Notes On "A Single Man"

Portrait of Christopher Isherwood
Don Bachardy
UNTITLED II, AUGUST 19  1985
Acrylic on paper
29 7/8 x 22 3/8 inches
courtesy Cheim & Read, New York

That man of funky letters, John Waters, once wrote that Tennessee Williams saved his life—in the public library. For me, it was Christopher Isherwood that saved mine. A perceptive high school teacher gave me a copy of A Meeting By the River. I was a sophomore or junior, so what could be better than a novel about being gay and spiritual? Isherwood soon became my patron saint of the fulfilled queer life.

Of all his writings, A Single Man (1964) was said to have been Isherwood’s personal favorite, according to his lover, the painter Don Bachardy. We rented the 2009 movie adaptation the other night and I can’t get it out of my mind. Director, writer, and producer Tom Ford has claimed that it isn’t a gay film, and weirdly enough, after thinking about what defines a queer film, I think he’s right. So, what constitutes a queer film?

Perhaps the first feature-length queer film I ever saw (albeit inadvertently) was Cabaret (1972), based on Isherwood’s Berlin Stories. In the edited-for-TV version, Michael York, as Isherwood’s Brian Roberts, has his queer line deleted, but if you were a hip high schooler, you understood Brian’s bisexuality anyway. Despite the film’s lack of overt queerness, Isherwood’s pre-WWII experience of Berlin came through. Of course, it also featured Joel Grey at his queerest best.

There was no pretending that the Rocky Horror Picture Show (1972) was anything but queer. In a very underground ‘70s way, the open sexuality and pot smoking in public was all part of the movie-going experience. We thought ourselves so brave to be attending the midnight show on Powell Street, where we smoked joints in the theater. We were suburban teenagers committing a revolutionary cultural act.

Clearly, 1972 was a big year for queer-oriented films. There was the made-for-TV movie, That Certain Summer, with Martin Sheen and Hal Holbrook. I have always loved Martin Sheen for taking on that role when he was so young and vulnerable. And he ends up becoming President! But it was still too early for an out-and-out queer love story in mainstream movie houses. Ten years later there was a mediocre film, Making Love (1982) that played in theaters all across the country. I admit my pride (and pleasure) in seeing Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin in bed together even if that Angel, Kate Jackson, was awful. When I saw Philadelphia (1993) in downtown Berkeley (of all places), the crowd gasped when Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas kissed. The progress during the two decades from my early adolescence to adulthood seemed slow indeed. But things sped up after that, in part because of TV sitcoms like Ellen and Will & Grace. It is hard to admit that sometimes liberation has popular culture to thank.

Despite this long relationship with cinema, I am still one of those people who would rather read the novel than see the movie. Isherwood, of all people, understood that whenever a novel is adapted for the screen, a lot gets changed. But although it has been thirty years since I read A Single Man, Tom Ford’s adaptation, with its lushness and beautiful quotes from the novel sent me back to the book, and back to Isherwood’s life. He wrote the novel after a trial separation from his partner Bachardy provoked fears about being left alone. Yet they reconciled and lived together in a cocoon overlooking the Pacific until 1986, when Isherwood died at age 81.

Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, 1968
acrylic on canvas,  83 1/2 x 119 1/2 in.
courtesy hockneypictures.com

In the novel, fifty-eight year old George Falconer lives in a small modest hillside home, not unlike Isherwood and Don Bachardy’s own home in Santa Monica. The literary George is not as debonair or wealthy as his film counterpart. Despite Tom Ford’s incredibly good taste in architecture (early Lautner, natch), décor, clothes, and cars, something gets lost in the film translation. It is not only that George lives in modernist architectural splendor and his gal pal Charlotte’s home recalls Ted Graber’s Beverly Hills, instead of the rickety canyon bohemia of Isherwood’s novel. Tom Ford operates in what some call a “post-gay” world: everybody knows someone gay, and if you live on the coast, you act like half the world is queer.

Santa Monica Canyon

Ford’s introduction of the suicide theme is akin to modern gratuitous violence. If there isn’t a revolver somewhere, we don’t feel alive enough. Of course, Isherwood didn’t need a gun; his text carried the urgency and the radical rage of the voice within, something he was always working with by removing some layers and not others. In the film, a potential suicide stands in for the rage—a sad and angry gay man would be too subtle without a pistol in today’s contemporary world.

A Single Man
courtesy The Weinstein Company

A Single Man
courtesy The Weinstein Company

A Single Man
courtesy The Weinstein Company

Ford takes the most beautiful scene in the novel—a swim in the ocean—and turns it into the visual leitmotif for the film. After his lover dies, George is always suspended in a kind of non-reality, turned upside down and sideways, but not quite drowning.

In 1964, few stories were as bold and took such a strong stance against the heterosexist hegemony as A Single Man did. Even today, save for some minor details, Isherwood’s novel could stand in as a contemporary indictment of the repressive right wing. But in Ford’s hands it feels like a nostalgic and luxurious film about an era when gay partners weren’t invited to the funerals but could still live very comfortable and tasteful lives together. Indeed, the thrill of the secrecy from the pre-Stonewall era has been replaced by Southern California movie affluence. Tom Ford can afford to make a film that floats beautifully above most of the world’s repressive queer reality.

In one of the film’s earliest scenes, adapted slightly from the novel, a child beats a bathroom scale with a hammer. This is the kind of fury that is just beneath the (proper British) surface of the novel, but for the most part it is lost in this all too pretty film. I wouldn’t mind the fabulous Lautner house or the vintage Mercedes, but I would have left the pistol in the drawer.

A Single Man
courtesy The Weinstein Company

A Gay Uncle in the Mist

David Kerr knew his Uncle Chuck was different when he would come visiting. David grew up in the suburbs of Austin, Texas and his uncle lived at the Y in mysterious Manhattan, doing odd design jobs and living a bohemian life. His parents worried that they would have to care for Uncle Chuck in his old age because he would have no resources. By the time he was a teenager David knew that his uncle was gay, but that didn’t mean he felt close to him. Chuck worked just enough to travel to Turkey, which he would visit repeatedly. Although he accumulated piles and piles of business cards in Turkey no clear business purpose was revealed.


He rarely saw his uncle as an adult, but out of a sense of loyalty, familiarity, and a regard for the other, David sent his uncle postcards, holiday cards, and letters. In December 2008 David received a phone call from the New Orleans coroner. They had found his uncle’s body when he hadn’t been seen for a few days. He was 77. In his apartment in the French Quarter the officials found notes on the desk and guessed who was next of kin. I thought it would be interesting to talk to David about the process of knowing an unknowable gay uncle who lived as a gay man long before Stonewall. They shared a middle name, but not much else.

Charles Allen Siegman - "Uncle Chuck"

Interviewer: What did you call your uncle? His name was Allen but you called him Chuck?

David Kerr: We just called him Uncle Chuck. Charles Allen Sigmund was his full name. Charles was his father’s name too. All of his friends in New Orleans knew him as Allen. So I guess as an adult he’d gone by Allen, which is my middle name. It’s a family name. My grandmother’s maiden name. But my Mother had called him Chuck since they were kids.

Interviewer: When did you first become aware that your uncle was gay?

David Kerr: When I was very young I knew my uncle was from another planet. He carried all his things in a little European net shopping bag. And he wore this Lyrca, speedo-like bathing suit. He had long hair and long fingernails. He was bohemian — like nothing that any of us had ever seen in Austin.

Interviewer: Did he come at regular times of the year?

David Kerr: He traveled a lot. He would show up on his way to his travels. My parents were always sure that he was going to spend all his money. There was always a lot of chatter and worry about him. Even if they hadn’t said anything, I would’ve known that he wasn’t like anybody else. As a kid I was too young to know that he was gay. But I just knew he was other, something different.

C Allen Siegman passports from 70s, late 50s

Interviewer: Did you know what he did for a living?

David Kerr: Well, he didn’t do anything. That was the other thing about his bohemian-ness. He didn’t seem to really have a job. He went to art school and he had been a painter, he had worked for a textile company. I had these curtains in my bedroom that he had designed, this wonderful cheesy western scene.

He did store window design in New York. But when my grandfather died, which was when I was five or six, he and my mother each got a very small windfall. He only worked enough to have money to travel. So, when he got that windfall, he didn’t work for many years after that. He just was very, very frugal. He was a lifelong vegetarian. He only ate off wood, chopsticks. I remember once we were having dinner and he said, “I forget how food tastes on metal utensils.” He didn’t believe in metal. He just seemed like a kook, and had this smell — patchouli and something else. He mixed his own fragrances.

I never saw where he lived while he was alive. But when he died I went to New Orleans and saw his apartment. He mixed his own cologne. He had all these little vials of patchouli oil and all these little spicy, scenty oils. The place had a very exotic look and very exotic smell.

Interviewer: So as you got older, did he seem to settle into a career?

David Kerr: Not really. In New Orleans he worked for a little tchotchke art shop, antiquey kind of place in the French Quarter. And his best friend there owned this shop.

Interviewer: How did your mother describe him?

David Kerr: My parents weren’t judgmental. It’s not like she came out and said, “This is the way not to live, or this is the way not to spend your money.” But it was clear that she was worried about him blowing all this money and not having a real job or career. That it just wouldn’t end well. And I’m sure more than once she told me that she knew that she and dad were going to end up responsible for him. But they didn’t.

Then a little later, when I was going through puberty — I guess I must’ve been 12 or so. And my dad had the talk, that horrifying talk. He took me to the church. Not because of the religious overtones, because they weren’t religious, but just to get some quiet. And so he talked about that it’s not abnormal to feel like you’re going through a phase where you’re gay. And he said that I shouldn’t tell my mother that I knew this but that my uncle was gay. He told me that it had been a big rupture in the family and that my grandfather had kicked him out of the house for a time. I never heard the full story because I wasn’t supposed to ask my mother about it.

By the time I was 12, I knew. Back then he used to spend a long time in Yugoslavia when I was a kid. I guess you could stretch your dollar further there.

Interviewer: Where did he and your mother grow up?

David Kerr: They grew up in Rocky River, which is just outside of Cleveland, Ohio.

Chuck Allen Siegman, center, with his sister Ruth (David's mom) at their Grandmother's birthday in 1939, Cleveland Ohio.

Interviewer: He goes to art school. He becomes a window dresser and bohemian and then travels when he has enough money, and —

David Kerr: He goes to New York and lives in the YMCA for years. That was his address. When he moved to New Orleans he moved to the Y. I don’t know if he moved to New Orleans because it was less expensive. I suspect that as New York got sort of gayer and more post-Stonewall, it wasn’t really a good fit for him.

Uncle Chuck's apartment in New Orleans.

Interviewer: As you get older, do you lose contact with him?

David Kerr: We never had much contact with him. In the Y, you don’t have your own phone, right? There’s a phone in the hall. So he never really had a phone. In college, when I came out, I came out to him in a letter. I sent him postcards. When I got a boyfriend, I would send him news. And very, very rarely would I hear from him. I can think of two postcards I got from him, and maybe two phone calls with him my entire adult life. I think it was more about his being sort of a monastic.

He didn’t like the phone. His friends told me that he believed if it was important it could wait until the next time he saw you. The woman who owned the store where he worked said, “You know, he’s probably my closest friend. But when he goes to Turkey, he’s gone, you won’t hear from him — you’re lucky if you get a postcard. And he’s not going to think about you for four months until he shows up. And then he’s back. And here he is.” He didn’t really connect with people over distance.

But what was interesting is, after he died, I realized I’d been one of his most frequent correspondents. He kept all the stuff I sent him. He had every postcard, every note, every Christmas card. It was all there.

And so that’s why I was the first person who was notified. One of my cards was on his desk. The coroner called me when they were looking for the next of kin.

Interviewer: Tell me how this all unraveled.

David Kerr: I get a call from the New Orleans coroner. At first, I thought, I’ve got to get my dad involved. My dad has to deal with this. But I kind of realized that it was a turning point in my relationship with my father. I could tell he was completely overwhelmed. And I didn’t realize until after it happened that there’s this point where it changes. I just said, “Dad, I’m going to go take care of this.” And he said, “Okay.” I mean, he was just like a kid. It changed my dynamic with my father. And I think because my uncle was gay, and because he was a connection to my mother, who’s been gone for 20 years, it just felt like something I wanted to do.

I flew out there and it was a mess. He hadn’t left any sort of will and had all this not-very-valuable jewelry in a safe deposit box. He’s of that generation of people who have safe deposit boxes and things stashed away in there. So it was quite a process because nobody had legal right to go in there.

Interviewer: Who decides you have the legal right, then?

David Kerr: I’m the next of kin. My brother and I were his last living blood relatives. We had to sign papers and do stuff with the bank. I went alone on the first trip and my brother came on the second. This was around the same time his friends held a small memorial for him at the shop where he worked. I got to meet his circle.

Interviewer: Tell me about that.

David Kerr: He lived downstairs from and was friends with the landlord and his partner. His apartment was just a mess. Bowls and scents and bottles and all kinds of stuff. Every piece of paper he’d ever had, it seems. All these little statues and screens, and all these jade bowls. I mean, that must’ve been 10 jade bowls, and all these brass cups, I think from Turkey.

Brass cups, statue, etc.

Jade bowls, and bowls, and bowls...

Interviewer: Did he fix things?

David Kerr: He did repair on old things for a few antique shops.

Interviewer: Do you know how long he worked in this antique shop?

David Kerr: He worked for a couple different ones but probably, you know, 13 or 14 years, so for a long time. And bags! He knit bags. There were probably 60 bags in his apartment.100 bags? These knit string bags.

Interviewer: What’d you do with all that?

David Kerr: I have a few of them, but we gave many away at his memorial.

Interviewer: At the memorial, what sense did you get of him?

David Kerr: People really loved him. But he had a certain kind of formality. There was a religious order that he knew. I think they were Catholics. And he befriended one of them. And so he was kind of a fixture over there. But he didn’t have a cell phone until after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. So for most of the time he lived there, he would just show up.

There was this artist he was close to and I was looking for her. All I knew was that she showed her art on a certain square certain days. I wandered around asking the artists if they had heard of this person. And I didn’t find her there. But she came to the memorial. And she just loved him. She had a picture of him walking in this sort of caftan — he must’ve either made them or gotten them in Turkey. There is the great photo of him walking away. But she said he would just arrive. He would show up at his regular places everyday.

They found him because he didn’t show up at the shop or the square for a few days, and that was really unusual. He made jewelry, too. Here’s a ring that he made. It looks very 70s. Here’s Margaret, who owned the shop. Margaret thought of Uncle Chuck as a member of her family.

Memorial for Allen Siegman, New Orleans, January 2009.

Interviewer: He minded the shop and did some repairs?

David Kerr: If she wasn’t there, he would hold down the fort. They came to know each other when she broke her foot and just couldn’t get around. So she needed help in the shop to do things. That’s when they became friends.

Interviewer: What happened when Katrina hit?

David Kerr: He and his landlord, who had by this time lost his partner, decided to stay. They were fine through the storm. They had some very low flooding, but not very bad. The problem was there were no services, no electricity, no food. After close to a week, it was clear nobody was going to come back. They got on one of the planes that flew out.

This was a time when you just got on a plane and they just flew you to wherever the plane was going. They ended up in Arizona or something and made their way to Austin on a bus. He stayed with my dad and stepmom in the RV for a month.

Interviewer: So, you have no idea really what he was doing in Turkey.

David Kerr: No. There were thousands of business cards but I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. I’m sure he had friends there, but you couldn’t tell if the cards were just a rug place where he shopped, or someone he knew very well. I did find out he had been learning Kurdish—a bookseller in New Orleans told me he’d gone to great lengths to get a Kurdish language study book.

But Uncle Chuck was very enigmatic. I think this was probably his being from the pre-Stonewall era. If he any kind of intimate relationships there was nothing about them.

Interviewer: No evidence?

David Kerr: Either he didn’t have “gentlemen callers” or he hid it. His gay landlords upstairs had no sense that he ever had a visitor. So he was either really monastic, or his sexual life was hidden. But I felt like I got to know him, by seeing his stuff and seeing how he lived. I just never realized that not everybody is on this planet to connect with people. At first I thought it seemed so sad how solitary he was, but now I don’t think that was his project. I think he was very in his mind. He was on a different program, you know?

Interviewer: Did you keep some of the stuff?

David Kerr: I’ve got a bracelet. And I kept a bowl. I kept this brass sea serpent. That was amazing. My therapist had been telling me about this Jungian archetype serpent/gremlin, which represents however much you plan or get ready, something can throw a wrench into the works. He pulled a book off his shelf and showed me a drawing. And then between that session and the next time I see him, I got the call about my uncle. I went to New Orleans. I went through all of his stuff. And I found this little brass statue, exactly the same as the drawing that he’d been showing me. It was just like a little wrench in my life, unplanned. But a gift too. I wish I could remember the name of this figure. [He later remembered it was Mercurious]

Brass figure Mercurious.

Interviewer: So have you thought some about how it fit, how your uncle’s story fits into your story?

David Kerr: We were both gay men. But we were on different planets. I am grateful to have learned more about him and to be connected with him after his death. Coming out and being gay was a big part of my identity as a young adult. If we had been in touch, I suspect he wouldn’t have had any idea what to make of that. But while he was a loner, he was independent. Nobody had to take care of him. He lived by himself until the end and died in his bed and did exactly what he wanted to do. There is something amazing about that. It felt like this wonderful gift, you know, to be able to drop in. I never gave up on keeping in touch with him, even though I probably didn’t give it much conscious thought. But the gesture was received and, in some way, treasured. Whatever it was we did have this relationship, this bond. I don’t know why I kept writing him all those years and rarely getting anything back. But it felt really good to know that we’d connected in some way.

The GLBT History Museum

Photo by Daniel Nicoletta

The GLBT History Museum opened January 13, 2011, near 18th and Castro Streets in San Francisco. My friend Steve Const, who was the architectural designer for the museum (with Kuth Ranieri Architects), invited me to the opening. Mayor Ed Lee was there, as was former District 8 supervisor Bevan Dufty, current District 8 supervisor Scott Wiener, and a lot of people who were part of the history being shown, including Phyllis Lyon, Cleve Jones, Daniel Nicoletta, and Armistead Maupin.

As I walked around the exhibit, I heard people telling stories of their own histories. I heard laughter and tears. Although the space is relatively small, it was designed and curated to a high standard. It is a storefront museum in that it is right on the street near several watering holes, but it feels like a museum, a grassroots kind of museum. This is due to the diverse leadership, but also to the fact that a lot of the beautifully crafted exhibit cases came from the de Young Museum. I thought it would be interesting to ask a few people who I either met or knew what the new museum means to them.

Daniel Nicoletta working at Castro Camera.
Photo by Harvey Milk.  Circa late summer/early fall 1976.
Courtesy of the Harvey Milk/Scott Smith Collection
at the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Studies Center, San Francisco Library.

Dan Nicoletta
Photographer, San Francisco

I was really excited to be invited. My friend Deborah St. John, who is a fellow photographer, was my date. She has been covering the queer scene for many years as well. We were both very excited. It was a low-key evening full of poignant speeches. I thought they did a marvelous job and it came off without a hitch except for the little leak in the ceiling. I looked at all of those exhibits and thought, “God that’s my life.” There is always some little quirk that is a message of some sort.

I am a huge supporter of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society. They will be able to show my work beyond my life on the planet. I am constantly using the organization for my own research and creative work.

In the vitrine in the middle of the room was a handmade binder which held tributes to Shanti project clients. They elected to open to a page about Leland Toy. I have been looking for Leland Toy for many many years because he is the creator of the image of the human billboard, which was Harvey’s strategy. Stand on Market Street and wave to commuter traffic. This picture was in Harvey’s negatives. Years later when I was printing images for dissemination, I tried to find Leland Toy, but I couldn’t find him. So we were doing the research for the Milk film. There is this amazing iconic image out there. But we couldn’t find the creator. Of course, I would credit him, but I would have my heart in my mouth because I couldn’t find him. Sure enough, he did pass away from AIDS. It was a complete circle to know who he was. And then in the middle of this opening show I find a full-page description about what kind of life he led.

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon
Photo by Daniel Nicoletta.

Steve Const
Principal, DOES Architecture, San Francisco

I was brought into the project by Bob Michitarian, who helped negotiate the lease and improvements with Walgreens, and then began working with Paul Boneberg, the Historical Society's executive director. In developing the architecture of the space, our goal was to foreground the collection and the exhibits. When you have a very modest budget, sometimes it makes sense to use the architecture in less obvious ways. The focus of the design was on the presentation of information. We didn’t want the design to overshadow what was said by the institution or any single exhibition. The design does not shout. I think there is a balance there. For example, we needed to sequence the entry experience past the all-important gift shop, yet make places for people to pause and converse or reflect.

Even with input, the design process is fairly insular. We have been kind of buried in the archive. Then suddenly the diversity and beauty of the LGBT community is revealed and played out in space, not as an abstract idea. People from all walks of life, from 20-year-olds to legendary pioneers, were mingling. I met the folks who keep the LGBT Historical Society functioning, from administrators to curators and donors. And I met members of the larger community that I had never known.

I have to admit, it was great to be recognized by politicians like Mayor Lee, former supervisor Bevan Dufty, and current supervisor Tim Wiener. That means that what we are doing is not going unnoticed. I hope it is not too grand to say that we felt unified.

Harvey Milk and Denton Smith
Photo by Daniel Nicoletta.

James Mowdy
Americas Travel Manager, Ten Group USA, San Francisco

As a native San Franciscan now in my 40s, I was impressed by how important each of us is in terms of our shared history. It was thrilling to celebrate GLBT San Francisco's gateway to a history that's still being written.

My involvement has been mostly as an observer thus far, but I am working to change that with a few projects I’ll hopefully be helping Paul and the board with over the next several months.

My partner Peter, on the other hand, has a much more involved role, over several years, and so he will have a different take on things. Many of my memories are from growing up here.

I was a huge fan of the Chronicle and Tales of the City, which I used to read every day (weird kid)! I also remember ABC KGO News with Van Amburg, and so I think these were the places that I’d see reports in real time on Anita Bryant, Harvey Milk, and what was happening in the Castro or related to the gay community (before I was an out adult and in the milieu).

I remember that as soon as Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk were shot, it was announced over the intercom at school. Many of us kids (all in the 6th grade) were crying. I was so shocked and a bit scared. I knew of both figures since I followed the local news. The most tangible experience on this front was walking on the steps of the State Building across the street from City Hall just a couple of days after the White Night Riots. I was with my mother, oddly enough. The State Building steps were still spray painted with lots of graffiti from the protestors, and I remember seeing City Hall totally shut down, with all the broken glass windows.

Living in the Castro in the early and mid-1990s was a scary introduction to AIDS, having friends and coworkers succumb to it. But it was also a great time.

My favorite exhibit? Definitely Mary Ann Singleton’s dress from Tales and the City, donated by Laura Linney to Armistead Maupin.

Harvey Milk victory
Photo by Daniel Nicoletta.

Peter Lundberg
Chief Financial Officer, Community Housing Opportunities Corporation, Davis, California

I was introduced to the GLBT Historical Society in 1998 with a tour of the archives by Gerard Koskovich, when it was located in the mid-Market area. Susan Stryker was the executive director at the time. I was blown away. I had never thought about gay history and historical societies. Sounded dusty and old. I was stunned by the realization that who I COULD BE TODAY was the residual effect of so many people over periods of many lifetimes, many of whom we would never know about because they were ordinary people, like myself, going through daily struggles of life, just wanting to love, be loved, and be happy. (Over the years, I saw this same reaction in the eyes of hundreds of people who visited exhibit openings and events at the archive offices on Mission Street).

I asked how I could become involved and was invited to join the board. Well, after nine years on the board (eight as president), I saw the organization grow from a budget of $100,000 to more than $500,000, triple the space, mount exhibits in the archive space on Mission, and finally open of the current full-fledged museum in the Castro—our dream come true. However, the real strength of the organization (and coming from a corporate background, I did not really understand the importance of this) is the involvement of the community. The board is dynamic in its diversity—cultural, social, gender, and professional. Corporate (like myself), academic, archivist, activist, transgender, ethnic.

And there is one common element in the continued success and growth of the society. This is an extraordinary high level of passion for the mission of the Historical Society. This also makes for interesting and challenging discussions in the board and community. Board members are super volunteers and argue their points of view passionately. The result is actions, policies, and directions that go beyond what any one person could have ever imagined. The GLBT Historical Society and Museum is truly an organization that holds, preserves, and tells ALL our stories. It deserves and must be supported by every GLBT person with financial donations, large and small. Every dollar is significant.

The line of people, going around the corner, waiting to get into the museum, on opening night brought tears to my eyes. Chatting with people who have made the museum happen—volunteers, politicians, donors, celebrities—reminded me how important this museum and the Historical Society is to so many people.

My favorite exhibit was in 2004, “Sporting Life,” which explored the growth of gay and lesbian sports groups, Gay Games, and the impact this movement has had on the self esteem and outside image of gay people.

I talk endlessly about the society and museum to friends and take them all to the archives and museum when they are visiting. It will be the Castro’s next international attraction.

White Night Riots - May 21, 1978
Photo by Daniel Nicoletta.

Faith & Joy

Reynolds Price
1933–2011

Reynolds Price
Courtesy of Duke University

One of the few people who could reach me on the topic of faith was the novelist Reynolds Price. He died January 20 in Durham, North Carolina. In his memoir of surviving spinal cancer, A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing, he wrote about a vision of Jesus pouring water over his back. Despite this suggestion of healing, he went forward with radiation treatment, which left him a paraplegic. He suffered for the rest of his life from pain and disability—but he lived. And wrote several more books. His various memoirs mention faith, but not in a doctrinaire way. Indeed, he referred to himself as an “outlaw Christian.”

Growing up gay in North Carolina must have been difficult. His first serious affair took place in Oxford when he attended the university as a Rhodes Scholar. But he didn’t discuss this widely until he published his third memoir, Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back, in 2009. Price wanted to be called an American writer, and begrudgingly accepted the term “Southern writer.” Like that phrase, “queer writer” would have been too narrow. On Charlie Rose and elsewhere, he said he didn’t think Americans were that interested in queer relationships, so he didn’t write about them. When Rose brought up Brokeback Mountain, Price responded that the short story made a great movie, but it didn’t win a Oscar for best movie or screenplay but for best director. At his military physical, he declared himself homosexual and didn’t serve. He wasn’t in the closet, yet he didn’t write much about his personal affections. He left scholars 38 books to look into for clues.

This novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

This was my introduction to Price's fiction.  It is one long letter.

The novels contain entire worlds of families and individuals left adrift and searching for mercy. He could write in male or female voices, rich or poor. I think that his otherness gave him the perceptiveness to travel around all kinds of lives.

He was best known for fiction, but his second memoir, about his illness, brought him a whole new readership. I went to many readings, and the audiences seemed to be split between literary fans and fans of healing. They didn’t cross over except perhaps in sharing the quest for mercy themselves.

He had a rich deep voice that could read anything. I would have traveled far to hear him if he hadn’t come to the Bay Area so often because his writing and his person conveyed compassion. Readings often bring out predictable questions, but he did not condescend and answered each question with compassion. Compassion because the person was unique even if the question was not. Compassion because every human being suffers some kind of pain.

When Terry Gross asked him if life would be unbearable without faith, he replied, “I’ve never thought of that.” Later in the interview, he said, “I am a great believer in joy.” I never spoke to him, but I loved him.

These are Price's three memoirs.  I only wish there were going to be more.

Here are a few videos worth watching.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1757619337/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvqerqnsjHQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YIkaFdhDEo

Terry Gross’s interviews can be found on www.npr.org.

Storymaking - Part 1

An Afternoon with Michael Adams

Michael Adams is a quiet editor with a fierce streak. The first time I walked into his office at I noticed he had a poster that said “Fuck Bush.” Every week he volunteers at Housing Works Bookstore and it’s hard to imagine him anywhere besides Greenwich Village. His apartment is filled with books and an oversized fireplace. It is an inviting kind of sanctuary. As gay people we learn to tell stories. He told us some good ones over the course of an afternoon.

Hopefully, this is the first of several interviews.

Interviewer: I want to start with a little background about what Detroit was like when you were growing up.

Michael Adams: We lived in Royal Oak, a suburb for the auto industry. My father was not in the auto industry, but many people were. We moved there when I think I was 12, in 1959; midway between the Eisenhower and the Kennedy period, a period of transition for the country.

My father was in sales and he was transferred to that territory from East Grand Rapids. Detroit was the first big city I had ever really lived near. To my eyes, it was a lovely, civilized place to live. But Detroit was very segregated. Royal Oak had no black families that I know of, so I didn't know any African-Americans. You could probably spend a lot of time there without seeing any black people. That was important because it was an unreal view of the world.

Detroit had a small, manageable downtown and that's the only place I would go. My parents saw no problem with me going downtown by myself to go into Hudson's Department Store, to go record shopping, to go to the Fisher Theater, which was the big place for out-of-town musicals in those days.

Interviewer: Were there black people downtown?

Michael Adams: There must have been, but they were very much "the other" and you didn't socialize with them; you didn't go into their neighborhoods and they didn't come into yours unless they were cleaning your house.

Interviewer: Did you have a housekeeper?

Michael Adams: No. My mother was not one to have a housekeeper. That was all very distant from us. I didn't really know much about Martin Luther King. My parents didn't talk about it. My father was king of the racist jokes. I knew every synonym and pejorative for a black person. But that’s not what you asked about.

Interviewer: I was asking about the context.

Michael Adams: Many people say it was an innocent time, but it was a terrible time in that way.

Interviewer: I assume then you didn't know any gay people?

Michael Adams: None.

Interviewer: Or even a concept of what gay meant?

Michael Adams: I guess I learned that just by reading as much as I did and melding it with my own awareness of my own sexual preference. But from what I read I couldn't even tell you what alerted me to the fact that there were such things as homosexuals.

Interviewer: So when did you first begin to realize that you might be another form of the other?

Michael Adams: There was a definite transition because I remember being aroused and interested in female breasts from a very early age. That was sort of the heyday of Playboy and to go to the drugstore and open a centerfold was thrilling. I guess maybe you're all just a whole bundle of sexual nerves in that period. And I remember those were the days of actresses like Jayne Mansfield and Diana Dors and these big-breasted women fascinated me.

Somehow along the way that transferred, but I don't remember if it was a day or a week or what it was that suddenly made me conscious. But I do remember when I was between eighth and ninth grade thinking, "Oh, high school's going to be great because I'll be able to see a lot of guys with hair coming out of their t-shirts." That is a vivid memory, but, when does something like that become conscious in your mind? I don't know. It doesn't happen, it's just gradual. And then you realize who is the object of your interest; that's what you look at.

Interviewer: When you went downtown what were you shopping for? Is that linked to your growing awareness of being gay?

Michael Adams: I would go to record stores all the time because I collected records. There was a Fabian record and he was in swim trunks. And I kept returning to that record. I'd go to show tune albums and look at the covers in the Judy Garland section, but then I'd keep coming back surreptitiously to that Fabian album, not fantasizing, but just fixated on it. And then it was like, "Well duh! This must mean something." And then I just fell into the awareness that that was my sexual preference, even though I didn't even know the mechanics of sex.

Interviewer: Did you know what to name it?

Michael Adams: Not really. I knew what it was because the phrase ‘latent homosexual’ came into my consciousness. I had read it somewhere, only I thought the word latent meant "seriously." I didn't think, "I've got to get out of this." I still had crushes on popular girls. There were a lot of popular girls who I had crushes on. The ones who were unavailable and maybe I was trying to force myself unconsciously to be a part of that.

So there's a split going on; my lust was going one way, but another way, at least my social awareness was, "I'd like to date some of these really cool girls." And none of them were interested in me, but I befriended them because I was kind of popular in high school. Not popular for sports, but popular because I was president of the Thespians and vice president of the French club and National Honor Society and all of that.

Interviewer: All that overachieving, over compensating.

Michael Adams: Exactly. I was kind of a character. I was in the school plays and I sought to be well known, well-liked is the better phrase.

Michael Adams at the Senior Potluck. 1965

Interviewer: Was there any guilt associated with those seriously homosexual feelings?

Michael Adams: Totally, total, total, total. Guilt in the sense that I knew this was a secret I had that I could not tell anyone in my family.

Interviewer: Could you tell anyone?

Michael Adams: No, I had no one. There was no one. You didn't go to the school counselor. At the same time I had the realization, I realized that this was something I would have to live with forever. I mean in those days I used to have nightmares that I would be walking down the aisle, because in those days it was like college, military, marriage. That was the thing you were on and there was no wavering from this. So I just assumed that I would have to endure those things, even though I had this very, very, very deep dark secret.

Interviewer: There weren't any girlfriends in those early years?

Michael Adams: No. In fact, a few of the best friends I had in high school I told just last year. I mean they knew I was gay, but they didn't know then, or at least they didn't know they knew. It was like, "Oh, in retrospect you probably were." But these are not girls I dated. These were girls I hung out with.

Interviewer: Was it a prosperous time for white middle class people in Detroit because of the car industry?

Michael Adams: Yeah. We were very solidly middle class and my father did well, we had a car, but our house was small. Eventually we had two cars. We didn't take vacations. We might go to somebody's house on the lake for a couple of weeks, but we were not wealthy. It was late '50s, early '60s. There was a self-satisfaction; a contentment about America's place in the world. We certainly didn't know any poor people; not poor-poor. And the guilt came from being raised Catholic. That was big time as my mother was devout.

Interviewer: When did you stop going to church?

Michael Adams: When I went off to college. For several months into college she would ask, "Are you going to Mass?" And I'd say, "No." And then finally she said, "Look, you're an adult; do what you want as far as that's concerned."

Interviewer: But all through high school?

Michael Adams: Mass, Mass, Mass, every Sunday.

Interviewer: And Catechism and all that?

Michael Adams: Yeah. Because I went to a public school I had to take religious instruction, as it was called. I hated all of it. You can say you don't believe it, but when you're a Catholic, there's still something that embeds in you that you can't quite escape - ever.

Interviewer: It follows you.

Michael Adams: I think I have escaped it now, but you still think in terms of mortal sins and venial sins and heaven and hell. Sometimes when I was young I would go to sleep thinking of what eternity was like; forever and ever and ever and ever and trying in my mind thinking what that must be if you went to hell.

Interviewer: As you're emerging as a sexual human being?

Michael Adams: Horrible, horrible. But I never tried to pray my way out of it because somehow I knew that there was no prayer that was going to "cure" this. It was a matter of fact. If somebody had said, "Oh by the way, you're going to wake up tomorrow and you're going to have no arms," or whatever, you'd say, "Okay, I'll just deal with it." I mean you'd be terrified, but it was a fact. It was something like, "Oh hell, if I pray I'll grow two more arms." No. I knew that this is what I was.

Interviewer: There was no changing that?

Michael Adams: No. There wasn't this mechanism that was going to change it.

Interviewer: Tell us what you can about the troubles in high school.

Michael Adams: My best friend was a guy named Ron and basically he brought me out. We met in gym class because we both hated gym and we started going to the movies. You spend a lot of time together; stuff comes up. And, again, it was even hard to talk about with a peer because the culture made it very clear and my family made it very clear that effeminacy was wrong and bad because of what it represented usually, which was this unnamed sexual deviancy.

Interviewer: So it wasn't even named.

Michael Adams: No, not in my family, no. No one ever said, "Be very wary of the strange man who comes and offers you candy." I never had any of that. It just was that even as a little kid I was chided if I did anything the least bit effeminate. It was very clear that effeminacy was bad and to be cured for want of a better word. The only cultural references we had were all bad.

On television [the comic] Ernie Kovacs had a character called Percy Dovetonsils, who was a very effete poet. He had a little mustache. He had little pursed lips and was, to my parents, hilarious. But the subtext was he's hilarious because he's a freak. He wasn't called a homosexual, but it was alluded to, and to anybody who knew, that was what he was doing. He was an object of ridicule. He was funny because of that.

Interviewer: You get these signals.

Michael Adams: Very early on those signals were clear; this is not something that's good.

Interviewer: So the story begins with Ron?

Michael Adams: He basically brought me out because we started talking about it and it got to the point of like, "Well if you had a football team and had to do whatever you wanted, what would you do?" And we talked about taking pictures of them naked, but that was only if we were queer this is what we would do kind of stuff.

Interviewer: So hypothetically if, if, if.

Michael Adams: We were playing this game with each other and he was the one who finally gave in and said, "By the way, you know I am homosexual." Again, the terminology is a little fuzzy to me because I don't know when "gay" became the word. But actually it was around that time that we probably started using it, but we might have said homosexual. I don't know if we ever said queer. Anyway, he finally admitted to me. He said, "You know I have to tell you I am," and --

Interviewer: How old are you?

Michael Adams: I was 15 or 16.

Interviewer: And he was the same age?

Michael Adams: Yes. And that's when reality hit home. I remember leaving that conversation, whatever we were doing, going home; lying down on my bed, turning hot, turning cold. Just like okay, now it's all been back here in my head, but now it's real. Now somebody has actually said that. You didn't have the courage to say to him, "Me, too," but that will come in time. He went on to try to seduce me and succeeded in New York City the week we saw the original production of Funny Girl.

Interviewer: And by then it's still the same period of time approximately?

Michael Adams: It's the summer between my junior and senior year in high school. It was the week before my 17th birthday.

Interviewer: So then what happens? How do you name yourself?

Michael Adams: There were still vestiges of not totally owning up to it, primarily because there was the Catholic guilt going on and because I wasn't totally in love with him. Whether or not that was because he was gay and he loved me or it was because under any circumstances that wouldn’t have been my choice I don’t know. But he was the only outlet I knew. In those days there wasn't a gay/lesbian alliance at high school where you could attend a meeting.

As far as I knew he was the only one in the world that I knew. He was much more sophisticated than I was. By the age of 17 he was out and going to the bars in Detroit. He was going down to Toledo where you could, at the age of 18, legally drink what they called near beer. He was definitely adventurous in ways that I never could be.

Interviewer: That was bold for those days.

Michael Adams: I still wasn't ready to come out, but he prompted me. He introduced me to gay guys that he knew from Detroit.

Interviewer: Young also?

Michael Adams: Yes. We would be driving around Detroit and some guy would beep at him in a car and he'd say, "Oh yeah, there's Ralph. He's a famous rim-queen." And that's when I said, "What's that?" And then he told me and it was like, "No, no, nobody can do it." I was very naïve about a lot of that stuff.

Interviewer: So where does that lead in terms of the troubles that happened?

Michael Adams: So he was trying to convince me that there had to be homosexuals in the school.

Interviewer: Besides the two of you.

Michael Adams: Exactly. He was like, "It's common sense that we're not the only two." So then he pointed out this really attractive guy who was on the football team and said, "I have a feeling he is." I mean he would say this to me in a department store when a guy was helping me try on a sweater and said something and then we left and Ron said, "I think he's one of us, and that sort of thing. And I would like, "Huh? Really? What? Why?"

So he was pushing me towards… he was like, "Okay, if I can't have you," -- because he was ostensibly in love with me and wanted me to be his boyfriend, but basically he said, "Well if I can't have you, I'll at least get you out in the world and let you leave the nest," sort of thing. So then he pointed to this guy and he said, "You know we're going to have to be very cagy. Let's start sending him letters." So we sent him gay love letters.

Interviewer: Together?

Michael Adams: Together. I wrote them because I was on the school newspaper.

Interviewer: A career foretold.

Michael Adams: We would leave him signals and ask him to leave signals that he was getting our letters and understanding what we meant and kind of complying.

Interviewer: But you didn't identify who you were?

Michael Adams: Not until the very last. Finally we thought we've got to bring this to a head, no pun intended. We needed to make contact with him.

Interviewer: Did he respond?

Michael Adams: Yeah.

Interviewer: Did he respond to your letters by doing what you asked him to do?

Michael Adams: Well I think there were a couple things like, "If you're interested, wear such-and-such on Thursday," and he did.

Interviewer: And he did?

Michael Adams: Yes, yes. But he was also delivering the letters to his football coach who was taking them to the principal.

Interviewer: Of course.

Michael Adams: So we were ultimately caught.

Interviewer: Entrapment.

Michael Adams: Is it entrapment when we start the whole ball rolling? I don't think so.

Interviewer: Now do you think he was following the cues out of some plan to try to trap you?

Michael Adams: Yeah.

Interviewer: Yes, not in response to the attention?

Michael Adams: Oh no, no, no, no, no. We're probably lucky that he didn't meet us and beat the shit out of us.

Interviewer: Were both of you signing the letters?

Michael Adams: No, no, no. It was ostensibly under one person doing it because we thought two people doing it would have been too weird. Like this wasn’t, weird enough. Yeah, we thought that it would make more sense, but the fact that both of us were involved was a saving grace because then my parents were able to say to themselves, "Well it was just like this little prank that two kids do." It wasn't like one kid going crazy with lust for another. Do you know what I mean?

Interviewer: So how explicit were the letters?

Michael Adams: You know it's funny because in doing this, I really think I blocked them out of my mind, out of real shame that I did such a thing.

The letters were more purple than they were anything else. A friend says we should put me under hypnosis to see if I can recall the letters. But I remember one line that was something like, "If the Greeks had a god of something or other, masculinity or something, you would be it," or some ridiculous piece of crap. But it was that sort of adolescent prose from one who read too many books.

Interviewer: So what happens? What is the final thing that gets you caught?

Michael Adams: We had to decide whose name and number were going to be on the letter and in my greedy little way I decided I had to get the reward because I was doing all the work by writing the letters. Talk about hoist on your own petard. So we put my first name and my phone number.

Interviewer: So your home phone number?

Michael Adams: Yep. We were actually also communicating with him by telephone.

Interviewer: Already?

Michael Adams: Yeah, well along the way. So, again, all of that is really fuzzy. Did this last six weeks? Did it last a week? I don't know. But there were some communications. I think we would actually call his home and ask for him and talk to him.

Interviewer: So then what happens? The principal then calls you? Or you get called in?

Michael Adams: I got called out of history class around 11:00 o'clock in the morning. I remember that vividly. I think it was a Friday. The principal tells me nothing. He asked me questions like, "Do you go to church?" And it was a very short drive from the high school to my home, but we drove in his car and it was like I knew what this was all about, but I thought, "No, no, it can't be." And the cinematic moment that was absolutely true is that he turned the corner, and he was carrying a manila folder, and as we turned the corner the manila folder spills out all the letters that I had written. They were in the folder.

Interviewer: Onto the seat?

Michael Adams: Right between us. They were in between us. That’s when my imagination went into overdrive and I thought like Lucy Ricardo, "How do I get out of this one?" My mother was home. He took me in and they sent me to the other room. He showed her the letters and my father was called home from work and he basically said, "If it turns out you're gay, you will no longer be allowed in this school." I don't think he used the word gay. I'm not sure, but "If this turns out to be true..."

And that's when I said, "I know what this looks like, but I did this" -- and again, I'm not sure when I brought Ron in to kind of bolster my case, but I said, "I was seeking revenge on somebody who humiliated me in front of a girl I liked." Fast thinking, right?

Interviewer: Incredible. You thought this up on the spot?

Michael Adams: I did. I remember sitting in front of the TV while we were waiting for my dad to come home watching some game show or something, staring at the TV and thinking, "Alright, well it's got to involve a girl." And I had like five minutes to concoct this story. And it bought me time. Because I knew that any admission of guilt would get me thrown out of the school. In the fall of my senior year when I have all these irons in the fire in school; where I was in my own little way a big boy on campus. They would have sent me to the Shrine of the Little Flower High School, a Catholic high school.

Interviewer: Shrine of the Little Flower?

Michael Adams: Exactly, exactly. Where I could have had an affair with a priest. The priest is just sitting there waiting for the guys they send over from the public schools because they're queer boys. I knew that was not possible for me in my life. I could not imagine how I would explain that to my friends. I had to get out of it. I had to lie my way out of it, but there was never a moment when I thought I'll just say, "Yes, I'm having those feelings. Help me." Impossible, impossible.

Interviewer: So you cook up this story in the few minutes it takes your dad to come home?

Michael Adams: Yeah.

Interviewer: They must have known that you were lying.

Michael Adams: No.

Interviewer: They believed you?

Michael Adams: Yeah, because they wanted to. And the principal said, "Well that's all well and good, but you're not going to be allowed back in school until a psychiatrist gives you his seal of approval."

So I was kept out of school for several days and the principal said, "We'll tell the school that you're out looking at colleges," which people did occasionally. They would take tours of prospective colleges. "And then you'll be allowed back in when the psychiatrist gives his okay."

Interviewer: So then did you call your friend Ron and say, "This is the deal."?

Michael Adams: No, strangely enough. He called me. Our phone was in the family room where everybody could hear and I pick up the phone and it's Ron and he says, "I'm ready. I have rope, I have poison, I have whatever." He was ready to do a dual suicide. Now was he just being dramatic or was he serious? Probably a little of both, but he really thought the jig was up and we'd have to kill ourselves. Maybe he thought that was, again, totally romantic. I don't know.

Interviewer: It’s unreal.

Michael Adams: Here I was on the phone with both my parents in the room going, "I think I've got this covered, just don't do anything. I think we're going to be okay with this one." I don't know how I didn't crack under the pressure.

My parents hated Ron anyway. That's when I said to them, "Look, I didn't do this alone, but I don't want to bring Ron into it. I don't think it's fair." And they were okay with that. But as I said, it allowed them to think, "Well two kids kind of being prankish and mischievous or revengeful is better than having one freakish son."

Interviewer: Right.

Michael Adams: So that helped them.

Interviewer: Talk about the psychiatrist. Do you remember that? What happened?

Michael Adams: I couldn't tell you what he looked like. So much is just a blank. Did my father take me? Did he wait outside? I don't remember any of that. But I do remember, again, thinking, "Alright, I've read enough about homosexuality to know it's all about loving your mother and hating your father." So I just kind of flipped them and said how much I admired my father and how much time we spent together. I didn't condemn my mother, but it was like she was not so present. I just created this whole thing.

Recently I've had a revelation about that though. I'll never know because I've gone through my life thinking this was the dumbest shrink in all history in that he took my word for it, because he reported back to school, "No, he's not gay. He's not a homosexual." I think he said, "He has the capacity for self-punishment," or something like that. But I got a clean bill of health. Somehow just in talking it out I’ve thought, "Maybe he knew exactly what he was doing. Maybe I didn't fool him for a minute." But he knew the consequences. Maybe he was gay himself. Or at least he was compassionate enough not to humiliate me. Now he's a hero.

Interviewer: So you get this sort of clearance, so to speak. And you go back to school. What happens with the football player? Does he just ignore you then and does everything just kind of go on?

Michael Adams: Yes. He deserves a lot of credit because according to the principal, if Steve, which was his name, spread the story, I'd still be out. All Steve would have had to say is, "Hey, you know that guy over there?" However, I think Steve would not have wanted to tell anyone that he was the object of some young boy's lust.

Interviewer: Right. It would indict him.

Michael Adams: Exactly. That's my five-cent psychological guess as to why he didn’t say anything. When you're that age in that era you know nothing about homosexuality. And he probably wondered, "Why me? Did they see something in me?"

Interviewer: Do they know something?

Michael Adams: Yeah. Because it seems like nobody went to him and said, "Well the story is that you humiliated him in front of a girl and that's what this is all about." So nobody was like weighing evidence.

Interviewer: So in buying yourself time, then that gave everybody kind of what they wanted; which was for it to all go away?

Michael Adams: Yes. Strangely Steve, the football player, started dating a woman that I was really close to.

She and I were talking and he came to pick her up or something and then just walked away. And she said something like, "Steve doesn't like you. I don't get it. Everybody likes you, but he doesn't seem to like you." But again, if he had opened his mouth I would have been in deep shit. And to his credit he didn’t say anything. I think it was shameful for him, too.

Interviewer: So what did your parents say to you as all of this is going on?

Michael Adams: We were not a communicative family. Like a good trial lawyer, you don't ask your child questions you don’t want the answer to.

So they said nothing. I mean they didn't say, "Have you ever had these thoughts?" Because I hung out with so many girls they were able to convince themselves that I was straight. I didn't have a steady, but not everybody did. I went to the prom with a girl. There are none so blind as those who will not see and that was written all over their faces. You don't want your kid to be queer, so you accept any scrap of evidence to prove that he isn't. So it was just like this chill in the air for a long, long time.

What's important to say, it was the time. Families did not have gay children. Gay people were the scum of the earth. They were in dark corners. They were waiting to jump at you perhaps, although, again nobody ever warned me that that was the case. Then, it was all best left unsaid.

Michael Adams Senior photo, 1965

A Conversation with Justin Spring about Samuel M. Steward

Justin Spring’s Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade

I wrote to Justin Spring after I finished reading his biography of Samuel Steward and the art book of Steward’s drawings and photographs. I still had a number of unanswered questions. He agreed to my suggestion of an interview by email.


Justin Spring

Q: How long did Secret Historian take to research and write?

A: I read my first Phil Andros book around 1987 and had been wondering about him for years, but the idea of writing about him only began in 2001 while working on my Paul Cadmus book.


Cover of My Brother, My Self by Phil Andros.
Courtesy Estate of Samuel M. Steward.

Q: Do you think Steward saw himself as all those different people, Sparrow, Andros etc.? Or did he use the names for convenience/secrecy?

A: They are pseudonyms, taken for reasons relating to privacy. Oddly enough, though, Steward enjoyed being known socially as Phil Sparrow. Many folks I interviewed knew him as Phil; and many letters in library archives are mislabeled as being from “Phil Sparrow.” That’s one of the things I had to contend with as I was doing my research.

Q: I’ve read that in researching your book on Paul Cadmus you came across Steward’s name and while doing research at Brown University you found that he was also the pornographer Phil Andros. Can you tell us more about that?

A: I was at Brown on an American Studies fellowship when I came across the pulp fiction archive and database at the John Hay Library. I had gone to that library to research beefcake publications I knew Paul Cadmus to have looked at and enjoyed. Since I’d never known Phil Andros’ real name I plugged it in to the database and out popped Samuel Steward. I subsequently looked up Sam Steward’s publications and was surprised to find he’d written a social history of tattooing, a memoir of his friendship with Stein and Toklas, and his own memoir, Chapters from an Autobiography. A few months later I had a fellowship at the Beinecke and looked up Steward’s letters to Stein and Toklas, and they were delightful. So was Chapters. From that point on, I was hooked. I had to know more about him.

Q: Who told you about Michael Williams, the literary executor?

A: I did a lot of detective work to track him down – cold-calling people whom I did not know, and who might or might not have had information for me. Ultimately there was a rare book and manuscript dealer who gave me his name. But even after I had the name, I had a hard time getting in touch with Williams. It took a long time for us to meet.

Q: Is Williams a librarian? He is barely mentioned in the book. How did he know Steward?

A: He’s a former schoolteacher and retired corporate librarian who now does a lot of volunteer work. He had met Steward at a book signing and began helping him at the bungalow towards the end of Steward’s life. The two became good friends. When Steward’s chosen executor suddenly died of AIDs, Steward needed someone to take over, so he asked Williams. This was just three months or so before Steward died.

Q: Please tell the story of coming to San Francisco and the 80 boxes.

A: Williams had met with me in New York and suggested that if I came to San Francisco he would show me what he had. He didn’t indicate that there was much and I don’t think he was sure I would come. I had the opportunity to take a business trip out there to see an artist’s work at a gallery, and so I took three extra days there, and during that time I showed up as we had arranged. Williams had been good enough to bring everything down from the attic and place it in a spare room for me to look at and photograph. It was an enormous amount of material.

Q: Were the boxes arranged in any order? Or was it just how Michael had packed them when he was cleaning out the cottage in Berkeley?

A: There were some rough storage boxes but for the most part Williams had simply stacked things on shelves and laid them out on the floor. His “eighty boxes” (I am quoting here from his recollection of what he had moved to San Francisco from Berkeley) had been mostly unpacked. There was no particular order to anything, and there were no 80 boxes in the room. It was just a whole lot of material, some of it boxed and some of it not boxed. It was not an appealing sight. To be frank, it looked to me like a big dusty mess, and a whole lot of work waiting to be done. On top of that, much of it stank. So upon seeing it for the first time I really had no idea what I had found. Then I began poking around and saw the visual materials and they shocked me and interested me, both sensations at once.

Q: Did you reorganize the materials?

A: After Michael and I had discussed the situation – this took several months -- I decided to return to San Francisco and spend the better part of a week placing the materials into special archival boxes, which I then shipped to myself in New York, at my own expense. (The materials remained his property; I only had the use of the materials for the writing of the book.) The materials were not organized to begin with, so “reorganize” is not the word for what I was doing. After I took delivery of them, I began a slow, painstaking, multi-year process of reading through and roughly cataloguing the materials for my own use.

Q: How could you store so much material in a New York apartment?

A: I didn’t. My partner and I share a country home, and that was where I had them delivered. In order to work with the materials I had to spend several months creating a finished workspace in the basement -- and that renovation work included purchasing industrial shelving to hold the boxes and installing a dehumidifier to make sure there would be no mold. But we had to do it; I was driving my partner crazy. We had first tried to store all the boxes in the guest bedroom but that proved impossible whenever we had a guest. And anyway I needed to keep all these things in a secure space.

Q: Did it take long to see how to organize the book?

A: Yes.

Q: What was your greatest surprise in going through the material?

A: Its coherence; its lack of inherent contradiction. I had the same luck with Steward that I’d had with Fairfield Porter: he was a man who habitually told the truth. So there is an astonishing integrity and wholeness to the materials.

Q: Since Steward was involved in one way or another with so many famous people would you call him a star fucker?

A: No. Apart from his chance encounter with Rudolf Valentino and his several would-be sexual adventures during summer of 1937 – when he sought out a number of older literary men he admired and respected for their writings and their place in cultural history (but only in one instance had sex) – Steward did not pursue celebrities for sex. It is true he had sex with Rock Hudson; but that was before Rock Hudson became Rock Hudson. Hudson was at that point Roy Fitzgerald, a young man working as holiday help in the gift-wrap department at Marshall Fields.


Reliquary holding Rudolph Valentino's pubic hair.
Courtesy Estate of Samuel M. Steward.


Sam Steward (right) with Sir Francis Rose (center) and his adopted "son," Luis in 1952.
Courtesy Estate of Samuel M. Steward

Q: Do you think Steward wanted to advance the idea that many straight identified men engage in homosexual activity? Perhaps with greater incidence that Kinsey suggested?

A: Steward created a testimony of his lifelong sexual activities. He wasn’t promoting an agenda in doing so, merely giving the facts of his sex history. That is the brilliance of his work. If it is a history of having sex with many straight-identified men, that’s because Steward preferred that kind of man, pursued that kind of man, and had success with that kind of man.

Moreover if you look at the way in which Kinsey came up with his data you’ll see (as Steward saw, and so many other people have since seen) that his data is accurate in a way that no anecdotal evidence or individual life experience could ever contest or contradict.

Q: Was Steward’s record keeping just a kind of uncontrolled obsession? Or did he foresee the day that somebody like you (or Kinsey) would find the material?

A: I wonder why you think that Steward’s record-keeping qualifies as an “uncontrolled obsession.” What is “uncontrolled” about it? And what is “obsessive” about it? Some people keep diaries of their bathroom habits; some people keep diaries of the books they read; some people keep diaries of their sex lives. I don’t think there’s much more to it than that.

Kinsey encouraged Steward to think that his sex records had the potential to help in the cause of sex research, and he urged Steward to do the best possible job in recording the data. So what began as a hobby and a personal record-keeping project ultimately turned into something much more serious.

I think Steward always hoped that his data would be of use to sex researchers; and I suspect that towards the end of his life he may have lost hope that it would. But I can’t say for sure. Sam never wrote about it. Then again, he did not give the Stud File and other remaining materials to the Kinsey Institute in his will. He might have, but he didn’t.

I have often thought that Steward had a biographer in mind in leaving behind so much self-documentation. Whether or not he did, I’ve always felt lucky to be that biographer.


The Stud File.
Photo Justin Spring.

Q: Do you see yourself as a Kinsey-like character? You express no judgment and you also seem to value the incredible record keeping and daring photography.

A: Like Kinsey, I value Steward’s life testament very highly. And yes, I do think Kinsey was brilliant, and yes, I’d like to think that my biography of Steward will ultimately be considered valuable to sex research. But no, I didn’t consciously try to emulate Kinsey in the neutral stance I took towards Steward and his life-choices. And I am unlike both Kinsey and Steward in that I am neither a collector nor a data-collector.

Incidentally, I don’t think I “express no judgment” in the writing of Sam’s story. The tone I take is measured and compassionate, and that in itself is a judgment on behalf of Sam’s importance, and the validity of his experiences. That being said, I didn’t do it consciously; it just seemed the best tone to take in the writing of the book.

Q: I am curious about Steward as a spiritual person. He was Catholic for a time, considers returning to the faith, and then fibs that he has done so to appease Alice B. Toklas. Do you think he connected his sexual life to a spiritual life or saw them as distinct?


Steward with Alice B. Toklas in 1952.
Courtesy Estate of Samuel M. Steward

A: Steward began life as a Methodist and I think that it was his Methodist conscience and love of truth that stayed with him all his life, even as he converted to Catholicism, fell away from it, and then struggled in later years with the uncertainty that comes with loss of (multiple) faith(s). His diaries and journals are full of spiritual self-questioning as well as ethical self-questioning. More than anything else, he despised hypocrisy – and it was the hypocrisy of Catholicism that most galled him, not simply the difficult and contradictory ways of the many priests he encountered. His writings, which are confessional in nature, seem to me very closely bound to the perennial self-questioning, or “examination of conscience,” that is part of the religious impulse. But he was not as forthcoming in his writing about his spirituality as he was in his writing about his sexuality. In that regard he was reticent; private. Without a doubt, however, he loved truth, and that love of truth does seem to me to have a spiritual dimension.

Q: If I understand correctly there will be at least three published pieces of this adventure. The memoir “Secret Historian,” the visual material “Obscene Diary,” and then Steward’s own writings, which may be published in the future. Can you tell us about those?


An Obscene Diary The Visual World of Sam Steward by Justin Spring

A: FSG could not allow me many illustrations in Sam’s biography, and yet I felt that his visual work is of great importance to understanding the man that he was. I didn’t want simply to push that work aside. So I asked a friend if he would consider doing an art book of Sam’s work, and he agreed.


Polaroid of wall mural in Steward's Chicago apartment.
Courtesy Estate of Samuel M. Steward

As for the anthology: I had originally hoped to bring out the anthology in time for the biography, but there have been so many other things I’ve had to do to promote the biography that I ultimately had to set it aside.

I was originally going to publish the anthology with Alyson, a gay publisher Steward had worked with, but they wouldn’t issue a fair contract, and ultimately I told them that they couldn’t have it – in part because so many other writers were coming forward to say that Alyson had delayed their publications and in some cases never printed the books at all. A few months later they shut their doors. I now plan either to publish the book using LighteningSource, a print-on-demand company, or else to place it with a University Press. I’d like to bring it out when the paperback version of Secret Historian is published, about 9 months from now. I still need to write the index, the notes, and the introduction for the book. Like so much of my writing on Steward, this is labor-intensive and basically unpaid work.

Q: Since the art book costs $150 and only has 1000 copies printed it won’t be widely consumed unless there is a show at the Sex Museum. Is that going ahead?

A: The art book is in fact selling well and will probably sell out within the year. It is a limited-edition book, more like an artwork than an art publication. We didn’t anticipate that many folks would want it at that price; but my original hope in creating the book was that in making it, I would be making the material available to interested researchers and writers who might not otherwise have access to the Steward visual archive. The book is actually being published at a financial loss; it was never conceived of as a money-making endeavor. We created it because it was the right thing to do, and because my friend, David Deiss, had the financial resources to undertake the project.

To my knowledge, yes, the exhibition is going ahead at the Museum of Sex in New York. I’m waiting for the contracts from them. The Museum would like to open the show in February 2011 and to have it run for six months. Incidentally we are not sure we will sell the visual arts book at the Museum yet.

I’m also in discussion right now with Matthew Higgs at White Columns Gallery in New York about the possibility of a contemporary-artists’ response to the biography and archive. But that show is still very tentative, and wouldn’t open for more than a year. Still, it seems to me a good way of getting Sam’s story out into the greater world.

Q: What happens now to all these drawings, photographs, and ephemera? Your memoir has changed the value of this collection.

A: It will be given in its entirety to an archival special collection, possibly Yale, or the New York Public Library, or UC Berkeley, or Cornell, or the Kinsey Institute. But only after the Museum of Sex Exhibition has come and gone, and only after careful negotiations, which might involve a third party to facilitate the transfer. Those negotiations haven’t begun yet and they won’t begin anytime soon.

Q: As the author you are rarely visible in Secret Historian except when you are annoyed at Yale or the Kinsey Institute for putting obstacles in your way. But can I ask how this book changed you?

A: When I started the book ten years ago I had a lot of unanswered questions about male sexuality and the evolution of gay consciousness in 20th century America. Some of these were personal questions and some of them were social and cultural. For ten years I did my best to answer those questions by working with Steward’s life story, doing so with the idea of sharing what I had learned with others. So I grew and learned, and I like to think I became more compassionate as a result.

Q: A biographer like you is in a kind of strange position. There will be only be a finite number of projects in a lifetime because each one takes so long. How do you decide which project to take on?

A: In Sam’s case, he basically chose me. Or, to put it another way: He was too interesting not to write about. Fairfield Porter was similar in that regard. And I hope I’ll be that lucky again. But I should add that in both instances I chose figures whose lives were not considered the least bit “saleable” as biographies. And in fact in both cases I wrote the book despite being told it was not possible even to sell the project, much less make money at it.

Q: Do you know what the next one is?

A: No, not yet.


Sailors in Steward's tattoo shop.
Courtesy Estate of Samuel M. Steward