(Gay) Sex and the Single Guy

Patricia Cohen takes a fascinating look at the life and times of Samuel Steward, a little-known gay literary figure who was inspired by the Kinsey Report’s treatment of homosexuality as natural and legitimate to see himself as a sex researcher, leading him to scrupulously document his voluminous sexual encounters -- including Rock Hudson, Thornton Wilder and Rudolph Valentino -- in explicit detail. Steward is the subject of a new book by Justin Spring that promises to be the most titillating look at gay life before the persecution of homosexuals during the 1950s McCarthy scare.

Patricia Cohen reports:

Author Justin Spring [got his hands on the] 80 boxes full of drawings, letters, photographs, sexual paraphernalia, manuscripts and other items, including an autograph and reliquary with pubic hair from Rudolph Valentino, a thousand-page confessional journal Steward created at the request of the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, and a green metal card catalog labeled “Stud File,” which contained a meticulously documented record on index cards of every sexual experience and partner that Steward said he had had over 50 years.

An attic full of items contained a secret history of a little-documented strand of gay life in the middle decades of the 20th century. Steward’s experience stands in stark contrast to the familiar story of furtive concealment and persecution in the period before gay liberation. As new biographies of artists and writers like E.M. Forster detail the effects of sexual repression on their work, Steward’s history shows what a life of openness, when embraced, entailed day to day.

Jason Baumann, curator of the lesbian and gay collection for the New York Public Library, said, “It’s exactly the kind of material that I constantly have historians and the general public wanting to have.”

“Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade” will be released on Aug. 17.