College
March 6, 2009
BEFORE I BEGIN THIS EPISODE
Even I was out of my seat several times as President Obama spoke to Congress–and to us–last week. It is so very refreshing to hear someone who can put thoughts into words and words into sentences! Listening (which I admit I was rarely able to do) to Ex-President Bush the last eight years was painful! Watching him I simply could not manage.
The republican response from Bobby Jindal was excruciating. Choosing him, presumably because his background vaguely resembles Mr. Obama’s, was tacky: that Bobby felt obliged to capitalize on it was even tackier. That his speech had been prepared without having heard the President is inexcusable. If Bobby Jindal is the best the repugnants can put forth to articulate their message, there’s little to fear from them. As usual, Rachel Madow summed it up best here. To top it off, now we find he lied! Sheeesh!
ONE MORE THING:
The router for my LAN gave up the ghost last weekend, necessitating purchase and installation of a new one. I have to say this for LinkSys: they’ve finally gotten their gadgets together with their installation disc and made the configuration far easier than it used to be. I actually managed to get the new router up and working without calling the Geek Squad or other assistants. Of course, there’s a down-side to that: some of those Geeks are really, really cute! But, on with my narrative.
SAN JOSE STATE
Although the summer job I took was located in Santa Clara, I elected to live in San Jose, not far from the State College campus. I had been so uncomfortable at UR, with all its rich kids, that I quickly decided SJS was a better fit for me. Additionally, it became apparent I could work part time at my new job and attend SJS in the fall. The job was far from onerous, in a small shop that specialized in repairing furniture and other “stuff” that had been damaged in transit. The boss had contracts with several trucking companies and railroads, so a never-ending stream of broken, crushed and battered items came in. What could be repaired satisfactorily usually went to the customer who had ordered it. Some items were beyond repair (we were the deciders) and went to the dump. Some items that could be repaired but which the customers did not want went to various outlets. The work was varied and sometimes challenging and it fit well with the “fixit” mentality I had developed early on, which went back to my days in Carmichael and which found their way into Heartbreak Motel, one of my stories available at Nifty.
Come fall, I enrolled it SJS (now SJU) and discovered they had something called a “General Major” which led to a BA in “General Studies” (I think the program has long since been abandoned). Essentially, I could take courses in any department I wanted! I went back to Chemistry (my first love), but filled out the days with all sorts of other subjects: law, religion, music, physics, social studies, philosophy: I read the catalogue, and if a subject looked interesting I enrolled! It was a very interesting year-and-a-half: the extra semester was necessary to amass the necessary units and to pass, finally, the American History course I’d blown back in Junior College.
CONFUSION SETS IN
Soon after I entered San Jose State, Dad got married for the third and last time. My new stepmother and I did not get along all that well, but it was clear she loved my Dad and he loved her likewise: seeing him happy at last, I began to feel the usual family pressure to marry and settle down, despite my near-certainty a different life-style was preferable. So I began seeing the only girl who had ever paid much attention to me way back in High School: we had gone on a few trips with the Horseless Carriage Club together back when I was “into” old cars. No sooner than we got together on a couple of dates did I decide to propose marriage! I’ve really never figured out why I did this. I had absolutely NO interest in her physically: in fact, her body was quite repulsive to me when I saw more of it than I cared to when we went swimming.
Unfortunately, not long after this “affair” began, I recalled some of the descriptions of cruising I’d heard from my friend back at Redlands. One Saturday night I went to a local theater and sat in the very back row of the nearly empty place. A chap came in and sat right next to me and began a game of “kneesies”. When he departed, I followed him to the john, but invited him to follow me back to my little room. He was somewhat older than I, and no beauty, but it was he who first shoved a cock in my mouth: right there and then I knew I was born to be a cocksucker! I knew instinctively this was the kind of sexual activity I wanted, as often as possible!
My poor betrothed! She no longer had a chance! I maintained the charade for a while. Driving to visit her in Hayward, I would pick up hitch-hikers in the hope one would proposition me: none did. It slowly dawned on me that if I was ever going to have any guy-sex, I would have to initiate the action. It would be a while before I got comfortable with that idea.
Meanwhile, after about 6 months of living the lie, I called off our engagement. Darley was devastated, saying my being queer would not make any difference, and so forth and so on. But I was NOT going to put her through all that, so we parted, never to see each other again. When I announced to my folks what I’d done, my new Stepmother’s reaction was, “Oh, thank goodness: for a while there, I thought you were really going through with it!” She knew far more than she let on, but I continued to dissemble to my family out of worry they could not handle my being queer. In reality it was I who was having the trouble dealing with my sexuality.
MORGAN
During my first Semester at SJS, I met Morgan, a musician, and one of the most beautiful guys I ever met. He was a preacher’s son, and we got along famously, except for one thing: I wanted to get into his pants in the worst way, but was afraid of rejection, so I never could bring myself try it. We took some trips into the hills and did some camping together, but the subject of sex never came up, dammit! At the end of that year, he went off to Juilliard. We corresponded, and his letters came back filled with “hairpins”! It seems he had had the hots for me, but could never bring himself to say so. Bummer! However, when summer vacation time rolled around, he returned to San Francisco, stayed with his parents, and took a temporary job in a local church while their regular organist was on vacation.
After a joyous meeting at my place, where “all was revealed”, we fell into a routine where I would drive up to San Francisco in time to appear at the door of the church as if I had attended the service. When Morgan’s Postlude was finished, we would repair to a twinkie-bar for a couple of drinks (the speciality of the house was a “Thunder Collins”: Thunderbird wine watered with Collins-mix. Just the thought of it now makes me gag!) Then we would return to the church: the sunday-school room had a carpet on the floor, and we would have an afternoon of wild sex! Fortunately, no one ever came back for something they forgot: we were never interrupted.
But at the end of that summer, Morgan went back to Juilliard, and eventually settled in Chicago. I rarely ever saw him again. Our “relationship” had been entirely one of wild, crazy sex: there had been no thought of love, permanence, or anything except getting together and getting off!
To be continued: Finally, I come out!
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