Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

Miss Poubelle was recently perusing Charley Shively's excellent book about Walt Whitman, Calamus Lovers, and was intrigued by the language Whitman used to describe his many sexual partners. Whitman, as is now perfectly clear, had hundreds of sometimes brief sexual encounters with mostly working class men. While one might describe such young men as tricks these days, Whitman's most frequent words were comrades and camerados.

Comrade is a word now rarely used in English, but it describes an important relationship between men for which there is no easy synonym. Originally it derives from the Spanish camerada, meaning "one who shares a bedroom." In English, it was especially used for the relationship between soldiers who shared a tent with each other, and by extension also means "chum," "mate," or "companion." Another example of a comrade relationship is that between Ishmael and Queequeg in Moby Dick, strangers who by chance find themselves sharing a bed with each other. Between men who shared beds or bedrooms, a special relationship of affection and solidarity was presumed to exist, and we still use the English camaraderie to talk about this kind of relationship.

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Comrade is not seen much these days, due to its association with socialism and communism. Beginning around the 1880s, comrade was used by socialists and communists in place of the titles Mister, Doctor, etc. The intention was to disavow the social hierarchy implied by such titles in favor of egalitarianism. Over time, however, comrade has become tinged with connotations of Marxism, and use of the word these days tells the listener more about your politics than your sleeping arrangements.

Perhaps Whitman was reacting to this shift in the implications of comrade when he coined the word camerado. In Guillaume Apollinaire's account of Whitman's funeral in 1913, he wrote that the crowd assembling included a wide range of people, including "cameradoes (he used this word which he thought was Spanish to designate the young men that he loved in his old age, and he did not conceal his taste)."

Shively notes that there is no Spanish word camerado, it is an invention of Whitman's. But what a useful word! Trick has negative associations with prostitution, and we need a positive word to describe the casual sexual partners who spend an hour or a night in our beds.

Whitman's poetry often speaks of his comrades and cameradoes, as in these beautiful lines:

Now, dearest comrade, lift me close to your face till I whisper, / We must separate a while-- here, take from my lips this kiss; / Whoever you are, I give it especially to you; / So long!-- And I hope we shall meet again.

The genius of Whitman's words lay in his willingness to speak openly about the loves that transgressed the laws and mores of his time. Whitman knew that there can be beauty and love in the brief encounters of comrades. In these days of reaction and conservatism, let us remember and honor his insight. **