Short review of “Bad Gays” by Lemmey and Miller in the current Gay & Lesbian Review (formerly the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review), brings to mind a question that taps me on the shoulder every now and then.

Given the human gutter Oscar Wilde’s boy toy Lord Alfred Douglas belly flopped into after Wilde’s death I wonder if, had Wilde exercised some common sense and not risen to Douglas’ father’s bait (his father was the “vile Tempered” Marquess of Queensberry John Sholto Douglas) and his boy toy’s own encouragement, and simply ignored the accusation or given it one of his famous bon mots rather than suing for slander with the end result he ends up imprisoned and dies broke, would Douglas have slid into the vicious fascist human gutter he did? I like to think loving Wilde would have kept him out of all that. But alas at age 69 the logical analytical side of my brain isn’t having it.

The authors of this book say Douglas had “evil twink energy”. I’ve read what I can about him, curious about the beauty Wilde fell for, and, yeah, evil twink about sums him up. But could Wilde, had the trial never happened, either led Douglas to a better place, or was that simply where Douglas was headed all along and eventually Wilde just leaves him for another pretty youngling without that streak of evil.

Or was Wilde always doomed to be attracted to pretty boys with that evil streak in them? And sooner or later one of them, if not Douglas again somehow, gets him into more trouble than his wit could get him out of?

Marquess of Queensberry is a title in the Peerage of Scotland, and by that reckoning Lord Alfred Douglas was, well, a lord. Of sorts I suppose. And Wilde but a mere playwright and story teller. But Wilde was the better man and there’s a lesson here not simply about beauty being only skin deep, but about how not dating below your station isn’t actually about social classes, but, well, class.