Sooner or Later

Nobody I knew when I started college was there any more. Everyone from the Blue Devils was gone. Joe the Muscle Man was gone. Terry the Health Professor was gone. Some had transferred to other places, some had joined the service, and some had simply disappeared. I'd had a date--a single date--that had been just short of bad. But my life had changed, and I could feel the difference.

Tommy and Dee had had their baby, a girl, and had gotten married in a ridiculous affair at a small town courthouse. Now they were ensconced in a new public housing apartment complex where I would occasionally stop by, but not very often, for Tommy was either working or sleeping and Dee was hanging out with other new mom's in the complex. Even with housing assistance and food stamps, life was a struggle and the burden of it hung heavy everywhere. When I did see them, there was little to say, so we would look at the baby for awhile and then I would leave. And it would seem to me that Tommy would look relieved.

The Presidential election had me excited, and for the first time in my life, I could vote. I argued politics at school with some older guys who were William F. Buckley-style conservatives, fellows who knew more about politics than I, fellows to whom I had gloated during the primaries. But in November, McGovern lost in a landslide, and it seemed tragic and wrong to me who had longed for an overthrow of the smug piety of the old regime. I learned during the campaigns that some of the icons I had grown up watching--Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, and a host of others--were Nixon supporters, and suddenly, they were lost to me, too.

After the Europe trip, Leonard had decided to take some time off from school. I didn't see him much after that, but one day I was talking with a mutual friend and heard a thing that sent me spinning. Leonard had been living with his girlfriend and her brother since he had returned from Europe in a funky apartment in a house downtown. His father, who had left his mother a year before, had a young new girlfriend who Leonard openly despised. His father, a mildly macho man who had not gone to college and who had a complex, I think, since his brother was the Commissioner of Agriculture in our state, had confronted Leonard several times about his lifestyle telling him he had to move back to his mother's house, but one of Leonard's friends, one of the hoodlums I had known, a really rough kid, had threatened Leonard's father with a beating and that was the end of that. The shifting hierarchies with which I was being confronted were dizzying, but there seemed to be no end.

Leonard's girlfriend's brother was gay and had started an organization at the new, local university he attended. The university was a bastion of conservatism and "gay" was a new word to me who had grown up in a world that considered homosexuals as queer, so I was quite impressed, if stunned, that this boy would be so public about his sexuality. I thought of Leonard and his girlfriend and the bohemian lifestyle that they were leading, and I compared it to my life which I'd thought was moving along nicely, but the changes now seemed merely superficial. Internally, things were happening, but to an external viewer it was all invisible. I still lived with my father and spent my nights at home. In the course of a few months, Leonard had gone to Europe, moved in with his girlfriend, and. . . the real shocker. . . Leonard had announced that he was gay!

When my friend told me this, I could feel the world tilt. What?! And with a big grin, he told it to me again. Was it true? I began to think about Leonard. In high school, he was a conservative boy, was a member of all the right clubs. He was tallish and had a big, winning smile that he showed easily. I had spent the night at his house, had slept in the same bed. Was he gay then, I wondered? Then I thought of him walking around the house wearing little shorts and a pair of clogs he had gotten in Europe while he fixed us French toast. I thought of that and a hundred other little things with wonder.

"Leonard has taken up with his girlfriend's brother," said my friend, " but they are all still living together."

Jesus Christ, I thought. What would I say to Leonard if I saw him again? I pictured him with the thin young brother of the pretty blonde, wondered if they all slept together, wondered if that was incest, tried to picture Leonard and the boy holding hands. Then I thought about how attractive his girlfriend was, how sophisticated and strange, and I wanted to see her. I felt my desire rise. Then I thought of Leonard. Jesus Christ. Crazy, erotic Leonard. I'd always felt a little superior to him, I realized, had felt myself above him somehow as being more worldly, more daring, more experienced. I had thought of Leonard as a bit of a nerd. Jesus Christ.

And, as always, I had to think again. My feet were planted in gravel as the river flowed rapidly about me. Sooner or later, I would have to start swimming.