428 EURAMERICA is why Whitman had better be described as entertaining a parahomosexual identity, in the sense that although he did have an awareness of his “sexual” differences from others and of the existence of other people who felt the same like him that altogether look very similar to modern homosexual identity, that awareness might still differ from it on some significant accounts. However, what makes Whitman’s same-sex conceptualization more similar to the modern homosexual is that, despite the still existing possibilities of being accommodated (albeit just barely) within the perimeters of normativity during most of his lifetime,26 he was foregrounding its differences from normativity as well as reaching out to people who felt as he did in this flaunting way.27 Of course, even without those hints and signposts purposely planted in “Calamus,” people who shared the same desire as Whitman might still have been able to read out the hidden level of nevertheless ends with a more cautious note on deducing the timing of a certain “homosexual” identity based thereupon; and also Benjamin Kahan (2019: 131137), who brings this debate into particular focus as well as attempts a brief synthesis of the two different temporalities. 26 However, there seemed to be one intriguing case of mainstream alarm that Whitman had crossed the line here. An anonymous review of the first edition of Leaves—later found to be penned by Rufus W. Griswold, an eminent critic at the time—lambasted the book severely (as did many other reviews) and concluded with the accusation: “Peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum” (“that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians,” namely “sodomy”) (1996: 27). Besides arriving a bit early (the “Calamus” cluster was still five years in the future), the term “sodomy” was also a highly charged accusation which cannot simply be taken as the equivalent of specific same-sex acts (Bray, 1990). For a particularly enlightening interpretation of Griswold’s accusation in this traditional sense, see Newfield (1996: 94-97, 105-109), which regards it as a reaction more to Whitman’s promotion of “radical” (read: “mass”) democracy or even “anarchism” than to aberrant sexuality. 27 As to the related same-sex subculture that would also be helpful for claiming such a para-homosexual existence, some critics are pointing at the legendary Pfaff’s (a tavern) on Broadway, where Whitman hung around in his bohemian days (in the early 1860s) as well as his relationship there with a group of young men nicknamed Fred Gray Association (Blalock, 2014).
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