Mirrors of Narcissus (9 page)

We were silent for a while. As I’d guessed, Scott seemed to be the serious, scholarly type, though not the kind who concentrated on studies to the exclusion of everything else. He was highly intelligent, and his vocabulary was much larger than that of most of the others in the dorm. He was someone I could learn a lot from.

But there was something defenseless about him. I didn’t know if it was because he’d led a sort of sheltered existence, but I felt that the ugly realities of the world would someday hurt him. Already, I found myself entertaining a protective feeling towards him. I wanted him to be as little hurt as possible.

Suddenly I asked: “Do you have a girlfriend, Scott?”

“Yeah. Though I don’t know whether you’d call her a girlfriend or not. We write to each other at least once a week, but it isn’t what you’d call ‘serious.’” He shrugged and didn’t seem too concerned. “How about you?” he asked.

“Yeah. Girl named Christine.”

“What’s she like?”

“She’s different. You have to meet her—she’s not like any girl you’ll ever meet. And I think she’s one of the most intelligent people I know. She’s here on a scholarship or something. But she isn’t a grind—she likes to have fun. And there’s a mystical side to her, too. She believes in the occult—you know, astrology, tarot cards, the whole works.”

“She sounds interesting.”

We’d arrived at the student union. The cafeteria was crowded and there was a long line.

“Looks like it might take a while,” I said.

“I don’t mind waiting. If you don’t.”

“No. Not at all.” A secret wish had gradually been blossoming within me as we’d walked side by side. I was hoping with all my heart that he was gay. I envisioned a friendship between us, exclusive and inviolable, based upon mutual sexual attraction. Not with me secretly pining for an unattainable other, wallowing masochistically in the hopelessness of my desire, but an open, reciprocal relationship of two boys loving each other.

It was the first time I’d felt that way about any of my friends.

3

Before introducing them to each other, I first wanted to tell Christine about my new roommate. We were having lunch at a burger restaurant east of the campus. The weather was pleasant so we were sitting at an outside table just beside the sidewalk.

“So what’s he like, this new roommate of yours?” she asked. She bit into her cheeseburger.

My excitement at meeting Scott was still very much with me. “He’s nothing like Jonesy,” I said, “At least I won’t have to clean up after him or anything like that. It’ll be a great change not having a slob for a roommate.”

“That’s nice.” She didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm at all. I knew she’d just had a fight with her own roommate, and I was praying she wouldn’t bring up the subject of my moving in with her.

“And don’t worry, Chrissie: he won’t be making passes at you, either. He seems to be a gentleman, a very shy type. I think you’ll get along great with him. He wants to be a writer.”

“A writer type, huh? That sounds interesting.”

“I suppose you want to analyze him and everything.”

“Well naturally. Someone who wants to be become a writer must suffer from all sorts of complexes. What a gold mine for study!”

“He doesn’t exactly seem to be a neurotic type, to tell you the truth. If you ask me, he seems to be better adjusted than almost anyone else I know. Present company excepted, of course.”

“Hmm. By the way, Guy, do you know that man over there? He’s been staring at us for the past five minutes.”

“Probably looking at your legs.” She was wearing short-shorts, and her legs were crossed up high as she ate. I turned around and for a moment didn’t recognize the man sitting two tables away. But just as he smiled, I realized it was Professor Golden.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said. “I was trying to recall if you were in one of my classes.”

“Uh, no. My name is Guy Willard, and I dropped in on your Art History lecture the other day.”

“Oh yes. I remember you now. I invited you to my independent studies group.”

“This my girlfriend,” I said rather hurriedly, “Christine.”

“Hello, Christine.”

“Hi. What sort of independent studies group is it?”

“About gay studies. I plan to discuss the history of the gay movement and its broader impact upon American society. You’re both welcome to attend if you’re interested.”

“Even though we’re not gay?” she said.

“Of course. Straight people needn’t be afraid. I won’t bite you.”

We all laughed, but I got the impression he was smiling at my nervousness.

“Actually, it sounds very interesting,” said Christine. “I’m a psychology major, and homosexuality is one of the things which fascinates me.” I knew she was telling the truth. Christine’s attitude towards homosexuality was rather enlightened; she was as intrigued by it as she was by most things sexual.

“I don’t wish to be pedantic,” said Golden, “but there is a difference between ‘gay’ and ‘homosexual.’”

“Oh?”

“Why don’t you join me here at my table. That way I won’t have to raise my voice.”

“Sure.” Christine and I picked up our things and shifted over to Golden’s table.

“What is the difference between ‘gay’ and ‘homosexual?’” asked Christine as soon as we were settled.

Golden seemed pleased by her interest. I sensed that the teacher in him responded instinctively to an appreciative audience. “Well, homosexuality is an activity—two people of the same sex having, well, sex. You don’t have to be gay to indulge in a homosexual act. A straight man or woman who has sex with a person of the same gender falls into this category. ‘Gay,’ on the other hand, is a lifestyle, a philosophy, even a world-view. Naturally, gay people indulge in homosexual acts of various kinds—they prefer it. But even they don’t always limit their sex to homosexual couplings.”

“I’m a little confused,” said Christine.

“Let me explain. Homosexuality has always been around; it has existed since the beginning of documented history. And we have all kinds of other evidence that it was around in one form or another in almost every culture known to scholars. So we have to assume that homosexuality is a universal phenomenon. Anywhere you have a sizeable population of people, there will be men (a minority, to be sure) who are sexually attracted to other men. And depending on the society, there are various degrees of acceptability.”

“All right. I’m with you so far. I know that it’s simplistic to pigeonhole people as gay or straight when there are so many people who have indulged in some sort of homosexual activity even if it’s not their primary inclination. And there are so many people who are not even sure of their own primary sexual orientation.”

“What you say is true. Now, a gay man is one who gets his greatest sexual pleasure from sex with another man. He might not always know that he is gay; after all, if he’s never experienced sex with a man, how can he tell? Such people sometimes sublimate their desire for men by fantasizing about it while never actually consummating it. But even among those who do get their greatest pleasures through sex with other men, there are many who hide their true nature by keeping it secret, or disguising it, out of a need for self-protection or camouflage. In a way you can’t blame these men because of the nature of our society. But all these men I’ve mentioned are homosexuals but not gays.”

“What’s the difference? Or should I say, how does a homosexual man become gay?”

“Good point. A gay man is one who lives his life as his inner personality dictates—not as society does. He may be confused or uncertain about his nature, or he may be proud, even militant about his gayness. But he is open about his homosexuality and makes no effort to hide it. Today we are witnessing a true gay revolution all around the world, but most especially here in the United States. We see gay men dressing, talking, acting in ways which express pride in their sexual orientation.”

Here I made my first contribution. “So a man who enjoys sex with another man, but who isn’t open about it, is not a true gay.”

“Not by my definition. But you mustn’t limit gayness to just the sex. We gay men are not just men who happen to prefer members of our own gender. We have a completely different way of looking at the world. We share an ambience, and have tastes in fashion and aesthetics which are purely our own. Yes, there
is
a gay sensibility—we see things differently, experience things differently. And not only because our sexual partners are not women. We are a different species, almost a different race, with our own culture, language, and history. Even our relationships are different. There are many people who think that two men in love are no different from a man and woman in love, except for their sexes. But a gay relationship is a completely different thing from hetero love—closely related but uniquely different.”

Christine was thoughtful. “So by your definition, ‘gay’ as a phenomenon, or a social existence, is a very recent development.”

“True. As I mentioned, though homosexuality has always been around, the gay lifestyle is something new, a fairly recent phenomenon in history. As far as I’m concerned, the first truly gay man was Oscar Wilde.” He picked up the book he’d been reading and showed us the frontispiece. “This is Oscar Wilde.”

We saw a handsome man with long, straight hair parted in the middle. He was wearing a full-length fur coat and was clasping a pair of white gloves in his left hand.

“He was the first gay in the modern sense of the word. Oh, there were homosexual men before him, of course. But Wilde was the first to openly flaunt his gayness. He loved to camp it up, dressing outrageously for the sole purpose of outraging the world, becoming a rare bird of plumage in the gray monotonous world of Victorian England. People made fun of his mannerisms, the way he sniffed at violets, the way he fluttered his hands as he talked. And finally they crucified him—socially—for living as he did. For me, he is the patron saint of gay men, martyred for no other reason than for being gay.”

“What about bisexuality?” I asked. “Someone who prefers both sexes equally.”

“In my experience, the truly bisexual man is a very rare bird indeed. In a sense, we’re all bisexual; it’s the degree to which we desire men or women which characterizes us. In most cases, we stick to our main preference, but you’d be surprised at the number of basically straight men who dabble with other men. And at the number of gay men who have serious relationships with women.”

“Is it possible?”

“Oh, yes. Especially if the man hasn’t come to terms with his gayness. I know—I can speak from my own experience.”

“You? But you seem so certain of yourself. I can’t imagine you ever being hesitant or reluctant about expressing yourself.”

He laughed. “You may think so. But when I was young, there didn’t seem to be any other way. I was born twenty years too soon. Back in those days, there was no such thing as a homosexual—at least he didn’t have a human shape. He was a monster, sordid and beastly…lurking in closets ready to jump out and get you. Convert you. So you can imagine how I felt when I discovered—gradually, to be sure—what my true inclinations were. I lied to myself. I told myself it couldn’t be possible. I couldn’t be one of
them
, one of
those
. Not me. I denied my true feelings all down the line. Was I falling in love with Gary? No, it was just friendship, just what one pal would feel for another, right?”

I could tell Christine was fascinated by this recital. She had forgotten all about her burger and was leaning forward toward Golden, trying to catch every word, mesmerized, like a small rodent by a snake. I found myself a little irritated at the hold he had over her, but I couldn’t deny my own fascination.

Golden, at any rate, was used to this kind of attention on the part of his listeners. He seemed to be in his element. “Young people today don’t have to worry about all the lies we were fed. I think that’s probably why I’m so eager to educate people about gayness. I don’t want others to waste their lives as I did. I really didn’t begin to live until I was in my thirties. When I was your age, I was still living in a hypocritical world of lies, largely created by myself. Because of it, I…. There was a boy in my class who made certain overtures…but I repelled them. I was indignant, disgusted. And I felt so righteous about it afterwards. Thanks to the stupid, idiotic conventions by which I was brainwashed, I let my whole youth slip away without once making the slightest ‘mistake.’ Pure? Oh, I was pure, all right.”

This was beginning to sound uncomfortably like my own experience. I thought of my friend Mark Warren back in high school. I, too, had rebuffed his advances. Perhaps things hadn’t changed very much after all. I found myself listening to Golden’s recital with renewed attention.

“By the time I was sixteen, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. My dreams didn’t lie. My own body didn’t lie. As I look back on those days now, I see that I was living with a constant feeling of unrelieved dread. I felt the world would crucify me if it could see what went on inside my head. That dread was like a companion, a lifelong friend, the only true one I ever had. It was with me always, until it got to the point where I would have felt lost without him—naked.”

The warm, burry tone of his voice had a soothing, hypnotic sound. As I listened to his talk flow on and on, I found myself willingly drifting downstream with it, heedless of where it might take me. It was wonderful.

“I wanted so badly to be normal, to be like all the others. Where most people want to be different, to stand out from the crowd, it was my fondest wish to blend in. To wake up one morning to find myself a regular boy, and that all the rest had been just a bad dream. I tried everything in my power to make it happen. It couldn’t happen, of course, but no one would have been able to convince me of it back then. So, like everyone else, I got myself a girlfriend. When we’d been together the requisite amount of time, we got married. Just like everyone else—as if I was normal.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “The marriage was a mistake on both our parts for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that I was living a lie. All my life was one long lie until I finally opened up with myself and made the first tentative steps to accept the truth which I’d tried so long to hide, to deny. That was about five or six years after we’d been married.”

His face creased into a bitter smile and his gaze seemed to wander into the past. “We had a so-called trial separation. I guess it was a feeble effort to save what was a disaster from start to finish—which was my fault because I was using her to ‘cure myself.’ Cure something for which there is no cure but one. Of course she didn’t know the real reason why it wasn’t working, and I made no effort to enlighten her. We got back together after a while when I couldn’t stand being alone anymore. But it was a mere partnership, and a shaky one at that.”

“Did you ever tell her you’re gay?” asked Christine.

“Eventually, yes. I finally worked up the courage to tell her the truth. She couldn’t stand it, of course. She took it as an insult, a judgment upon her as a woman. Which it wasn’t, of course. For a while, she even tried to help me conquer my ‘problem’…to no avail. It was pitiful. A mess. In the end, the divorce was her idea.”

He looked at me as he said this. I could find no words to say. It was obvious that the relationship with his wife had been the major tragedy of his life, but I was made a little uncomfortable at the way he’d spread it all out before us, as if it were an exhibit of some kind. For once, Christine seemed to be at a loss for a sympathetic phrase.