Interestingly, the European connection in Thurman's project is produced through the same intertextual references that are central to Locke's rhetoric of friendship. On Thurman's self-declared reading list, one can find authors fundamental for Locke's homoerotic idiolect, such as Plato or Nietzsche. Both writers forge a network of cosmopolitan textual influences. These intertextual bonds are articulated on a number of levels: in Hughes's literary recollections of Thurman, in Thurman's own correspondence, and in the declarations of his textual alter-egos such as Raymond Taylor or Paul Arbian. Such celebrations of literary predecessors signify that in Thurman's writing just as in Locke’s, in the dialectic of the anxiety of influence and the anxiety of authorship, the latter clearly dominates. Yet Locke and Thurman interpret the same philosophical texts in different ways. As Van Notten persuasively argues, Thurman lacked the in-depth academic knowledge of the philosophies he refers to, which is in stark contrast to Locke's scholarly investment in philosophy. Moreover, although Thurman's individualist philosophy is concurrent with representations of transgressive sexualities, he does not use these philosophical texts as emancipatory tools for same-sex desire. European intertextual reverberations mediated through American monographs in Thurman's texts might be shallower than Locke’s, but they also are more inclusive. This chapter examines multifaceted representations of non-normative sexualities, including “Spartan” same-sexuality, effeminate Uranians, dandies indebted to the aesthetic of female performers, and androgynous bodies illustrated in Aubrey Vincent Beardsley and Oscar Wilde's Salome.

The difference between Locke's and Thurman's representations of alternative sexualities can be aptly illustrated with a juxtaposition of two European visual discourses of alternative sexualities. The contrast between Salome illustrations alluded to by Thurman and male nudes against natural background from German same-sex press echoed in Locke's idiolect perfectly pinpoints the gap between their divergent projects. Thurman's dandyist celebration of artifice and theatricality challenges Locke's naturalized same-sex masculinity. If Locke forges a unified masculinist race consciousness in the figure of the New Negro, Thurman's narratives explode such uniform identity in their experimentations with cross-dressing, homoerotic self-display, and racial passing.