But rationality was not on the agenda; the straights' reaction was horrifying. Such witty slogans as "Necrophiliac Thursday" and "Child Molesters' Friday" were scrawled on the signs. I cannot quite express the depth of resentment I felt and feel at being lumped together with people who screw dead bodies or seven-year olds. My love is mature and adult, and requires mature adult reciprocation.

My homophobic roomate announced with disgust, but with authority, that the purpose of Gay Wednesday was to help the "queers" identify sexual prospects. It never occured to him that gay people did anything but perpetually screw. He was insensitive to the idea that maybe gay people wanted to have sympathetic friends and live normal lives. I certainly wished I had a roomate who didn't heap on anti-gay abuse.

Shortly after Gay Wednesday, the president of HRGSA, Joe for now, wrote to The Crimson to respond to the anti-gay mania, and to try to explain the purposes of Gay Wednesday. He signed the letter. I was positively astounded. I could not believe that there was a human being alive with the courage to sign that letter. As it turned out, I knew him--he was in a class of mine--and because of that letter, I came to admire and respect him as I respected few people in the world.

The straight reaction to his letter was sadly predictable. My roommate sagely intoned that the writer had signed his letter only to use The Crimson to invite other queers to his bed. He denied that the signature required courage.

For the rest of the year, I heard references to that letter. Freshmen at the Union no longer told "fag" jokes, they told Joe jokes. I became aware of just how much more respectable--how much more of a man--was a guy who would put himself on the line for the sake of other gay people than were the chickenshits who ridiculed him from the safety of their little groups of gutless friends.

It was that fall, during my freshman year, that I first realized that I would eventually "come out"--openly acknowledge my homosexuality--and live as a gay man, not as an ostensible straight one. I knew it would take time before I was strong enough--it took me two more years.

I cannot really say why I wanted to come out. There was no Big Reason. I can only say that I did not want to live a lifetime without love--nor, of course, without sex--and the only way to avoid that deprivation was to tell other gay men I was gay. But I could not stand the idea of living a double life--being gay among gay people, appearing straight among straights. That kind of double life seemed worse to me than what I was already doing--passing as straight to both gays and straights. So I knew that when I finally came out, I would come out to everybody, not just to gay people.

The problem was, I was not only afraid of straight bigots, but also of gay people, though for different reasons. I knew that gay people, unlike straights, would not judge me, ridicule me, fear me, and hate me. But I was afraid of appearing confused, less than totally together. I was afraid of seeming weak and troubled. And I was deathly afraid of seeming unsophisticated and inexperienced.

I had decided, more or less subconsciously, that I would come out by going to a meeting of HRGSA. But I had preconceptions about the group that very closely matched what most straights think about it. I pictured a small, tightly-knit group of worldly, experienced gay men who had conquered all the difficulties of being gay in a straight world.

Because of these preconceptions, I felt that I couldn't go to just any HRGSA meeting. I thought that my appearance at a meeting would be so conspicuous as to emphasize only the fact that I had never been there before--which, I figured, would make obvious to all that I was unsure of myself, that I was troubled. But if I waited until the first meeting of the next year, people there would just figure I was a freshman, and would not then conclude that I was just coming out, just getting it together. As unfounded as my fear was, it was genuine, and I am convinced that many, perhaps hundreds of gay people at Harvard who have not come out share the same fear.

The group itself fed this fear. It appeared as impersonal, imposing, almost secretive. Its posters announced date, time, place--period. No mention was ever made of what was done, who should come; no encouragement was extended through the keyhole of my closet door. When a poster appeared--"HRGSA meeting, 8 p.m. Wednesday, Phillips Brooks House"--I assumed that all the other gay people knew precisely what went on at meetings, and responded, en masse, as if to a secret signal in the posters.

Another fear had nothing to do with gay people, but with men, generally, at Harvard. Harvard men are the most threatened, most insecure men in the world. Harvard men are incredibly afraid to be less than totally masculine, cool, heroic, with it, sophisticated, charming. They try hard, too hard, to compensate for their insecurity by posing as confident and self-assured. And because Harvard men are highly skilled socially, they largely succeed. But in the process, they scare the hell out of each other--each one is convinced that everyone else's calm front is real, and that only he is in fact unsure of himself. So, for reasons irrelevant to my sexuality, I was afraid to appear to other people--even other gay people--as unsophisticated and inexperienced.

So I waited through sophomore year and went to the first meeting junior year. Apparently, many, many gays at Harvard shared my fears. If Kinsey's estimate that almost 10 per cent of Americans are predominately homosexual is applied to Harvard, there are roughly 600 undergraduate homosexuals. (There are 180 people in Matthews, 18 gay Matthews residents; 140 marching band members, 14 gay bandies. Gay people are not "them," somewhere "out there." If you live in a quint next to a quint, one of you is probably gay, whether you know it or not, whether you like it nor not.)

But there were fewer than 25 people at the meeting. When four or five people I had already known walked in, I thought in amazement, "He's gay?"; "She's gay?" Gays, just like straights, are unable to tell at a glance who is gay--we have no secret radar.

The meeting was largely organizational. We elected officers, and voted to change meeting times so that the Radcliffe feminist group's meeting time wouldn't conflict with ours--so gay women on campus could attend both groups. We listened to a short presentation by a representative of the Cambridge Gay Political Caucus, who talked about Saundra Graham's campaign for state rep from Cambridge. We broke up for cider and cookies, and I was intimidated by the fact that everyone but me seemed to know everyone else, so I left.