The Greatest Lie Part 3

He was from a wealthy family from Chicago. He told me he was bisexual, but recently he had lost interest in sex completely. In a matter of fact manner, as if it were of no concern to him, or to me, he asked "Alex, are you gay?" Whatever I was, I had grown accustomed to hiding it, and so I replied that I was still trying to figure some things out about myself. He liked that answer, and said he was still trying to figure himself out too.

He was on the Board of the Alliance of Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered Students, and was in charge of a task force monitoring and investigating and reporting to the administration on any harassment of gays on campus. In my situation I thought he might be helpful, so I made the Friday afternoon coffee a regular event, and waited to see if anything developed. He certainly had the trappings of campus power. The Alliance had an office in the Student Union and Jon had a desk there. Of course, he also had TA’s office in the English Department. In academia, I knew from my dad’s experiences, office space was the talisman of power. It looked like Jon was doing well in that department.

The course work was demanding, and I really wanted to excel. If I had straight A’s, the Scholarship committee might be more forgiving when I tried to change my registration to a girl’s name. I just studied all the time, tried not to think about sex and stepped up my hormones to keep my libido suppressed. The only thing was, by this time, my breasts and ass were getting pretty noticeable. Even wearing baggy boys clothing and my hair piled up in a baseball cap, I still got wolf whistles when I walked by construction sites.

Finals were really hard, and the Gender Roles exam was particularly lengthy. I ran out of time and had to more or less sketch out my last answer. The day after the exam, Jon met me to talk about my answers. "Alex, I could tell you were on the right track on the question about Orlando, but you really never got to the point.