with anyone, nor lived with him.”

Steward had another opportunity to reflect on changing social perceptions of homosexuality when he was contacted by the researcher Gregory Sprague in April 1982. Sprague was an administrator and instructor at Loyola University in Chicago, and was also coordinating the Chicago Gay and Lesbian History Project, which was documenting the development of Chicago’s gay subculture. Steward responded with an immediate invitation to visit. “To say that your letter was startling would be a very mild way to put it, for back in the days when I was teaching among the Jesuits [of Loyola] the [words]
homosexual
and
gay
barely existed and were rarely heard,” he wrote. “It is astonishing to learn that your activities as coordinator of the Gay/Lesbian history project are even permitted; despite the Jesuit reputation for tolerance, you might very well have found yourself on the street for such upfront work. These are new times, indeed.”

Nineteen eighty-two also brought the American debut of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s
Querelle
, starring Brad Davis, Franco Nero, and Jeanne Moreau. In 1950 Genet’s novel had been considered so obscene that it could only be sold illegally at a handful of Parisian bookshops, and Steward had smuggled, translated, and illustrated the book as an underground labor of love. Now it had been made into a major motion picture with an international release.

•

In spring Steward required surgery for a stomach tumor; the procedure seemed doubly dangerous to him since it required a blood transfusion. By now AIDS was rampaging through the San Francisco Bay area, and though Steward was not infected, he was justifiably worried about becoming so through the transfusion. While the surgery was successful and no AIDS infection resulted, Steward’s health remained poor. Due to the chronic pulmonary emphysema he had developed over the last decade, he now needed a portable oxygen tank in order to breathe, and though he took pains to hide the device from visitors, he needed to remain connected to it for most of his day.

A number of smaller writing projects kept Steward occupied during his final years. He wrote a substantial foreword for the reissued version of James Barr’s classic 1950 novel
Quatrefoil
. Paul Mariah, publisher of
Manroot Literary Journal
and Manroot Books, republished Steward’s poems of the 1930s as
Love Poems: Homage to Housman
in a limited edition of three hundred signed copies featuring several of Steward’s own erotic line drawings from the 1950s. Since Mariah’s other poets in the same series included Jack Spicer, James Broughton, and Thom Gunn, Steward was pleased and honored to be included.

Steward published a long article in
The Advocate
in November 1983 about his experiences working with and for Alfred Kinsey. A detailed account of his visit to Thomas Mann in Zurich in 1937 appeared shortly thereafter in the same magazine, and he also contributed an essay entitled “In Defense of Erotica” for Eric Rofes’s anthology
Gay Life: Leisure, Love, and Living for the Contemporary Male
.

At the suggestion of Michael Denneny, a pioneering gay editor at St. Martin’s Press in New York, Steward then set to work on a series of mystery novels featuring Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas as sleuths. The writing of these light entertainments would take up the final years of Steward’s life, with
Murder Is Murder Is Murder
published in 1985 and
The Caravaggio Shawl
in 1989, but they were disappointing works of fiction, weakly plotted and of little value even to those interested in the lives of Stein and Toklas. Denneny meanwhile purchased the final revision of Steward’s novel inspired by Sir Francis Rose,
A Hunting We Will Go!
, publishing it as
Parisian Lives
in 1984. The book appeared to mixed reviews, and rightly so, for the original vitality of the manuscript had been sapped by nearly thirty years of revision. Moreover, by 1984 no one in the United States knew or cared that the novel was a roman à clef about Sir Francis Rose, for the English artist had never achieved even a minor reputation in the United States, and had in fact died in poverty in 1979.
^*
Freed of its scandalous real-life references, the novel appeared merely peculiar and anachronistic—particularly so since Oscar Wilde had used the same lover-revealed-as-son plot twist nearly a hundred years earlier in
A Woman of No Importance
.