March 18

Etienne – gay leather-culture artist

Chicago native Domingo Stephan Orejudos (1933-1991) was a principal dancer with the Illinois Ballet Company, a dance instructor, choreographer and bodybuilder who led a double life as Etienne*, creator of all-male erotic illustrations, many of them published by his partner Chuck Renslow. Orejudos was too short and muscular to continue a career in ballet, so he turned to a second career as an artist whose works depicted graphic sexual activity by butch, muscular gay men.

Many of his erotic drawings graced the pages of the leather culture magazine, Drummer, and the male physique magazine, Tomorrow’s Man. Another pseudonym often used by Orejudos was “Stephen.”

He was still in high school when his first erotic drawings were published. Orejudos was known to friends as Dom, and along with Renslow, his partner from 1950-1991, established Chicago’s gay leather scene. Renslow ran a Chicago-based beefcake photo physique mail order business known as Kris Studio (1950-1979); he also published the male physique magazine, Tomorrow’s Man, and produced bodybuilding competitions. For a long time the two lived in a back room of a Chicago gym owned by Renslow.

In 1958 the couple founded Chicago’s first (and legendary) gay leather bar, Gold Coast, and Orejudos provided erotic murals for the interior. They ventured into gay bath-house territory with Man’s Country Baths, and they founded the International Mr. Leather competition.

Dom was a brilliant illustrator of the gay leather underground, often compared to Tom of Finland, who became a good friend. Dom’s drawings and illustrated books are today highly collectible. Dom died of AIDS related causes in 1991.

*Etienne is French for Stephen, Dom’s middle name; curiously, he did not use the requisite French accent on the initial “E” - Étienne. He used the pseudonym “Stephen” for his illustrated story books (basically gay comic books with a rough sex theme, as in the example above), “Dom” for his more serious oils, and “Etienne” for nearly everything else.

Oil painting by Etienne now on display at the Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago.

This mural was displayed at the Gold Coast at 2265 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago. The murals in the first Gold Coast were actually painted on the walls of the bar, which opened in 1958, making Chicago the first city in the country to have a leather bar. When Chuck Renslow and Dom (Etienne) lost their lease, they had to remove the murals with paint remover or by painting over them. Some fine pieces were thus lost forever. When the Gold Coast moved, Chuck and Dom decided to paint the murals on 4'x8' panels, so if they ever had to move the bar again, they could save the artworks. This was fortunate, because the Gold Coast operated at five locations before closing in 1988.