Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde weren’t the only ones getting busy with each other.
The recent Toast article "Literary Trysts It Gives Me Great Joy To Think About: Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman" set off a flurry of Facebook shares and likes and a tempest of tweets and retweets. The idea of these two gay literary icons getting together truly was too delicious not to think about.
But Oscar and Uncle Walt were not the only gay writers — past and present — known for their activity between the sheets as well as between the covers. From various biographies, diaries, and memoirs, we know about poet Edna St. Vincent Millay's intoxicating effect on her fellow female students at Vassar, author Michel Foucault's penchant for S&M clubs, City of Night author John Rechy's past as a hustling muscle-daddy, and the dirt Edmund White dishes on himself in My Lives and City Boy.
Here are some of the gay past's greatest writer to writer hookups — and a couple of Missed Connections.