Free A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski Page B

be it known that, though little inclined to jealousy in love matters, the Tahitian will hear of no rivals in his friendship. 24
    The relationship dynamic gets more complicated in Moby-Dick, when Ishmael, the narrator, half-willingly shares a bed at the inn with the South Pacific harpooner, Queequeg:
    Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade—owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times—this same arm of his, I say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues together; and it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was hugging me. 25
    In this passage, implicit homoeroticism is juxtaposed with the domesticity of the classic New England quilt. Melville has titled this chapter “The Counterpane,” so there is no question that he intends for us to compare Queequeg’s multicolored tattoos with the designs of the quilt: they are one and the same, inseparable. The homoeroticism is not expressed as an exclusive identity, but rather as a marker of democracy and American civilization, which is neatly folded into the “uncivilized” Queequeg. Melville’s use of the metaphors of weddings and marriage throughout the book reinforces his vision of a republic resonant of interracial, same-sex relationships that blend nature with civilization to the point of creating a “natural” democracy.
    Stoddard’s work, two decades later, is laced with similar scenes, often more overtly erotic in tone and description. Here the narrator first meets Kána-aná:
    So Kána-aná brought up his horse, got me on to it in some way or other, and mounted behind me to pilot the animal and sustain me in my first bare-back act. Over the sand we went, and through the river to his hut, where I was taken in, fed, and petted in every possible way, and finally put to bed, where Kána-aná monopolized me, growling in true savage fashion if any one came near me. I didn’t sleep much, after all. I think I must have been excited. 26
    After the narrator returns to the United States, he misses his chum and muses on what it would mean to bring him to “civilization”: “I could teach him to dress, you know; to say a very good thing to your face, and a very bad one at your back; to sleep well in church, and rejoice duly when the preacher got at last to the ‘Amen.’” 27 Stoddard presents a complicated relationship between the sexual freedom that Kána-aná represents and the narrator’s desire to bring his friend to “civilization,” even as he admits that civilization is riddled with repression and hypocrisies. Like Melville, Stoddard is concerned with finding a way to merge what he idealizes as sexual freedom and lack of social constraint with the conventions of U.S. life. His attempt remains all the more powerful as a radical ideal, not a reality.
    Aside from fiction, few records document same-sex behaviors during this time. In his mid-century diaries, Philip C. Van Buskirk, an American marine, details mutual sexual interactions among sailors. They include mutual masturbation (called “going chaw for chaw”) and anal intercourse, as well as sexual and romantic relationships between older sailors, often officers, and cabin boys as young as thirteen. In 1853 his diary records an older sailor’s opinion about sex between men. While the sailor would punish men who had sex with men on land, he had no desire to do so at sea: “What