Former U.S. President John F. Kennedy made his wife Jackie suffer silently behind closed doors with his lifelong friendship with a man whom he knew since childhood. Kirk LeMoyne Billings, shortly known as Lem, had shared a very close bond with JFK, which was also sexual, according to insiders.
Their alleged gay affair started during their preparatory school days and went on until the 35th President was assassinated at the age of 46 on November 22, 1963. While many describe their relationship as a close-knit friendship, some claim Lem was a life-long lover of JFK, who even had a room at the White House.
One Kennedy family insider told Radar Online, “Lem was an important part of his life, a companion and a lover and a confidant all wrapped into one.”
Billings reportedly expressed his interest in JFK through a note, when he was just 16. They were together at Choate, their all-boys boarding school in Connecticut. Although John F. Kennedy insisted, “I’m not that kind of boy,” the pair soon formed an inseparable bond that would last for life. Lem had become a loyal fixture by his side since then. However, not everyone looked at their relationship as lovers.
Their former classmate Rip Horton commented, “In Lem, Jack [John’s nickname] found a slave for life.” He claimed that Billings did his laundry, went out to buy pizza for him during cold nights, and even became his “unpaid masseur,” tending his backache. Horton further claimed that they even made a pact to lose their virginity together to the same New York City prostitute.
Inside the relationship between JFK and Lem Billings pic.twitter.com/VsFBU82Rrd
— Crazy Vibes (@CrazyVibes_1) December 18, 2024
However, as per several media reports, JFK and Lem also shared a secret sexual affair. Following the former POTUS’ assassination, late writer Lawrence J. Quirk recalled that Billings once blurted out that he performed oral s—x on Kennedy many times to “relieve his stress.”
The evidence of their intimacy is also reportedly present in the letters the two exchanged. As per Radar Online, Lem had saved some of them despite JFK’s recommendation to “burn after reading.” In one such letter penned by Kennedy in the 1930s during a hospital stay, the former U.S. leader says, “Nurses are almost as dirty as you, you filthy-minded s–t.”
In another letter penned in 1936, John F. Kennedy complains about a groin injury, jokingly saying, “It looks as though there will be no little rascals bearing the name LeMoyne Kennedy.” These notes further fueled speculations that the two had a forbidden romance behind closed doors, while the public considered them just really great friends.
I recently learned of Kirk LeMoyne ‘Lem’ Billings and it honestly made me swoon. Lem was JFK’s lifelong best friend and even had his own bedroom in the White House. After JFK’s assassination in 1963, one historian wrote that Lem was “probably the saddest of the Kennedy ‘widows’.” pic.twitter.com/03DGRCbVxt
— Shane Krpata (@ShaneKrpata) December 2, 2020
Their secret affair continued for years, even when Kennedy was sworn in as President in 1961. Billings got a private room at the White House, and their frequent hangout bothered Jackie Kennedy, the former First Lady. She reportedly complained, “Just one weekend in my life, I’d like to have my husband to myself. But Lem is always there, bathing and massaging him, even putting on his shoes and socks.”
In many ways, they were seemingly more like partners than JFK and Jackie were. After the POTUS was gunned down in 1963, Billings reportedly gave in to alcohol and substance abuse. He never recovered from Kennedy’s murder and eventually died of a fatal heart attack in 1981.
Talking about their relationship in his book The Kennedy Assassination – 24 Hours After, historian Steven M. Gillon noted, “At a time when homosexuality was taboo, Kennedy accepted and loved Billings, who he knew was gay.”
