Law School

From Dad:

In about my third trimester of Law School, I decided that it was about time to get serious about my life. I had done well in School. I had "Booked" Criminal Law I, and another was on the way, Constitutional Law I . "Booked" meant getting the top grade in the course. The term originated from the fact that American Jurisprudence gave a copy of the relevant section of its law encyclopedia in the form of a special edition of that section to the holder of the top grade. I was also already Research Editor of the Law Review. In short, I was on my way.

I decided that that as an aspiring young lawyer-to-be with promise, I would need a wife. It follows that to get a wife, one must first have girl friends of which I was in dramatically short supply, being as I was, a Gay man! So I talked to my friend, Jack Hause, in whom I only had platonic interest. I told him that I wanted to meet a 'special' girl. He and his new wife, Sharon, came up with "the perfect match," a girl named Karen. She was a sophomore and had worked with Sharon at a jewelry store in their hometown, Pensacola, Florida. Jack and Sharon arranged a blind date for Karen and me. We were to meet at a school football Pep-Rally. We met, and I liked her from the start. She was pert and pretty. She was shorter than me, about 5'4." I, on the other hand, had attained my final height 6' 1." She had her hair in a bouffant, Ronnette's style. Karen was dressed in a Jackie Kennedy style, even though the assassination had occurred more than two years ago. I, as usual, was dressed in my preppy best, wearing my fraternity pin prominently displayed on the chest of my meticulously laundered, hand starched and ironed, Gant 100% cotton dress shirt.

After a stimulating date, I walked her to her dorm. I snuck a kiss on her cheek before saying, 'Good night.' I asked if she would mind if I called her in the future at which she confidently responded "Of course not!" I was as happy as a Rookie Yankee who had just hit his sixth Grand Slam. I was beginning to learn that I could successfully pull off the greatest scam of them all - the Gay man dating a woman in the heterosexual fashion. Sometimes I think that this is the cause of rampant homophobia. We can so easily disappear into the heterosexual world prior to our take-over. Nothing except the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or "The Homosexual Agenda" could be further from the truth. In fact, to the extent that this fear exists, it betrays a strong lack of confidence in heterosexual marriage and, indeed, in heterosexuality itself. I would say this to my heterosexual brothers, "Geez! fellows, if the social barriers that you have erected with the aid of the pernicious Church can be so easily penetrated by me, a gay man in preppy attire, may be, just maybe, you should consider abandoning such inept, ineffectual and inefficient barriers.

In any event, Karen and I began to date regularly. I escorted her to football games and to campus dances. These were boring affairs, no booze, the guys invariably all stood to one side of the room with the girls all together and giggling on the other side. I would take Karen for Sunday rides in my '63 Pontiac Lemans. Our favorite spot was in an affluent section of Gainesville, the town that surrounded the Law School. In this section the main street had a wide median strip that was a tree shaded park with a meandering creek that opened into a duck pond. We spent many a happy afternoon there watching the ducks swim by majestically.

During summer break (in the trimester system this consisted of only August, not the June through August that applies under the semester system) I drove to Pensacola to meet her parents. Karen came from a broken family. Her father, a character named Garland, was an outrageous alcoholic. He deserted her mother, Elizabeth, when Karen was about 9 years old. Elizabeth and Karen moved from High Point, N.C. to Pensacola to start a new life. There Elizabeth met, and subsequently married, Wayman, who adopted Karen. Elizabeth and Wayman were nice folks with good spirit. She kept a modest house on Fisher Street and worked for Pure Oil as an executive's secretary (this was before the term secretary was considered demeaning). Wayman was a Fireman with the municipal Fire Department. I especially liked him. He had an adventuresome spirit that we all remember to this day. Big Daddy, Wayman epitomized the spirit of the World War II veteran.

Unfortunately, even though Karen was what any up and coming attorney should prize, I simply had no sexual interest in any woman. Sex was a source of enormous anxiety to me. I could, and would, 'make-out.' I found that I could make a passable show of heterosexual interest, but there was no real passion. I feared that this lack would show if I attempted real sex. This anxiety substantially delayed my proposing marriage to her. But, by the time of my second trip to Pensacola, I had been elected Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review, which guaranteed me the best offers of employment in the state, and, incidentally, made finding a wife all the more urgent. So one night in my car parked outside a disco club on Pensacola Beach, I proposed marriage, and she accepted.