Charles Durning Carroll

For a long time I’ve suspected that I might be gay or bisexual. Years and years ago when I lived in NYC as a boy I used to wander down Christopher Street–then ground-zero for gay culture–and be fascinated and curious about the leather culture that seemed to dominate the street back then. My boy-on-boy experiences were really non-existent unless you count a long-long ago session of dressing up in pantyhose with another boy when I was no more than about four or five. Also, there were moments in locker rooms when I almost got an erection, though I was too scared to allow such a thing. Still, these were perhaps little moments in a history of thinking of myself as mostly straight.

Things changed a little bit in the early 1980s. Reagan was president, America was feeling bad about itself and I wasn’t exactly feeling great about myself either. The previous year I had done a post-graduate high school year in Michigan studying drama. I thought of myself then as straight, but I developed crushes on some of the beautiful boys there. I’m not sure I would have called these “crushes” at the time; they were more like interests or intrigues, but they were strong. Had a boy offered himself to me or let me offer myself to him I cannot conceive that I would have objected. Looking back on it I very much wish I had.

The next year, still not ready for college, I moved to Los Angeles. That was where I met Jeff. Jeff, whose last name I don’t remember, was a few years older than I was, and worked in a low-level administrative position at a UCLA library. I had moved to LA to experience something totally different from the world of close, tight, big cities that I knew, and also just to put some distance between myself and my parents back on the east coast. I was, to put it mildly, alone.

I can’t say I found Jeff good-looking. He was pleasantly dorky. But he was gay, and sweet and oh-so earnest. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but we became friends and then lovers. It is too long ago for me to remember many details, but I think there was a lot of masturbation and one or two rounds of oral sex. We didn’t go further than that, partly because well I wasn’t gay, and partly his own diffidence. Mostly we spent a lot of time together in his little room. I will always remember the epistemonic semantery (a term he invented). This was a system for classifying knowledge that he believed was far more efficient and effective than the LOC or Dewey systems. Jeff was also a big fan of Richard Nixon, perhaps because he saw in the embattled upstart who was rejected by the elite, something of himself.

I lived in LA from September 1983 to the spring of 1984. At the end of that time, I left and left Jeff behind. I don’t remember if he was sad when I left, but I’ve never seen him since. I do wonder what happened to him–whether he died, or got married to a nice man.

Recently, I read Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. It reminds me of the time I spent with Jeff in his little room.