Fall 1984: The Closet Queens of Hell-fer-Sartain State College

Many people have been asking about the real name of Hell-fer-Sartain State College, where I taught for for a year after getting my M.A. (it was actually only 35 weeks, not including Christmas and spring break, but that was more than enough).

It's Lone Star College now.  Back then it was North Harris County Community College.  In a far, far, far northern suburb of Houston.

What I liked about it:
1. The student who got naked in my class
2. A visit from Bruce
3. The redneck boy in the trailer court next door who worked out with weights in his front yard.
4. Studying Italian
5. Spring break in New Orleans.

What I hated about it:

1. I had a dreary two-room apartment on a dead end street, with an illiterate redneck landlord upstairs and a headbanger neighbor.

2. Everyone in the rust belt moved to Texas in the early 1980s, which meant that everything was grotesquely crowded.

3. The gay neighborhood of Montrose was only 20 miles away, but due to traffic (see #2), it took an hour to get there.  I hate traffic, so I usually stayed home.

4. Everything else was 20 miles away, too, in grotesque traffic.

5. And everyone was new at their job, everyone took forever and made lots of mistakes, which made every chore from banking to going to the gym a daunting enterprise.

6. Everything was under construction, resulting in more delays, and more flat tires in nine months than in my previous 8 years of driving.

7. The campus was all ugly concrete slabs and treeless scrub grass.

8. My students were illiterate, surly, and very, very homophobic.

9. And so was everyone else.  "You're not going into Houston?  Nothing but homos down there -- be careful you don't get grabbed!"

10. All gay men were very, very closeted, "closet queens," as we used to call them.   I put a personal ad in The Montrose Voice, the local gay weekly, asking for a "long-term relationship," and got questions like "Are you gay?"; "Why do you want to know my name?"; "Can we go to your place -- my wife is at home!"; and "Are you a cop?"

And when I did get a date, we had to drive far, far away lest anyone they know see them; we couldn't go back to my place, too many people around; and if they spent the night, they invariably gave me a fake phone number in the morning.

I got even with a guy named Hank, a recent graduate of the college, now working in a department store, who claimed to want a relationship, but gave a fake number.  He didn't realize that as a faculty member, I had access to all student records, including alumni.  So I looked up his number and called.

"Um...um...I don't...I mean," he stammered, trying to figure out how he managed to accidentally write down his real number.

"You said you wanted a relationship.  So -- dinner tomorrow night?"

Summer 1984: My Big Fat Indian Wedding

The 1997 episode of Seinfeld where the gang goes to India for a wedding always gives me a weird nostalgic vibe. In 1984, just after my second year at Indiana University, I traveled to India for a wedding.

Mine.

I invted my gay Indian friend Viju home for two Christmases, two Spring Breaks, and to my sister's graduation, where he hooked up with my Cousin Joe.  So he decided to return the favor: at Christmastime in 1983, he told me that my present would be a trip to India to visit his family next summer.

A free trip to India!  I was never so excited about Colombia, Germany, France, or Switzerland!  I spent all spring semester studying guidebooks, practicing conversational Hindi, going to Bollywood films at the Indian Students' Association, and reading a dozen books: The Wonder that Was India, Plain Tales from the Raj, India: A Wounded Civilization, Tales from Ancient India.

Jahanpanah City Forest

Of course, there was no way to see the whole country in two weeks.  We only took one trip out of Delhi, to Agra (for the tourist-trap Taj Mahal) and Varanasi (to see the Ganges).  But we did see the Red Fort, the India Gate, the Qutub Minar Mosque, lots of temples, lots of department stores, and because I was a bodybuilding enthusiast, a competition sponsored by Talwalkars Gym.

And Nehru Park, Vasant Vihar Park, and Jahanpanah City Forest.  There were no gay bars, bathhouses, community centers, or gay organizations  in India, Viju said: men met by cruising in parks or metro stations, or through friends. But the cruising was very, very active.

Viju was not "out" to his family, except to his sister Aruna (a chemistry major at Nehru University).  And he wasn't planning to come out.  No one in India would, he said.

Khalkaj Mandir

As long as you met family obligations by marrying, having children, and passing on the family name, no one cared about your secret "sexual tastes" -- or wanted to know about them.  So Viju told everyone all about a fictional "girlfriend" back in the States, a lovely girl, not Indian but from a high class family, with blonde hair and a yacht.

"You can't keep that up forever," I pointed out. "Eventually they'll expect a wedding announcement."

"Oh, eventually she will dump me, and I'll be devastated, and move on. Then I'll find someone new, and the cycle will start all over again."

I had a fictional "girlfriend" story prepared, too, but no one ever asked about her.

Soon I found out why.

Viju kept inviting Aruna along on our expeditions to museums and restaurants, and to the bodybuilding competition, and one day when we went to a movie -- I think it was Asha Jyoti, starring Rajesh Khanna -- he suddenly vanished, forcing us to sit through the whole thing and then find our way home alone.

Finally I got the picture: "Are you trying to fix me up with Aruna?"

"Ok, you caught me!"  he said, grinning.  "She's cool -- she won't mind if you have boyfriends on the side."

"Yes, but..."

"And it will solve your job problem."  I had sent out hundreds of resumes to book publishers, newspapers, magazines, and tv stations, with no luck.  "Once you are married, you can stay in India, and my brother Gadin can set you up in a job teaching English."

"Yes, but..."

"And the best part -- you'll be my brother-in-law, a member of the family!"

I grabbed him by the shoulders.  "Yes, but I'd have to sleep with a woman!"

He blinked.  "Only until she gets pregnant. Why, what do you have against women?"

"Nothing, as long as I don't have to sleep with them!"


Too bad Viju didn't try to fix me up with Gadin, an English teacher at a private academy.  He was quite a hunk -- with a "girlfriend" that no one had ever met.

Robert Gant: Gay Action Hero

In the 1950s, there were no "openly" gay actors.  To make a public proclamation was unthinkable -- even a rumor could mean the end of your career.

Today agents, casting directors, producers, directors, and costars still encourage gay actors to pretend to be heterosexual -- at least until they're famous.  Being "openly" gay will stall your career at the start.

Robert Gant was openly gay from the start.  A practicing attorney, he broke into acting in 1994, with some guest spots on Friends, Ellen, Silk Stalkings, Popular, and Caroline in the City.  

Mostly heterosexual or unspecified characters, but he played an iconic gay character in Queer as Folk (20002-2005): Ben Bruckner, college professor, partner of central character Michael (Hal Sparks).

And in Save Me (2007), he plays Scott, a resident of an "ex-gay" halfway house who starts a relationship with another resident, drug addict Mark (Chad Allen).

And in Kiss Me Deadly (2008), he plays Jacob Keane, a spy who happens to be gay -- probably the first "openly" gay action-adventure hero in movie history, and the only one to date.

There have been lots more tv guest spots since, on Hot in Cleveland, Bones, Mike and Molly, Baby Daddy, and Sean Saves the World.  Sometimes gay characters, sometimes not.  Sitcom casting directors don't seem to care who he's dating, as long as he has a square jaw, a muscular physique, and comedic timing.

Not a lot of movie roles.  Maybe movie casting directors are still thinking "our target audience is homophobic, so.."