COMING OUT

as recalled by jim kepner

An old friend the other night made one of those perfectly banal remarks that nonetheless conjured up for us some enjoyable reminiscences. Wouldn't it be wonderful if one could "come out" all over again, without being so dreadfully naive about it?

Well, mother, this one wouldn't even mind repeating the naivete. We -using, by your leave, a gay editorial "we" from here on-have grown more blase in the years since our timid outcoming into the "gay world," shortly after the start of world war the twoth, and life's little adventures have since been more routine, a drag so to speak, but for the preferred usage of that term, we recall our summer of '42 . . .

The war and family dislocations had snatched us green from a small Southern town, where we'd been idealistic, puritanic and most square. All of which had begun to come unstuck before we moved to Bigtown. Our religion was replaced by our personal version of libertinism, which was all in our mind, and we had occasion to look up the word, "homosexual," in a dictionary. That was the extent of our sexual education for some months.

At nineteen, and in the confessional stage of life, we unburdened our unorthodox longings on a charming older woman, a fellow file clerk in the large railroad office where we worked. She was warmly sympathetic, and gave us some utterly useless instructions on how to make our entry into the homosexual world.

Following her hints, we purchased and put on a red corduroy shirt, a gauche lavender scarf and a gabardine raincoat, worn cape-wise. We tucked under our arm the copy of Well of Loneliness she'd bought us, and spent three weeks of nights walking, in an ecstasy of trepidation, up and down the several streets she'd named, waiting for our homosexual brethren to recognize us and take us to their bosoms, this last being purely a figure of speech, for we lacked any earthy notion of the nature of homosexual conjunctions, but envisioned something like an eternal, etherial embrace.

That we were not instantly discovered and so embraced by our kind may have been due to our fearfully hiding the novel, supposedly our badge and

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passport, well under the raincoat. Or perhaps we simply appeared ludicrous. We hate to think that, even now.

But one night, our hungry eyes locked for just a second with another pair, and we knew we'd found what we were seeking. Still, doubt immediately swamped us. The stranger, only moderately attractive, and not young, who'd first caught our attention by his resemblance to a friend back home, saw us instantly for a novice, no difficult feat, and decided to give us a minimum of encouragement, and make us do all the work. Despite commendable patience, he nearly gave up several times. Besides, we were obviously jailbait, though no one had advised us of this important legal fact.

As for ourself, the more we became hooked, the more our doubt and frustrations mounted. At times, we feared he might rob us. Slight and nondescript, in jeans, black sweater and cap, we saw him at times as almost sinister. The two of us walked for over an hour, up and down the dreary warehouse-lined street, we certain it all was hopeless, but unable to let go, and he stopping to look in each window we had just abandoned. About the fifth time we came abreast at a crosswalk, we, on impulse, and wild with excitement, asked for a match. Or not quite impulse, for we'd been told this was. a password. But when the stranger simply offered us a match, instead of suddenly inducting us into the mysteries, we, in desperation, having no idea what else to do, and being certain now we'd made a mistake, turned silly and admitted we didn't smoke. He insisted we try a cigarette, which we did, taking all the smoke the wrong way. So together, we walked out another half hour, with little conversation. We, hope rising and falling, began to drop every kind of hint we I could think of, but the stranger said nothing to indicate he had any notion

what we were aiming at. Our conversation in those days dwelt much on the hometown we'd just left, and since he provided no conversational gambits, the bastard, enjoying all our green bumbling, we soon were giving him most of the home town's vital statistics. And in a manner calculated to inform him subtly of our new libertin-

ism, we told him how religious we had been but no longer were. He told us only that he was a seaman, and had been to our home town.

All this managed to pass the night, and with the first shades of dawn, he, relenting, suggested that since we both were tired, we should go to his room -we'd passed it many times— and get some sleep. We were naive enough, and disappointed enough, to be quite certain that sleep was all he

meant.

His sudden secretiveness at entering the smelly old rooming house puzzled us. He whispered that the room belonged to a friend, who wouldn't under any circumstances be there, and who didn't mind. It was a cramped, musty and untidy room: three-quarter bed, washstand, face basin and wicker chair. Since the bed seemed narrow for comfortable sharing, we glumly offered to sleep in the chair. We rather insisted, though we began to be deeply stirred by the thought of cuddling up to him before sleeping. In our mind, we'd long since undressed him, and had found his body small, wiry, exciting. Now he undressed casually, meeting Our general expectation, though he kept on his long underwear. This embrassed us, since we'd stopped wearing underwear after reading they were debilitating. So we figeted, halfdressed, till he snapped off the light, and in one fast, clumsy motion, we dropped our pants and slid under the covers, bumping him sharply. Both of us were on the bony side. Ungentle as the contact was, it excited us, but he still intended us to take the initiative, and aside from being both cowardly and uninstructed, and never forward, before or since, we'd quite given up hope. It now seems hard to believe we could have gotten so far and still doubted his motives, but that was the way we were.

So, wanting to roll up in his arms and cry, we instead turned our back, and, in a fury of mixed emotions, pretended to go to sleep, even counterfeiting a bit of snoring. We kept wanting to touch him, and let it seem accidental, but we were tied by our fears. After his third cigarette, we tried conversation again, which dragged on past daylight.