Mind you the timid models
Whitman is vowing to free himself and then others by exemplifying democratic adhesion. Even his own earlier poems, he seems to be suggesting, were timid: they failed to offer new models of manly attachment, such as men kissing each other with “robust love.” They failed to naturalize and Americanize that love.
A “public room” is a lounge or other room open to all, especially in a hotel or ship, but the word “public” adds many other meanings as well. It emphasizes that Whitman is doing something that timid people might do only in private, as well as the fact that he believes this individual act of love has important consequences for the public, the nation.
“Nonchalant” is a loan-word from French; it comes from the Latin words for “not” and “warmth,” and thus it connotes a “cool” insouciance. In “Mind you the timid models,” having portrayed a male kiss on the lips delivered with “robust” love, Whitman may have wanted to end the poem with a cool, rather than hot, note. However much he departs from timid models, he will not dive too deeply into the homoerotic.
The references to the ship’s deck, the sea, and the salute all bring sailors to mind. Whitman never put to sea, but he often mentions sailors – attracted, perhaps, by their male world of camaraderie and homoeroticism. Similarly, while never a soldier, he was to spend much of the Civil War visiting hospitals and caring for soldiers, offering and receiving comfort in a conventionally-acceptable realm of male affection and bonding.
The “salute” also reflects the surprising amount of warlike imagery in Calamus. Whitman’s view of adhesive democracy includes his aggressive imperialism – his dream of a victorious “band of brothers.” This is more than a cover for male yearning; it also reflects the truth that people often bond more tightly as a group when they feel opposed to other groups. Whitman’s tolerant, inclusive nature keeps him from demonizing others but he still gravitates toward visions of America as embattled.
Whitman links his silence to his lack of refinement and charm; his working class roots and persona; and his preference for the physical culture of drivers, sailors, and mechanics over the timid conversation of the educated classes. Ironically, though, other Calamus poems have disclosed that his silence is also a form of timidity – as he secretly loves strangers a long time and never avows it; tells certain hungry wishes to the skies only; and dares not tell in words, even in his songs, the fierce and terrible love inside him.
The salute happens “ever,” which means that the two men are not strangers or casual acquaintances. There is a hint here of the Calamus poems in which Whitman emphasizes that love means “clinging” and “never leaving” Buthe emphasizes that the kiss takes place at parting, as if to assure us that it is not a prelude to other embraces. His “model” may be less timid than contemporary conventions, but, even in it, men are free to show robust love only when separating.
This model is not one that Whitman birthed himself; it is one that he “adopted” and now offers to the States. “Adopt” can mean to take up and practice; to accept formally and put into effect, as in “adopt a constitutional amendment;” to sponsor the care and maintenance of; or, of course, to take a child into one’s family. By choosing this word, Whitman evokes both civic and familial meanings. He “naturalizes” a relationship sometimes considered unnatural by “adopting” unrelated men as lovers (in his life, he treated men like Peter Doyle and Harry Stafford as lovers, comrades and adopted sons). He is not creating the model out of nothing, though; he is adapting something he found among working-class men, which he thinks is latent among all men.