42pm* * + ■ January îa. 2ûû2
HUMOR
............ ¥ ............
alt Whitman was a big, hairy homo.
He was also a great poet. He wrote
about the Brooklyn Bridge and singing
the body electric and when lilacs last
in the dooryard bloomed, but frankly, none of
that interests me much. As a writer I’m ashamed
to admit it, but his poetry can put me to sleep
quicker than a Tylenol PM with a vodka chaser.
A s far as 1 can see, W hitman subscribed to
the theory that you shouldn’t use one word
when 15 would do in its place; his poetry reads
like those Oscar speeches that the orchestra
has to cut off.
W hat does interest me a lot, however, is
W hitman’s sex life.
I don’t know why. A t this point in my life, I
don’t question my various obsessions and com
pulsions; more importantly, neither does my part
ner. After 15 years together Floyd’s learned just
to roll his eyes and say “yes, dear” when, for
instance, I wanted a pork pie hat after seeing The
Talented Mr. Ripley. Every gay man I know had to
pour ice in his lap when he saw Jude Law take a
bath; me, I just wanted his adorable little hat.
But I digress.
Turns out there’s a very good book on the sub
ject of Whitman’s sex life called Walt Whitman: A
Gay Life by Gary Schmidgall, which contains all
kinds of juicy material previously unpublished:
I share the midnight orgies of young men,
1 dance with the dancers, and drink with the
drinkers,
The echoes ring with our indecent calls,
I take for my love some prostitute— 1 pick out
some low
person for my dearest friend,
He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate— he shall be
one
condemned by others for deeds done;
Whitless
W
Sex and the single poet
THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING
TO MARC
b y M a r c A c it o
1 will play a part no longer— Why should 1 exile
myself from my
companions?
This poem reads like a 19th century person
als ad, if you ask me: “Hairy poet seeks lawless,
rude, illiterate prostitute for fun and com pan
ionship. Your nude daguerreotype gets mine.
Send to walt@leavesofgrass-stains.com."
Some literary critics think Schmidgall has a lot
more than just a schmidge of gall even to claim
Whitman was gay. They insist the copious catalog
of men he slept with refers to the 19th cen
tury custom of men sharing beds,
which explains, presumably, why he
roamed the city’s dockyards and parks
looking for men to sleep with. I guess I
must have missed the Ken Bums docu
mentary on the Great 19th Century
Sleepover.
Whitman himself isn’t much
help, either, spending the last 30 years
of his life editing all the soft pom out
of his poetry, lines like “Thruster hold
ing me tight, and that I hold
tight !/We hurt each other as the
bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.” Now
if you ask me, that’s some damn good poetry.
Throw in something about a harness and a prison
guard and you’ve got my attention.
I finished Schm idgall’s book yearning for
more smut, so 1 turned to the most obvious
place— the Internet— where I found what are
claimed to be nude pictures of the good gray
poet. They’re real 19th century daguerreotypes
all right, not like those shots you see where
Bruce W illis’ head is superimposed on some
pom star’s body, but we just can’t know for
certain whether they are o f W hitman.
I surfed well into the night and fell asleep at
my desk. 1 awoke feeling uneasy, and not just
because I was sleeping sitting up.
I realized that I wasn’t alone in the room,
that I was being visited by a spectral presence.
The presence identified himself as a young dock-
worker who had spent an evening with W hit
man in the fall o f 1872. His name was Dover—
Ben Dover— and, like Whitman, he expressed
himself to me in verse, which I transcribe here:
I thought that he’d be hot to trot
For all his sexy talk,
But then he grabbed me by the hand
And took me for a walk:
Past shipyards, houses, parks and squares,
An all-night pilgrimage,
“I won’t get laid tonight," 1 thought
As we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge —
'Cuz Walt talked and talked and talked and
talked
O f his Utopia
And everyone he’s ever met;
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I know that he’s some famous guy,
So I didn’t interrupt,
But all night long all l could think
Is can’t this man shut up?
My sentiments exactly, Ben. Talk is cheap.
If you want to hold my attention, you’d better
do it with cheap talk.
And that, my friends, is T he Gospel
According to Marc. | H
M a r c A c i t o can be reached at marcacito @
attbi.com. Any information regarding the size of Walt
Whitman’s member (or your own, for that mat -
ter) should be sent there.
EVERY BOOK OF GAY EROTICA
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