DRUMMER REVIEW
©Jack Fritscher. See Permissions, Reprints, Quotations, Footnotes

Reviewing the Best Gay Artists...

STAR TRICK
ARTIST DOM OREJUDOS IS ETIENNE!
by Jack Fritscher

AUTHOR'S HISTORICAL CONTEXT INTRODUCTION
DRAFT VERSION

Written October 1977 for my friend, Lou Thomas, Target Studio, and for Chicago artist Dom Orejudos/Etienne/Stephan, and produced for “advertising” in Drummer 19, December 1977 to accompany four pages of cartoon narrative by Dom Orejudos with a photograph (page 74) of artist Orejudos lying in front of one of the large murals he painted for the Gold Coast Bar, Chicago, invented by Chuck Renslow. This thin slip of an article is a wonderful “tail wagging the dog,” because it is an occasion to review that all of gay life seems six–maybe, three–degrees of separation, but it will demonstrate the roots of Drummer, and how everything that rose converged to make Drummer possible. Orejudos was a member of the extended Renslow family that included tattooist Cliff Raven (who tattooed my left shoulder in 1969), as well as writer/tattooist Sam Steward/Phil Andros who had told Cliff Raven to take as a tattooing name the name of a bird. Sam/Phil as a tattooist down in Chicago’s Loop, and then in California, went by the name “Phil Sparrow.” Sam was introduced to me by the S&M priest, Jim Kane, with whom I toured the West by Harley in June 1969, ending up in Santa Fe, and Taos, where one night I floated fully clothed in a swimming pool wearing Ken Kesey’s brown leather jacket. That summer of ’69, before Stonewall even happened, was focused very high-energy on sexual liberation in the gay male world. In Chicago, and other large cities, very “out” orgies were scheduled for the erotically numerological date, 6/9/69.

            Sam Steward, who had been an intimate of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and James Purdy, was a professor teaching English at DePauw University in Chicago when he took up tattooing in order to get his hands on the tough straight guys that for him, and for many gay men, are the carnal objects of desire. DePauw fired him when his second career came to light. In 1972, I received a ______grant to do hours of audio-taped interview of Sam Steward and his fabulous life. His only request was that I not use the information on the tapes until after he was dead, because he said he had to live off his stories through his own writing and lectures. In 1990, he wrote a review of my novel, Some Dance to Remember: “_______________________________________________. Sam’s fiction appeared several times in Drummer. I featured his Catholic priest short story, “This Is My Body,” in Drummer ___________. Sam Steward died _______________.

            Through Blaine Cunningham, who accompanied me to Europe in May 1969, Dom and I met July 3, 1969. With other guys from Chuck Renslow’s Gold Coast crowd, we attended a band concert and fireworks in Grant Park. Twenty-four hours later, in the Gold Coast bar, I met my first lover of ten years, former Gold Coast bartender, David Sparrow, whose actual name was “Sparrow,” much to the delight of Sam Steward/Phil Andros/Phil Sparrow, who in California was tattooing the likes of Hell’s Angel president Sonny Barger, gorgeous actor James Dean (whom Sam told me was called “the human ash tray” because he liked to be burned with cigarettes), and experimental filmmaker, the legendary Kenneth Anger, creator of Fireworks, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, the classic Scorpio Rising, and its sequel, Lucifer Rising, the print and negative of which–when they had to be hidden for reasons I cannot disclose here–were kept locked in the 9^th Street/AVEnue?? Berkeley cottage owned by Sam Steward. Because of indie film pioneer Kenneth Anger, the road was paved for the first overtly gay erotic filmmakers, Wakefield Poole, the Gage Brothers, and Drummer’s favorite filmmaker and columnist, the Los Angeles top, Fred Halsted, whose______________-are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Fred Halsted, despondent over the death of his longtime partner and star of his films, Joey Yale, committed suicide in ____________.

            In 19XX, Dom and I corresponded about creating a Dom/Etienne/Stephan Video Gallery of his work for my Palm Drive Video’s artist series, which includes Rex, Hun, A. Jay, Skipper, and Domino. Dom was living in Boulder, Colorado at the time and said in a letter dated XXXX: “________________” Dom died__________.

            Lou Thomas was my leather S&M playmate in Manhattan from 1969 to 1975 as was the incredible top, Don Morrison, one of the dark powers behind the Anvil and the Eagle. Muscular roller-skating champion Don Morrison was famously coupled with Frank Olson who was lighting director for the soap opera___________________. In 1972?, Frank Olson took me as a journalist to the set so I could research a chapter for my nonfiction media book, Television Today. Lou Thomas photographed me for Target Studios in 1970 with a 42^nd Street hustler, and years later requested my short story “Best Dirty Blond Carpenter in West Texas” for his Target Album magazine (DATE). Lou Thomas, who died in ___________, was initially the co-founder in New York City of Colt Studio with Jim French. When Thomas and French parted because of creative and geographical differences, Lou Thomas stayed in Manhattan to photograph the New York “look” for his spin-off from Colt, Target Studios, while Jim French moved to Los Angeles, to chronicle the sunnier California muscle look of high-gloss perfection typified by Colt

             Both Colt Studio and Target Studio in the late 60’s and early 70’s were made possible by their forerunner in the late 50’s and early 60’s, Chuck Renslow’s Kris Studio, Chicago, with its ’zines such as Mars. Renslow led the charge, along with Bob Mizer from the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s at Athletic Model Guild studios, Los Angeles, with Mizer’s famous ’zine, Physique Pictorial, toward the legalization of frontal nudity versus the U. S. Postal System’s ban that lasted until Renslow got the law changed in 1969, thus paving the way toward real gay liberation in the press and in the federal mails. Without these forerunners, Drummer would never have made it into print six years later, and certainly would never have become that unheard-of item, a gay magazine available by mail order, which was one of the secrets of its nationwide success. –JF, 16 February 2002

©2002, 2003 Jack Fritscher

The review was written in October 1977,
and published in Drummer 19, December 1977