"sleep gay"?

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:34 PM -0500 3/14/06, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Doesn't anybody else remember "act / talk / live, etc. black and sleep
>white" from the
>'Sixties? It looks like ordinary BE syntax to me: "(live straight and) sleep
>gay." I've
>just awakened from a nap, so I may be missing the point as a consequence of
>not
>being fully alert. If I am missing it, you know what to do.
>
>-Wilson

No, (by George) I think you've got it!  Note (from the reference to
men on the down-low) that it's quite likely the writer was indeed
African-American, and it did ring that distant bell, which I now
realize was that of "living black and sleeping white", which I guess
*was* a kind of living on the down-low avant la lettre.

Larry

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