Senior year my college roommate was a chap by the name of Warren. He was gay. I knew it before we got an apartment together, I’d known Warren since we were in the dorm freshman year. He came out pretty early on which was a brave thing to do, especially in those days. Interesting thing was that some of us (ashamed to say this included me) used to make jokes about Warren’s sexuality before he came out. We weren’t certain that he was a homosexual but there were signs like his fastidiousness and a slight lisp and his never going on dates or talking about girls. But once he came out there were no more jokes. It would have been crude to make “gay jokes” about an actual gay man that we knew and liked. That’s true too, everyone liked Warren. He was the nicest person you’d ever meet, never had a bad word to say about anyone.
Warren was among the guys I drank with and when he’d had a few he’d sometimes discuss the difficulties of being gay, especially because he came from a small town in the Salinas Valley. He’d managed to find a classmate in high school who was also gay and they discreetly “saw one another.” Still he could hardly be himself least of all with his family which was pretty conservative. He did come out to an older cousin who lived in San Francisco and that cousin invited him to the city a few weekends where Warren was able to meet other gay teens. But now that he was in college, my friend was going to be totally open and even planned — as difficult as it would be — to come out to his family in the Summer after freshman year.
Over the next few years Warren and I saw one another from time to time, we traveled in the same circles and were often at parties together. He always appreciated me for the fact that, in his words, I “really listened and really cared.” Plus we both had similarly bizarre senses of humor and shared the same tastes in literature and film. It was late in our junior year that we were talking on campus and discovered we were both looking for someone to share an apartment with. I didn’t hesitate to accept Warren’s offer to look for a place together. Of course one acquaintance snickered and flat out asked me if I was gay too. Never mind that I’d had several girlfriends by this time. I shook it off.
Warren was a great roommate. I know this is supposed to be a stereotype but Warren was very neat and never minded cleaning up. Our apartment was immaculate. And, of course, Warren was still a really nice person. We were both pretty busy with our studies and both dating. Warren had broken up with a boyfriend over the Summer and was “playing the field.” I started regularly seeing a girl named Cherrise who was a freshman. Seniors didn’t usually date freshmen in college but I was smitten. Also white males didn’t usually date black females, but again, I was smitten.
It was a good year. Warren and I got along well, I was having a passionate love affair and had been accepted to grad school at Boston University. Warren seemed happy, he had a rich social and love life and had also been accepted to grad school, in his case at Colombia. We’d be a few hours a way from each other and be able to visit now and again and see each other’s cities.
It was late in the school year when everything fell apart. It was a Thursday night, we’d both been at home studying for over several hours. It was 10:00 when I announced that I was done hitting the books for the night and was going to celebrate with a drink. Warren said that he too was caught up with school and would join me. I mixed a couple of martinis. We started talking and decided that a second drink was in order. Soon we had a third and presumably more, I can’t recall. Somehow we ended up in Warren’s bed where, much to my surprise, we were having sex. It was my first time with a man. I remember enjoying myself somewhat but it was nowhere near as exciting nor fulfilling as making love to a woman. For his part it seemed Warren quite enjoyed our coupling.
The next morning was awkward. I slipped out of Warren’s bed, feeling guilty but more than that as if I done the wrong thing. If I had to have had a homosexual experience I wished it had been with a stranger rather than my roommate. I showered and dressed and when I went to the kitchen to make coffee and have cereal there was Warren, naked.
“I had a nice time with you last night,” he said. I turned beet red.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed, I won’t tell a soul,” he giggled.
“Look Warren, it was nice, really, but it’s also not my thing. I guess it was something I needed to get out of my system. I hope that doesn’t sound bad, or insensitive.”
“No, I understand.” But Warren’s voice had dropped, his head was lowered and quickly he returned to his room. While I was eating he re-emerged.
“It’s so fucking hard for me,” he said. “I’m sick of screwing other queers. I want to make it with straight men. I want a straight man. I guess I thought I could convert you. I know it’s stupid and I’m sorry for saying it. I know I’ve had great relationships with other queer men and will again. But there’s something empty for me about it all. I guess I’m just fucked up and need a therapist.”
I told Warren that I agreed, he should find someone to talk to. If nothing else he needed to talk about his family which had not responded well to his coming out. Warren’s father was no longer speaking to him.
Then Warren began to sob. And sob. And sob. I was not used to comforting anyone who was crying, let alone another man but I did my best. I held Warren and patted his back and tried to soothe him. After a few minutes he stopped, got up wordlessly and returned to his room, he stopped at the door, turned and thanked me.
In the days that followed Warren was clearly depressed. I blamed myself and eventually told Warren so.
“Nonsense, this has nothing to do with what happened between us and even if it did, something was going to be the catalyst.”
“Promise me you’re not going to do anything drastic.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, I’m no drama queen and I love life too much. I’ll be fine. Maybe I just need a steady beau.”
“Or you could start seeing a counselor, or shrink.”
“Romantically?” He giggled.
“Glad your sense of humor is in tact.”
Warren ended up doing both. He’d had an on-and-off relationship with a junior, named Tony from near his hometown who lost his “virginity” to Warren in the Fall. He also started seeing a psychiatrist. “Dear old Dad has cut me off emotionally but he still sends a big fat check every month, so I can afford it.”
The rest of the school year went smoothly. I gradually extricated myself from my relationship with Cherise as I’d be moving out of town in June anyway. Warren and Tony became, in my roomie’s words, “hot and heavy.” Analysis worked for Warren whose depression symptoms eased.
I occasionally thought of the night I spent in Warren’s bed and felt embarrassed, but I didn’t really regret it.
In the Summer I moved to Boston and Warren to New York. We stayed in touch and visited each other’s cities in the Fall. After a few months, Warren had a steady fella. Cherise transferred to Northeastern in the middle of the school year so we re-kindled our romance.
Letters stopped coming from Warren in the late Spring. I tried calling him but never got an answer. In the Summer I was doing research in New York so visited his apartment. He’d moved out and not left a forwarding address. A neighbor told me Warren’s father had died suddenly and that he’d temporarily moved back home to be with his mother and sister.
I was pretty busy after that. Then spent a year in Europe. When I came back Cherise and I married, I got a job and then our first child was born. I only occasionally thought of Warren but never got around to trying to locate him.
It was ten years after I last saw him that he sent me a letter. I’d had a few articles appear in national magazines and Warren had seen one and somehow from there got my address.
He was living in San Francisco, in the third year of what he called his “most intense and meaningful relationship yet.” Warren was now a lawyer and active in the then burgeoning Gay rights movement. We corresponded for a few years and finally saw one when I visited the Bay Area on business. It had been fourteen years since our last meeting. We had a grand time catching up and the next day he introduced me to his partner, who I very much liked.
We stayed in touch and Warren visited me once in New York. A few months after that visit I got a letter from Warren in which he revealed that he had been diagnosed with AIDS which was then ravaging the gay community. I was going to be in the Bay Area in a few months and promised Warren I’d visit him.
I don’t know if you’d say the timing of my visit was exactly fortuitous. As it happened I arrived a day before Warren’s memorial service.
I wept unashamedly when I got the news. I attended the service and wept again. Warren had been one of the best friends I’d ever had. Now when I think about the night we spent together I’m proud. Damn proud.
