An interesting article on The Plays of Clay Shaw
These homoerotic scenarios and allusions to homosexuality suggest that Clay Shaw was aware of the gay milieu and his own desires at a relatively young age, and further supports the sustained importance of this aspect of Shaw’s personal life. While I will later further discuss the literary and biographical connections between Shaw and non-normative sexuality, specifically S/M, for now I only mention that these gay resonances in Shaw’s work reinforce his longstanding same-sex desire. Given the need for mid-century gays to be discrete, Shaw’s sexual identity led to his involvement with the gay subculture of New Orleans, which then included such figures as David Ferrie and Perry Russo—and, according to some reports, Lee Harvey Oswald. Jim Garrison called Oswald “a switch-hitter who couldn’t satisfy his wife” (Phelan 151). Sources in the older gay community, both unknown and as famous as Gore Vidal,2 claim Oswald was a gay hustler who worked the New Orleans bars. When asked if Oswald seemed gay, New Orleans attorney Dean Andrews said that Oswald “swang with the kids” (Kirkwood 138), the Latino “gay kids” whom he called “Mexicanos” (130). Andrews remarked that he didn’t know “squares” to hang out with gays, reckoning “birds of a feather flock together” (138). Andrews, who received a phone call from “Clay Bertrand” asking Andrews to defend Oswald soon after Lee’s arrest, claims these gay Latino youths had earlier accompanied Lee to Andrews’ law office (these were likely anti-Castro Cuban exiles). The sunglasses-sporting “hepcat” Dean Andrews was known in the New Orleans gay community as a sympathetic lawyer. Andrews said he had already received multiple requests from this articulate gentleman “Clay Bertrand” (a name Andrews took to be a pseudonym), to defend gay youths who had been arrested.Clay Shaw was the only person ever to be prosecuted for the murder of President John F. Kennedy. He died of lung cancer in 1974. Or did he?
