GLR January-February 2025

Following their vaguely referenced sex ual interlude, Howard departs for Lon don to work on a new musical, and “Sweeter than Sweet” closes on Broad way; the production goes on the road. While driving to the tour’s first stop, Ken confesses to chorus boy Frankie Reagan that he’s glad to be free of Howard and his “emotional orgasms,” telling Frankie: “I’m going gay.” During the road tour, Ken becomes more accepting of his gay identity, at least superficially—and with the aid of copious amounts of alcohol. Whether hosting “come-one, come-all” nightly drinking marathons in his hotel suite, vis iting out-of-the-way gay clubs, or drop ping in to observe “negro” drag balls, Ken is increasingly exposed to gay men, and the occasional lesbian—people he refers to as citizens of “our world.” §

and I’ll show you a gay corpse.” It could serve as the novel’s leitmotif. Through the course of the novel, Ken’s growing aware ness of his gay identity is matched by his increasing reliance on alcohol, an inex orable decline in his dancing skills, and a burgeoning swell of internalized homo phobia. In the novel’s last chapter a street wise drinking companion, Feathers, declares that Ken is “just a rotten old fag.” Given this prelude, Ken’s eventual demise is inevitable; a desperate, drunken attempt to return home to Texas by treading the waters of the Hudson River concludes with his drowning. Soends Butterfly Man. A once talented dancer loses his youth, his career, and his life. And why? Because he has succumbed to the evils of homosexuality. Even this brief retelling makes plain why no one would regard this novel as a gay classic worthy of acclaim. But for all the clichés,

the broad characterizations, and the negative stereotypes, the novel is not without value. Readers today should not discount the unique opportunity to glimpse a slice of gay life in 1920s America, making the book worthwhile from a strictly historical perspective. Understanding our past helps us to bring context to the present and to develop guideposts for the future. Nevertheless, because Ken’s trajectory of self-destruction plays into the now largely discredited sentiment that embracing a gay identity automatically leads to despair and ruin, some readers may find Butterfly Man passé in the extreme, if not downright offensive. After all, same-sex attraction is no longer considered an illness by legitimate medical organizations as it was in 1934. Gay marriage is legal, and references to gay iden tities are no longer deeply camouflaged in novels and other ex pressions of cultural values. But despite these advances, one cannot deny the fact that stigma and homophobia and other manifestations of anti-gay bigotry are still with us. Consider that a December 2023 report by The Trevor Project documented over 1,300 practitioners actively engaged in “conversion ther apy” across the U.S., and a growing body of evidence supports the notion that the rejection and prejudice experienced by sex ual and gender minorities can often become internalized, re sulting in increased rates of depression, alcohol and substance abuse, and suicide. From this perspective, Ken’s demise be comes a textbook example of what today’s psychologists clas sify as “deaths of despair” that result from people’s inability to cope with modern life and pressures, including prejudices in flicted by society itself. While Levenson may not have possessed the skill to portray Ken’s demise in a more nuanced way, there’s no doubt but that he was well acquainted with the consequences of homophobia. Was this awareness based on his own experience, or had he ob served its effects in others? That question cannot be answered without more information about the author. But we can say with certainty that Levenson understood the negative consequences that can result when a person is not allowed to embrace their authentic sexual nature.

B Y AROUND THE MIDDLE of the novel, most 21st-century readers will have come to understand what prompted the epithet “anti faggot trash” to describe it. There isn’t a single negative stereo type or outdated myth about male homosexuals that isn’t ascribed to Ken or most of the gay men who surround him. These myths can be summarized as the following four clichés about gay men and gay life, all of which can be found in un mistakable form in the novel: § Gay men really want to be women. In preparation to attend his first drag ball as Cara, outfitted in a golden gown and wearing a wig of “natural titian,” Ken, standing before a mirror, admires himself, seeing the face of “a refined and charming woman.” Readers are later informed that when he’s drinking, Ken’s mind seems “to escape the limitations of his body” and he imagines himself to be “the lady superintendent of a girl’s seminary ... or a redheaded woman acrobat ... or Aunt Emily Winterbottom giv ing lessons in etiquette.” § Gay sex is dangerous, even deadly . Without remembering how he got there, a drunken Ken finds himself in the apartment of a Chicago gangster named Rocco and his gang of “fifteen delectably human morsels.” After dancing for the group, Rocco christens Ken “my butterfly man.” The next day, Ken arrives at the theater dirty, with torn clothes and uncertain memories. After learning of Ken’s visit to Rocco, his chorus boy chum, Joe Durazzo, tells him that it’s “lucky you got out alive,” the implication being that Ken had been gang raped by Rocco, et al. § Gay sex is dirty. Toward the end of the novel, traveling on a train back to New York following a sober hiatus in Texas, Ken meets Tommy Cook. Tommy, a fanboy from the earlier road show, is described as “golden, pink and cherubic.” Ken wel comes him as a “heaven-sent” companion meant to support his efforts to resume a successful dance career—until Ken is diag nosed with syphilis, which he contracted from young Tommy. He calls the boy an “unclean bitch” and throws him out. § Gay men can never be happy. Remember the following line from The Boys in the Band ? “Show me a happy homosexual January–February 2025

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