I was still panicked and could barely listen. I felt as though I had disappeared. This wasn’t going to work.
A man in a wheelchair in a jaunty black beret gave me a look meant to be kind, but I was almost sick. When another man, Gene, held out his hand, it was impossible for me to accept it. I was frozen, felt bad, guilty to be thought unfriendly, but I just could not reach back.
It was hard to breathe.
I could not look at the faces. I could not look up at all. I was sorry I had come. It was just all wrong. It wasn’t going to work. It was harder here than anywhere; I felt worse than ever.
Staring at the tabletop, I noticed my sweaty handprints on the table as, humiliated and ashamed of myself, I tried to listen to Larry talk about some Supreme Court decision.
The trip back to the dorm seemed to last for hours, but I didn’t notice anything I passed. I was not there. I knew only that some part of my self went away, left me alone, ripped open in front of everyone. I had never heard anyone describe such a reaction to anything and was terrified that this would happen every time I went in public as gay. In my room, I sat down on the bed. I had soaked my shirt clear through and it hung on my body, so wet, as if someone had pushed me into the deep end of a pool.
. . .
A few months after my debut, I returned to the meeting. I felt I had to; I had to get a life. I needed help to get my bearings in this life.
A man named Michael, a medical resident, seemed to be sizing me up at the meeting as I tried to listen to the dialog. Feeling his eyes on me, I turned to see if he was looking at someone behind me, but there was no one. We looked a little bit alike and somehow I knew that this had attracted him.
Several months later, at a fish restaurant where Michael took me, my first date, it happened again, the bad thing. I started shaking again, leaving my body. I thought that Michael had plans for me for later on. I wanted this and didn’t. Again, so tense, I broke into a sweat. He talked and talked about San Francisco, where he said everything was happening, but I could not speak. I was embarrassed. But it didn’t matter. He took me to his apartment where there were textbooks and a pile of porno magazines. I felt so far away from home. I knew this man was going to give me nothing. I knew he wasn’t going to help me out.
That night: a bizarre physical encounter, bargain-basement love, no kisses or hugs. Quickly after, Michael announced he was taking me home. It was maybe 2 a.m. I seemed to have misplaced several articles of clothing. Where my new pair of flesh-toned bikini underwear had lodged themselves seemed a mystery I was too exhausted to contemplate. Moving on to check out Michael’s desk, I found a pad of paper and a pen. I wrote, “You’re an asshole” on one page and moved quickly away from the desk when he returned.
Back at the dorm where he dropped me off, I realized that I was missing my card key. I walked back to the bench by the tennis courts and sat down, waiting for morning. A block away was the Phi Delta Theta house where Jack Fleming was probably prodding the new guys with a red-hot poker or forcing them to clean the basement in their underwear. What would Evelyn make of my night with Michael? I could not imagine she would approve. I figured that in the years ahead a lot of people would stop speaking to me.
On the day I went to the Ecumenical Center, as I started into the building, I thought of what my parents would think as I stood at the door I was trying to figure out how to open. I felt that if I stepped through that door I would be leaving them behind. I felt like I was losing something that connected us, something good. I felt like I was leaving behind the way I was taught to live.
. . .