James Whitcomb Riley: Even Dull, Depressing Poets Can Be Gay

When I was growing up in Rock Island, teachers thought it their duty to lecture incessantly on local writers and artists, like Carl Sandburg, gay jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke, and Isabel Bloom.

My cousins in Indiana were hearing about their local writers and artist, of course, and whenever I visited, I had to hear about them, too: Theodore Dreiser, Gene-Stratton Porter, Hoagy Carmichael....

The one I hated the most was James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916), the "Hoosier Poet," the official poet laureate of the state of Indiana.

My Aunt Mavis scared me and my Cousin Buster to death with her rendition of "Little Orphant Annie":

The goble-uns'll git you ef you don't watch out! (The "git" was accompanied by a sudden grab.)

And "Nine Little Goblins":

You shan't wake up 'til you're plumb dead!

My Cousin Joe had to read "My Bachelor Chum," about a guy who is old -- nearly 40 -- and fat, who claims that he loves being unmarried -- he can smoke and drink and stay out late, and there's nobody around to nag him.  But then he sneaks off to a private study, looks at a picture of a woman, and starts crying.

Not only heterosexist, but depressing! Can you believe that James Whitcomb Riley was one of the most popular writers of his era, and all of his books were best-sellers?

Glancing through a copy of the Selected Poems that was on every bookshelf in Indiana, I found nothing but death, despair, lost heterosexual loves, dying soldiers, and more death.

They loved that kind of thing in the 19th century.

Riley's most famous poem is "The Old Swimmin' Hole": an old man reminisces about how as a boy he used to enjoy skinny dipping with his chums, but now he just wants to die:

I wish..I could dive off in my grave like the old swimmin' hole

Wait -- he liked to swim naked with his chums?

Could Riley have been gay?

His biographer, Elizabeth Van Allen, says certainly not, but what biography doesn't try desperately to establish the heterosexuality of her subject?

She admits that he sought same-sex friendships through his life, and described them in passionate terms; to physician James Matthews, for instance, he wrote: "I love you, and no knife shall cut our love in two."

But that's just a 19th century convention, she explains: "he understood that there was a limit to what was socially acceptable between people of the same gender."

Of course there was.  The same limit exists today -- it is expected, encouraged, and demanded that same-sex relationship be platonic, and cross-sex erotic.    Being gay crosses that line.  But that simply means that gay people must spend a lot of time defending themselves against the accusations that they're trying to destroy the world.  It doesn't mean that they aren't gay.

Or that they never experienced glimmers of same-sex love while writing their dull, depressing poems.

See also: John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Sean and the World of Gay Leathermen

During the 1960s and 1970s, gay men carved niches for themselves, separate neighborhoods where they could be free from homophobic harassment, separate social institutions to replace those they were excluded from in the "straight" world.  And one of the institutions they devised was Leather, aka S&M.

The look: muscles, hairy chests, and clothing based on the motorcycle gangs of the 1950s: chaps, vests, boots, jackets.  Black, sleek, rigid, gleaming.  No fluffy sweaters, no chinos, no designer shoes, no perfumes, nothing but raw masculinity


The acts: erotic "scenes" involving dominance and submission, power and pain.

Leathermen were excoriated by the heterosexual press, which kept squealing: "Look!  Look!  We told you that gays were all perverts!"

In Cruising (1980), the subculture was savagely derided as a bunch of masochists and murderers.

Even the mainstream gay movement was leery, thinking that they would scare the heterosexuals and forestall the quest for tolerance.

But they survived.  During the 1980s, even people not into the culture started experimenting, since S&M activities don't transmit HIV.

It became commonplace for men hitting their mid-30s to shift their allegiance from twink bars to leather bars like the Spike, the Eagle, the Gold Coast, the Faultline, and Bill's Filling Station.

There were motorcycle clubs, leather clubs, S&M clubs, bear clubs, fetish fairs like Dore Alley, contests like International Mr. Leather, magazines like Drummer, Mandate, and Bound and Gagged.

All illustrated by a cadre of gay artists: Tom of Finland, Etienne, the Hun, Cavello...and their undisputed leader, Sean.

Sean, aka John Klamik (1935-2005), who was a fixture in West Hollywood from the 1950s, painting murals for leather bars,  publishing cartoons in leather and mainstream gay magazines, illustrating the novels of leather greats such as Larry Townsend, and publishing his own graphic novels.

He and his partner, Jim Newberry, were also well-known in West Hollywood politics, instrumental in planning each of the Gay Pride Marches and Festivals from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Sean drew his inspiration from the impossibly buffed, impossibly endowed Tom of Finland men, but he put them into much more graphic situations.

So graphic that it's hard to find one to illustrate.





And his themes and situations veer far from the jubilant eroticism of Tom's men. There are acts of torture, punishment, and revenge.    

For instance, the famous Biff Bound (1982), which I found at the adult bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana, is a pantomime comic book about a super-muscular, super-endowed blond who hitch-hikes in search of willing partners.  But instead, he is grabbed, tied up, and sexually assaulted by three toughs, who then steal his clothes and his suitcase.

He is rescued by a group of gay leathermen, who give him a new leather outfit, then help him capture the toughs.  They tie them up, have sex with them, force them to have sex with each other, and finally retrieve Biff's suitcase.  

Heavy stuff.  Is it promoting sexual assault?

Certainly not, Sean said in an interview.  "It's a fantasy."

It was about empowerment.  Gay men in the mainstream press of the day were portrayed as perpetual victims, of homophobic assaults, of discrimination, of AIDS, of their own "uncontrollable urges."  But they didn't have to be. They could be strong, powerful, in charge of the situation.  They could save the day.  They could triumph.

See also: Tom of Finland;  The Mystery of Cavelo; and The Bear with the Sweeney Todd Fetish.