But I'm stuck with the Kennedys emotionally, and I will be to the end of my life.'Įthel's alcoholic, philandering brother, George Skakel Jr., actually booted Billings in the a** at the church, knocking him into the aisle.Īnd George Terrian, the alcoholic husband of Ethel Kennedy's alcoholic, pill-popping sister, Georgeann, told me in interviews for my book 'The Other Mrs. 'People think I'm a joke,' he once acknowledged. One of Jack's five sisters, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, found it hard to describe her brother's relationship with Billings, once stating, 'It was a complete liberation of the spirit.' for Jack, and that her brother was a 'complete liberated man when he was with Lem.'īut Billings was embarrassed about his effeminate mannerisms - he'd remain publicly closeted for his lifetime.

He has really been part of 'our family' since that first time he showed up at our house as one of 'Jack's surprises.' In her memoir, Times To Remember, published eleven years after Jack's assassination in Dallas in 1963, she wrote that Billings had 'remained Jack's lifelong close friend, confidant, sharer in old memories and new experiences.' While her husband had his qualms about Billings and couldn't stand to have him around, the matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, had a different take. 'The Kennedys were a liberal family and one that tolerated a lot of heterosexual promiscuity as well.' Still, the Kennedy clan accepted - even welcomed - Lem Billings into their exclusive inner-circle, practically adopting him, and he became a part of the family.Īs Billings' biographer David Pitts told me, 'Once JFK decided that Billings was his best friend - like it or leave, everybody in the family sort of fell in line with that. On school breaks, Jack often brought Billings home with him, sparking Joe Kennedy to complain to his wife, Rose, 'Do we have to have that q***r around all summer?' He noted that everywhere Jack went, Billings was sure to follow, like a puppy dog. The Kennedy patriarch, Joe, a noted philanderer himself, was suspicious of Billings' sexual preference from the start of his son's close friendship with him. Their arrangement, Quirk asserted, 'enabled Jack to sustain his self-delusion that straight men who received oral sex from other males were really only straights looking for sexual release,' and he further observed, 'Jack was in love with Lem being in love with him and considered him the ideal follower adorer.' And The Dark Side Of The Dream, because the strapping, bespectacled Billings, with a high-pitched, effeminate voice, would later become the fawning surrogate father - and fellow drug user - of JFK's nephew, Bobby Kennedy Jr., with whom Billings also had intense romantic feelings.Īs one source told me, 'Young Bobby replaced Jack in Lem's heart of hearts.' Related articles One of the most credible accounts of the Kennedy-Billings relationship was told by David Pitts, who I interviewed extensively for my book, Robert F. Their very intimate relationship would last from those school days to Billings even having a room in the Kennedy White House - distressing for the first lady - to the day of Kennedy's assassination.

They met in 1933 in their sophomore year at Choate Rosemary Hall, the exclusive Connecticut prep school, when both were teenagers, working together on their class's yearbook, and Billings instantly became attracted sexually and otherwise to the handsome scion of America's self-styled royal family.

Lem billings