![]() Fisher’s food writing), he ends with:įor my part, I cannot rest until I find a wolf to try it. ![]() The trees of Lincoln Park are the curling man-hair of his chest, the trees of Jackson Park the foliage upon his legs, the tall buildings of the Loop his sturdy muscles, and the whole anatomy of the city his outstretched body.Īnd after describing a medieval recipe for preparing a wolf to eat in “On How to Cook a Wolf” (a satire on M.F.K. It is Gargantua with his head in Evanston, his feet in Gary, and he lies Relaxed and smoldering along the lakefront. I think of Chicago as a man-city, healthy, sweaty, and sensual. Through double-entendre and word-play, Steward asserts his gayness.Īs Mulderig points out in his excellent Introduction in On Chicago Steward employs a surfeit of homoerotic imagery: This goes a long way towards vividly painting a portrait of Steward as quirky, brilliant, provocative, witty, poetic, and fiery. He is also remembered as the writer of gay erotic fiction under the pen name of Phil Andros.Įach personal essay is annotated by Mulderig and includes footnotes that help place the essays in historical, cultural, and biographical context. Steward wrote many articles and stories for the pioneering Swiss gay magazine Der Kreis as well as for the Danish gay magazines Eos and Amigo. In the early 1950’s Steward met Alfred Kinsey, the famous sex researcher, and committed himself to his own form of sex research by keeping a “Stud File” card catalog on all his sexual adventures Stein’s death in 1946 was a huge blow to Steward’s psyche. He corresponded and visited with Stein and Alice Toklas for many years. Stein, though, was Steward’s greatest champion and mentor. Steward, in later life, went on to befriend numerous gay artists and writers including Paul Cadmus, George Platt Lynes, Julien Green, Fritz Peters, and Glenway Wescott. Steward counted Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder among his friends and, while in Europe, he also met with Andre Gide, Thomas Mann, and Lord Alfred Douglas. Samuel Steward earned a PhD in English from Ohio State University and held over the course of his life several academic posts including professorships at Loyola University and later at DePaul University. The essays show Samuel Steward’s development as a writer and a gay sophisticate, from the early essays which centered awkwardly on dentistry from the patient’s perspective, to a wider range of topics–bodybuilding, cryptography, psychiatry, espionage, opera, pet cemeteries, Gertrude Stein, Chicago, and Paris. Thirty of the overall fifty-six essays published are included, authored under the alias of Philip Sparrow. It is all the more remarkable considering they were published in the obscure Illinois Dental Journal between the years of 19 penned at the request of its editor, Dr. The personal essays in this collection are written from a queer perspective at a time when censorship and homophobia were rampant. How wonderful that Jeremy Mulderig has reclaimed these lost gems of gay writing. More than a history of the art or a roster of famous-and infamous-tattoo customers and artists, Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is a raunchy, provocative look at a forgotten subculture.‘Philip Sparrow Tells All’ by Samuel Steward ![]() why people get tattoos-25 sexual motivations for body art.how to ensure the artist uses sterile needles and other safety precautions.what to expect during a tattooing session.However much tattoo culture has changed, the advice and information is still sound: These days, when tattoo art is sported by millionaires and the middle class as well as by gang members and punk rockers, the sheer squalor of Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is a revelation. From studly nineteen-year-olds who traded blow jobs for tattoos to hard-bitten dykes who scared the sailors out of the shop, the clientele was seedy at best: sailors, con men, drunks, hustlers, and Hells Angels. ![]() His lascivious relish for the young sailors swaggering or staggering in for a new tattoo does not blind him to the sordidness of the world they inhabited. The gritty, film-noir details of Skid Row life are rendered with unflinching honesty and furtive tenderness. Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is anything but politically correct. During that time he left his mark on a hundred thousand people, from youthful sailors who flaunted their tattoos as a rite of manhood to executives who had to hide their passion for well-ornamented flesh. Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos tells the story of his years working in a squalid arcade on Chicago’s tough State Street. Explore the dark subculture of 1950s tattoos!In the early 1950s, when tattoos were the indelible mark of a lowlife, an erudite professor of English-a friend of Gertrude Stein, Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, and Thornton Wilder-abandoned his job to become a tattoo artist (and incidentally a researcher for Alfred Kinsey). ![]()
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