This topic intrigued me no end...I have speculated about this issue once or twice...but largely because I am bisexual and Bukowski appealed to me so much yet he was very much a masculine man, a no bullshit, tough boy. (I am no pansy, nor am I some macho man).
If we must resort to category then undoubtedly Bukowski was heterosexual. Did he have any homoerotic experience? Undoubtedly. But in the final analysis this is just scandalous gossiping...with no real conclusion.
I suppose Bukowski wasn't the most vocal on issues of sexuality...I have found some interesting lines in his prose poems that point to supposed 'views' in sexuality and homosexuality:
Refrences to sexuality and homosexuality in: 'the days run away like wild horses over the hills')
*what a man I was (page 15)
-'...not a boy there looked like he'd turn
into a man
90% homosexuals, the lot of them...'
*did i ever tell you?page98
(this entire poem reads from a female perspective on gay men, like a fag hag, or a device buk uses to distance himself from the subjetc matter so he can write about the subject. a truly bizzare prose poem. not like anything buk wrote, largely because of the gay theme. would love to know more about it. afterall, it goes on for 9 pages. featuring such suggestive lines as....
'...And the tall one who
became a forest ranger
and left a note with Roger
confessing he was queer
(but roger already knew)...'
or
'...And Jerry was just like a horse-
if I looked him in the eye
he couldn't
kiss me.
(He just pretended he was gay
but he wasn't.)
(I call tell. Oh, I can always tell.)'
*fag,fag,fag (page110)
Very revealing lines on the issue of homosexuality:
'I have nothing against 2 men sleeping together
so long as i am not one of those 2
men.
I didn't infer which one was the
fag.'
In Factotum near the end Bukowski is working in a Paint shop and one of the guys he works with is a fag (yet he has a girlfriend) and he invites Buk home and Buk goes to his house the guy wants to fuck on his 'machine' but buk just doesn't bother and says: 'I can't do it Paul. I'm straight.' and Paul replies: 'Well if you want fuck me. I'll fuck myself.'
----
Forgive me bring this thread back from history but I was just searching and for personal reasons this thread took an interest in me and I thought I would add my observatiosn and findings. In the end, Buk knew homosexuality existed, he wrote about it without any more or less deprecation than anything else...f his tone embraces all the 'anomalies of life'.
