This blog post was written for three reason: 1) I like the three pictures in this post and wanted a way to use them (even if only one is black horse like Bucephalus), 2) Alexander the Great has always been a hero of mine since he was both a gay man and military genius and I’m a gay man and a military historian, and 3) I like this story.

Bucephalus was Alexander the Great’s horse and is considered by some to be the most famous horse in history. Alexander and Bucephalus’ initial meeting was unique but demonstrated the true character of one of the greatest generals in all of history. Initially, Bucephalus was brought to Macedonia and presented to King Phillip II (Alexander’s father) in 346 BCE by Philoneicus of Thessaly. With a price tag almost three times the norm (13 talents), the beautiful black horse stood taller than the normal Macedonian steed but was considered too wild and unmanageable, rearing up against anyone who came near him. Phillip ordered him led away.

Alexander sat in the audience with his mother Olympias watching the spectacle before him. As the attendants tried to lead Bucephalus away, Alexander rose calling them spineless. According to Plutarch’s biography of Alexander, the young prince said, “What as excellent horse do they lose for want of address and boldness to manage him.” At first Phillip ignored the challenge, but finally said to Alexander, “Do you reproach those who are older than yourself, as if you were better able to manage him than they.” Alexander, ignoring his father remark, repeated his challenge and said he would pay for the horse if he, Alexander, were unable to tame him.

  
Amid wild laughter, Alexander approached the horse he would name Bucephalus calmly. He had realized something the others had not — the horse was afraid of his own shadow. Turning Bucephalus toward the sun so his shadow was behind him and slowing taking the reins in his hand, Alexander mounted him. The laughter of the crowd turned to cheers as Alexander rode off. 

According to Plutarch, as Alexander returned to the arena with Bucephalus and dismounted, Phillip said, “O my son look thee out a kingdom equal to and worthy of thyself, for Macedonia is too little for thee.” Historians claim this taming of the wild Bucephalus was a turning point in the young prince’s life, demonstrating the confidence and determination he was to show in his conquest of Asia.

Bucephalus and Alexander were inseparable; only Alexander could ride him, and indeed he did, into every battle from the conquest of the Greek city-states and Thebes through Gaugamela and into India. After the final defeat of Darius, Bucephalus was kidnapped while Alexander was away on excursion. Upon returning and learning of the theft, Alexander promised to fell every tree, lay the countryside to waste, and slaughter every inhabitant in the region. The horse was soon returned along with a plea for mercy.
Although historians disagree on the cause of the horse’s death – some claim he died from battle wounds – most agree he died of old age after the Battle of Hydaspes River (326 BCE). While Plutarch spoke of both possible causes of death, he cites Onesicritus, a historian who accompanied Alexander on his conquests, as stating the horse died of old age. However Bucephalus died, in mourning, Alexander founded a city in his beloved horse’s memory and named it Bucephala.

  
While I know nothing about this picture for sure, I am pretty sure of a few things. First, these men are from the early 20th century, most likely close to the time of the First World War. There uniforms are the uniforms that the US Army used between 1902-1926 as their winter service uniforms, at least the darker color of the shirts suggest that it is winter uniform as opposed to the lighter colored summer uniform. By the looks of the pins on their collars, I would say that they are part of a New York National Guard unit, but the picture isn’t clear enough to tell me what units. Furthermore, they seem to be very close to one another, good friends or possibly more, though they could just be brothers. One thing for certain, they were very handsome men, especially the first one on the left.

I do wish I knew the story behind this photograph. What do you think the story is?

You’ve probably all heard the phrase “Queer as a $3 bill,” which was originally “Queer as a Clockwork Orange.” Though originally it was meant as a way to claim something was strange, it has taken on more meaning today as someone who is homosexual. But maybe the phrase would be more accurate as “Queer as a $10 bill.”  Most people think of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton as the face on the $10 bill (which now has a pinkish hue to it), but would he have been better suited for the $3 bill? There’s some evidence in his letters that he may have been bisexual. Come to think if it, if he was bisexual, maybe he belongs on the $2 bill. Sorry, it’s late as I write this, and I can be a bit silly late at night.

Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler in 1780 and fathered a total of eight children, but some historians believe Hamilton had a romantic relationship with fellow solider and aristocrat John Laurens while both men were aide-de-camps to George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Washington’s concern for his male colleagues clearly extended to their personal lives. This was especially true of Hamilton, who he brought with him to Valley Forge, giving Hamilton a cabin to share with his then-lover, John Laurens, to whom Hamilton had written passionate love letters which are discussed below.

Maj. Gen. Frederich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian military genius Washington enlisted to help him strategize at Valley Forge, was a known homosexual (he’d been expelled from the court of Frederick the Great for sodomy) and came to the Continental Army with his young French assistant, Pierre Etienne Duponceau, who was presumed to be his lover and shared a bed with von Steuben at Valley Forge. Since von Steuben’s English was limited, but his French was perfect, Washington assigned his own secretary and one of his aides-de-camp to von Steuben, Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton and Lt. Col. John Laurens, who shared a cabin at Valley Forge at Washington’s bequest. Washington, who had to have known the nature of their relationship due to his own closeness with Hamilton, situated the two together at Valley Forge and then connected them with von Steuben and Duponceau–a gay foursome working directly with the leader of the Continental Army.

The evidence of Hamilton’s and Laurens’ relationship is found in a series letters written by Hamilton to Laurens shortly after Laurens left Washington’s military family for South Carolina, where he worked to recruit African American troops to fight against the British.

In a letter dated April 1779, Hamilton begins:

Cold in my professions, warm in my friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it might be in my power, by action rather than words to convince you that I love you. I shall only tell you that ’til you bade us Adieu, I hardly knew the value you had taught my heart to set upon you. Indeed, my friend, it was not well done. You know the opinion I entertain of mankind, and how much it is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent of the caprice of others. You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.

Though most people in the 18th century wrote with a very flowery language that to modern ears may sound gay, but was actually innocent. However, sometimes things are exactly what they appear to be and this doesn’t seem like mere flowery language.

The letter continues:

But as you have done it, and as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed, on condition that for my sake, if not for your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you have artfully instilled into me.

At the time, romantic relationships between members of the same sex were considered taboo, and sodomy was a punishable offense in all 13 colonies and men were subject to imprisonment, castration, and even death. Which raises the question of what sort of “fraud” Hamilton might be referring to.

In another letter, dated September 1779, Hamilton describes himself as a “jealous lover” after Laurens failed to respond to any of his missives:

Like a jealous lover, when I thought you slighted my caresses, my affection was alarmed and my vanity piqued. I had almost resolved to lavish no more of them upon you and to reject you as an inconstant and an ungrateful ____.

At that point, the handwriting becomes illegible, leaving it up to the reader’s imagination what the Founding Father may have written.

Later in the letter, Hamilton talks about his new fiancé, Elizabeth Schuyler, in language that makes her sound more like a beard than a wife:

Next fall completes my doom. I give up my liberty to Miss Schuyler. She is a good hearted girl who I am sure will never play the termagant; though not a genius she has good sense enough to be agreeable, and though not a beauty, she has fine black eyes – is rather handsome and has every other requisite of the exterior to make a lover happy. And believe me, I am lover in earnest, though I do not speak of the perfections of my Mistress in the enthusiasm of Chivalry.

One year later, in a letter dated September 1780, Hamilton again wrote to Laurens about his wife:

In spite of Schuyler’s black eyes, I have still a part for the public and another for you; so your impatience to have me married is misplaced; a strange cure by the way, as if after matrimony I was to be less devoted that I am now. Let me tell you, that I intend to restore the empire of Hymen and that Cupid is to be his prime Minister.

He signed the letter:

Adieu, be happy, and let friendship between us be more than a name.

It’s been reported that after his death, Hamilton’s family crossed out sections of the letters. Their reasons for doing so are unknown, though some speculate it was because the notes contained suggestive language that might have confirmed a romantic relationship between the two men.

Interestingly, in his 2003 essay “Slavery and Liberty in the American Revolution,” historian Gregory D. Massey notes that of all the surviving letters written by Hamilton, the only other ones that show the same level of sentiment are those penned to his wife.

Of course, we’ll probably never know for sure. But one thing is for certain: Whatever feelings Hamilton had towards Laurens were unique, as evidenced in a letter he sent to General Greene in 1782 after Laurens was killed in the Battle of the Combahee River:

I feel the deepest affliction at the news we have just received of the loss of our dear and inestimable friend Laurens. His career of virtue is at an end…. I feel the loss of a friend I truly and most tenderly loved, and one of a very small number.

If the walls at 1026 Conti Street in the French Quarter could talk, they’d be international porn stars. It’s Norma’s House, the upscale brothel near the corner of Rampart run for 25 years by the sexy, shrewd and legendary “Last Madam” Norma Wallace. From 1938 until the early 1960s, Norma welcomed an upscale clientele including gangsters, governors, movie stars and scions of Uptown families.

Her often outrageous, sometimes touching and always fascinating stories are told in the best-selling “The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld,” by author Chris Wiltz.

“Norma’s house was the last wide-open parlor house in New Orleans,” Wiltz said. “Men went there as a rite of passage.”

During the first decade of this century, the house underwent reconstruction, and several unique features from Norma’s day were recreated, including the door to the “hideout” where the girls fled during raids and the hole in the wall where the money was secreted and the door where Norma made her payoffs.

Two years before her death in 1974, Norma began to tape-record her memories – the salacious stories of a smart, glamorous, powerful woman whose scandalous life made front-page headlines, and whose husbands and lovers ran the gamut from movie stars to gangsters to the boy next door, 39 years her junior, who became her fifth and final husband.

Wiltz’s book chronicles Norma’s rise from a life of poverty to that of a wealthy grande dame – a New Orleans legend with powerful political connections who was given the key to the city. “She answered to no one, and surrendered only to an obsessive love, which ultimately led to her surprising and violent death,” Wiltz said.

“The Last Madam” is also the story of New Orleans over five decades, steamy-thick with the vice and corruption that flourished in an Old World atmosphere.

“Wallace had the wit of Dorothy Parker and the instinct for self-dramatization of Tallulah Bankhead,” said The New York Times review. “The Last Madam admirably recreates a little slice of life otherwise devoured by time.”

Key to understanding the only owner of a bawdy house in New Orleans’ recorded history to receive the Key to the City from the mayor and council is the house itself. Built in the 1830s, the three-story, balconied building was also home to Storyville photographer E. J. Bellocq, who famously captured the “red-light ladies” for posterity.

Bellocq and his brother Leo, who would become a Jesuit priest, spent their childhoods in the building. They sold it in 1911, when E.J. Bellocq was in his late 30s, for $9,880. Bellocq particularly loved the light on the top floor; another photographer/artist now lives there. Portraits of Bellocq and Norma adorn the entry hall.