For most of his career he found it necessary to scrutinize his work and his behavior for any evidence of “leakage” of that unspoken truth. It bears noting that in Cheever’s mind his homosexuality was a “semi secret” and not a full-fledged one. “I have homosexual instincts and … they are a source of painful anxiety,” he confesses in his journal “the thought of being a homosexual terrifies me.” But he seems to have been particularly worried, not that any “hint of aberrant carnality” that he might emit had already been recognized by other people, but that such information might circulate more widely and undercut his carefully constructed persona as a New England country gentleman.
