Here I am, passing for homosexual at a Columbia first-Friday gay-lesbian dance. Haven’t felt quite so uncomfortable since Playboy made me wear drag down Main Street in Provincetown. Earl Hall—center for the other campus religions as well—is just about sold out on a bitter, sleety night. I’d shove through this mob, but I’m afraid someone might think I was getting fresh. My genderal compass is demagnetized: a clergy conference or two aside, I’ve never been around so many men whose motto was “Vive la similarité.” There are lesbians also (about one for every three dozen gay males) and all that wasted female talent can depress me. These young people seem particularly bright and intense. It’s a national disaster that they’ve climbed out of the gene pool. But, worse yet, someone might recognize me. I’ll be barred from the Columbia football locker room.
My first article assignment for NR, 16 or 17 years ago, was “Coming Out at Columbia.” Gay people, back then, were maneuvering to secure lounge space on campus—after all, a considerable precinct had already been set aside (and segregated, liberal-style) for the black faction. At that time I wrote: “As goes Columbia—by 1980 there will be a gay lounge in every college in the land.” Not what you’d call a vatic breakthrough, that prediction. “By general consensus GPC [Gay People at Columbia] has improved the historically poor morale of
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