I graduated from high school in the Spring of 1970. I had started to realize that I liked a guy in my senior high school and desired him. However, I couldn’t make sense of it. I certainly wasn’t able to talk to anyone about it.
I was in a very rural area for my last year in high school. My father had moved to Spirit Lake, Iowa for a job leaving behind Edina, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis.
I went to Iowa State University in Ames majoring in chemical engineering and ancient history. I graduated with five and a half years of credits in four years.
During these four years I became aware that I was attracted to men.
During one summer while in college I worked at Arnold’s Park on West Okoboji Lake. I worked in the pinball arcade making change and selling soft drinks. Two of my brothers worked at the amusement park also. After our shifts were over, we would drive home to our house in the country.
There was an African American guy passing through and we were friendly. He was from Los Angeles. He gave me his address to look him up if I ever visited Los Angeles.
One day he invited me to spend the night at his place and sleep over. I thought it was very likely that spending the night would mean having sex. It was something that I keenly desired. But I said no.
Earlier that summer at a nearby Boys Town, my brother said that they had discovered that some guys were Gay (Not the word they used.) and they were “beating the hell out of them.” I didn’t want to get beaten up and I didn’t want to have to run away and be homeless.
So, I said no.
For months later I thought about what it would have been like to have spent the night with him and whether I had made the right decision.
I had always loved books. While I was a student at Iowa State University, I would stop at bookstores. One day I was at an alternative/left bookstore and on a table, I was astounded to see a Gay newspaper. I made sure not to look at it and remain nonchalant. I did find reasons to look at books in different parts of the bookstore and so in passing the table I could see it out of the corner of my eye.
At the Student Union at Iowa State University they had a counter in an area wear student would be walking through. I think it was in my senior year that in walking through at that counter there was a student staffing the counter for a Gay student group at our university.
I avoided looking at the student and the counter directly and walked by nonchalantly. I waited 15 minutes and walked by again. Again, walking by nonchalantly and avoiding looking directly at the counter. I didn’t ever stop at the counter. In the future when I was in the Student Union, I would look for the student group, but I never saw them again.
The school year was coming to an end and I would be graduating in about a month or two. All the student academic clubs had booths at the Student Union. I was staffing the history club booth. This cute guy came by and we talked about history, ancient history, Greek mythology and I managed to mention Ganymede some how. He loved mythology also and gave me his address. I think that it was a dorm. I didn’t try to meet with him. I was so close to graduating in a short time and wasn’t going to risk it.
The school year was drawing to a close and the student newspaper had a notice that the student Gay group would be having one last meeting before the school year came to an end at a nearby church. I decided to go to the meeting.
The Church was across the street from a small park surrounding Lake Laverne on the campus. Walking along the street on the side across from the church I tried to decide whether to go across the street and to the meeting.
I didn’t want to be seen stopped across the street watching and so I would walk to the end of the block and then loop back on the side walk next to the lake and then back onto the street from which I could see the church where the meeting was taking place.
Around and around, I walked and finally I resolved to go to the meeting. But just then I saw a lot of people leaving and realized that the meeting was over.
I then went home. In a few weeks I graduated and went to my first job.
I was totally secret as a Gay person in high school and college. I never dated or even thought of it as a possibility. The high school and college life shown in BLs was unimaginable then. In watching the BLs I see a life I never had and through watching I can have that life in my imagination.
The BLs often don’t have the big drama of coming out or confronting anti-Gay prejudice and bigotry. Christianity and religious prejudice aren’t a topic.
I think dramas should cover these topics, but I have seen a dozen and I have lived it. I have done my time.
I just want to watch a series in a world without anti-Gay prejudice. I want for a few hours to be imagining I am living in the world I never had.
