5 Gay Guys Who Got More Women Than Most Straight Men
Human sexuality can be a mysterious thing. How do we fall in love? What fans our desire? Should it always hurt this much when urinating? I don't pretend to have the answers to any of these questions. I hold no special insight or sexuality degree, but I didn't let that stop me from writing an article about gay dudes who've had sex with a bunch of ladies. When you have an idea this important, you can't let gross incompetence or abject sexual stupidity stand in your way.
I decided early on I'd need some sort of criteria for fitting people into the categories of "straight," "gay," or "other." For the most part (with exception), I've tried to include only men here who've seen themselves as gay. For example, you won't see David Bowie on this list. Has he had a bunch of gay sex? Surely. But he's also had so much straight sex that if you put his men over his women in a sexual fraction, the numerator would pretty much drop to zero. He's also been married to supermodel Iman for like 20 years. What I'm saying is, to make this list it takes more than some gay sex. You either had to declare your gayness at some point or -- and this is the tricky part -- I had to insist that you were gay solely for the purposes of this article. That's right. Sometimes I use my power as a Cracked columnist to overrule a celebrity's claims of bisexuality and shove him forcibly into the gay category. Yep, I said it. I like to force things onto bisexual celebrities. Maybe I'm just jealous of their ability to land high quality female tail.
Little Richard
Little Richard's musical significance cannot be overstated. As a singer, songwriter and pianist, he is a towering figure, helping define both rock and soul music with hits like "Tutti Frutti" and "Good Golly, Miss Molly." He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, and he's the winner of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation's Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Case for Gayness
There's no debate that Little Richard has had all sorts of gay sex, and in 1995, he told Penthouse magazine that he was gay. If there were any doubt, there's also 60 years of rock-and-roll fabulousness supporting the orientation.
Little Richard making Prince seem like Ving Rhames.
Sometimes, he's called himself "omnisexual," and at other times -- like when he became a born-again Christian -- he's claimed to be heterosexual. But if you read some of his authorized biographies, like this one, there's plenty of gayness to be had.
The Women Landed Anyway
Maybe Richard just needed to meet the right women ... women like his on again, off again girlfriend since 1956, Audrey Robinson (aka Lee Angel). Ms. Robinson had a certain something the boys didn't: Specifically, she was a 16-year-old girl with a 50-inch bust and 18-inch waist. She tells it this way in a GQ interview:
"I was not a fan," Angel tells me over lunch in a hotel near her home in West Hollywood. "I was just walking down West Broad Street, in Savannah. Richard looked out of that window, and sent for me ... I said to the person he sent down: 'Who wants me? Little Richard? Excuse me? Is he aware that I am a girl?'
She was captivated "from the second I met him. I almost fainted. I felt weak at the knees. I went through all the classic signs of falling in love. With Richard, I have had a lot of firsts."
During one of his Christian phases, he also married Ernestine Campbell for four years. Oh, and apparently, he participated in a hosts of orgies throughout the '50s where apparently some straight sex slipped in when he wasn't paying attention.
Anthony Perkins
Best known for his indelible performance as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Anthony Perkins was an incredibly gifted actor. Aside from his critically acclaimed performance in Fear Strikes Out, I'd also encourage anyone to watch the much maligned and underrated sequels Psycho II and Psycho III solely for Perkins' unrivaled ability to convey emotion through the tiniest facial movements.
The Case for Gayness
This is slightly dicey because Perkins identified himself as straight later in life, claiming to have been "cured" by psychotherapy. Still, it's hard to overlook all that sex he appears to have had with actor Tab Hunter, composer Stephen Sondheim, dancer Rudolf Nureyev and dancer-choreographer Grover Dale. And perhaps even gayer, he apparently rejected the advances of Jane Fonda and Brigitte Bardot.
Personally, I didn't think anyone was gay enough to do that.
I don't want to impugn his claimed heterosexuality, but I'm going to have to insist that any man who doesn't lose his straight virginity until he's 39 is either gay or me. (Hopefully, later this year. Fingers crossed!)
The Women Landed Anyway
As mentioned above, Perkins' long gay stretch (which sounds far more homoerotic than intended) ended in 1973 when he was 39. Apparently, while filming The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, he met a young co-star named Victoria Principal who managed to do what Jane Fonda and Brigitte Bardot could not.
I'm guessing Victoria knew some tricks Jane and Brigitte didn't.
His newfound heterosexuality led him to marriage. On August 9, 1973, Perkins married photographer Berinthia "Berry" Berenson. The couple had two sons and remained married until his death in 1992.
Alan Cumming
Alan Cumming is a Scottish-born character actor perhaps most known for his role as the emcee in the '90s revival of Cabaret. His films also include Circle of Friends, Spy Kids, GoldenEye and Eyes Wide Shut, the latter featuring his performance as the impishly gay hotel clerk. I will always believe Cumming chose to play this role as "gay guy stoked to meet Tom Cruise."
People who disable embedding will never know true love. The link is above.
Case for Gayness
Now, I'm already expecting some push-back from the High Order of Celebrity Sexuality Judges for including Cumming in the gay category when so much of the historical record would seem to dictate he be placed in the pansexual or bisexual category. Still, I'm doing just that for the purposes of this list. I understand it's sloppy journalism. Of course, I'm not actually a journalist, and, in my defense, there's this:
Also, he's been married to a man, Grant Shaffer, since 2006, so there's that.
The Women Landed Anyway
Despite the above, Cumming is no stranger to the ladies. He was married to Hilary Lyon from 1985 until their divorce in 1993. Thereafter, he had a series of relationships with women, including actress Saffron Burrows.
Note to self: Purchase ass-accentuating red cape and blue eye shadow immediately.
Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson was the epitome of the straight, masculine movie star of the '50s and '60s. Urban legend holds that in his prime, Rock was so handsome that one out of every 10 American men turned gay just by looking at his movie posters. Rock was so manly that when he visited the Australian Outback as a toddler, he devoured no fewer than five dingos. Rock had so much testosterone that once when he was playing Battleship, his aircraft carrier spontaneously grew a penis. Also, Rock was super gay.
That's right, you'd have to travel back five decades to find someone prettier than Cracked's own Soren Bowie.
The Case for Gayness
There's not much argument on this one. Rock lived most of his life as the quintessential closeted movie star. He also did it kind of badly, because according to some colleagues, Hudson's homosexuality was well known in Hollywood. Former co-stars Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Saint James and Carol Burnett all claimed they knew of his homosexual activity. Still, he maintained the public lie until his AIDS diagnosis brought public attention to the disease and his orientation. How devoted was he to being closeted? Even in this clip where he's portraying a straight man pretending to be gay, he's super bad at it. After all, you don't want to be too convincing.
The Women Landed Anyway
But when you look like Rock, I'm guessing it's just kind of hard to go too long without vagina finding you. Yes, there was his marriage to Phyllis Gates, which lasted three years. But by many accounts that was a publicity stunt to quell the gay rumors. Gates was Hudson's agent's secretary.
But former B-movie bombshell Mamie Van Doren also insists that Rock proved to her he was "at least bisexual." You can read about it here. Oh, apparently, Rock had pretty impressive genitalia, too. Thanks for the heads up, Mamie! Now please play mahjong or join a book club like a normal old lady.
Alright, I couldn't find the names of that many women Rock slept with, but this one counts for like 10, right?
William Shakespeare
If you don't know who William Shakespeare is, I can explain, briefly, that he was the greatest culinary expert ever to compete on Iron Chef. If you do know Shakespeare, however, then, of course, that's wrong. Also, if you seriously don't know Shakespeare, please don't Google it now. You'll be stuck with the horrible reality that you had to use the Internet to find out about the greatest poet and playwright of the English language solely to gain context for dick jokes.
Case for Gayness/Ladies Landed Anyway
You'll notice I've kind of merged my two categories for this one. Why? Because, I'll admit it, there's no good reason to flat out call William Shakespeare gay -- unless he's just about to shoot a free throw in a really close basketball game and you're hoping to psych him out. By all accounts, pure notions of "straight" and "gay" didn't exist in Elizabethan England. In any event, rather than using this fifth entry to list celebrities who led purely gay lives with one sham marriage or one accidental straight fling, I thought it would be more fun to spend time talking about where the greatest literary mind the world has ever known put his penis.
"If I told you everywhere my proud member hast been, it would bloweth thy mind."
There's no shortage of speculation on Shakespeare's sexuality, and gay academics are more eager to claim him than Cracked.com is to make lists about animals that can totally kill you. Often quoted as "proof" of his gay lifestyle is the nebulous line in his will leaving his wife, Anne Hathaway, his second-best bed. Man, what a gay burn! Hissssssss!
Of course, on the other hand, it's widely believed that Shakespeare wrote the adoring Sonnet 145 for his wife, with the wonderfully poetic "'I hate' from hate away she threw/And saved my life, saying 'not you.'" But it should also be noted that he left his family after three years of marriage and ran away to London to spend every night hanging out in bawdy theaters with common folk and thespians. According to one contemporary, Shakespeare even had a tryst with a female admirer during a performance of Richard III.
But what of the gayness, you say? (By the way, I hope you were alone when you said that, because if you just blurted that out in a Subway sandwich shop, there could be questions.) If you search the Web, you will see all sorts of gay interpretations to his sonnets and plays, and there's no way to list them all here. Indeed, some contend that 126 of his sonnets are addressed to a man often referred to as "Fair Lord." Personally, I'm pretty fond of reading Sonnet 71 in a gay way. And by that, I don't mean with a histrionic lisp. Grow up! Sonnet 71 contains advice from a dying man to his lover regarding how to behave after his death. Here's some English dude reading it.
It ends with the famous couplet:
"Lest the wise world should look into your moan/And mock you with me after I am gone."
It seems hard to believe these lines could be addressed to a widow. Who mocks a widow for mourning her dead husband? So imagining the beloved as a gay lover is a good call. Then again, so is an unfaithful wife having an affair with a now-dead guy, so, y'know.
Ultimately, odds are pretty good that Shakespeare had both straight and gay sex. After all, he worked in theater. Of course he did. There's straight, gay, bi, transgender and a distinct fifth category that still thrives today known as "theater whore." I'm going out on a limb and placing him there.
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For more from Gladstone, check out 5 Things I Learned by Quitting the Internet and 5 Things That Are Totally Unrelated to Hot, Hot Lesbian Sex.
