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             In speaking of his homosexuality, Williams claims in a 1978 Playboy interview that:.

             I"m not really a dual creature; but I can understand the tenderness of women .

             and the lust and libido of men. That"s why I seek out the androgynous, so that.

             I can get both.

             While Williams may have sought out this combination "androgynous" males, he wrote about women with this combined tenderness and libido. It has been suggested that Williams employs the "Albertine Strategy," which means that he disguises homosexual males as females (Pagen 530). Throughout his plays he may be substituting the female figure for the male object of desire.

             In Summer and Smoke (1946) Tennessee eludes the conventional gender categories of a female character. The character, Alma, takes the role of the initiator of sex. She is a female that is both tender and full of lust. Alma in a sense, "comes out" with her sexuality. (In this connotation, "coming out," means the expression of actions that was inappropriate for women in the 1940"s.) Williams expresses his desires of "coming out" as a homosexual through Alma, and states that Alma is the character that he connects most with (Clum). .

             During Williams" most successful years, the late 1940"s and 50"s, long before he had come out of the closet, his own identity was torn. Williams had the ability to write his sexual desires and practices silently in his short stories, but was unable to speak them openly in his works for the stage or the screen. This was attributed to the 1934 production code that banned all representations of homosexuality in performed literature. .

             Williams still pressed on and discovered a way to accommodate his plays. In a Streetcar Named Desire, the homosexual male never physically appears on stage, he dies before the play starts. Despite this absence, the character lives on through the others, and the body of the play surrounds the deceased character.