The Five Gay Guys of Eigenmann Hall

Bloomington, September 1982

After meeting no gay people  at all (that I knew of) in high school, and only a few in college, I moved to Bloomington, Indiana in 1982 to work on my M.A. in English, and within a few weeks I met four!

Four gay men right in Eigenmann Hall, the graduate student dorm, right in the 13th floor tv lounge!

Well...sort of.

1.  On Friday nights, some of the guys liked to watch The Powers of Matthew Star n the 13th floor tv lounge.  One night I knocked on the door of an optometry student named Mark to tell him it was time, and he was sitting cozily on his bed next to another guy.

 "Who's this?"  I asked, grinning.
 "My...um...cousin, visiting for the weekend," Mark told me.

2. On the night of September 25th, I went to an adult bookstore and asked "Do you have anything gay?"  The resulting Gayellow Pages got me the number of a gay student group.  I was afraid to go to meetings, since they said that they were "monitored by the police" (I thought that being gay was illegal in Indiana).  But I did contact the group's secretary, Rick (not his real name), a doctoral student in philosophy who lived two floors down.

3. Rick introduced me to Joseph, an undergraduate in history.

4. I don't remember how I met Andrei, an engineering student from Poland.  He was on the down low: "In my country, you are expected to get married and have children, but other than that, no one cares what you do."  He would go out with his girlfriend, then call me at 2:00 am: "I'm so horny I could **** a cow!  Please come to my room!"  It wasn't hard to resist such a gracious invitation.

Honorary #5: Terry, a MFA student in theater, was flamboyantly swishy, with an overmodulated voice, fluttering hands, a fabulous wardrobe, and metrosexual hair care products.  But he claimed to be straight, and regaled the 13th floor with tales of seducing a different lady every night.

So much for Eigenmann Hall.

See also: Sharing the Optometrist's Boyfriend.