It might have been a vestry meeting; perhaps a monthly session of the local volunteer fireman’s association. The hair was somewhat longer, of course, than one generally will see amongst firemen and church wardens, but the dress was rather conservative, neat. There was bickering; procedural fine points were as elusive as they ever are when men organize. It was frankly boring to an outsider, yet not boring at all. Given a certain shared sexual premise, the range of faces and physical types was extraordinary, educative. Some you could have spotted easily from a car doing seventy on the Thru- way; some might have presented only interesting doubts after a ten minute conversation; some could have passed for your average Midwestern football player, maybe not a first-string football player, but a football player nonetheless. It was efficiently destructive of stereotypes. I had been invited to a weekly business meeting of Gay People at Columbia (GPC) in their controversial, dreary gay lounge.
They have all “come out”—the cant phrase that designates an unequivocal acceptance, an opening of closet doors (closet as in “closet queen”). It is analogous, I suppose, to the word “vocation” amongst young seminarians. “Coming out” has become both more fashionable and more feasible these days. The Gay People have turned militant in a mild way as modern militancy goes. Their cheerless lounge at Columbia—an old dormitory storeroom with naked steam pipes and naked concrete block walls—is an emblem that has caused repercussions across America.
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