I Spend the Night with Calvin and His Four Brothers

Calumet City, Illinois,  February 1982

When I was an undergraduate at Augustana College, there was  no place to meet gay men except for Rock Island's only gay bar, the Hawaiian Lounge.  I was too young to get in, and besides, bars were scary to a Nazarene.  Of course, I met dozens of guys in class, at the campus radio station, and at my job in the Student Union, but how to tell if they were gay?

I obviously couldn't come out to them, and they would never come out to me.  So I tried a noncommittal reference to gay people, to judge their reaction:

"I visited Los Angeles two years ago. Very interesting. Sights you'd never see in Rock Island, like gay guys walking around openly on the street." 

Most of the time, my target said "Gross!  Those freaks should all be taken out and shot!  Fortunately, there aren't any  in Rock Island.  I couldn't stand being in the same city with one!" 

Straight.  Time to make an excuse and leave.

A few said: "I don't know...I mean, they're sick, they're disgusting, and all that, but, really, they're not hurting anybody. Why not just let them alone?"  

Straight.

But one guy in a dozen, or one guy in a hundred, abruptly changed the subject: "Los Angeles, huh?  So, did you meet any movie stars?"  


The hesitancy about discussing gay people at all meant that he was gay.

Calvin (not his real name) abruptly changed the subject.  He was a freshman physics major who somehow enrolled in my upper-division Eastern Religions class, tall and thin with gangly hands, a round face, unruly reddish hair, and smooth pale skin. A tight swimmer's build, but not particularly athletic.

I'm not particularly into redheads with pale skin.  I prefer black guys, Asians, Arabs, or dark, swarthy Mediterraneans.

But Calvin was probably the only other gay guy on campus.  You take what you can get.

In order to ask him out on a date, I needed an activity, and it was hard to find a common interest: he didn't like science fiction, comic books, languages, or the paranormal.  Actually, he wasn't much into anything.  He was taking an overload of 21 credit hours, mostly hard classes that required endless hours with textbooks and calculators.

It was also hard to find a time to schedule the date.  Augie classes met Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday, leaving Fridays off, and every Friday morning at 7:00 am, he got into his car and drove home for the weekend.

After a few weeks of ruminating over how to get to stage 2, from "finding out that he's gay" to "asking him out," Calvin asked me!

I mentioned that I was applying to graduate school at the University of Chicago in linguistics and Byzantine Studies, and I wanted to go tour the campus.  But I didn't relish the idea of driving all the way to Chicago and back on the same day.

"Why don't you come home with me this weekend?"  Calvin asked.  "We can go up to the campus on Friday, and then see the sights on Saturday and Sunday."

A weekend, for a first date?  I was too naive to realize how risky that would be.

We actually drove to Chicago with two other guys, so Calvin and I couldn't have much of a conversation. I discussed my ex-boyfriends, Fred and the Priest with the Pushy Mom

The campus was beautiful, Medieval, like Oxford.

But then we started driving.  I thought Calvin lived "in Chicago."  He lived in Calumet City, a suburb 18 miles south, 45 minutes away during rush hour.

Stuck between 3 major highways and Indiana, its motto is "We Love This Town!"  It smelled   bad all the time, due to auto exhaust, overindustrialization, fertilizer factories, oil refineries and marsh gas from the Prairie and Marsh Nature Preserve.  It was once known as Sin City, for its taverns, brothels, and go-go clubs.

It was also known for its Catholics. Calumet College of St. Joseph, affiliated with the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, with 1000 students, in Whiting, Indiana. Across the street from industrial blight.

Calvin lived in a modest three-bedroom house with his parents and FOUR BROTHERS.

Who cared about my date with Calvin.  I wanted a ginger orgy!

The full story, with nude photos and explicit sexual content,is on Tales of West Hollywood.