My disappointing, short-lived college career began one hot August afternoon in 1976. When I entered high school I had initially dreamt of becoming an astronomer, but harsh reality forced me to admit that I would never be able to master the mathematics involved in securing a degree in the field. A newfound love of architectural design coupled with the much less stringent mathematical requirements for such a degree sent me following in my father’s footsteps with intentions of becoming an architect. Both Arizona State and the University of Arizona had excellent architectural schools, but the reason I ultimately chose U of A instead of ASU was more practical than anything else: by going to U of A, I could move out of my parents’ house and have the freedom to start taking those first tentative steps out of the closet—and freshman calculus (see mastering mathematics, above) was not a requirement for admission to the architectural college there like it was at ASU.
I moved into a room on the third floor of Navajo Hall, a reinforced concrete relic from the late 1920s built under Arizona Stadium. It was obviously not one of the newer residence halls, but it had the largest rooms of any dorm on campus, and that was important to me. It was also one of the few at that time that had central cooling.
My first roommate was an Asian gymnast, whose name completely eludes me now. I knew from the beginning it wasn’t going to work. While I can now look back and say that undoubtedly some of my gay contemporaries might’ve jumped at the chance to room with a ripped 18 year old athlete, our class schedules were completely different and we had absolutely nothing in common.
Within a few weeks I had transferred to another room. My new roommate Karl, was a tall, blond, civil engineering major who had an enormous penis and wasn’t at all shy about it.
While I was still deeply in the closet, our next door neighbor, Andy, was most certainly not and from the very beginning he read me —as they say—like a cheap dime store novel. He knew my story even if I wasn’t quite sure of it myself, but was never cruel or malicious about it. If anything, I remember Andy being genuinely interested helping me come out, but I stubbornly refused to give in.
That changed somewhat beginning one Friday night in October. For some reason I found myself at the Flandrau Planetarium, touring the exhibits, when I made eye contact with a handsome boy on the other side of the room. I finally got the nerve and started a conversation. His name was David Miller, a guy from a small town in West Virginia.He too was a freshman, and we immediately hit it off. Despite my hopes, it was obvious he wasn’t gay, but we became good friends. He even came back up to Phoenix with me for Thanksgiving with my family.
I don’t remember exact details at this point, but David and I started hanging out more and more, and once Andy got wind of it, he started ribbing me about having finally found a boyfriend. That wasn’t the situation, but one thing led to another and Karl eventually got word of it. That began the end of our friendship and my time in Navajo Hall.
While the timing is fuzzy at this point, sometime around Thanksgiving David’s roommate had unexpectedly quit school and moved out, leaving David with the unpleasant prospect of having to pay for a single room. When he suggested I move in, I jumped at the opportunity since the situation in Navajo was rapidly deteriorating. He lived in Apache Hall, another older dorm (in the 1970s, all the dorms at U of A were “older”) that sat immediately west of Arizona Stadium. It was a 3-story red brick structure built in the late 1950s with cinder block interior walls and uncarpeted polished concrete floors. It reminded me of a prison minus the bars.
Shortly after the start of the spring semester, I decided it was time to stop kidding myself and everyone else around me. It was time to come out, and I felt my friendship with David was solid enough at that point that he would be the first person I told.
He took the revelation well, and after a long pause confessed he had a secret too. My heart fluttered. Was David about to come out to me?
No, but it was almost as good. His mom’s brother was Christine Jorgensen. “We don’t talk about Uncle George much any more.” I had no reason to doubt him; very few people really knew about Christine so I took it at face value.
We stayed up that night talking until nearly dawn, truly surprised he’d taken the news as well as he did.
(To be continued.)
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