JFK and RFK Shared Everything-Even a Boyfriend From Youth to Death

This story originally published on Sunday by the  Daily Mail, Written by Jerry Oppenheimer, NY Times best-selling author.

Born 100 years ago, John F. Kennedy was revered as the 35th president but quietly chided for his womanizing
One of his closest relationships was with his gay best friend and prep school roommate Lem Billings
Billings told JFK about his romantic intentions toward him in a love note written on a piece of toilet paper at their elite Connecticut boarding school
The future president wrote back  'I'm not that kind of boy'
But one point Billings confided  that his friendship with the future president 'included oral sex, with Jack always on the receiving end'
They remained close even after the election, despite warnings from JFK's advisers who thought Russian agents could use the relationship as blackmail
After JFK's assassination, Billings had romantic feelings for JFK's nephew, Bobby Kennedy Jr.

Jerry Oppenheimer is a New York Times bestselling author who has written two books about the Kennedys. His latest book, The Kardashians: An American Drama, will be published in September. 

John F. Kennedy, whose 100th birthday is being celebrated this year with a Kennedy Centennial postage stamp, TV memorials, a slew of books, and much media coverage, was revered as the 35th president of the United States. 

But the man married to Jackie Kennedy was quietly chided for his compulsive philandering. The one iconic photo of President John F. Kennedy up close and personal with a woman other than Jackie shows him and his attorney general brother, Robert, coming on to curvaceous Marilyn Monroe at a party. 

While the photo of Kennedy cozying up to Monroe is the best known of him with one of his purported lovers, other far less public snapshots show the flip side of Kennedy's intimate relationships.

 Among the snapshots is one that shows a handsome pre-presidential Kennedy sunning himself, sprawled on a chaise at Patriarch Joe Kennedy's Palm Beach estate. And seated close to Kennedy is his shirtless, tanned and oiled best friend forever, his very gay chum, Kirk LeMoyne 'Lem' Billings.

While JFK is legendarily known as a master womanizer who frequently cheated on his first lady, his curious three-decades-long intimate friendship with Billings suggests more than a simple bromance.

They met in 1933 in their sophomore year at Choate Rosemary Hall, the exclusive Connecticut prep school, when both were teenagers, working together on their class's yearbook, and Billings instantly became attracted sexually and otherwise to the handsome scion of America's self-styled royal family.

Their very intimate relationship would last from those school days to Billings even having a room in the Kennedy White House – distressing for the first lady – to the day of Kennedy's assassination.

Details of Lem Billings and JFK's three-decade relationship are revealed in 'Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And The Dark Side Of The Dream' +13

Details of Lem Billings and JFK's three-decade relationship are revealed in 'Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And more.

One of the most credible accounts of the Kennedy-Billings relationship was told by David Pitts, who I interviewed extensively for my book, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And The Dark Side Of The Dream, because the strapping, bespectacled Billings, with a high-pitched, effeminate voice, would later become the fawning surrogate father – and fellow drug user – of JFK's nephew, Bobby Kennedy Jr., with whom Billings also had intense romantic feelings.

As one source told me, 'Young Bobby replaced Jack in Lem's heart of hearts.'

Billings, who was a year older than Jack Kennedy, made his desire known while the two were still at Choate in a bizarre love note, penned on a piece of toilet paper that could be disposed of easily to avoid incrimination at a time when homosexuality was illicit. 

While Billings' missive is long gone, a startled Kennedy responded, 'Please don't write to me on toilet paper anymore. I'm not that kind of boy.'

But Kennedy's reaction to Billings gay come-on soon changed and he became more amenable to his friend's advances, according to the writer Lawrence J. Quirk, author of 'The Kennedys in Hollywood.' Quirk had met Billings in the mid-Forties when both were volunteers in Jack Kennedy's first congressional campaign.

Quirk immediately pegged Billings as gay, noting his 'high, screechy laugh,' and 'high nasal whine of a voice.' As they became close, Billings confided that his relationship with Kennedy was, in fact, sexual, to a point.

According to Quirk, Billings revealed that his friendship with the future president of the United States 'included oral sex, with Jack always on the receiving end.'

Their arrangement, Quirk asserted, 'enabled Jack to sustain his self-delusion that straight men who received oral sex from other males were really only straights looking for sexual release,' and he further observed, 'Jack was in love with Lem being in love with him and considered him the ideal follower adorer.'

The Kennedy patriarch, Joe, a noted philanderer himself, was suspicious of Billings' sexual orientation from the start of his son's close friendship with him. He noted that everywhere Jack went, Billings was sure to follow, like a puppy dog. On school breaks, Jack often brought Billings home with him, sparking Joe Kennedy to complain to his wife, Rose, 'Do we have to have that queer around all summer?'

Still, the Kennedy clan accepted – even welcomed – Lem Billings into their exclusive inner-circle, practically adopting him, and he became a part of the family.

As Billings' biographer David Pitts told me, 'Once JFK decided that Billings was his best friend – like it or leave, everybody in the family sort of fell in line with that. The Kennedys were a liberal family and one that tolerated a lot of heterosexual promiscuity as well.'

 While her husband had his qualms about Billings and couldn't stand to have him around, the matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, had a different take. In her memoir, Times To Remember, published eleven years after Jack's assassination in Dallas in 1963, she wrote that Billings had 'remained Jack's lifelong close friend, confidant, share in old memories and new experiences…He has really been part of 'our family' since that first time he showed up at our house as one of 'Jack's surprises.'

One of Jack's five sisters, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, found it hard to describe her brother's relationship with Billings, once stating, 'It was a complete liberation of the spirit…' for Jack, and that her brother was a 'complete liberated man when he was with Lem.'

But Billings was embarrassed about his effeminate mannerisms – he'd remain publicly closeted for his lifetime. 'People think I'm a joke,' he once acknowledged. 'They make fun of my voice. But I'm stuck with the Kennedys emotionally, and I will be to the end of my life.'

After Jack Kennedy's election to the presidency, Billings was a constant presence and overnight guest at the White House. Knowing the kind of intimate relationship that he had with the president, advisers were concerned about political repercussions, and even blackmail. 

The Cold War was still raging, and there was fear Russian agents might use the friendship against Kennedy.

Gore Vidal, the gay writer who claimed he viewed homosexuality as normal as heterosexuality, disparaged the JFK-Billings relationship during the Kennedy administration.

 He once called Billings the 'chief f****t at Camelot.' As for Kennedy himself, Vidal asserted that the President 'felt quite comfortable in the company of homosexuals as long as they were smart enough to hold his interest.'

After the assassination of RFK in 1968, the flamboyant Billings transferred his obsessive affection for Jack, to handsome teenager Bobby Jr.

David Pitts, the author of 'Jack and Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship,' told me, 'Lem was a gay man and he had a 14-year-old, good-looking kid living in his house with him and there had been rumors because of that. I have no evidence one way or another, but I would discount [any sexual activity.]

Still, Billings was viewed by many I interviewed for my biography of RFK Jr. as his gay Svengali who guided and literally tried to control every aspect of Bobby Jr.'s life from the time he was in his mid-teens.

During the night of May 28, 1981—almost two decades after JFK's untimely death – 65-year-old Lem Billings died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack.

Billings had once told Bobby that when he died he wanted the pall-bearers to be members of Bobby's circle of young friends, whom he knew well and with whom he had done drugs.

It was Bobby Kennedy Jr. who gave the eulogy.

'I'm sure he's already organizing everything in heaven so it will be completely ready for us – with just the right Early American furniture, the right curtains, the right drugs, the right paintings, and everything ready for a big, big party.

'Yesterday was Jack's birthday. Jack's best friend was Lem, and he would want to remind everyone of that today. I am sure the good Lord knows that heaven is Jesus and Lem and Jack and Bobby loving one another.' 

 DailyMail, edited by Adamfoxie*blog

'To clarify' from Adam Gonzalez, Adamfoxie*blog Publisher

To clarify any confusion from someone who might not understand sexuality and how it flows, let me say that sexuality as in my experience, readings and teachings is fluid. There are truly bisexual men that feel very comfortable with either sex, sexually speaking. The environment and society's laws, norms and myths mixes in that fluidity and sometimes can make a person's sexuality as hard as cement. Sexuality is something we are born with and to some that refuse to believe that I would say hat if a person were not inherently born gay then is for sure something that happens in the early life of a boy or girl even before they are aware of what sex is. You can only understand this only if you are gay or bi yourself or have studied it and have listened to people that are gay and bisexual without judging but a desire to learn what a person feels. If you are to understand anything in nature including space, the sun, space travel, you must put aside religious and society's norms. Why? because just like people were imprisoned for saying the earth was round, society's rules don't change with evidence. Sometimes if those norms are so ingrained that it takes a new generation altogether to be born and have an open mind to understand these things. Imagine killing somebody because they say the earth is round, the same applies to killing somebody because they have been a member of the same sex. One thing is to read something and another is to experience it yourself.
It is obvious to me what JFK was looking for in a man. He had been with plenty of women but up to know there is only this account of having a friend since he was a boy, an older brother you might say.
Since there was not related by blood the relationship expanded into also sex. That is normal because what he was looking for is something most people look for; Trust(with his life), loyalty, understanding, sharing, no judging, openness and the feeling that he could be himself with all other trappings. JFK followed the rules of the family by dating a girl marrying and having a family. In private he wanted to have his own life.
One day after the boomer generation is all gone and this world but particularly the western world if govern by millennials you will see if you could time travel the numbers of LGBT growing. It's not going to be because there will be more LGBT but because people won't be ashamed in admitting having been with a man or woman of their same sex. People will look back at today's norms as we do look back to the argument that the earth was not round.
It is all silly and should not be a cause of argument when we talk about who we are. We already know there are no or LGBT killers and criminals than any other group. It's a percentage just like everything in our lives is a percentage weather is our DNA and what type of chromosomes ar together or not to the water that we drink. Yes, sexuality is fluid, is not one thing you can just hold with your hands or say that is pure no matter if you filter it. It all depends on what container you use to keep it contained for you.

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The book: Details of Lem Billings and JFK's three-decade relationship are revealed in 'Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And The Dark Side Of The Dream'