Reading In Bed W/ Gore Vidal, and the heartbreaking fourth chapter on Vidal's companion of 40 years Howard Austen. Their arrangement--a kind of sexless middle and then boys on either side, seems incredibly typical of an upper midde American artistic bourgeoisie---having someone do all of the work of propping the genius up, and having the genius just be this monster of narcissism and cruel uncaring ( For other examples, see Auden and Kallman, Ginsberg and Orlosvosky, Merill and Jackson, Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo, Ned Rorem and James Holmes, even Isherwood and Baechelor) (Auden and Isherwood as late Americans is something worth noting beside.--for all the conversations about how did what to whom in which circumstance, the emotional topping and bottoming, the careful notice of power, and the age differential suggests a topping/bottoming outside of strict sexual positions. Add class to the mix and it gets really really messy  I am sure their are examples of more caring and less caring--but figuring out how much of it was sexual, how much of it was the domestic work of keeping house or keeping emotional regulation or drinking in check, and how much of it was having a second for dinner, and how much of it was managing a public life--these were dedicated open questions, that I think are vastly under-represented. (This seems to be slightly different in queer circumstances than the anonymous work of the housewife--perhaps because the ambiguous sorting out of the queer domestic had not be slotted into a kind of propriety I might be wrong about this point). This is not limited to boy on boy though (see Muriel Spark and Penelope Jardin, or Stein and Toklas and though it seems mostly American, the  book has this great quote by Edmund White about Margaret Yourcenar and what her life long companion did. or didn't do). I think there is a longish book to be written about what exactly the role of a secretary is.