I wanted to please Evelyn, but I wouldn’t change my mind about the fraternity. Despite Betty’s repeated pleas, I refused to pledge, put my foot down for the first time. My mother attempted to stare me into submission, but found someone looking right back as determined as she was. I held firm; for me it was an emergency. No way could I be in that place; those guys would make my life miserable.
Freshman year, 1977, at the University in Columbia: guys throwing footballs in the dorm halls, running around naked, snapping towels. In my dorm room, I hung a giant poster of Monet’s Water Lilies. Acquired on a high school trip to St. Louis, my masterwork had not drawn the praise I expected. A boy from Hornersville, Missouri, asked, “What exactly is that supposed to represent?”
“Floating flowers,” I said.
“God Almighty,” he replied.
The first week of school, the student newspaper, the Maneater, published a notice about a Gay People’s Alliance meeting at the Ecumenical Center off campus on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. I figured I should try to go. I had to. I was desperate. I had to get my life going, somehow. By 2 p.m. on Tuesday, I was stepping into the shower, cleansing thoroughly before Right Guarding myself so generously that I did not anticipate perspiring again until at least my midthirties.
What to wear? I sensed this a crucial, possibly life-altering decision. What did I have that was sexy? Nothing. Unbuttoning the top of my shirt, a white Lacoste chosen to show off what was left of my summer tan, I studied myself in the mirror before going to gargle again and brush my teeth more thoroughly. I had taken to smoking unfiltered Pall Malls after reading that they were the brand of my favorite writer, despite the fact that my lips stuck to the paper and any loose strands of tobacco. During my first month at the university my teeth appeared to be sprouting hairs.
. . .
Give or take Wray Chowning, the only gay people I had seen were a group of men in tiny swimsuits at the Chase Park Plaza pool in St. Louis where, a few summers before, I had gone with Betty and George for the weekend to go to the Municipal Opera, a huge open-air theater in Forest Park. Like a spy, I observed these men, but they ignored me, slathering tanning lotion over their already dark bodies and reading After Dark magazine as I struggled with a tube of Bain de Soleil, a product I considered luxurious and sensual that I had purchased at the hotel gift shop.
I couldn’t stop looking at the men; I couldn’t stop staring at their bodies, the sun pressing my skin as the children raced around screaming and I rubbed the lotion into my chest. I can remember its smell. Betty wore sunglasses. No one would ever know what she saw, though it was unlikely that she could have imagined the scenes floating through my head as I leaned back on my sun chair and closed my eyes.
That night, at The Music Man, Big George hummed loudly along with every number as if those gathered under the stars had come to hear him and not Eddie Albert. It was one of the moments when his desire for attention felt uncomfortably close to desperation. Betty, bored immediately by Marian the Librarian, mostly ignored the show, focusing on my father and whispering to me. “If he as much as sings one note,” she began.
“Maybe he’ll get discovered.”
“Do you think we could leave at intermission? You could tell him you have sunburn.”
“He likes the barbershop numbers . . .”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. He’ll give a concert.”
“I’m hoping Marian gets murdered.”
“She’s not that pretty.”
“She’s bookish.”
I didn’t care whether we stayed or left. I was still back at the pool, lying in the hot sun, fantasizing about rubbing someone’s smooth bare back with Bain de Soleil.
. . .
On the night of the meeting of the Gay People’s Alliance, reeking of antiperspirant, I sneaked out of the dorm, nervous but able to find the Ecumenical Center in about four minutes. I sat down on a bench near some tennis courts. It was after 4 p.m. Hours to spare. I am never, ever late. Scoping out the parking lot, I checked for familiar cars, feeling under surveillance somehow. Evelyn Fleming, visiting Jack at the Theta House, might feel drawn to a discussion of nonviolence. I kept my eyes on the door of the center, trying to see who entered. I wanted to be touched; I had waited and waited. I wanted to be with someone.
Finally, I went in, suddenly tense, trembling on the inside. Scanning the room, I got more and more upset, so anxious I could barely move toward a chair. I did not think I could speak. If no one tried to talk to me, it would be a mercy.
I left my body; this had never happened. I felt about to break open. Part of me fled and I fell into a full-fledged panic. I had been so looking forward to this night, but it looked like none of this was going to work, and if it didn’t I didn’t know what I would do.
Larry, a bearded, thirtyish professor, appeared to be the head of it all. His haircut suggested an affiliation with the medieval period.
“Are you out to your parents?” he asked, and when I shook my head, he added, “Knowing parents are rare animals.”