Sexuality
McKay was bisexual; he pursued relationships with both men and women throughout his life. He never officially "came out" as it was considered a societal taboo or explicitly state his sexual preference, but over the years he appears to have frequented and enjoyed the "clandestine" homosexual communities of New York as well as relationships of intermediate duration with several women. According to his biographer, Wayne Cooper, Frank and Francine Budgen, whom he knew during his stay in London in 1920, remembered him as "open" about his sexuality and as "not at all effeminate." Several of his poems suggest homosexual sentiments. In others, the gender of the speaker is not identified, which leaves to interpretation the nature of the relationships presented.[34] Some suggest that there was a sexual component to McKay's relationship with his mentor, Walter Jekyll, who was apparently homosexual but there is no evidence one way or the other.[35] In the early 1920s McKay was intermittently involved with the English labor advocate and IWW organizer, poet, and translator Charles Ashleigh.[36]
McKay's sexuality is hinted at in some of his literary work. His 1929 novel Banjo: a Story without a Plot, for instance, contains a queer-coded ending. As all the other characters of the ensemble featured in this work make plans to depart, Banjo asks Ray (the two characters most central to the story) to go off separately together. In and of itself, this may not seem to indicate a romantic nature to their future relationship, but as Ray initially considers Banjo's proposal to go off together, he recalls how much joy he associated with the dream of "loafing after their labors long enough to laugh and love and jazz and fight."[33]
Last years and death
Less than two decades before he died, McKay largely abandoned secular ideologies in favor of Catholicism. He worked with Harlem's Friendship House, a branch of the Catholic interracial apostolate founded in the early 1930s in Toronto, Canada. McKay relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where he joined a Catholic organization as a teacher. McKay developed health problems by the mid-1940s, enduring several illnesses until he died of heart failure in 1948.
