THE MAN IN THE TUX: PART I

We had four State Universities in my home state, and the smallest of them was the one I went to. It was in the northwestern part of the state, in the lower foothills of the Rocky Mountains – cold in the winter, but glorious in the spring, summer, and fall – all pine trees and aspens and endless vistas.

I had grown up and gone to high school in one of the larger cities in the state, and my high school was huge – the whole state was experiencing a population surge at that time. They had to build a new high school my senior year and opened it the fall after I graduated, in addition to the four they already had, and 2 years later the new one was filled to capacity, too.

The overcrowding at my high school was one of the reasons that I opted for the smallest of the State Universities – I didn’t have the money for a private school or to go out-of-state, and my grades weren’t good enough for significant scholarships. I wanted someplace where I knew my professors and where they knew me, and I found it at Northwest State.

No one else from my high school class went to Northwest, however – they all went out-of-state or to the bigger, more prestigious state schools. That anonymity took some getting used to at first – I literally knew no one in the town or the college, and the first few weeks were pretty lonesome. I gradually made friends, however, and my being as unknown to them as they were to me – very much a tabula rasa – worked to my advantage in at least one regard.

I had felt homosexual urges since I was a child, and had suppressed them. No one in my family was gay and I didn’t know anyone who was gay. I finally went to the one person in the whole school that I felt I could trust – my tennis team coach, Mr. Parnell. He also coached the wrestling team, and was in his late 20’s, and built like a jungle cat – all lean-muscled grace and energy. I enjoyed tennis, and had some small success playing singles, and a trophy or two, but I enjoyed the locker rooms more – especially when the wrestlers were there. I think Coach Parnell must have suspected my feelings, because when I asked to meet with him just a few days before graduation, he readily agreed. When I finally stammered out my conflict he didn’t seem too surprised, although he didn’t say much. What he did do was to quote Shakespeare to me – “…to thine own self be true…” – and tell me that he knew several people that struggled with the same impulses, with varying outcomes. He did warn me that if I chose to act on those impulses, and to do so openly, that I had better be prepared for the kind of family and social ostracism that I would likely face. He said that this was not something that a team could help with – this would have to be purely individual effort, me alone, against the world, just like I was alone on the tennis court.

As I got up to leave, I thanked him for not judging me, and he thanked me for feeling safe in sharing with him,