Schloimele, in Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story of the same name, is described as having feminine qualities when he's first introduced:
The door opened and a pink-cheeked young man with cherry-dark eyes came in. He smiled, dimpling, his small mouth girlishly red, and asked, 'Are you the writer from Warsaw?'
Slightly later, his voice is described as "intimate":
With his slightly hoarse, intimate voice he said, 'Mr Bernard Hutchinson recommended me.'
The play that Schloimele is obsessed with throughout the story is a story about a girl disguised as a Yeshiva student.
It's also worth noting that his changing cast of (female) partners are described as having increasingly masculine qualities after the first one, Sylvia.
I opened the door of a tiny room whose walls were covered in photographs, posters, and faded newspapers, and found a smallish girl with a crooked nose, owlish eyes, and hair cropped like a boy's. Schloimele, on the telephone, nodded and winked.
He and Bonnie had broken up. He had a new girl, a head taller than he, with a long nose, black woolly hair, and a mustache. She had a bass voice and openly admitted membership in the Communist Party.
[...]
Her coat pockets were as deep as a man's and stuffed with newspapers and magazines. She even had a mannish cough.
Later on, he suggests "going away" with the narrator:
Schloimele glanced at me sideways, smiling. 'Why don't we go away together?'
'Two men?'
'What of it? We are not fairies. We'll find women.'
'Where should we go?' I asked, amazing myself.
(translations by Alma Singer and Elaine Gottlieb)
This last quote has Schloimele explicitly denying that he's gay, so I'm not asking if he's gay within the context of the story. What I'm curious about is if these things that I've provided, along with any other evidence from the story, are enough to conclude that Schloimele is queer-coded? Does the subtext indicate that he's written to emulate queer qualities?
