How Many Cups 36: Kennedy Month - JFK Wasn't A Normal Teenager
welcome to this month's theme, all things Kennedy
“Jack has rather superior mental ability without the deep interest in his studies or the mature viewpoint that demands of him his best effort all the time. He can be relied upon to do enough to pass.”
- Choate’s General Estimate for John Kennedy’s Princeton application
Not an overwhelming endorsement for the future war hero and president, to say the least. Indeed, when revealed, much of JFK’s youth does more to convince one that he was not presidential material than to affirm his destiny for greatness. To come is a handful of passages - well sources from professional historians - on Kennedy’s teenage years. I believe you’ll find them…interesting.
“The reason I’m here is that they may have to cut out my stomach!!!”
- JFK, 1933
Just as he was in his adult life, Jack Kennedy was often sickly as a child. Like so many of us, Kennedy’s serious ailment provided him the excuse necessary to reveal the sides of his personality usually hidden away during the monotony of normal life. Pain, and more importantly, pain killers, will do that.
Sent to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota during the early thirties, Jack had his high school career interrupted by an intestinal problem requiring much probing. Too much probing. Kennedy was losing weight, and fast, leaving him exhausted. And in his words, he would “shit blood” while losing up to “8 pounds” only in a few days time.
Eventually, Kennedy would get on the mend and doctors presumed he had an infection or a terrible case of piles. It was his predilection for sexualizing the most intimate, most unattractive of medical events, however, which draws the most attention and thereby the most psychological interest. In a letter to a high school buddy, a teenage Kennedy detailed his precise thoughts during a somewhat terrifying doctor’ visit:
“First they gave me 5 enemas until I was white as snow inside. Then they put me on a thing like a barber chair. Instead of sitting in the chair I kneeled on something that resembles the foot rest with my head where the seat is. They took my pants down!! Then they tipped the chair over. Then surrounded by nurses the doctor first stuck his finger up my ass. I just blushed because you know how it is. He wiggled it suggestively and I rolled ‘em in the aisles by saying ‘You have a good motion.’ He withdrew his finger. And then, the shit stuck an iron tube 12 inches long and 1 inch in diameter up my ass. They had a flashlight inside it and they looked around. Then they blew a lot of air in me to pump up my bowels. I was certainly feeling great as I know you would having a lot of strangers looking up my ass-hole. Of course when the pretty nurses did it I was given a cheap thrill.”
Of course, Jack’s letter does what most teenage boys do: sexualize something that is inherently not sexual in an attempt to gain the top spot in the hormonal hierarchy. But the more I read about JFK - and I assure you, there is endless literature - the more I become convinced that he had an unhealthy obsession with sex.
“Jack’s penis was his nasty, irreverent friend, always ready to perk up at the most morbid of moments.”
- Laurence Leamer, The Kennedy Men
What regular adolescent boy doesn’t name his penis after his high school archrival? Kennedy’s post-secondary escapades make his teenage years look like a Pixar film.
There was the case of a London nurse who was “continually trying to goose” Kennedy. Another one was convinced to travel with Kennedy to St. Moritz, ostensibly unaware that the future president wanted to transform her into another notch in his bedpost.
It is understandable for someone to write off Jack’s letters and diary entries as masculine bravado typical for a man in their early twenties. Perhaps it truly was “locker room talk.” Yet, some of his writings reveal discriminatory thoughts not consistent with the man we would come to associate with the aughts of the Civil Rights Movement.
Ever the ladies man, Jack had the ammunition necessary to tease his friends about their sexual shortcomings. He could not comprehend why any of them would pay for sex, which some of them surely did. In fact, he warned his friend Lem about catching syphilis, especially if he bedded a prostitute in some “nigger place.” Incidentally, Lem Billings was a gay man, making Kennedy’s teasing of him rather perplexing.
“ drink and make [out], as tomorrow or next week we attend my funeral,”
- JFK, 1930s
Contextualizing Kennedy’s language regarding sex can be complex. Was he just a horny young man outlining a pattern of carnal conquers that would define his personal life while in office? Or was Kennedy deploying his particular brand of humor to avoid coming to grips with the potential of an early death?
Defined by frequent hospital stays and a seemingly unending onslaught of mysterious ailments, it is easy to perceive Kennedy as a young man watching the world pass him by. Moreover, he had to endure the successes of his older brother Joe, who “he was not bright like” or a similar athlete to.
Nevertheless, Kennedy’s appetite for the flesh never dissipated. He brazenly would escort mistresses into the White House and past his closest allies, with his wife never far behind. And when one employee tried to leak knowledge of this to the press, Kennedy simply made her his newest Press Secretary. To Kennedy, and perhaps all of the Kennedy men, sex was just something that came with the territory of being in the most powerful American family.