his Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Steward met sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in late 1949 and subsequently became an unofficial collaborator with Kinsey's Institute for Sex Research. During his years of work with the Institute, Steward collected and donated sexually themed materials to the Kinsey archive, gave Kinsey access to his lifelong sexual records, introduced him to large numbers of sexually active men in the Chicago area, and provided him with large numbers of early Polaroid sex photographs which he took during the frequent all-male sex parties he held in his Chicago apartment. He also allowed Kinsey to take detailed photographs of that sexually-themed apartment. He ultimately donated large numbers of drawings, paintings and decorative objects that he himself had created to the Institute. In spring of 1950, at Kinsey's invitation, he was filmed engaging in BDSM sex with Mike Miksche, a New York-based erotic artist also known as Steve Masters. After Gertrude Stein, Kinsey was Steward's most important mentor; he later described Kinsey not only "as approachable as a park bench" but also as a god-like bringer of enlightenment to humankind, thus giving him the nickname, "Doctor Prometheus." While making the transition from professor to tattoo artist during the 1950s, Steward befriended a number of gay artists and writers including Paul Cadmus, George Platt Lynes, Julien Green, Fritz Peters, and Glenway Wescott. At Kinsey's specific request he also kept highly detailed journals and diaries of his daily sexual activities, and chronicled them in a secret card catalogue he referred to as his "Stud File." Starting in 1957, he began contributing short stories based on his many sexual encounters to the Zurich-based homophile magazine Der Kreis ("The Circle"), to which he also contributed essays, reviews, and homophile journalism. During his final years in Chicago, Steward befriended Chuck Renslow, co-owner of Kris Studio, and Renslow's partner Dom Orejudos, the homoerotic illustrator also known as "Stephen" and "Etienne." Renslow and Orejudos would later go on to open the Gold Coast, Chicago's first leather bar, and to found International Mr. Leather, a yearly gathering of leathermen from around the world. In the 1960s Steward began writing and publishing his erotica under the name of Phil Andros, initially doing so with the Danish magazine Eos/Amigo. Some of his early works described his fascination with rough trade and sadomasochistic sex; others focused on the power dynamics of interracial sexual encounters