
Pleasure Principle
On July 24, 1926, Samuel Steward, one day past his seventeenth birthday, got word that Rudolph Valentino had just checked in to the best hotel in Columbus, Ohio. Grabbing his autograph book, he made his way to the hotel and knocked on Valentino’s door. The actor appeared, wearing only a towel, and after signing his autograph asked whether there was anything else the boy wanted. “Yes,” said Steward, “I’d like to have you.”
The Latin lover obliged. Steward performed oral sex on him and at some point procured a lock of Valentino’s pubic hair—a souvenir that Steward kept in a monstrance at his