Was Lincoln BiSexual?

"Also, (Lincoln's) fascination with sex stories whose obscenity alarmed even him�he was an early stand-up comic and, as such, was appreciated in the stag world of the law. Descriptions of his performances (and the stories told) even suggest a mild case of Tourette's syndrome. Certainly, anal sex was a common denominator to his tales."
Gore Vidal, Vanity Fair web exclusive.

Elegant blogger James Wolcott hips us to some Old School American Historical dish, namely, Gore Vidal's essay -- and truly Gore Vidal is of Montaigne's caliber, peerless, in the Art of the Essay -- "Was Lincoln Bi-Sexual?" which probes gently but relentlessly the relationship between Honest Abe and his -- now, how shall we say this? -- "longtime companion," one Joshua Speed, and no, we didn't make that last unfortunate name up.

It all makes sense now, looking backward: the whole "Great Emancipator" posture as "Out-of-the-closet" metaphor. The cultivated -- at least for his station in life -- wit of the railroad lawyer, the man's man. It was the "Amish beard" that ultimately threw off our gaydar, drawing us wide of the mark; the Amish beard wouldn't go over too well in Chelsea, or its equivalent, we imagine, circa, 1865.

"The young Lincoln had a love affair with a handsome youth and store owner, Joshua Speed, in Springfield, Illinois. They shared a bed for four years, not necessarily, in those frontier days, the sign of a 'smoking gun' only messy male housekeeping."

... (The sound of The Corsair whistling) Yeah, but precisely how "messy." (The Corsair tucks in with brio) Who was smoking whose Abra-Ham? And -- inquiring minds want to know -- who laid out the "corncob pipe" first? Did he pronounce certain wines "naive"? And, finally, did Ulysses S. Grant like to "party"?

"Nevertheless, four years is a long time to be fairly uncomfortable. The gun proved to be the letters that passed between them when Joshua went home to Kentucky to marry, while Lincoln was readying himself for marriage in Springfield. Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead."

Uhm, fantasizing? Hello?

"Can they hack it? To Sandburg's credit [Carl Sandburg, poet and multivolumed Lincoln biographer] he picked up on this (who could not after reading the letters?), but, first time around, I skipped his poetical comments on Lincoln's 'streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets.' "

Positively pimpy! What the fuck? This is starting to make sense. Slavery was so disempowering of everyone's inner decorator. And nonconsentual "whipping"? A social faux pas. And the low ceilings of the slave ships? Can you say -- Disaster?

"Sandburg was a typical American of his time and place; he knew that any male with sexual feelings for another male was a maiden trapped inside a male body. Even the great Mae West, our first commanding sexologist, was convinced that fairies were simply women, obliged, through no fault of their own, to inhabit crude male bodies: Plangently Doctor Mae mourned her lost sisters."

Yeah, what he said; and, uh, didn't Abe like to wrestle? And didn't he go to the theater? I'm just saying ...

"There are those who will contend--nay, rage--that the Great Emancipator could not have been a bi-guy. I can see Lynne Cheney shaking her head now, deploring this latest affront in 'revisionist history.' But even she will find it hard to quarrel with Vidal's inspirational last paragraph, which reverently bows to the mysterious ways in which the Almighty works."

Permit me. Lincoln was indeed a visionary, and bisexuality suggests a more enlightened sensibility, at least to some. Take "The Fugutive Slave Act," for example. Waay too controlling. If your baby leaves you, let the door hit him where the good lord done split him. What, with all those chains, bloodhounds, paddles, overseers and night patrols -- does someone have "Trust issues"?

And those drably colored way too overbooked slaving ships. What? Couldn't somebody have bothered to paint those walls a life-enhancing "sorbet"? Or something by way of African earth tones -- beige, perhaps?

Slave ships -- that's not a cruise, darling -- that's a snooze.

Just how is someone supposed to get their "travel on" -- roars the engine, The Corsair imagines, of Mr. Lincoln's inexorable logic -- and quite possibly hook up with, or "liaise," with the chieftain of his dreams under such overcrowded and unhygenic conditions. One can almost hear our bi-President, standing athwart the sweeping tides of history, yelling, "Fiddlefaddle!"

Couldn't the slave ship captain have bothered to go the extra mile -- --reasons Mister Lincoln -- tossed a few pottery knicknacks around? Sprayed something -- oh, I don't know -- "citrusy"? Hired a DJ for that trans-pacific journey? Lain easy on the hickory stick beatings, unless, of course, it was consentual?

Besides, a bi-President would have known the barbarity of making people make do with a monthly ration of salted pork and corn meal. Hello? Where's the arugula? An essential food group. Human rights people. We hold these truths to be self evident! Perhaps Honest Abe intuitively knew that the liberation of African-Americans would release untold enormous amouts of "flava" into the drab Industrialized West, bewitching the Jazz Age, a generation later, and, ultimately, jump starting rock and roll.

Good looking out, Abe with the Amish beard thingie.