Kissing a Boy at the Bell Tower

Rock Island, March 1981

When I was in college, Bruce and I and some other English-philosophy-modern language majors hung out at a little bookstore off the student union.  It sold mostly science fiction and fantasy novels, with a scattering of mainstream literature and philosophy, basically whatever the manager, Adam Horowitz (not his real name) liked.  Adam was older perhaps twenty-five, taut and muscular, surprisingly tanned, with an open, expressive movie-star face.  Not at all the sort of person you'd expect to spend his life selling science fiction novels.

Once an English major, he was expelled halfway through his junior year after a scandal that no one would talk about.  With no degree, no job, and nowhere to go, he got some faculty allies to help him open his little bookstore.

What scandal?  A same-sex affair, perhaps? 

It made sense: Adam never dated girls, or talked about girls.  Actually, he never said much about his personal life at all.  It sounded like the hesitations, dissimulations, and omissions that gay people made in the Midwest in the 1980s to avoid revealing their "secret."  

But there was only one way to find out for sure: get him alone, and then zoom in for a kiss!  It worked with Fred, my boyfriend last year.

On a cold, drizzling Friday afternoon in March 1981, the campus was nearly deserted.  I had been alone in the bookstore for nearly an hour, studying Paleontology on the green couch by the western window, while Adam sat on his stool reading the underground Zap Comix.  This was a perfect opportunity!

“I'm heading over to the Comics Cave," I said in a tentative voice.  "Why don't you come along?  I don't think you're going to get any more customers today."

Adam stared at me in shock, as if I had suggested skinny-dipping in the pond behind Old Main.  "Um...sure, why not?" he said finally.  He wrapped on his coat and locked up the store, and we walked out into the blustery gray afternoon.  He talked nonstop about R. Crumb and Steve Ditko, and then of Little Nemo who explored Dreamland in the newspaper comics of a century ago, as if he couldn’t bear a moment of silence.

He was really nervous!  That must mean he was gay!

To get to the parking lot, you had to walk past East Hall, left toward the Bell Tower, then right, up the heavily wooded ridge to 38th Street. Adam paused.

“Have you heard the secret of Bell Tower?” he asked.

“I don't know.  I’ve heard a lot of secrets since I came to Augie.”

“The Fratboys bring their dates there, because if you kiss a virgin under the bell, it rings. Thus notifying everybody up in Andreasson Hall that she is 99.99% pure.” He gestured toward the freshman girls’ dorm on the ridge.

"Cool!  Let's check it out -- I've never seen it up close before."

"Um..ok, I guess."  We turned away from the path, crossed the wet grass, and stood under the Bell Tower with its graffiti-blackened benches where Fratboys and their girlfriends kissed. It was very damp, and smelled of sawdust and brine.

“Did the bell ring for any of your....dates...when you were a student?”  I asked, deliberately avoiding the word "girl."

"Um..well, actually I never got a chance. It’s really sort of Fratboys’ turf. They have dibs on all Augie babes.  I was  a Head Case -- an English major."

"So you never heard the bell ring?  That's a pity."  I pressed my hand hard against his shoulder. I saw that he was beginning to blush.

But at that moment a professor appeared, trundling down from the ridge: short, balding, round as a goblin in a yellow slicker raincoat, with an umbrella shoved under his arm like a stage sword and a bulging briefcase at his side. I recognized him: Dr. Dahlquist, who taught American literature and journalism.

He flashed an odd, alarmed look at me, then at Adam. We said “H’lo” politely, but he brushed past us and walked on quickly, almost trotting, to East Hall.

Adam stopped and stared at his retreating form. The snub obviously bothered him.  I wondered if Dr. Dahlquist discovered Adam at the Bell Tower before, on another lazy Friday afternoon many years ago. I wondered who was kissing him then.

"Um...ok, you've seen the Bell Tower.  Do you mind if we take your car?"  He walked briskly toward the south, toward the student parking lot.  We drove to the Comics Cave and bought a few comic books, but he refused my offer of a milkshake at the Belgian Village.  He had a headache, he said.

I asked Adam for out for comic books several more times, but he was always "too busy."

A few years after graduation, I returned to Augustana for a visit and found the bookstore gone.  I heard that Adam had taken a job as a newspaper editor in Missouri, but b eforethe internet, could find no other information.

Today Adam has his own wikipedia page!  He actually ran a museum in Missouri before he retired.  He's published a lot of science fiction and comic book criticism, plus a book about a famous lynching incident.  

So, what about the Bell Tower kiss?  Was he gay, and scared?  Or straight, and scared?  I'm still not sure. 

Cruising the Miracle Mile

West Hollywood, July 1980

The summer of 1980.  I am 19 years old.   I have just finished my sophomore year in college and moved to Omaha with  my boyfriend Fred.    After five weeks, I have met only three gay people.  As far as I know, there are no others in Omaha.

As far as I know, there are no gay magazines, newspapers, bookstores, political organizations, or social clubs anywhere in the world, nothing out there at all but a few furtive closet bars and some porn magazines.

The relationship is stormy.  Fred is controlling, demanding, and even what I would call abusive today.  He doesn't want me to continue college, doesn't want me to have a career.  I can't go out to the bars without him. He gets upset when I talk to another guy, but he's been seccretly hooking up.  I have to get out.

My friend Tom, who moved to California after high school and is now going to UCLA, invites me to visit.  This is a perfect opportunity to escape!  One day while Fred is out, I pack some of my things and drive west on Interstate 80, intending to never come back.

While visiting, I stay in Tom's room in his cousin's house in Westwood.  They are both attractive, but nothing happens except for what I call the "heterosexual huddle," what straight guys do while thinking about girls.


We see all of the touristy landmarks: Mann's Chinese Theater, the Cinerama Dome, Griffith Park, and the Hollywood Sign.  We cruise down Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood Boulevard, Sunset, Melrose, the streets that have been familiar throughout my life, ever since The Lucy Show suggested that Los Angeles might be a "good place."

It feels like home.

We drive through the gay mecca of West Hollywood, but I am not aware that it exists, so I don't notice anything different.

We stop at Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard, three blocks from my future house.

I see a section marked Gay and Lesbian.

I assumed that there were only Geight ay and Lesbian books in existence: Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, which Peter gave me, and the seven on Fred's  secret bookshelf.  It is amazing that they have a whole section at Book Soup .

Isn't it illegal to openly sell books about gay people? Fred said it was all done by mail order, without using anyone's real name.

I'm afraid to stand in front of the section, lest anyone think that I'm. . .you know.  I pretend to be immersed in a section nearby, Psychology, and steal surreptitious glances.

I see: Loving Someone Gay, The Best Little Boy in the World, The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse, Gay American History, Christopher and His Kind....far more than eight!  (There were actually about 30 nonfiction books about gay people in print at that time, plus fiction.)

Finally I gather my courage, snatch a small paperback called The City and the Pillar from the shelf as I rush past, hide it under some science fiction novels, and go to the cash register.  I don't realize until I get there that there are two naked guys on the cover, but it's too late to back out now.

I expect the cashier to scream "The sting worked!  Call the police!", or at least yell "Price check on the gay book! This weirdo wants to buy a gay book -- he must be gay!  How much does the gay book cost?"  But she just looks at me funny.

Tom meets me, and we go out to the car. "What did you buy?" he asks.

"The Ringworld Engineers and Lord Valentine's Castle," I tell him, naming two science fiction novels.  "And some other stuff."

Later we're driving down Wilshire Boulevard when the Billy Joel song "It's Still Rock and Roll" comes on the car radio, with the line "are you going to cruise the Miracle Mile?"

"This is the Miracle Mile!" Tom exclaims.  "How's that for a coincidence?"

It feels even more like home.

I stay for a week, then drive home to Rock Island to enroll in my junior year at Augustana.  But I'll be back.

Is My Judo Master Gay?

Rock Island, January 1971

Denkmann Elementary School didn't have any sports teams, so I was spared the "play a sport...play a sport...play a sport" litany.  Until the beginning of fifth grade, the fall of 1970, when Dad suddenly came home with a pamphlet advertising "Rock Island Parks & Recreation Kids’ Sports.”

"It’s not just ball games, Skeezix,” Dad said. “They have boxing, judo, and karate. Those will be better at teaching you to fight anyway.”

“Couldn’t I join the orchestra instead?”

“Orchestra won’t teach you how to use your fists,” Mom pointed out. “You’re going to have to learn to fight sooner or later. All boys do.”

I sighed.  I get punched by a Mean Boy one time, and they start a "learn to fight" kick, insisting that people will be challenging me to fistfights regularly for the rest of my life.

Or maybe they were responding to the incident at the A&W, when Bill and I became "a Mama and a Papa."  Or asking for an Easy Bake Oven for my birthday.

“How about we make a deal?” Dad said. “You can join the orchestra if you take one of these classes, too. Boxing, judo, karate, whichever you want.”

Judo seemed the least horrible – no actual hitting, and you got snacks – so when the new kids’ classes began in January, I walked four blocks west to 38th Street, to the Rock Island Martial Arts Center. I changed into my stiff white judogi with the novice white belt, and learned about bowing, falling, and randori, or exercises on the mat.

I considered sneaking through the glass doors, looking at the comic books at Schneider’s for an hour or so, then going home and lying to Mom and Dad about how much fun I had. But it was too cold to go outside without a coat, and besides, most of the other students were cute junior high boys, and if I stuck around I might be able to see them take their judogis off in the locker room.



The sensei, or teacher, a Japanese guy named Sammy, was tall and broad-shouldered, with a smooth, golden chest slightly dampened with sweat (I don't have any pictures, but he looked like Japanese bodybuilder Hidetada Yamagishi). During the break, when we got to drink tea and eat almond cookies, he took me aside and wrapped a huge hard arm around my shoulders and said “Don’t worry that you are little. Some of our greatest champions are little guys. I bet in a month or two, you will be able to throw me.”

And, in a month or two, I did manage to throw Sammy (but he helped, practically leaping over my hip). I started to look forward to my Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at the dojo, with the tinkling Japanese samisen music, the faint smell of bleach and incense, the cute junior high boys, and Sammy’s fascinating stories.

One night during break, as we were eating almond cookies, Sammy said, “I better stock up. At home all we got is peanut butter sandwiches.”

“Why don’t you tell your wife to make pot roast?” I asked. “That’s what Uncle Charlie always makes on My Three Sons.”

“We never have that,” Sammy said with a weird half-smile. “Too complicated to make, too many ingredients.”

Why was pot roast too hard for his wife? I wondered. Weren’t all grown-up women expert cooks? But. . .boys couldn’t cook, or if we tried, it had to be something easy. When Mom was in the hospital having my baby sister, Dad made macaroni and cheese three nights in a row.

The answer was obvious: Sammy was married to a man, not a woman!

I didn't know the word "gay" yet, but I assumed that Sammy was in a same-sex relationship for almost a year.  Until the summer after fifth grade, when he invited some of his best students to his house for a cookout.

When Dad dropped me off and I walked onto the screened-in porch and knocked, the door was answered by a petite Caucasian woman in a flowered blouse and Capri shorts. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. Sammy was married to a woman after all.

Where were all the men married to men?  Or were they all forced to marry women?  Maybe the litany "what girl do you like" shifted gradually, as you grew older, to "you must choose a wife!"  And if you refused, you would be forced.