Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/527
Adele[1] gets furious these days when I talk about bisexuality. Why don’t you become a homosexual, she flares at me, you want to anyway. The funny thing is that I don’t—I feel less homosexual tension than I have ever felt—neither homosexual desire which for that matter I’ve never felt consciously, but more important no homosexual anxiety.
The other day in a homosexual clothing store the salesman was giving me a covert feel while measuring the length of the cuffs. A year ago I would have broken out into a sweat. This time I stood there unmoved but feeling tenderly humorous toward him. (The two is definitely in toward. We go from one toward two. The spelling conflicts with the basic instinctive pronunciation which is why so many illiterate people have a bitch of a time pronouncing that seemingly simple word.)
Anyway, I felt no anxiety. Instead, I thought, “Well, my friend, congratulations. A part of me always wanted to be a corset adjuster so I could cop quick feels (and isn’t that just the sexual quality of the cop—he always takes as a stranger) and get away with it. And you on your side of the fence have made it.
note
- ↑ Adele Morales (1925 – 2015), who he married in April 1954, was Mailer’s second wife. The mother of his daughters Danielle (b. 1957), and Elizabeth Anne (b. 1959), she separated from Mailer in early 1961 a few months after he stabbed her with a penknife, just missing her heart. He pled guilty to felonious assault and was given a suspended sentence. They divorced in 1962.
