The Closet "Given the ubiquity of the term today and how central the metaphor of the closet is to the ways we think about gay history before the 1960s, it is bracing -- and instructive -- to note that it was never used by gay people themselves before then. Nowhere does it appear before the 1960s in the recoreds of the gay movement or the novels, diaries, or letters of gay men and lesbians." --George Chauncey Gay New York(New York: Basic, 1994; page 6).

There was even once a time when the closet, the wardrobe, could be used a metaphor for anal intercourse by a certain sixteenth-century englishpoet: So am I as the rich whose blessed key Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure, The which he will not every hour survey, For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure. Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, Since, seldom coming, in the long year set, Like stones of worth they thinly placed are, Or captain jewels in the carcanet. So is time that keeps you as my chest, Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide, To make some special instant special blest, By new unfolding his imprisoned pride. Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope, Being had to triumph, being lacked, to hope. For more on this interpretation of Sonnet 52, consult Joseph Pequigney, Such is My Love.