That term I came out to my students as soon as it flowed from the material we were dealing with. If it did not put them at ease, it made me feel more comfortable. But I was clear about announcing the fact that I was gay within the first two weeks of classes.
The isolation of a visiting professor moving onto a new campus — and, in my case, it was also my return to the U.S. after two years in England — can be extreme. The few people, including Carla, who helped alleviate it, I was grateful to. One day, however, when she was walking with me across the campus, she confessed, somewhat jokingly, that she was sexually interested in me and would have pursued it with some passion had I been straight. “I’m just a slave to my body,” was her comment; it has remained with me for years from that afternoon. I know the feeling. But I reiterated that I wasn’t straight; still I hoped we could stay friends. A notable current of my adult social education — and I feel it’s very near the core of what I sometimes characterize as what it means to be a “responsible gay male”—is not to be irrationally terrified either by female anger or by female desire. I enjoyed Carla’s friendship and hoped she could still enjoy mine, even if she had to suppress an overt sexual component — a relationship I have had, and have enjoyed, with many men. I decided to make no effort to distance myself from her, but give her the opportunity to reconceive the friendship in non-sexual terms — an opportunity a good number of men, both straight and gay, have given me.
Classes ended, and, about a week before I was to return to New York, Carla, an older male student (a carpenter we’ll call Fred, an aspiring poet in his late twenties, whom, I confess, I was attracted to; but Fred had made it as clear to me as I had made it clear to Carla that he did not want to pursue a sexual relationship, even though, in his own words, the possibility flattered him), and another woman student who was Carla’s close friend, invited me out with them for an evening. The specific suggestion came from Carla. She explained I was to be their guest for the night, and that dinner and dancing afterward were their way of showing their gratitude for my term’s teaching.
A very pleasant night it started off. Somehow, however, I ended up with several more drinks than I wanted — twice when I came back to the table from a trip to the john, my half-finished drink had been replaced by a full one; and at least three other times a round I didn’t really want at all was bought over my protests.
But we were dancing, having a good time — and there was much talk of “drinking up.”
In Fred’s van, we returned from that very loud Buffalo dance bar which, in 1975, claimed to be the original home of the Buffalo chicken wing; and when we reached the double tier of motel rooms in which the university had housed me that term, Carla announced she would give me some help upstairs to my room — I only realized, perhaps, I needed some when I was halfway there.
In my room, she pushed me backward onto the bed, grabbed my arm to keep me from falling onto the floor, and proceeded to pull off first my clothes, then hers.
She climbed on top of me.
Then, at her insistence, we made love. I had the presence to ask if she was using any birth control. She answered: “What do you think I am? Crazy?” The only other interruption was, once, when I pulled away to race into the bathroom to be messily ill in the toilet. Solicitously, she brought me back to bed. The next morning, it was a while before anyone felt like moving. And, in the haze of my hangover, I recall her rising to dress and leave.
Some time later that day, she returned. I answered the door. She entered, and immediately began to undress.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let’s talk.”
And so, for a while, we did.
It seems, she confessed, her plan from the beginning had been to take me out for the evening, get me drunk, bring me home and, in her words, “Fuck your brains out.”
“Yeah,” said Fred on the phone a little later. “But I told her she probably wouldn’t succeed. I don’t think you can really do that kind of thing to a guy, can you…?”
I pointed out to Carla that, one, this just was not what I wanted our relationship to be. Two, if I had done the same thing to her — or to any of her undergraduate friends — she would have been justifiably furious. “Didn’t you just tell me, about a week ago, about some male professor here who tried something rather like this on a young woman that you knew? As I recall, you were pretty pissed off at him.”
“Yes,” she said. “But it worked when he did it, too.”
“Carla,” I said. “If we’re going to be any sort of friends, you’re going to stop this — we’re going to stop this.”
“Yes,” she said. “I guess we are.”
And she left.
And left me wondering if, indeed, we could be friends anymore.
I hope you find this story, so far — for it is not over — troubling in all its resonances. I certainly did.
My term was up at the university. Three years later, when I was living in New York with my then-lover, I received a call from Carla. She was now in her second year of law school, there in the city. I said, quite sincerely, that it would be nice to see her again.
I mentioned that I had been living with a lover for more than a year.
She sounded very pleased. And about a week later, she came by. Her dark hair was cut very short and she wore very tight white jeans. “I want you to know,” she told me, as we sat and talked in my study, “that I took your advice.”
“Advice?” I asked. “What advice?”
“I’m a lesbian now.”
“This,” I asked, “was advice I gave you? I can’t imagine my advising anyone to ‘become’ a lesbian — or a gay man. Although I hear it happens, I wasn’t particularly aware that it was any more common than becoming straight.”
“Well,” she said, “what I meant is that I followed your example.”
“What example?” I asked, totally lost.
“You were married for thirteen years or so, weren’t you, before you became gay?”
“Ah!” I said. “No, I’ve been pretty aware that I was gay since I was eleven or twelve — though, yes, I did get married. But now, at least, I have some idea what you’re talking about. But ‘advising’ someone to become gay — that’s like advising someone they’d be better off black than white. Sure, in anger, you could suggest someone might learn something if they experienced some oppression. But no one who’s part of an oppressed group, who’s really thought about the nature of that oppression, is going to advise someone else to join in.”
Now it was her turn to say, “Ah.” She went on: “Well, it’s true; you never said it in so many words. But I thought that’s what you were doing. Anyway, whether you gave it to me or not, it’s been the best advice I’ve ever taken!”
“I’m very glad it was,” I said. “But, next time you think I’m giving you advice, do ask me to tell you directly what it is. I’ll feel better about it, even if you don’t.”
Two years later, Carla passed her bar exams. And, on another visit in which she came by to tell me both of her new job working as a civil rights lawyer and of her new and most satisfying relationship with another young woman, she said: “You must have been very angry at me, back at school. I have a very different take on all that now — we handle sexual harassment cases. That must have been quite dreadful for you.”
“For whatever it’s worth,” I told her, “I wasn’t angry. I don’t know whether it has anything to do with it or not: but at least once in my life I’ve been held down by two men and raped. It was a lot less pleasant than what you did.”