Sharing the Optometrist's Boyfriend

Bloomington, October 1982

When I arrived for graduate school at Indiana University, 21 years old, fresh from a small town in the Midwest, my gay experiences were so limited that I never suspected Mark, the optometry student who lived down the hall from me in the graduate student dorm.

He was short and compact, with a flat face and a high forehead, cute, a little nerdy, not stereotypically swishy.

 I didn't suspect when he joined me in watching The Powers of Matthew Star on Friday nights, a superhero spoof notable only for teen idol Peter Barton.

I didn't suspect when I knocked on his door one Friday night in October, a couple of weeks after my visit to the adult bookstore where I found the Gayellow Pages, and Mark opened with his shirt disheveled, and I saw another guy with his shirt half off sitting on the bed.

I didn't even suspect when I noticed that the two twin beds in the room had been pushed together to make a double.

But I suspected the other guy -- tall, pale, with a slim, tight chest, blond hair, and a round, pretty face.  Effeminate!  Must be gay!

I grinned at the glimpse of beefcake as he quickly buttoned up.  My first gay guy in Bloomington!  "Hi, I'm Boomer."

Obviously unwilling to make introductions, Mark complied out of politeness.  "Boomer, this is Shaun.  My...um...cousin.  Visiting me."

Mark's cousin was gay!  Did he know, or was he oblivious?

I barged into the room, took Shaun's slim hand, squeezed it, and held it for a moment too long. He smiled. I began to feel flushed -- here I was, flirting with Mark's cousin right in front of him!

 "So...um...you guys up for The Powers of Matthew Star? It's stupid, but it has Peter Barton in tights."

"No, not tonight, sorry," Mark said.  I didn't catch his look that meant Get lost!

 "I'll go!" Shaun exclaimed.  Mark glared at him.  "Oh, relax.  It will be fun.  That other thing will keep!"

"Ok, then, you guys go ahead."  I didn't catch Mark's angry tone.  "I'll get some studying done.  But don't stay too long -- we don't want to be late for that other thing."

"Sure, sure.  See you in an hour." He touched Mark's shoulder affectionately, and stood, facing me.  Definitely cruising, I thought.  "Which way to the tv lounge?"

Each of the tv lounges in Eigenmann Hall was dedicated to a different channel (back then there were only six).  On Friday night, most residents were out, or watching Benson on the third floor or Dukes of Hazzard on the sixth.  We had the thirteenth floor lounge to ourselves.

Shaun and I sat on a big crimson-colored couch, so close together that I could feel the warmth of his thighs and glimpse his pale hard chest in the places where his shirt was still askew.

In those days you never just came out to someone -- the results were usually unpleasant, and sometimes violent.  You tip-toed around the question.

"So, are you in college?" I asked.

Of course, Shaun was actually an undergraduate psych major at Indiana, on a date with Mark -- this was their fifth date.  They had gone out to dinner, and they were just getting ready for intimacies when I barged in.  But he couldn't tell me that.  He had to stick to the "visiting cousin" story.

 "Oh yes, I'm a junior at Notre Dame.  My parents insisted -- I think they wanted me to become a priest.  Imagine, me a priest!  They about had a heart attack when I told them I wanted to major in music instead.  Voice."

We were good at making up impromptu stories in the 1980s.

"You'll have to sing for me sometime."

"Oh, I'll do more than sing for you."

I felt even more flushed with the heat of anticipation.  "Um...Peter Barton is quite an actor," I said.

"Yes.  I had a big crush...I mean, all the girls in my high school had a big crush on him."

That was out enough for me!  I checked the door to see if anyone was looking, then reached out and took Shaun's hand.  He squeezed it, and then moved it carefully to his lap.  "I haven't met anyone...you know...at IU yet," I said.

"Me, neither."

There was a gay student organization on campus, and a gay bar in town, but I was afraid to go to either.

"Does Mark know?" I asked.

You never outed a friend in the 1980s, so Shaun didn't say "He's my boyfriend."  He said "Oh, yes, he knows."

"And he's ok with it?"

"Perfectly.  You should tell him that you are -- it would be nice to have a friend on campus, wouldn't it?"  He paused.  "Besides me, of course."

"You'll be going back to Notre Dame soon."

"Oh, yeah.  Right."  The problem with making up stories is, you have to keep them consistent.  "But we have tonight, right?  And the night is young."

I wasn't much for hookups in the 1980s, but Shaun was the first gay person I met on a campus of 40,000, and besides, I hadn't been with anyone for a few months.  "You want to -- come back to my room?" I asked.

Now Shaun had a dilemma.  He had a boyfriend.  He was on a date.  But he  couldn't say so without outing Mark.

So he made a decision: "Let's go back to Mark's room instead."

"What?"

"He's got that big double bed.  We can really get to know each other there."

"But then he'll find out about me."

"Oh, don't worry.  He won't mind.  I'll...um...tell him to come in here and watch tv for an hour."

The prospect of being with Shaun trumped the fear of coming out to his "cousin," so I allowed him to lead me back to Mark's room.

Mark was sitting at his desk, reading a gigantic optometry textbook.  "Hi, how as the tv?" he growled without looking up. Shaun wrapped his arms around his shoulders and kissed him.

"What are you doing!" he yelled, pushing Shaun away.  "Um...Cousin Shaun, stop fooling around!"

"Yes, well, about that."  He carefully shut and locked the door, then put his arms around me. "I invited Boomer along on our date."

Date?

Mark stared for a moment, and then smiled.  "You mean he's....I really had no idea!"

Suddenly both of them had their arms around me. Shaun was unbuttoning my shirt and nuzzling Mark's neck at the same time. Mark was groping me.

"You're not really cousins, are you?"

And we were kissing.

Mark and I "shared" Shaun a few more times before they broke up. But the sharing wasn't as important as knowing that I was not alone at Indiana University.

See also: My First Visit to an Adult Bookstore and The Farmboy Butches It Up

Roy the Farmboy Butches It Up

Bloomington, November 1982

No one came out casually in the 1980s, but it didn't take long for me to suspect Roy, the sophomore education major who worked with me at the Eigenmann Hall Snack bar.

He had big hair and wore bright colors, mostly reds and yellows.  He wore rings.  He had an overmodulated, feminine voice and a vocabulary heavy on adjectives.  His manner was a bit swishy.  Ok, a lot swishy.

We were open from 7 p.m. until midnight, selling hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, cold sandwiches, bagels, and snack items.  There were tables and chairs, but most people brought their food into one of the tv lounges, or up to their rooms.  So we were alone a lot, and we had lots of opportunities to talk and joke around.

One night he performed "A Lil' Ole Bitty Pissant Country Place" from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas!

One of my jobs was to replace the soda and lemonade canisters, which involved swinging 50-pound jugs over my head.  Roy watched with a cruisy gleam in his eye. "Watch it -- you'll fall," he said, and and clapped his hands onto my waist to steady me.  And "accidentally" feel my butt.

Ok, so he was probably gay.  But I wasn't going to come out to him until I was sure.

Unfortunately, we didn't work together often.  There were always two workers, one on the grill and the other on the counter, both boys or both girls --  so we'd keep our minds on our jobs, Carol, our Boss from Hell, said with a heterosexist flourish.  But she alternated the boys, and we just worked twice a week anyway, so during all of the fall 1982 semester, Roy and I only worked together four times..

The third time, just after Halloween, I still hadn't figured out if he was really gay or not, when he mentioned something about church.

Religious?  Hetero, then.  And homophobic!

"Are you having Anita Bryant as a guest speaker?" I snarked.

"What?  No, we're against...um...homophobia, you know."

What kind of church was against homophobia?

"It's a church with a special outreach to people who have been rejected by mainstream churches. Like, you know, prostitutes, and drug addicts...and homosexuals."

"MCC!" I exclaimed.  The Metropolitan Community Church, the only church for gay people, was founded by the Rev. Troy Perry in 1968.  One of the first gay books I read was his autobiography, The Lord is My Shepherd and He Knows I'm Gay.

For the record, the MCC doesn't have an outreach to prostitutes or drug addicts.  Roy put in those others to avoid completely outing himself.   I don't know why he put homosexuals at the end, as if they were by far the most disreputable of the lot.

"Oh, you've heard of us?"  Roy said with a grin.  "It's so great to meet someone else who's....come on, give me a hug!"

He hugged me, but not with the joy of one gay person finding another in the closeted 1980s.  With a cruisy tightness.  He was interested!  Next he'd be asking me for a date.

But I wasn't interested.  Roy was nice, but tall, thin, gawdy, gilded, and flamboyant.  He smelled of cologne.  He wore rings.  Not at all my type.

"I've been trying to find a MCC," I said, disentangling myself.  "The Gayellow Pages doesn't list any in Indiana."

"There's one in Louisville, Kentucky.  I'm from New Washington, about a half-hour drive away.   When I'm at home, I always go."  He paused.  "Why don't you come home with me this weekend, and we'll visit together?"

I hesitated.  I knew what "visiting" meant.  Spending the night in his bed.  I didn't find him attractive.  But...a gay church!

"Sure, that would be great," I said without enthusiasm.

New Washington, Indiana

When Roy called for me in the lounge of Eigenmann Hall that Saturday morning, I was astonished.  He had somehow managed to transform himself from devotee of show tunes to a devotee of tractor pulls, from fey and theatrical to redneck.  The rings and cologne were gone.  He had a different haircut.  He was wearing tight jeans and a lumberjack shirt.  He looked...well, rather hot.

"Ready to go?" he said, in a deep, non-modulated voice.

"I'm sorry...um...are you Roy's straight brother?"

"Hey, in farm country, you learn to fit in."

New Washington was about two hours south of Bloomington on the shore of the Ohio River, a tiny town with a few bars, a fire station, two churches, and a water tower.  He didn't live on a farm, exactly, but his house had a huge back yard that abutted a cornfield, and there was a farm next door.

We had lunch at the house with Roy's parents and brothers (one older with his own place, the other still in high school).  Roy wasn't out to them, of course, so our conversation was mostly about our "girlfriends," Darla and Jane (we made out complete biographies on the way down).

"You should have seen this boy in high school!" Dad bragged.  "Such a lady-killer -- he was always bringing girls around.  Why, I think he had more girlfriends than boy friends!"

Roy grinned at me.  "Yeah, I was friends with just about every girl in the school.  And quite a few of the boys.  The captain of the football team, for instance."

Nobody seemed to catch the joke.

In the afternoon we saw the Ohio River and went for a hike at Charlestown State Park, where Roy turned out to have remarkable stamina.

"Oh, I was up and down these hills all the time when I was a kid.  You'd be surprised how much fun I had here."  He "accidentally" grabbed my butt.

After dinner at a rather good pizza place, we settled down for a night of Diff'rent Strokes, Silver Spoons, and Mama's Family.  We claimed tiredness to avoid having to sit through Love, Sidney, with Tony Randall playing a gay man -- it would be too close for comfort.

Roy's parents put us into the room he used to share with his older brother.  There were two twin beds,

I looked at Roy, questioning.  He smiled and unbuttoned his lumberjack shirt, revealing a smooth, hard chest.  "Why don't you give me a hand?" he said.  "I especially need help getting my pants off.  They're pretty tight -- and getting tighter by the second."

I didn't need to be asked twice.

In case you were wondering: good kisser, with a Bratwurst, and an anal top.

In the morning I got up early to go for a run.  At least, I thought it was early.  Dick, Roy's teenage brother, was already up, eating oatmeal at the kitchen table.

With his shirt off -- hard, smooth chests must run in the family.

"Have some oatmeal?"  he asked.  "The family won't eat for another couple of hours."

"I thought farm folk got up with the chickens."

"Well, we ain't got no chickens.  Sit down," he said forcefully.  "I want to ask you something."

I sat.

"Are you and Roy together?  I mean, dating?  Like a couple?"

1980s homophobia required you to say "No, of course not!"  But I was too flustered. I just stared.

"Don't freak --  it's fine with me.  I knew Roy was that way for a long time.  Always with a girl, but never talking about girls, you understand?   So I figured when he brought you home, you being so obvious and all...."

"Obvious?"  I repeated.

"Well, yeah."  He dug into his oatmeal.  "No offense, but...well, you're kind of fruity.  I could tell right off that you're the girl in the relationship."

See also: The Optometrist's Boyfriend

Next: Sharing the Farmboy with the Security Guard.