Big Man on Campus

September, 1969

Big Man on Campus

It had been a fabulous summer, and the amazing experience of having my first real lover still had my mind reeling. Alexander 's abrupt departure left me anxious to be moving on myself. I had no idea how to process the idea that I was a fucking queer, not completely, anyway. I jus knew that the sex had been fabulous and I wanted more of it.

A lot more.

Now it was almost September and time to go away to school. The University was huge, and it was going to take some time to figure out how all the parts fit together. Alexander brought me out and taught me how a man likes to have his cock sucked. He taught me how to be fucked with wild abandon, and how to take a strong hard dick up my ass and writhe in passion, panting for more.

He was a man, though, with all the baggage that goes along with it, and he had waltzed onto the Greyhound bus to ride to his college without a backward glance, if you could waltz in the back of a Greyhound bus heading for Washington, DC, belching diesel fumes.

Losing him made me hurt and homesick. Having found real sex I did not want to live without it, but When I packed up the little red car with my belongings- clothes, mostly, my turntable and some albums that fit perfectly in the little foot-well of the backseat of the Beetle, I was ready.

Mom asked if I wanted her to drive me down, and I declined. I was headed for a whole new adventure, and I wanted to do it on my terms. When I putted into Bloomington I wasn't prepared at all for what things were going to be like. I was quite stunned by it all.

The brochure that came with my acceptance and dorm assignment told me I was going to have a "storybook experience of what college should be like...with "top-ranked academics. Awe-inspiring faculty. Dynamic campus life. International culture. Phenomenal music and arts events. The excitement of Hoosier sports. And all of it set in a jaw-droppingly beautiful campus."

The Dorm on East Davis Street was a pile of ancient stone, looking like it had dropped out of a Gothic novel, and my room was on the second floor. I had a room-mate, a skinny engineer with black-framed glasses and a crew-cut. Not my type, I thought. He had a serious demeanor that did not blip my nascent Gaydar. I was still experimenting with that, since the idea that there were other cock-suckers out there walking around was still a new concept. I wasn't alone, I knew that now, but I had no idea how things worked, how they met or lived these lives invisible to the passing crowd.

I resolved to leave my roommate to his own devices, so long as he allowed me to do the same thing. After I got my meager things hung up or placed in the battered chest of drawers, I wandered out to get oriented.

There was a bulletin board near the elevators in the lobby, and I looked at the postings with interest. I saw a note about fraternity Rush, and made a note to check it out. Dad had been a SAE, and I knew he expected me to pledge the same house as a legacy, and would pay the initiation dues. If that is what it took to have cordial relations, I was willing to do it, plus I was pretty sure that there would be plenty of beer to go along with it.

I might be a fucking queer, but I liked my beer. There was another note that got my attention, though. It was a notice from an organization announcing that they were the Gay Pride group. There was a phone number to call for inquiries. That was the first time I saw the word capitalized, and the first time I saw articulated the concept that there might be a way to be actually proud about being a homo.

I thought about it, as I lay on my back in the narrow bed back in my room. The Engineer had headed off to the library, a place he might as well have lived, and I wondered whether I could masturbate in peace. I thought about the number and decided it was worth a try. This was a new beginning, big time, and I should explore the options. I poked around in my jeans and fond a dime and padded out into the hall to walk down to the payphone near the elevator. I wondered what my floor-mates would think if they knew who I was calling and it gave me a little guilty thrill.

The phone rang three times and a soft voice came on. "Hello?"

"Hi. Are you, er, ah..." I stammered as one of my new floormates from downstate walked by toward the men's common shower area with a towel wrapped around his mid-section. Well built, I thought.

"Part of the Gay Liberation Group?" said the soft voice on the phone. "Why yes, I am. Can I be of assistance?"

"Uh, I think I am a homo and wanted to know if there was someone I could talk to about it."

"We don't say it like that. We are Gay and do not accept the terms and language of the patriarchal oppressors. But yes, in answer to your question. You can come over and I can tell you come of the resources available to our community."

"Gee," I said. "That would be great." He gave me an address and a time the next day I might call on him and I wrote it down on a piece of paper. I could have written it on the wall with all the other notes next to the phone, but I didn't think that was cool.

I went back to my room and read a trash paperback for a while, and then explored the mysteries of the cafeteria and got acquainted with some of the other Frosh students. They seemed like nice people, some from the country and some from the City. I didn't try to go out. This had been quite enough for the first day and there was a lot to think about.

Once the lights were out and my roommate was settled down, I thought of the voice on the phone. I became engorged and I thought of Alexander and his proud hard cock planted deep in me and I thought about little Joe from Middle School, subject of my first crush on another guy, and the only one until Alexander swept me off my feet and onto my back.

I had not thought about him since Alexander came so dramatically into my life, and I became to stroke myself, careful not to make any noise that would rouse the Engineer across the darkened room. It did not take long to get to my climax, and I came in a sweet flood all over my hand and belly. In the darkness I licked it off my hand, and drew my index finger across the rich viscous pool on my belly.

The next day I showered early and went to my geology lab and the big Frosh English class. My appointment was at the break for lunch. The address was off University Street in an apartment on the second floor of a battered Victorian house that had been subdivided into student housing from a single-family residence. It was not run-down, per se, but it clearly had been used by generations of IU students.

My heart was pounding as I knocked on the door. A voice from inside said "Hang on, I'm coming!" I waited there with my heart in my throat. I heard footsteps coming, and then the door opened on a chain. I saw dark eyes and dark hair.

"Are you Rob?" asked the voice from the phone. I nodded, unable to articulate any words. "OK then, come on in."

The door closed and I heard the chain slide off and the door opened wide.

In the frame was a tall slim man who I thought might be in his early twenties. He looked like a grad student, or maybe a teaching assistant. He had a wispy dark beard and fair skin and dark hair that reached down to his shoulders. He wore a T-shirt that said, "Stop the War" and faded jeans. He looked like a guy that my football coach would have called "Sleeping Jesus," which was his term for the few hippies in our suburban town.

"Hi" he said, sticking out his hand. "My name is Steve. I am a volunteer for the Gay Pride."

I shook his hand, thinking that his fingers were long like Alexander's had been. I made the connection between the length and dimension of the fingers and the penis, and would have blushed if he had not ushered me through the door.

"It is like a Pride of lions, get it? The Gay Pride."

"Yeah," I said. "I got it." Though frankly I did not have a clue.

Steve sat me down on a battered couch and proceeded to give me all the clues. He sat me down at a tiny table in a sun-lit kitchenette. He gave me a cup of instant coffee and rattled off all kinds of things. He had either been drinking a lot of that coffee or he was on speed.

Frankly, not knowing a lot of other homos, I wondered if sex was going to be on the menu for my orientation. I was also interested in marijuana, since I had no clue as to how I was going to find any. Steve was kind of cute, in a wispy way, and I did not know what to expect. He rapidly filled me in.

"O.K., the first thing you need to do is raise your consciousness. This is not about sex, although of course it is, but it is mostly about the politics of Straight Monroe County. The pigs are out there, enforcing antiquated sodomy laws, busting us. We have got to stop the war and what's more, we have got to stop the war against us."

I blinked. I had thought about the war hardly at all at home, except to register for the draft and get my 2-S student deferment. I wasn't going anywhere, as far as I knew, and certainly not to Vietnam. I had come over here to investigate finding other young men who liked each other in a physical way. Not to join the war on war.

But he was a fascinating man, very intense. His fingers were elegant and I found myself watching them intently as he drew them across his cheeks and gestured with them as he described the injustice of all sorts of things I hadn't considered.

He explained that there was a social activity at the local Unitarian Church that Saturday, one of the first mixers of the season, and that there would be a lot of the right people, activists, progressives, Gay thinkers and maybe some live music.

I realized this was not the place to find a joint and a joint to suck. This was a hub of activist politics. I was interested by the energy, and in fact, quite swept away by it. He told me which bathrooms on campus were hot to cruise, a notion I found curious. Going to a public toilet to find sex? It didn't sound very romantic, I said, and he responded that in anonymity was power, and a way to get to the straight guys and let them experience the power of cock-suckers and their own latent but inherent Gay sides.

He was still in mid-sentence an hour later when someone knocked at the door. He went over and removed the chain. I realized that there was a little paranoia in the air. A tall woman entered. She was black as night and she wore her hair in a vast corona of an Afro. She looked at me coolly.

"Who's the frat boy?" she asked.

"Oh, this is Rob. He called me on the hot line. I think he is Gay, he just doesn't know how yet."

"I know how it works," I said quietly.

"Honey, you don't know the half of it," she said, and gave me a thin smile. "C'mon, Steve. We need to get to the meeting." He shrugged and looked at me.

"Listen, that is what is going on here. Meetings and empowerment for marginalized communities. Remember the Social this week. If you have any questions, give me a call. Maybe we can have coffee again some time."

"I'd like that," I said, realizing Steve was going to be too busy stopping the war and injustice to slow down for me. "And thanks for your time."

I walked to the door and let myself out as they began to talk about strategy, and how the Black Lesbians needed support and how The Man would be watching everything they were doing. They didn't pay any attention at all to my going.

I confess I looked over my shoulder as I walked away. The Pigs could be watching everything, after all.

Unitarians

I had been to a Unitarian church service one time, since my folks insisted on us going to some kind of church, even if we weren't very religious, and the Unitarians seemed like they weren't either. We normally went to a nice Presbyterian Church and one of the Sunday School activities was to go to other churches and discuss them from a theological perspective.

I wasn't go to the church this Saturday night to discuss secular humanism, though. I was here to meet other homos- Gays, I corrected myself, and maybe find a friend to replace the gaping void that Alexander's departure had put in my life.

The Church was a long low building and didn't look much like a traditional place of worship. It looked like it could be a union hall, or the VFW that we used to rent to have parties back home.

I had walked by the place a couple times to reconnoiter, looking over my shoulder to be sure I was not followed.

It was pretty crazy. I had been to fraternity Rush the night before, visiting several of the more popular houses on campus. I liked the Lambdas and the Dekes, even though I knew I was going to pledge SAE to make my Dad happy. The brothers seemed eager to hand out the beers and get me to like them. Rush would go on for another week or so, and I thought I might find a group of people to hang out with by visiting most of the houses on Frat Row. I wished there was a Gay fraternity. That would have made things much easier, and not have to segregate the part of me that wanted to have wild sex with the whole house from the staid suburban man I usually presented to the world.

But there was this Gay thing to deal with. I was so horny, and all I wanted was someone like Alexander to fill me up. Of course, he had been Black, even if his skin was almost as light as mine, and the politics of that issue was something I didn't fully understand in this intensely political campus.

The frat houses didn't even seem to be aware of the war, just the practical necessity of staying in school as long as possible and away from the draft. Some of the older brothers had successfully changed majors three or four times to extend their campus stays and avoid getting the letter from Uncle Sam to report. I had plenty of time left in school, and didn't consider it a real threat. Maybe when I was a Junior there would be some sort of immediacy. I had drawn a number in the lottery that meant I would probably get drafted if the war went on like it was going, but I couldn't work up a lot of energy about. Yet.

I finally screwed up my nerve in the darkness and walked up to the double door on the lobby. I went in and there was an easel set up that said "Gay Pride Mixer in Activities Room" with an arrow pointing to the corridor on the right. I walked down the hall toward the sound of voices.

There was an open door and a guy sitting at a card table. He had a coffee can with a sign that said "Donations."

"Hi" I said. "Is this the Gay thing?"

"Yes it is," he said and smiled broadly. "I'm Greg and I suck cock," he said with an air of self-satisfaction. "Two bucks in the recommended donation."

I fished my wallet out of my slacks and found two wrinkled bills. "I'm Rob, and I do, too." I said weakly. "Suck cock, that is. At least one." I didn't have much cash and wouldn't until I got a bank account set up in town so I could get at my summer money from working with Alexander at the department store. I dropped the bills into the can and

Greg smiled again. "Thanks" he said. "Hope I see you inside." He looked me up and down and didn't seem to mind what he saw. He had broad shoulders and white teeth and hair that was growing down to his shoulders. Handsome. I swallowed and walked in.

There were about forty people standing around in little clusters. The lights were half on, in an attempt to create an intimate atmosphere. There was a table that had big jugs of soft drinks on it, and large bowls of potato chips and pretzels with napkins to pile them on.

There didn't seem to be anything to do except stand there awkwardly, so I went over to the table and poured a Coke and munched on a handful of chips. I was thinking this might be one of the more awkward events of my life, having this big secret hanging right out there and no one to talk to when a young man with dirty blonde hair left one of the knots of people and walked over to me. He extended a hand and took mine and held it a second or two longer than I was used to. His hand was soft and his skin was moist. He cheeks were full and so were his lips.

"Glad to see you here tonight," he said. "My name is Bob. We are going to have some music in a minute, as soon as the band gets set up, and I hope you will save a dance for me. I'm with Student Coalition."

"Coalition for what?" I asked. "And my name is Robert, too, though they call me Rob."

"Well, Robby," he said, suddenly conspiratorial, "It is a coalition to oppose just about everything." Then he laughed. "And have a little fun in the process of overthrowing the Government of the United States and the Old Order." He gave me an infectious grin.

I smiled back a little uncertainly. I hadn't come to overthrow the Government. I had just come to meet some others homos. But at least some of the people here evidently sucked cock, so that was a start. And they say the longest journeys start with a single step.

We chatted for a moment about the latest developments on campus, the riots elsewhere and when we might expect something to get going at IU. I heard the squeal of an amplifier and some first brisk chords being strummed on an electric guitar. Bob excused himself, and walked over to where the musicians were standing all slouched over and tapped the top of a microphone. It went pop-pop and was live. He took it off the stand and asked everyone to come up close.

"We want everyone to dance tonight, and we want to make some good noise. And we want some solidarity tonight, proud that we are Gay and Lesbian!" There was a murmur as people walked up and formed a broad semicircle around him and the band. "Tonight we are going to do some political dancing with The Pride Band! Get down, Brothers and Sisters!"

He handed the mike to an emaciated woman in a tank top. She had small breasts with large nipples and nothing between them and the thin cotton. He hair was straggly and she had a ring in her nose and eyes as dark as the bottom of a coal mine. Lead guitar was a white guy with an Afro and a black man with big hair and elephant bell pants slung low on his hips was holding a Fender Jazz Bass. A kid with a hank of blonde hair and a blank gaze looked like he was threatening to play rhythm on a Stratocaster.

There was a sharp rap on a snare drum and a thickset guy with sunglasses and a ponytail started to rap out a drum riff.

The band stumbled into some muddy song, way too loud for the acoustics in the room. The woman started into something that sounded a little like "G-L-O-R-I-A" but the words were different. I decided I didn't care. It was too loud to talk to anyone, and I sipped my Coke and tried to make sense out of the crowd.

There were couples, male and female ones, and some guys and gals who were radiating acceptance and progress. Most were hippies, but there were a couple older guys in rumpled sport coats and chinos. They were clearly academics. I was scrutinizing the crowd and hoping to find someone who looked like they needed a friend. The cutest was the black guy playing bass, and since I was still a virgin for white guys, I thought he was closet to the one man who had made my world turn inside out. I think he looked back at me with a cool gaze, but it could be that is how he looked at everyone.

I have always liked men of color. Alexander set me up that way, I guess. I wondered what he would be doing later, and what it would be like if he made me his bitch for the semester. That would cause a stir back at the dorm. Or maybe it wouldn't. This was an altogether new world, where men just announced that the were cock-suckers. I wondered if someday we would call ourselves faggots and queers and take away the cruel power of those words

I felt a little flustered and then I felt someone tug on my sleeve. It was Greg from the door. He shouted at me over the music. I think he asked me to dance. I nodded, since there was no point in trying to talk over the noise of the band. I finished my Coke with a gulp, turned and began to shake in unison with him, not touching, of course, just shimmying with the music.