Did the New York Times out Roger Federer?

David Foster Wallace's much-hyped article on Roger Federer for the New York Times "Play" magazine is now available online (hat tip to Off The Baseline.) However, what interests me is this description of Federer's fiancee, "girlfriend Mirka [Vavrinec, a former women’s Top-100 player, knocked out by injury, who now basically functions as Federer’s Alice B. Toklas]." (text bolded by MadProfessah.)

In case you were unaware, Alice B. Toklas was the longtime companion of celebrated American author Gertrude Stein. They were (and are) famous lesbian icons. It is an interesting analogy chosen by such an accomplished and prolix wordsmith as David Foster Wallace. Toklas was famous for basically two things: 1) being the pre-eminent love of Stein's life and 2) the person who basically self-subjugated her needs to take care of Stein's.

Well, clearly Mirka has similarly sublimated her tennis career goals to be Roger Federer's girlfriend, travelling companion and business manager so that aspect of her relationship to Federer is similar to Alice B. Toklas' relationship to Stein. But how should one parse the same-sex imagery invoked by declaring that Roger Federer's companion is similar to a famously frumpy lesbian?

MadProfessah is reminded of the popular gay quiz from years ago: "Gay, or Eurotrash?" popularized by Blair magazine. Is David Foster Wallace intimating that Roger Federer is gay? Or just European? He does, after all, in the rest of the article use the word "beautiful" to describe Federer, whichis an awfully unusual word for one heterosexual male to describe a world-class heterosexual male athlete. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.