September 15, 2010 | Arts / Entertainment

Samuel Steward: life of a sexual renegade

Some people live life; others consume it with a passion.

Samuel Steward, for example, may have packed more into his 84 years than 10 people put together. He was a professor and an erotic novelist; he worked as a tattoo artist, was filmed by famed sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in a BDSM video, included among his friends Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, and kept track of his sexual conquests on file cards in his 'Stud File' (as we all should). But if it wasn't for a chance finding of his dusty journals and writings, long forgetten in the dark corners of an attic, all the amazing details of his colorful life would have been lost with his passing.

Writer Justin Spring discovered much from these personal writings, using them to piece together Steward's life story in the book “Secret Historian." The book is,  according to The Economist, "a rich and exuberant biography of a man who deserves to be better known, as well as a rare window on gay life in an era known mostly for its furtiveness and repression."

Steward began his working life as a professor in 1934. He lasted two years before his first bout with controversy, losing a position with State College of Washington because he included a sympathetic portrayal of a prostitute in his novel 'Angels on the Bough.'

Through his writing and studies, he would later become friends with Lord Alfred Douglas (Oscar Wilde's gay lover), Thomas Mann, and French author, André Gide (who once loaned Steward a young Arab that Gide had brought from North Africa to France).

The biggest influence in his long - and often troubled - life was sex. Anonymous sex. Aggressive sex. Steward began sharing his experiences through short stories, and in the 1960s started writing erotic novels under the name Phil Andros. His work centered around themes he was most familiar with, primarily sadomasochism. His books included 'The Motorcyclist,' '$tud,' 'My Brother, the Hustler,' and 'Below the Belt and Other Stories.'

Steward died at age 84 of chronic pulmonary disease in Berkeley, California.