Kennedy Toole's personal life, tragically foreshortened by his suicide at age thirty-one, remained a mystery after his death in 1969. The extra-textual clues to issues such as his sexuality have been destroyed. In his introduction to Toole's The Neon Bible, W. Kenneth Holditch mentions, John revealed little of his personal life to anyone and He had left a note addressed 'To my parents,' which his mother read and then destroyed (vii). Although Toole wrote The Neon Bible when he was 15 or 16, Thelma Toole, his mother, blocked its publication until 1989, after her death. On other hand, she actively sought publication for A Confederacy of Dunces, which was written during Toole's mid-20s; Thelma Toole's dedication, illustrated by now mythic presentation of A Confederacy of Dunces to Walker Percy, resulted in its publication in 1980, eleven years after Toole's death (Holditch x-xi). Through these novels, we can investigate ways in which his protagonists perform their conflicted sexualities. Both of Toole's protagonists, David (The Neon Bible) and (A Confederacy of Dunces), find themselves compelled into performances of heterosexuality while being drawn to queer identities. This essay will first address domestic sphere as David's idealization of accepted gay existence in The Neon Bible and then continue with examination of A Confederacy of Dunces, in which both space of domestic and image of Quarter queen are rejected for ultimate performance, New York sophisticate. The mysteries of Toole's brief life have led many to read David's and Ignatius's difficulties with sexuality as representative of Toole's. The problem with these interpretations is that instead of positing a possible nonheterosexual solution, critics all too often read his sexuality as childish or immature; in turn, this interpretation is used as a guide for reading Toole's protagonists. William Bedford Clark describes in terms of perverse childishness (275) and states that aversion to physical contact and resistance to demands of natural sexuality have been two of dominant symptoms of his infantilism (276). Keith D. Miller argues that Ignatius' problem is an utter inability to mature (33). Richard F. Patteson and Thomas Sauret conclude that sexual fears may be partly responsible for Ignatius' avoidance of love .... Living with his mother at age of thirty is a kind of escape--from adulthood, from sexuality, from rejection (86). Lloyd M. Daigrepont is more direct: Ignatius also exhibits a juvenile preoccupation with sex, masturbating and daydreaming about absurd encounters (75). Even more troubling is Robert Walter Rudnicki's argument that the 'child/victim motif' is all too revealing of Toole's troubled state of mind during these years, especially when both texts are read against one another (234). None of critics mentions possibility of author's homosexuality. While I have my own thoughts about Toole's sexuality, purpose in mentioning these critics' readings is to point out that they enforce a heteronormative performance of text, one that we must abandon if we are to understand queer performance within novels. By abandoning heteronormative readings of these texts, and looking instead at how sexuality is performed within novels, we will see a rather clear queer subtext. In The Neon Bible, conservatism of community is crucial to understanding queer dynamic, because it reveals need to closet protagonist, David, making inclusion of a gay teacher, Mr. Farney, and his partner all more significant. According to Judith Butler, 'performance' is not a singular 'act' or event, but a ritualized production, a ritual reiterated under and through constraint, under and through force of prohibition and taboo, with threat of ostracism and even death controlling and compelling shape of production (95). …