In the Rex Stout novels, we have four grown men living under one roof, nonew of them in any really permanent relationship, three out of four of them with no women in their lives whatever. But the only one of the four men I’ll say is probably gay is Fritz Brunner, Wolfe’s live-in gourmet chef.
Wolfe I’ll give a pass to because he’s obviously asexual, for all practical purposes. His open misogyny isn’t a symptom of an impaired homosexuality, but a more general sympton of his control-freak nature. He fears that he cannot control his feelings about women if he comes in too much contact with them (and alludes to being a great romantic in his past) so he rejects the entire gender as hopelessly irrational and unreliable. He sublimates his sexual feelings in his orchids. (More about that later.) I also suspect his enormous weight was not merely the consequence of his taste for fine food and plenty of it, but served as a buffer between him and women.
I’ll give Archie a pass as well. Granted, despite all his womanizing, he has never found a woman he’d marry, though Lily Rowan is a clear candidate. But I give Archie a pass for his prolonged sowing of wild oats on the Simpsons principle. That is, it’s necessary that the characters don’t age to keep the string going. If Stout had aged his characters in time with his writing career, Wolfe would most likely dead inside two decades, or if not dead transformed into a febrile hulk. hardly able to stir from his bed. So Archie’s prolonged womanizing isn’t cover for gayness, it’s the product of an unnatural fictional narrative neccesity.
heodore Horstmann isn’t enough of a character to have any kind of sexuality. He just a fixture in Wolfe’s orchid nursery. If he had any personality other than being the guy who tends Wolfe’s orchids, I colud guess about his sexuality, but I can’t. Other than being in an all-male household with no known women in his life, there’s no grounds for it. He could be gay, or he could, like Wolfe, be sublimating his sexuality via orchid obsession. He could even be sublimating a gay sexuality via orchid obsession. One guess is as good as another on the basis of Horstman’s near total lack of personality.
Now, Fritz is much more of presence in the Nero Wolfe novels. Like the others, he has no women in life. But we also know him as a man who giggles. As Archie once said, “Ordinarily, I’d be unsure of the fundamentals of a man who giggles, but not Fritz.” We also knows he spends all his time cooking for other members of the Wolfe household (though, curiously, there is little or no mention of Horstmann joining Archie and Wolfe for a meal). He’s extremely concerned for Archie and Wolfe’s safety, but clearly a noncombatant when it comes to dealing with tough guys. (That’s Archie’s job, in part.) He’s always speaking admiringly of Archie for his braveness and so forth, and has a childlike faith in Archie’s ability to bring in clients. He dotes on Archie and bickers with Wolfe a lot. He’s clearly an old queen, with Wolfe as the husband figure and Archie as the child figure (adult child figure, that is).
I must confess however that my real life gaydar is sadly deficient. It may well be that my literary gaydar is off, too. So I thought I’d see what others think.
