Was there another, gayer side, to notorious womanizer Norman Mailer?

Norman Mailer, the Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist, was famous for his writing, and infamous for his womanizing and chauvinism. Salacious stories are now coming out, though, from one of his female companions who "suspected him of having an affair with a male friend, was worried that he might contract Aids and refused to indulge his fantasy of three-way sex with a gay man."

An archive of personal papers from model Carole Mallory was bought by The National Enquirer Harvard University, and they reveal intimate details of their relationship, as well as some surprising accounts of Norman's alleged gay desires. from the article:

At one point in April 1990, when Mailer was 67 and married to his sixth wife, Norris Church, Mallory worried that her lover of the previous seven years “could get Aids”. Three weeks later, she wrote that Mailer had asked her what other men she would like to sleep with. When she mentioned a man named Paul, Mailer is said to have replied: “He’s gay. Why don’t we all three f***?” At another point she writes: “He asked me to wash his bottom. So SAD. He is so ashamed of what he likes."

Despite that fact that the last quote is one of the most unintentionally hilarious things ever written, there's no proof that Mailer, was in fact, a "bottom washer", and because he died last year, there's no way for him to refute or confirm it. What's obvious is that this is either a classic case of a "woman scorned", or a classic case of a man seeking to repress his gay curiosity behind a wall of hyper-heterosexuality.

Or maybe he just liked having his bottom washed. The world may never know the truth.