Public Faces, Private Lives
Text from Improper Bostonians

He would die for me Melville's tales of men at sea were based on actual experience. In Polynesia, he witnessed societies where homosexuality was an accepted part of life. In Moby Dick (1851), which he dedicated to Hawthorne, Melville describes the interaction between the South Seas islander Queequeg and the Yankee sailor Ishmael, who share a bed one night in a New Bedford inn: "Upon waking the next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife." Ishmael grows ever closer to the "pagan," and the following day they undergo a ritual bonding: "When our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me 'round the waist, and said that henceforth were married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would die for me, if need should be." As one scholar has written, "Melville had an unfailing eye for handsome men."