Comments on: Secret Historian: "The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade"

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Query: if he was (albeit briefly) in the Navy why is he wearing a Coast Guard uniform in the cover photo? Service-curious?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

There was a great line in CARNAL KNOWLEDGE that Art Garfinkle tells Jack Nicholsom’s character who was his former college buddy:
“You know, you can’t make fucking your life’s work” Apparently Samuel did!

By: MrsBug

MrsBug — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ah the art of the understatement. Lost, so sadly, in today’s world of thick applications.

By: Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I must have looked away during that part, I was multitasking. Sorry for the weenies.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

With all that Hollywood pubic hair on file, might we see another Jurassic Park sequel?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fascinating…I’ve put this book on my library hold list. However, that video is NOT safe for work, unless your workplace is ok with multiple scans of pictures of men with their pants down and graphic orgy scenes (in which case, lucky for you…).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Steward also published an autobiography, _Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos_.

By: Jean-Luc Turbo

Jean-Luc Turbo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Oddly no “weenies” (again, you were multitasking) but a coupla’ photos of faceless men Greco-Roman wrestling…I guess it was enough to frighten the horses…

By: TEKNA2007

TEKNA2007 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This makes me feel as if I am ultimately alone, a drop of protoplasm adrift

If you’re lucky, you’ll land on one of Samuel Steward’s catalog cards, where you may yet live forever.

By: Sarah Neptune

Sarah Neptune — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hahaha! My thoughts exactly!

By: blahrgh

blahrgh — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

FYI: the video is not work safe, unless you work in a place where they allow you to look at panning shots of orgies.

By: wasmax

wasmax — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Xeni, your definition of “work-safe” is interesting.
I guess it depends on where you work…
Nudity, orgies, S&M tools?
What do you consider NSFW?

But you’re right, it was fascinating.

By: Maggie Koerth-Baker

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Oh, it was pubic hair he was collecting?

I’d imagined something different.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

An era exciting, lonely, and lost.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Somewhat disturbingly, I have a bag of ancestral (head) hair. Tiny locks of baby hair from god knows who, tied up in little snippets of fading ribbon.

By: Ugly Canuck

Ugly Canuck — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Geez, I use to date a lady who was a collector of Victorian era “hair jewelry”. See:

http://www.victorianamagazine.com/jewelry/hairjewelry.htm

Perhaps working it into a piece of such was what your ancestor had intended to do with that which you have “in-hair-ited.”

By: trieste

trieste — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s always nice to have a hobby.

By: RHK

RHK — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This makes me feel as if I am ultimately alone, a drop of protoplasm adrift in an incomprehensibly vast, utterly uncaring universe.

By: Jean-Luc Turbo

Jean-Luc Turbo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I guess I’ve been demoted back to “practicing” homosexual…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

You werent looking close enough.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I finished the book a couple weeks ago. While it seems like an interesting topic, in the end it’s just a tedious recitation of the life of a sex addict who made very little of himself.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

#19 Respectfully, I disagree. I too, finished the book a couple of weeks ago (and was also moved to read Sam’s autobiography, which is very stylishly and entertainingly written) and it was an amazing story and an entertaining read. This guy was a fascinating combination of intellectual, voyeur, renegade, historian and researcher. He lived a difficult life, sometimes under brutal circumstances, yet he triumphed over it all and his obsessive record-keeping is a testament to it – also an important and rare document of a long period of American gay history, which would otherwise be largely unknown.