In Terror of Being Thought Fairies

Then as now American men were hysterical on the subject of homosexuality. American writers, who tend to be sissies anyway--nose-in-a-book all the time--are even more hysterical on the subject than realtors or arbitragers.  McAlmon was not particularly open about his sex life but everyone knew, and he was treated with some disdain by Hemingway and Fitzgerald, two sissies in terror of being thought fairies.  Whether they were or not is immaterial; many people thought they were (and perhaps they did, too), including a couple of their wives.  Certainly McAlmon did and , in his cups, he felt it his duty to reveal Ernest and Scott as fairies.  There survive some wonderfully comic letters in which the outraged Scott and Ernest vent their loathing of McAlmon and his hideous allegations.  After all, they wanted to be Great Writers and every American knew then as they know now that no Great Writer can be a fag; except maybe if he is a European or a Japanese and so it doesn' really count.

Gore Vidal in a Forward to Robert McAlmon's Miss Knight and Others