Oscar Wilde was one of the first proponents of queer marriage – albeit unknowingly!

He married the beautiful Constance Lloyd (assigned female at birth) in the Spring of 1884. Oscar took to marriage like a duck to … orange sauce. This meant he fathered two children in two short years (overcompensation much!). However, never again … until Liza Minnelli and David Gest, has any marriage exhibited more red flags. As everyone knows, the secret to a traditional marriage is generally called heterosexuality. The “gay stuff ” came as a bit of a surprise to Constance, and maybe even to Oscar too. Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas joined the marriage in 1891.

Fact Check: gay men didn’t officially exist in Victorian England (no … really!). The sexologists of the time hadn’t yet invented them (note to self – try rewriting that sentence). This meant that Oscar’s ‘special friend’ Bosie was the **** that dare not speak its name. Good-looking chap but also frightfully temperamental and promiscuous.

While Sigmund Freud was busy with apple strudel and writer’s block in Vienna, Oscar was eagerly discovering the world of cruising, rent boys and copious amounts of iced champagne. Not until 1905 would Freud write The Idiots Guide to Homosexuality and poor ole Oscar was already long deceased by then.

Wilde once penned the line – “In married life three is company and two is none.” Yes, the writing was evidently on the wall, directly above the lounging sailor boy with the wicked smile. By this point, Oscar’s wife had become a woman of, mmm, no importance. After the big scandal and Oscar’s imprisonment for entertaining male street-walkers, Mrs Wilde changed her name to Holland: a name that perfectly summed up the flat, boring, landscape of her future existence accompanied by a horrible sinking feeling.

In 1995, one hundred years after Oscar began his prison sentence, another doe-eyed princess uttered the immortal words – “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” (Princess of Wails, formerly Diana Spinster).

Both Mr & Mrs Wilde had died by the end of the year 1900. In contrast, Bosie (pronounced Bozo) lived until 1945, fathered two children and yes – drumroll – got married too. Oscar did say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

PS one of Oscar’s favourite drinks was absinthe: the notorious green fairy that led many men to a sticky end. Irony was never lost on the Emerald Isle’s most famous son.

Disclaimer. Mild homophobia has been utilized by the author in the pursuit of easy laughs here, my apologies for my writerly alter-ego.