My Gay Story 7

Antioch. Where to start?

My parents cried, in the airport. I wouldn't let them fly with me; I insisted on doing it alone. Not the best idea, as it turned out, because at the end of the day of flying I was not happy with even a small amount of ineptitude, and the supposedly free shuttle service line was disconnected. I considered not staying, just buying a ticket back to the west, which seems strange now that I think about it - I wasn't even going to give it a chance - but I was panicked. I mean, really, panicked, a couple of neurons from hyperventilating, just thinking, why did I do this, why did I do this, why did I do this? I think the only way I slept, that first night, was because my body was just so exhausted that it didn't care what my mind was thinking.

My rideshare the next morning knew how to help. Oh, I didn't tell her I was panicking or anything, but she knew what to say and what to show - look, Ohio highway construction is just as bad as Arizona - and her radio was playing Supertramp's "The Logical Song." Somewhere between the hotel's soggy muffins and the first misty morning at Antioch, I decided I was going to try.

I went to the gym. I met the people I'd talked to on the phone. I received my key, my orientation pocket, and my Antioch muffin, which was slightly less damp. I had my picture taken in front of a shower curtain (yellow with blue flowers) for my school ID. I set off across campus, wheeling my thumping trunk behind me.

The next few days were even better, because I met people - people who, in those few days, would set the groundwork for lifelong friendships. And, inevitably, I met a cute boy. It must've been my second or third day there, because my dorm, the transfer dorm, was having a meet and greet in our common room, and I ended up standing next to him.

He doesn't need a code name, because he already has one: Blueberry. Four reasons: First, my friend Veronica (who was also my RA) had a crush on Blueberry's (straight) roommate, and decided that he should be called Grape for no reason at all. The "nickname cute boys after fruits!" idea stuck, and thus, Blueberry. But I picked Blueberry for other reasons, too: He had startlingly blue eyes; he wore this wonderful sky blue shirt with regularity; and I loved to eat blueberries. ...Don't look at me like that.

Antioch's writing professor was on leave that fall term, so I decided that I was going to take the kinds of classes I always said I wanted to take, but never did. I signed up for a dance class, which was both movement (on Mondays and Wednesdays) and history (on Fridays). There was a visiting professor from NYU's drama school, and I signed up for her theater class, not knowing if I was any good but figuring, well, now was the time to figure it out; I tried out for performance and ended up writing part of it, too. I signed up for the choir because I liked to sing in my car. I signed up for a Queer Theory class that had a lot of reading. I signed up for a self defense class and a martial arts class. I was the epitome of those things you think about late at night before you fall asleep and the things you see on TV and say, geez, I wish they had that here. I wish I could do that. Maybe I didn't go on to win an Academy Award, exactly, but I had fun.

During my first dance class, we were sorted into groups for an ongoing exercise that was supposed to teach us how to move across a room. I somehow got chosen to lead one of the groups (I'd discovered Dance Dance Revolution that summer, and I can only think that that had something to do with it). Just as we're about to start waltzing across the studio, who should come wandering in but Blueberry? Where would he sit? Well, right in front of my line, of course. I caught up with him in the bathroom that night, and stumble-apologized for looking like such an idiot (Blueberry, of course, was in the advanced dance class that met after mine). "I thought you looked great," he said. I went back to my room and pounded my head into the wall for fifteen minutes.

See, I had no idea how to act around a cute gay guy. You've already read about my stumbling half-effort with Rachel, and the pseduo-sex with the Cowboy. I had no high school relationship sandbox in which to experiment. I had no idea what I was supposed to do to impress a guy like Blueberry, who was a kickass dancer, a smart guy all around, and who had grown up in the city. As I asked Veronica, what am I supposed to do, invite him down to the Caf? Antioch was in a small town, and yes, they had restaurants, but I hadn't even been on a proper date by that point and I was absolutely out to sea.

I only had a roommate for about a month. Karen (Antioch believed in co-ed rooming) decided around that time that she needed to be closer to her business and her family - she lived a day's car drive away - and so she withdrew. However, before she could go, she left me a little present. She was tired of hearing me talk about Blueberry, tired of seeing me crush on him without doing anything about it. Both Karen and Blueberry had joined my intro dance class by that point, and one day after class Karen held back and told Blueberry in no uncertain terms that I was pretty much in love with him.

Sounds like high school, doesn't it? That's certainly the emotional-readiness level I was at, but I don't know what her excuse was.... I was devastated, anyway. I couldn't talk to Blueberry for a week, and even then it was horribly awkward, especially since he didn't like me back. All those weeks of coy looks! The nights spent chatting up while we brushed our teeth! All those dance classes of dancing myself hoarse for him! I would've gotten to asking him, in my own time. But now, no chance.

Antioch, for all its gay-friendliness, didn't attract many gay men. In the three floors of my dorm building, Blueberry and I were the only gay guys. Lesbians, on the other hand, were out in full force. Of course, the joke (read: the motto) at Antioch was "Hi, I go to Antioch, and it takes fifteen minutes to explain my sexuality." I was impatient with that. I was a gay man! I knew what I was, I knew that I liked men, and that was that. But with Blueberry unavailable, I didn't have much else to turn to. There were a few girls who "identified as men," and more power to them, but I wasn't about to go out with them.

My friends, though, there's another story. Many of them fell under the fifteen-minute sexuality banner, and they were all (with the exception of Grape, who did eventually get together with Veronica) women. We were some kind of liberal arts sitcom, really: The East Coast Jewish girl. The kitschy photographer. The redhead with glasses. The never-showers artist. The café-haven indie guitarist. The lesbian writer. And me. I loved 'em all, and I fill up many entries with memories and inside jokes and whatnot, but it'd all have to be contained within that single fall semester.

See, at the same time Antioch was a rousing success, it was also a failure. Notice came down from the governing board that term that they were going to close the college in a year and a half, and while that wasn't solely responsible for my decision to leave, it was pretty sobering to realize that I couldn't get a degree from Antioch, no matter how hard I worked, because it would close down before it was feasible. Then, too, they took away some of my financial aid because of a mistake in which my dad, who had identified himself (rightly) as a student because he was in the process of getting his master's degree, was accused of making up another child in order to get more financial aid for me. Apparently it never occurred to them that he could be both a parent and a student, or that they should clarify such things on their applications, but whatever. I digress. It still rankles, but this isn't what this is about.

I made up my mind too quickly, probably. By October, I was already filling out applications for transferring the next term. Well, "application," actually, as I'd already made up my mind that I was going to head back to an Arizona university. I was talking almost daily with Michael (my high school best friend, remember him?) by this point, and he told me I should just move into his dorm room, which was supposed to fit three, even if they'd never bothered finding him a third roommate. Perfect! He came out to me around that time, too, not as gay, but as transgender. I tried to be supportive, but I was having enough problems just figuring life out for myself.

I can't say it was bittersweet to leave, because it wasn't sweet. Looking back now, and knowing what's coming, I wish I'd stayed at Antioch, if not until it closed, then at least until the summer. Yeah, it was expensive, and yeah, I'd run out of boys to potentially go out with, but that could've changed the next semester! If I hadn't already announced that I intended to leave at the end of semester, the pool party (ahem, naked pool party) we threw the week before school ended should've convinced me otherwise. But I thought about getting my program back on track; I thought about a whole city full of potentially gay men; I thought about Michael's roommate, who he assured me was attractive and bisexual.

I flew home for Christmas and I didn't come back.