I learned a lot from going to college when I was 12. Or thereabouts. I don’t know how old I was exactly. Does anyone? We think we know — we measure our orbits as the vet measures a cat’s teeth — our moms and dads may claim that they were there, were visceral witnesses when we came bloodied and desperate into this world, but — does anyone have any real proof? Of anything?
In any case, I was young. I was an incomplete expert in brands and varieties of wooden pencils, every size of Boston bulldog and binder clip available at Plaza Gifts and Office Supplies, which Smith-Corona models had the oval keys (not mine, alas), where to stop for Fritos while out on a purple banana-seat bike ride, how fast my bike could go downhill on the snaggletoothed sidewalk below the hospital’s brand new helicopter pad, and masturbation.
At college, I was majoring in racing frictionlessly up and down the echoey halls on my dad’s spinny chair, typing on his typewriter (so similar and yet so different from my own), stealing Beech-Nut gum from his colleague’s peppermint-smelling desk drawer, floating like a dream ghost through the shop behind the stage in Rose Theater, and studying the arcane texts engraved upon the wobbly walls of the bathroom stalls when almost everyone else had left the building for the night.
This day’s featured text was Socratic in format; a rhetorical question to which someone, presumably not the original author, had scrawled an answer underneath:
ARE ALL GREEKS GAY?
—NO, JUST BI
I’m certain those who’d hunkered in that cloistered carrel before me and understood it smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.
I didn’t know much about fraternities (though I had probably seen Animal House by then), so I didn’t know why it might be thought ironic if their members were gay. I didn’t even know what “bi” was — had to ask my brother later, and his explanation was logical but incomplete.
But let’s parse line 2 a little bit, let’s unpack it, shall we?
Why is the anonymous respondent’s clarification modified by “just” — why assign this diminution to the Greeks’ alleged bisexuality?
I deployed that same disarming “just” myself, years later, when I was enrolled in college (a different one) for real, and afterward felt mildly ashamed. We’ll let that pigeon mumble his song another day, but the gist is that a guy I worked with at St. Louis Bread Company (top five most fun jobs ever!) asked me if I was gay, and I said “just bi,” and he said damn, I wish I’d known, we coulda gone out! because it was too late because I had a girlfriend by then.
He also said I was brave because I was going to go roam around the country (with Cael) without a plan. He had a plan. Then I did go roam around the country, more or less, and got depressed and haunted and moved to Milwaukee and blah blah blah, still trying to figure out what “bi” really meant. Never saw that coworker again, hope he’s doing well and has a loving partner who is whoever he is, who doesn’t have to be “just” anything.
I didn’t know anything about all that when I was sitting in that bathroom stall in the language arts building, of course. I didn’t have the vocabulary for what I sensed (and feared) about my own sexuality. I still had to go through the rest of the 80s — leftover repression, ignorance, death! And then it was gonna be the 90s — more death, hysteria, corruption! I had a long way to go. We all did. Do.
Speaking of that spinny chair — shortly after my dad’s retirement, my now ex-wife and I, accompanied by I think the first two of our daughters, were helping him move the last of his stuff out of his office. We were all done, everything was boxed up and hauled out, and he said, “How about one last ride on the chair up and down the hall? That would really wrap things up perfectly!”
I said, “We already did!”
He said, “That works for me!” And we left and never went back.
And it wasn’t not true; I had rolled and spun the girls in the hallway — but not enough, and not while my dad was watching. I had done the thing but not fully. What would you do differently if you could go back in time? Big things, momentous things, little things. I would go back and be more present for that final ride. I’d put my back into it. Prolong it. I’d take another turn myself. I’d impress into my memory the girls’ shrieks and squeals, flying through that empty corridor, as if it were the only moment, as if it were forever.
Why didn’t I, at the time? Why did I rush through it, do a halfhearted job, squander that specific instance of my daughters’ essential education, of my dad’s time-traveling ceremony? It’s tempting to blame my ex-wife. I was almost always partially absent during my years with her, but it’s hard to separate cause from symptom, and we all know it takes two to make a marriage miserable.
What keeps me going is believing that it’s not too late to not make that mistake again.