It's Not Slash Fic If It Actually Happened
September 17, 2013 12:44 PM   Subscribe



 
"You are either the kind of person to whom this matters a great deal, or the kind of person to whom it matters not at all."
posted by box at 12:48 PM on September 17, 2013 [5 favorites]


Just an etymology question here, but isn't "calamite" just a play on "catamite"?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:50 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


(For the purposes of enjoying this article I am ignoring the fact that most biographies of Wilde tend to paint him as a voyeur, the concept of homosexuality is a modern one, and his first dude-on-dude action was basically forced upon him.)
posted by The Whelk at 12:52 PM on September 17, 2013 [4 favorites]


Slash Nonfiction
posted by schmod at 12:53 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


Slash Nonfiction

Slash poetry.
posted by The Bellman at 12:56 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


It takes a lot for somebody to turn my head these days (relative to my well-spent youth at least) -- but damn if I wouldn't head right up to the den of somebody who said 'We could be on ‘thee and thou’ terms' to me.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:56 PM on September 17, 2013 [29 favorites]


I'm sorry
I have eaten the arse
of the author who was visiting

forgive me
he was so handsome
and totally leading me on.
posted by The Whelk at 12:57 PM on September 17, 2013 [50 favorites]


I recently wrote about this in a play I did about Oscar Wilde. As I recall, Wilde was referencing a good-bye kiss from Whitman when he said he still had his kiss on his lips, and it is worth noting that it was not uncommon then for men to kiss each other hello and goodbye.

That being said, if they met and did not have sex, it is the greatest tragedy ever. But the ambiguity, and the teasing manner in which Wilde both suggested and did not suggest there was more, is delicious. And I'm not even gay.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 12:57 PM on September 17, 2013 [4 favorites]


Well I'm convinced.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:58 PM on September 17, 2013


ASDF;LKAJSDF;ALKSJDF, as the saying goes.
posted by Kabanos at 12:58 PM on September 17, 2013 [10 favorites]


THE SEX
posted by elizardbits at 1:00 PM on September 17, 2013 [6 favorites]


Why do we ever talk about anything else?
posted by asperity at 1:00 PM on September 17, 2013 [5 favorites]


hmmmm. hmmmmmm. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. This changes everything! and nothing! at the same time.
posted by Think_Long at 1:00 PM on September 17, 2013


best line form the comments re: Fitzgerald/Hemmingway

"I have bought a condo in this thought and I'm never coming out."
posted by The Whelk at 1:02 PM on September 17, 2013 [12 favorites]


(also, from comments: REMEMBER ISHERWOOD/AUDEN TOTALLY HAPPENED.)
posted by The Whelk at 1:03 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


oh wait, MORE DEAD AUTHOR GOSSIP:

Some items of interest:

1. Stoker and Wilde were college pals.
2. Stoker married Wilde's ex-ladyfriend.
3. Stoker was a huuuuge Whitman fanboy: http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2012/novemberdecemb...
4. Stoker started writing Dracula one month after Wilde went to jail, noting that the opening section, where Harker is imprisoned by Dracula, was written in a "vivid flow of inspiration."
5. In that section, Dracula makes the sexy lady vampires leave Harker alone because, and I quote, "This man belongs to me!"
6. Basically all the vampire-business in Dracula is obsessively described as involving violent and morally laden penetration (teeth through skin = bad; stake through heart = good), spurting bodily fluids, and uncanny desires.

CONCLUSION: OSCAR WILDE WAS A VAMPIRE

posted by The Whelk at 1:05 PM on September 17, 2013 [38 favorites]


Walt & Wilde
posted by Kabanos at 1:05 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


The 10th Regiment of Foot: "Just an etymology question here, but isn't "calamite" just a play on "catamite"?"

Probably.

Calamus, also called Sweet Flag, is a fairly common woodland plant. I'll leave further interpretations to the reader.
posted by jquinby at 1:07 PM on September 17, 2013 [5 favorites]


MARLOWE/KYD 5EVA
posted by elizardbits at 1:09 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


I've just never thought of Wilde as a bear lover. I always thought he was kind of a dandy, and Walt was so, scraggly, just not a pair I would have put together, but to each his own I suppose.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 1:11 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


And Bram Stoker was apparently a friend and distant relation to Arthur Conan Doyle.

Small damn world back then. It's like those photos of Grace Jones and Dian Fossey hanging out a party or whatever and you realize that not only did it never occur to that they might know each other, it never even occurred to you that they were in the same universe.

Or the fact that Lois from Hi and Lois is the sister of Beetle Bailey. I mean what I don't even.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 1:11 PM on September 17, 2013 [14 favorites]


Whitman opened a bottle of elderberry whine

Hey, old people get crotchetty sometimes. There's no need for snark.
posted by yoink at 1:11 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Calamus, also called Sweet Flag, is a fairly common woodland plant.

I wonder how ancient horsetail grass feels about all this.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 1:12 PM on September 17, 2013


I've always idly wondered whether there's any Hawthorne/Melville slash out there. It's got to be hilariously grim, given their dispositions.
posted by invitapriore at 1:14 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


Having studied this for my dissertation, the much more likely pairing is Whitman / Edward Carpenter. Still a second or third hand account, by the not-notoriously truthful Gavin Arthur, told for the purpose of laying beat poets.
posted by LucretiusJones at 1:14 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


I love this post so much that I would like to put my hand on The Whelk's knee and call him Oscar. Yes, I am casting The Whelk as both Wilde and Whitman.
posted by desuetude at 1:16 PM on September 17, 2013 [4 favorites]


I've always idly wondered whether there's any Hawthorne/Melville slash out there.

Isn't that the novella Billy Budd?

(on preview whoa Edward Carpenter was a looker. I'll have to add to my Time Machine Seduction list.)
posted by The Whelk at 1:17 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


Wilde Whitman would a great name for a male stripper or Drag King
posted by The Whelk at 1:17 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


Wilde Whitman and The Samples (the backup group)
posted by jquinby at 1:19 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Here's a rather less speculative and rather more probable account of the way the meeting went.
posted by yoink at 1:24 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Walt & Wilde

I think the correct title is: Walt Gone Wilde.
(Followed by Walt Gone Wilde 2: Leaves of Ass)
posted by The Bellman at 1:26 PM on September 17, 2013 [38 favorites]


whatevs, ruiner
posted by elizardbits at 1:26 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


The sidebar link-bait on the-toast.net is much better than on nybooks.com.
posted by goethean at 1:28 PM on September 17, 2013


Here's a rather less speculative and rather more probable account of the way the meeting went.

Pfft, Gen fic.
posted by The Whelk at 1:29 PM on September 17, 2013 [5 favorites]


Two gay dudes were in the same room alone, so obviously they had sex.

I mean... Really? This is where we are, in 2013? Come the fuck on.

Besides, it's pretty well known that they were both into way younger guys. They weren't homosexuals so much as pederasts.
posted by Sys Rq at 1:30 PM on September 17, 2013


Two gay dudes were in the same room alone, so obviously they had sex.

That's not how it works? Have I been doing it wrong?

damnit.
posted by The Whelk at 1:31 PM on September 17, 2013 [11 favorites]


hdu sir

may your bosom companions eschew your company and all your waistcoats be ill-tailored
posted by elizardbits at 1:31 PM on September 17, 2013 [5 favorites]


The 10th Regiment of Foot: "I wonder how ancient horsetail grass feels about all this."

Or Jack-In-The-Pulpit!

ok I'm done
posted by jquinby at 1:34 PM on September 17, 2013


Henry James/Oliver Wendell Holmes. Take it away, Big Sheldon ...
"Least important of all, I think (but can't be sure) that one evening in the spring of 1865, James jacked off (since we are talking dirty) his young friend Oliver Wendell Holmes."
posted by octobersurprise at 1:38 PM on September 17, 2013


I like to imagine Henry James' peevishness toward Wilde is irritation that no one wants to visit him in his big weird house and Edith Wharton just tells the same stories over and over
posted by The Whelk at 1:42 PM on September 17, 2013 [4 favorites]


Kabanos: "Walt & Wilde"

Easily my favorite Smiths song.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 1:43 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]




I am pleased that you are happy that two famous artists once maybe did it.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:47 PM on September 17, 2013


Henry James' peevishness toward Wilde

Also, no one wanted to see Henry's play.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:50 PM on September 17, 2013


Well this guy is pretty proud of himself.
posted by tittergrrl at 1:58 PM on September 17, 2013


Quick, someone nominate it for Yuletide!
posted by yasaman at 2:10 PM on September 17, 2013


the much more likely pairing is Whitman / Edward Carpenter. Still a second or third hand account, by the not-notoriously truthful Gavin Arthur, told for the purpose of laying beat poets.

Yeah, I was thinking of him when I read this piece as well — by some accounts (e.g.) Carpenter is this amazing single nodal point in the history of sex, having managed to screw, over the course of his life, both men who lived before the invention of homosexuality and after Stonewall.
posted by RogerB at 2:24 PM on September 17, 2013 [5 favorites]


> But the ambiguity, and the teasing manner in which Wilde both suggested and did not suggest there was more, is delicious.

I was in an extremely crowded wifi coffee joint yesterday. The other chair at my table was pretty much the only empty. A lady who might or might not have been the eighteen-and-a-half year old Lara Croft came up and asked if I would mind if she shared my table. I nodded a half centimeter of welcome and she sat down. She diffidently complemented me on having the balls to carry a Gateway amid such a Pacific Fleet of Macbooks. "It's running Unix," I murmured. "OpenBSD." I noticed she was wearing both her Desert Eagles.

Rather than prolong this into the tl;dr version I will just suggest, and also not suggest, that there is more to the story.
posted by jfuller at 2:36 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


LucretiusJones, thanks for the Edward Carpenter link. It's nice to read a story where a pair of 19th century gay lovers manage to live a reasonable approximation of happily ever after. 47 years! That's pretty good.
posted by tavella at 2:43 PM on September 17, 2013


What's interesting to me about this is that while I think of Oscar Wilde as being Gay, I think of Walt Whitman as simply being homosexual. By which I mean Wilde had all the trappings of what we call "gay culture", in fact defined many of them. Whitman seems simply to have had homosexual interests, something not nearly as uncommon or unknown as we pretend now. But he never really adopted or even defined gay culture really.

It'd be a bit like if Quentin Crisp and Gore Vidal had a tryst. Which come to think of it, would be sort of lovely.
posted by Nelson at 2:45 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


Man Edward Carpenter is interesting, socialist aristocrat into anarchy, poetry, and threesomes. I think I have a new hero.
posted by The Whelk at 2:57 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Ooh, ooh, do Christina Rosetti and Lizzie Siddal next!
posted by Biblio at 3:06 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Wilde Whitman would a great name for a male stripper or Drag King

remind me to make you give me a drag name when I eventually get the balls to do that

(because I would not grow the balls, I would obtain them, and then put them into my pants)
posted by NoraReed at 4:03 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


Archive Of Our Own: Search by character: Oscar Wilde

*clicks, sees multiple occurrences of Jack Harkness, world view confirmed*

*scrolls a bit, sees*

No Archive Warnings Apply Third Doctor/Other Third Doctor Oscar Wilde Recreational Drug Use Anal Sex Oral Sex Anachronistic Historical

*realizes we truly live in the best possible future*
posted by MCMikeNamara at 4:11 PM on September 17, 2013 [11 favorites]


Yoink, I am not persuaded that the less-fervid account says any different than the OP. Especially given all the stuff from Symonds.
posted by gingerest at 4:13 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Time Machine Seduction List would be an excellent band name.
posted by jb at 4:30 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Whitman would have been 63, and Wilde 28? Or something like that. . .
posted by Danf at 4:52 PM on September 17, 2013


Or the fact that Lois from Hi and Lois is the sister of Beetle Bailey.

Wait, what?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:54 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


"Dear Yellow Book,
I never thought it would happen to me..."
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:02 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


How nice for them, and how nice for us lit fans to visualize the joining of these two bodyminds. Cool.
posted by kozad at 5:18 PM on September 17, 2013


Seems like as good a time as any to mention that a friend of mine, as a child, had English-faculty parents who were putting up Allen Ginsberg and guest for a night; my friend had to sleep on the couch so that Ginsberg could have his room, and the entire house was kept up all night by the noisy rut Ginsberg and co. were throwing down in my friend's room.

At least that's the story I was told.
posted by COBRA! at 5:33 PM on September 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


Carpenter is really a fascinating guy. From a very stultifying upbringing (middle class in Brighton, if I recall correctly) to unhappy affairs at Cambridge where he took orders, to reading Walt Whitman, and having a series of huge life-changing decisions. He leaves the university go among the common men and teach as an extension lecturer, has including full-on mystical visions and writes "Towards Democracy," his Whitmanian book of poems in a species of trance. He's a full on Whitmanian kosmos for a while, before calming down to socialism, anti-vivisectionism, making further spiritual quests to India, and the like.

His belief that romantic or comradely relationships across the classes would help solve the social problems in England (and that members of the "intermediate sex" would make great holy men and advisers) show, the same way that Whitman's ideas show, alternate ways that same-sex love could have played out before it was well codified in the minds of the masses. As was, Wilde was more predominant as the type, and the social and political angle wound up downplayed.
posted by LucretiusJones at 5:40 PM on September 17, 2013 [4 favorites]


Edmund White said something similar in the 70s, that since gay men frequently have to cross class lines in search of sex and companionship, they're more likely to be sensitive to cross-class conflicts and awareness.

I wonder how much of that was true and how much that's changed.
posted by The Whelk at 9:42 PM on September 17, 2013


It's my understanding that Walt Whitman did not discuss his sexuality publicly and did not want others to do so. Is it too much to ask?
posted by koavf at 9:56 PM on September 17, 2013


but, i love that Gavin Arthur story, especially as related by Allen Ginsburg. according to lady Ginsburg Arthur told him about sleeping with Edward Carpenter who, according to Arthur, smelled like autumn leaves and said "Walt would have loved you." i've particularly cherished that story as a continuum, a passing of the torch so to speak.

what a lineage, it's like Black Hat tantric buddhism in it's extensiveness. "Light From Guru to Disciple."
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 10:06 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Edward Carpernter's sexual conquests are delightful. I also am not sure that Whitman would have thought the love of woman as insipid, because he wrote well and often about women' sexual selves. I think we should not avoid Constance here. I also think that James most likely died a virgin--and while both Whitman/Wilde had a soft spot for working class trade, and would not have been each others taste, i need to believe this
posted by PinkMoose at 10:07 PM on September 17, 2013


Literary history, as written by tumblr.
posted by betweenthebars at 10:17 PM on September 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Edmund White said something similar in the 70s, that since gay men frequently have to cross class lines in search of sex and companionship, they're more likely to be sensitive to cross-class conflicts and awareness.

I wonder how much of that was true and how much that's changed.
See also Samuel Delany's accounts of looking for hookups in fifties New York and the kind of people he did it with back then, also why dirty, bitten off fingernails are such a recurrent feature in his work.

But that's one of the objections against gay marriage and the bourgeoisisation of gay culture, isn't it, that disappearance of gay solidarity as nice middle class gay men become normal while everybody else falls by the wayside?
posted by MartinWisse at 11:13 PM on September 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Walt & Wilde
You mean the '90s NBC sitcom with two gay men as main characters? It was called "Wilde & Grass".
posted by knile at 8:10 AM on September 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


It's my understanding that Walt Whitman did not discuss his sexuality publicly and did not want others to do so. Is it too much to ask?

He's been dead for over 100 years, I think the statute of limitations on giddy gossip has expired.
posted by elizardbits at 8:48 AM on September 18, 2013 [3 favorites]


It's my understanding that Walt Whitman did not discuss his sexuality publicly and did not want others to do so. Is it too much to ask?

Song of Myself, Section 28

Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me,
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

The sentries desert every other part of me,
They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.

I am given up by traitors,
I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor,
I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there.

You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat,
Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.



When I Heard At the Close of the Day

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d,
And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,
When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast – and that night I was happy.


To be fair, he was cagey about his sexuality outside his poetry, and even inside it at times--"Once I Passed Through a Populous City" was about a man in manuscript form but was published as being about a woman. There was a fan of his who wrote to him repeatedly over years trying to get him to admit he was a lover of men, and he never would give the answer this person wanted. But I couldn't resist.
posted by not that girl at 8:56 AM on September 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


I always got the sense that Whitman's flinching (and sometimes hilarious dissembling) in the face out outright queries about his sexuality is like his similar hemming and hawing when his younger socialist pals tried to pin him down on his position, and when Richard Maurice Bucke tried to pin him down on whether or not he'd had mystical experiences. When you set out to create a universal poetic persona, you don't want him to be partial and pigeonholed. Also, Symonds, who asked the sexuality question first, rolled up on Whitman the wrong away, I think.
posted by LucretiusJones at 9:04 AM on September 18, 2013 [3 favorites]


I hereby dub them WildeMan.
posted by crossoverman at 4:07 PM on September 18, 2013


I also suspect some of Whitman's reluctance arises from the contemporary cultural absence of a notion of bisexuality. Leaves of Grass is a giant sensual valentine to every body and everybody.
posted by gingerest at 4:53 PM on September 18, 2013 [3 favorites]


I think it's also generally seen as OK to attempt to find queer icons in history because there are so few of them and the people who really want to find them tend to be people who will be positively effected by having heroes like them. It's hard to be in a group without a whole lot of historical icons or role models and I tend to think it's worth potentially irritating the ghost of Walt Whitman to be able to look back through time and feel less alone.
posted by NoraReed at 4:55 PM on September 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


"I like to imagine Henry James' peevishness toward Wilde is irritation that no one wants to visit him in his big weird house and Edith Wharton just tells the same stories over and over"

I have to say, if it's this story, it's OK by me....
posted by acrasis at 4:57 PM on September 18, 2013


The ghost of Walt Whitman is honestly trying to look forward through time contact /everyone/. It's kind of his thing.
posted by LucretiusJones at 8:38 PM on September 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


@NoraReed: I think you make an intriguing and germane point. Your insight is trenchant but I can't understand this mentality at all. On the one hand, reading back into (e.g.) Socrates and saying that he's (e.g.) bisexual is some kind of anachronism—he didn't belong to any kind of political LGBTQIIetc. community. On the other hand, why is him having evidently had sexual intercourse with both females and males somehow empowering to someone who is sexually attracted to both females and males today?

If someone chooses to align himself with a politically-constructed gender and sexuality minority, then I can't personally sympathize with that sentiment but I'll grant that it might be something that provides someone value or meaning. But then appropriating others outside of that community as somehow representing you... why?

To use an example of a demographic that fits me (but is unrelated to sexuality and gender), I am white. I have no interest in white nationalism nor in viewing whites as some kind of politically sensitive community. I am also not happy or empowered by whites doing something outstanding or excellent—their achievements are irrelevant to my self-esteem.

You could counter that being white in my context makes me a majority and one which is more-or-less powerful over other minorities. That makes some sense to me. But I also belong to several minority groups and finding out that others belong to them and that they have done great things in no way validates or justifies my having this same trait.

In the case of white nationalism, I see why that's a repugnant and immoral force: the casting of whites as a political community (in my context) is done as a proxy for racial hatred against minority groups who are themselves actually vulnerable. But I also don't see the impetus for persons who belong to my minority groups as accidents of history, genetics, or aesthetics as being my kin.
posted by koavf at 9:31 PM on September 18, 2013


When you're a part of a group that is dehumanized, put down and stereotyped, sometimes it's nice to be able to look at history and see that the people who are prejudiced against you are wrong because people like you accomplished a lot. It's especially poignant when they've created something that really speaks to you personally, as is the case of artists, because you can look at the art they made and say that someone like you made that, and it echoed through history to touch something in you now. This is how I feel, as a queer person, about Allen Ginsberg. It's how I feel as someone with mental illness about Van Gogh.

We look at history through the lens of people writing history, and those people tend to be of the privileged class: educated, straight white men, glorifying the accomplishments of educated, straight white men because that's the perspective they know, understand and expect. It makes everyone else invisible and contributes to their marginalization. This is why we have Black History Month, it's why we have focuses on women's history, it's why queer history exists, because "History" means "The History Of Privileged Straight White Men" most of the time and so you need to look through the lens of queer history, of women's history, of Black history, of Chicano history, to get a grasp on the full picture of what the world is like.

It's the same in history as it is in fiction-- there's a powerful connection to be had when you can look at someone else, whether they're historical, fictional, or contemporary-- and identify with them, and know that their experience in some way echoed yours. It's about not feeling alone and it's about standing up to the people who would oppress you; it's about knowing, even through the mere connection of a hundred-year-old poem, that you're not the only person to ever feel the way you do. Art, fiction and poetry can be powerful lifelines when you feel like there aren't any other people like you around.
posted by NoraReed at 5:24 PM on September 19, 2013 [2 favorites]


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