by Larry Kramer
Most of the naked bodies parading around would have improved with clothes to cover them. Several of them, though, were mighty men, big and burly and hairy, which I confess I found exciting. I had never seen bodies so covered in hair. My own body is so pale, my frame extended beyond necessity. I stared hard at one man without consciousness that I was doing so until his penis erected as he stared right back at mine in its similar state. He tried to converse with me later. Again, my inability to find words and thoughts to exchange rendered me all but mute. I had been day-dreaming of burrowing my face into all that hair upon his chest.
In all, my excitements were satisfied several times in hasty ways at the hands of a few men who wanted to “love” me and to take me back home with them to wherever they were from. I became confused. I too am lonely. I want to go forward into life but know not which road leads where. But how can a man swear eternal love on such swift terms for a fellow man?
There are many questions akin to this that the trip forced my tired brain to consider. What joins men in unity? Is it only that our penises erect themselves, and relieve themselves and then their flaccid owners pass on? To what?
I do not wish to live such a life.
Surely there is a better life for men like me to live. What means “men like me”?
How do I find it, and with whom, for certainly I do not wish to live my life alone.
I began to realize the power that these feelings can assume in those who own them.
I would dearly like a life free from secrets.
The next day on our continuing journey we saw the young Negro hanging from a tree. He was being cut down by a group of angry white men who heaved his body on a burning pyre. The four older Negroes were in chains awaiting a similar fate. They were much ridiculed and called “Niggers” and “Rent-Marys.” I want to stop to find some sense here but Dapper Dan is quick to restrain me and hustle his group along with much more speed. I notice that none of the gentlemen could refrain from looking upon this scene.
I had thought once, when dreaming of my election to some office, that I would fight for the freedom of one as the same as the freedom of all.
I begin to see this will not be possible.
We are not all the same, at least so that this can be told out loud.
In battles and in victories one must make choices. I know that. But what if you know that the choice you make is somehow wrong?
JOSHUA SPEED’S REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
I write this in memory of what was and might have been. I write this as a beaten man. My once Abraham has been taken from us, and the memories I hoped were gone come flooding back still. The peace I thought I had away from him I have not, still these long years later. I guess I will never have it. It is with trembling that I confront the terrible sadness that remains in this. For all these years I believed I had made myself safe, had made the right and only choice, and I sequestered myself away from the world lest it discover the reality of what we, and I, had done. And now, as death is all that is left to me, this safety still remains not to be so.
Billy Greene sent him to me. In New Salem, Billy was a partner in his store with Abner Ellis, who was partner with me in Springfield, in my store. We all fucked with each other at one time or other. Indeed, the spare bed I had was home to Abner or Billy, or both, when they were in Springfield. Billy was younger by several years than Abraham and much enamored of him, particularly his thighs, which he extolled as perfect to fit his cock between. They were all New Salem boys, Billy and Abner and Abraham. Abner’s father in fact did business with my family in Kentucky. When Abraham joined me, I was happy for it. I admit it. I sought him. I had heard him speak. I could tell he was marked for great things. He already had done important political work, like getting Springfield made our capital.
From the first night we met I held him in my arms, each night for going on four years. And he held me in his arms even tighter. We were both big strapping young men and my big bed took quite a beating. If Billy came upon us, or Abner, in the middle of our occupations, they would throw a pillow at us. Oh, how we laughed, all of us. Those were happy days.
Abraham was twenty-eight. I was twenty-two.
But I was older. I had lived in many ways that he had not. It was for me to take him into society, and even dress him, early on.
His long bones and muscles did not always join together properly. It often hurt him just to stand. To ride a horse from town to town to trials in various county courthouses was agony. No, he never complained, not even to me. I could tell, though, in our bed, where it was hard for him to shield his discomforts as he tossed in bad dreams or attempts to find sleep. Then I would get up and fetch Dr. Mervin’s Extended Elixir and rub him down until he could sleep. I could tell he was finally asleep only when his hand, which was wrapped around mine in his unease, slowly released its grip. I confess that I looked forward to his attacks of spasm so I could tame them down, and tame him as he slept beside me, so handsome to me then especially in his need, even in his melancholy and his gloom that others claimed made him a sad-looking man. Some saw him as a long, gawky, shapeless man. Some told me they thought him ugly, which I never did, although I wondered how I came to entertain him so passionately, forgetting that he was muscular and lithe and supple like a willow tree or a birch. He never asked that anything be extended to him especially. Even when we loved, he never specified a favorite means or a more comfortable position, content to go along with my own desires in this matter. I do know that all his physical needs, his sexual wants, his bad back, his various ailments, were not attended to much by others after I left him. Mary was only interested in Mary. He put up with the pain of her—and yes, the pain from the loss of me—for the rest of his life.
Yes, I left him. I was not so kind to him as I should have been. I was punished for that for the rest of my life, to use those pathetic words again. For the rest of my life.
He was so needy. That was attractive to me, his inexperience so childlike. But after a while it became annoying, and a burden I did not know how to carry. I could not give him what he wanted, whatever precisely that might be, for neither of us knew. We were both walking on unknown ground. Perhaps I was the more confused of us two; we could not live like this; we had to get married, each of us. Neither of us knew what to do about that, or about each other. Where were we going? Where could we go? He was just starting his legal career. How could he, and we, fail to be seen for what we were and what we did? How could he succeed with the world knowing what we were and did? He would not answer any of these questions I demanded we talk about. It was almost as if he did not care, as if my concerns were just bits of dander to be brushed away. Yes, it turned out I was the more confused and Abe was never confused about anything in his entire lifetime!
No two men were ever so intimate. I can say that now. I knew it then, for a few years. He knew it until the day he died. I did not. I did not. Now I wish I had.
He fucked me immediately. And I immediately invited him to live with me. And he immediately accepted. Springfield was a town of very few women and many young men and much fucking among us all over the place. There was this electricity in the very air. And there was electricity between Abe and me and we both knew it. I made him tell me all the boys he’d sexed with and he questioned me about mine, almost as if I were on the witness stand. It turned out he’d had more than I had! When I mentioned a woman or two, whores I’d visited, he said he wanted one, and would I take him with me next time. I wouldn’t, and he went anyway, and had not enough money to pay her, so he left even though she offered herself anyway. It was I who later gave him syphilis, not the whore whom I have heard blamed for this.
He was like a great big boy in my arms. I called him my countess because I thought it suited him, a man so tall and seeking the deference of others. I could picture a tiara perched upon his head. “You would be most dashing in a regal gown, with a train. Oh, yes, with a train!” He did not like me to talk this way. He kissed me when I teased hi
m, to shut my mouth. He would grab me up in his long arms’ embrace, and like a clinging vine. He was needy of affection, and demanding of it too, in his intense and quiet way.
Sometimes I think I was there but to be both mother and father to him, so that when he grew up, which he did in our bed and in our embraces and with his cock in me, or mine in him, he could go out and stand as tall as he really was. When I teased him he would get so riled up he would pound upon me as if I were a drum. Then I would hold his body at bay and bend to kiss his face, his mole touching the tip of my tongue as I licked at his rough skin. He had no beard yet. That came later, and while it was I suggested it, I did not much favor it.
But I had long since forsaken his kisses by then. I separated myself from him for many years. I was a fool. We both were. Both our marriages were as barren of love as we had feared. Had I not grown too hard a man to cry, I would cry now, although it is too late.
He was rarely one for pitying himself or his beginnings, though he never forgot their poverty. When I took him to my family’s home, he could not believe its luxury, or that any family could be as old as ours, seven generations away from Great Britain. “That people live like this!” Again he cross-examined me, question after question, about my upbringing, and every member of my family, all my ten brothers and sisters, and what it was like to be rich. Always he was stingy about himself. I tried to question him just as pointedly but he was a clever one. Oh, I had seen him speak. I knew something of his style, tall, upright, so honest that it hurt, because I could tell such honesty came only from hurt. I could never be so honest! But what he told the world was his great rhetoric laced with sentiment, and what he would not talk about was the pain.
You might say I knew in advance what I was out to get, and got it, and from that first fuck determined to keep it only as long as I liked it. That has always been my way. I always had only what I wanted for only as long as I wanted it. “Mighty fine” is how he sighed sometime after we finished bringing each other to pleasure. He was not more adept than this for talking about what we had done. So when we were losing each other because of me, neither of us knew how to talk about it.
I asked him once, “How many others are there like us, do you think?”
He answered, “I think that many things that feel so fine are ruled peculiar for that reason, and by those who cannot feel so fine.”
I said, “I know full well there are many like us. I know full well.”
I do not think he thought us other, as I did. We might suffer from what he sometimes called our “nervous debility,” but he also pronounced this “utterly harmless.” For he was only one, within and without, one whole person undivided and unable to think otherwise. That is why he could not bear to conceive much less allow what he called “a house divided.”
He became exceptionally able to think for himself and for his needs. Like so many who come from the poor, he knew how to find food when he was hungry.
Once he said to me, “Speed, if there are so many others like us, perhaps they need a lawyer.” This was his humor, but as with everything he said there was a part of heavier weight. He was concerned about the rights of all. He did not think that hushmarkeds lacked rights. I knew we never would have rights. We were too invisible to have rights.
“Could you be our Jesus, to lead us to the world of glory?” I once asked, knowing full well he believed in God only as He who created the world and then abandoned us.
“It is not right to have to hide” was all he said. “What law, exactly, has been broken?” He would never join any religion.
We both worried for each other. We both shared our one great burden. We knew we were meant to marry. When our feelings about this tried to find their way into words, he closed his eyes rather than look at me. But after a time he would lean forward and kiss me. His lips were rough, as if a carpenter were needed to plane them smooth. And then we would do with each other that which we were frightened of with women. And fearing it so much made us perform on each other with even more boisterousness, and yes, love, as if it were ours alone, for now. But underneath, that was the question always on our minds. What would happen next? We tried to console each other that all would be fine, that each of us was ready for what we felt we had to do.
He let me love him. I am not certain he knew the effect he achieved on me. No, that is not true. He knew well and good what effect he achieved, on me and others, and he knew how to effect it silently and without a comment. This was an amazing gift I have noted in no other, this ability to possess a want, a need, and to obtain it without expressing or demanding it.
In the end, he wanted all his slaves to be free.
THE END OF A LOVE AFFAIR
Between 1837 and 1842, Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed are lovers. Springfield, just over twenty years old itself, is a small place of hardly several thousand mostly men who come, as Abe does, to start their lives. Indeed, as the young and growing San Francisco will shortly be for the young Samuel Clemens, many young men come here just to be with a lot of other young men.
Surely their relationship must have been known, witnessed, talked about. How could it have escaped the notice of customers, women coming in to do the cleaning and laundry, to wash the sheets? Such a deep friendship must indeed have been known, and even accepted, by many a friend and neighbor and fellow citizen.
The Speeds are a wealthy Kentucky family. Joshua is trying his hand at running a dry goods store as an experimental lark, trying out “trade” before he decides on this or something else, which is what it will be when he elects, like Abe, the law. Because of Joshua, new shirts come to Abe, and new shoes, and enough food, and a warm home, no small gifts for someone who has always been so cold and hungry. They will also sleep in a big, wide, clean bed, another luxury for Abe. He is taken into society as well. But more than any of this, Abe has obviously been ready to fall into another man’s arms and stay there. The desire for warmth involves more than just a big wide bed, wood in a fireplace or coal in a stove, and two or three square meals a day.
What happens, then, to end this friendship, at least the sexual part of it, and separate Lincoln and Speed, and send Lincoln into marriage with Mary Todd, a woman he certainly does not love?
Speed determines it is time to leave Springfield, sell the store, and return home. His father has died and his mother has asked for him and indeed has inquired with growing persistence why he remains a bachelor. He conveys this news to Abe on January 1, 1841. Abe’s response is awful. He has a nervous breakdown. Indeed, it appears that he has several, perhaps three, no sooner recovering from one than another replaces it. Speed finds him several times with knives and weapons, as well as strong medicines, all of which he removes. “Lincoln went crazy,” he writes. “It was terrible.” He takes him back to Kentucky and there for many months he nurses his friend back to health. They even take an eight-day Mississippi boat trip, and return to stay at a friend’s house in Springfield, where there had once been happiness and a touch of permanence. Joshua stays with Abe for many months, neither of them ostensibly performing any business but to be with each other.
Then Joshua does a terrible thing. He takes Abe to a hushmarket. The two men were back again at the Speed mansion. They had been discussing Joshua’s marriage to an orphan, Fanny Henning, consoling each other that, yes, it is now the right thing to do and not so fearsome. Joshua takes him to a gathering of hushmarkeds in a tavern on the other side of Louisville. There Abe sees Joshua embrace another man and kiss him passionately in a far corner and then go off with him to a private room upstairs. “I was not accustomed to such feelings of deprivation and jealousy as I knew that night,” he is to write to Joshua many years later. Abe makes haste to return to Springfield.
What transpires for many years to come is a fitful correspondence between them, with emotions couched in heavy armor, as Abe attempts, at first painfully and feebly, to concentrate on the law and his career in politics. Of this period Abe writes, “I am now the most miserable man living. I
f what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forbode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”
Joshua weds Fanny and writes to Abe that he has consummated the marriage successfully. He is lying. Abe conveys his congratulations, particularly about the successful consummation. Speed will never consummate his marriage with Fanny. Abe, of course, must now marry the unpleasant Mary. If Joshua can fuck a woman, then Abe can, too. He will in fact impregnate Mary on their wedding night, and have four sons, and constantly invite Joshua and Fanny to visit them in Springfield, and then in Washington, but to no avail. Joshua refuses all invitations or ignores them altogether. Abe will offer Joshua positions in his government (one of Joshua’s brothers will accept one of these), again to be refused. Many of their letters appear to have disappeared. Like Mrs. Melville and Martha Washington, who destroyed all the evidence of their husbands’ homosexual yearnings, Mary Lincoln destroyed a large number of her husband’s papers. How long she’d known, and how much, we can only guess. One thing is certain: she did not like Speed, never had, and she was unfriendly to and suspicious of Abe’s many close male friends over the years. Just seeing Abe with one of them could lead her to one of her punishing orgies of riotous consumer spending, almost, as it were, to pay him back. She may not have known, but she knew.
No sooner is Speed married than he commences his many years of creating a new narrative to deny the old one. His version of how they met is far from what transpired. For one thing, he tells William Herndon, Lincoln’s first biographer and his law partner (who had his own reasons for protecting Abe’s sexual history, of which he was more than aware), and hence the world, only that Abe showed up one day, a perfect stranger who could not afford a room, or a mattress, or indeed a sheet. Why someone who had been the lover of the president of the United States could not live with this fact and indeed cherish it would today mark Joshua Speed as a very strange man indeed.
