BROTHERLY LOVE | PAGE 1, 2
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I was the one asked for a massage after a brutal rugby game, asked for advice about what a girlfriend must be thinking, and then asked by the girlfriend for advice about the boyfriend. I was expected to tell accurate fortunes with my old Tarot cards, and to play medium, soothing the house ghost when she was restless. At Halloween, my theatrical makeup kit was raided; and I nursed brothers through concussions and broken hearts, planned a winning homecoming skit, baked gingerbread, took photographs, plotted elaborate practical jokes and parties. In return, I valued my fraternity brothers, very much valued them, for the glorious, casual masculinity which they projected. Having grown up in a very small suburban home with three thuggish brothers who despised me, I felt privileged to be counted as an equal among smart, funny men who did not bruise, insult or wound me on a daily basis. Guys who did not ignore me, men who did not insist that the only version of masculinity worth having was their own. And yet ... I remained deeply closeted the entire time I lived at the Sigma Pi house. I declined alcohol, knowing full well what could happen if my inhibitions were to be loosened. I was beyond "virgin." This was eunuch-mode, convincing and complete, comfortable, in its way, even comforting. Falling asleep in the third floor common dorm room, surrounded by the breathing and snoring of twenty-five of my fraternity brothers was, well, nice. Comforting. There were a half-dozen or so beds into which I would gladly have crawled, but it never happened. I told myself (and I tell myself) that I wanted it to happen, and I wondered (and I wonder) if it would have been good for me, young and confused and impressionable as I was then. "That I would be good for the house and that the house would be good for me ..."

There were only three brothers in the house who ever knew that I was gay, one of them my ol' blue-eyed theater buddy, who of course saw the differences in my speech and behavior between frat house and backstage. Ray knew exactly what it meant, and he never condemned me, never seemed particularly dismayed by the agonizing-to-me revelation -- and never knew that I would have lied, cheated or stolen to have slept with him just for one night! Ray agreed with Gerry -- the handsome, brilliant, temperamental blond Adonis from my pledge class, the recipient of many an asexual backrub -- that I probably just had not met the right woman, and they kept introducing me to pretty sorority girls on campus.

At the end of my senior year, an outraged rumor went hissing through the house that one of the freshman pledges had been caught in bed with another man from his dorm. Turmoil!

What should they do? What should they say? How would this affect the "honor" of the house?

Should they confront him, blackball him, give him another chance? It was just a week or so until graduation, and maybe I was finally feeling the constraint of four semesters among handsome, untouchable men, but ... something snapped. I stood up in the weekly chapter meeting and declared that I was ashamed of them all, that they had never given the honor of the fraternity a moment's thought when seducing a drunk townie in the rec room or sweet-talking a sorority girl into a blowjob in the attic. I was angry, trembling with fury and with fright. How dare they? How could they? These men who prided themselves on their civility and their intelligence? And it was none of their business anyway, any more than their own sexual preferences and partners were the concerns of anyone else.

No one spoke after me. The meeting was adjourned, and not another word was said about the affair, and Dermot was duly initiated the next semester with the rest of his pledge class. I was valued by my fraternity brothers. I was to be their touchstone, their conscience, their innocent, hero-worshiping little brother who nevertheless knew how they ought to behave.

Just before I left campus for the summer, I wrote Dermot a note, telling him what I had said, why I had said it, and how I had felt while saying it -- I was declaring myself to someone, at last, at last! I told him I wished that I had shared my bed in the freshman dorm, too ... but then I graduated the next Sunday, and he and I never got a chance to talk about what it had been like to be gay in the fraternity. I have often wondered, if I had tried harder, spoken louder or spoken sooner, might I have had a life with one of my oh-so-idolized fraternity brothers? With Derek, who always kissed my cheek when blitzed on beer? With Rod, the 6-foot-5-inch ex-football jock, gentle and kind and searching for God or some substitute? Dan, the golden-haired pre-med student, eager to join the Marines after college? Dermot, surprised in his narrow bed with the handsomest freshman on campus? All married now, I think. I sang at most of their weddings.

Were there any other gay men in the composite photograph which I glance at maybe once a year? Forty young men, lots of raging hormones. Politically correct lesbigay politics says that there ought to have been three others, and the mathematical odds say at least one more ... but who was it? And why did we never recognize one another, and why did we never speak?

Silence is acceptable. Silence means that nobody needs to think about the 10 percent minority -- need not fear, need not discuss, need not allow space, effort or emotion. Call me grateful for my years with my fraternity brothers -- grateful for the ability to blend, to play the non-threatening chameleon, for the lessons on how to behave like a man in middle America -- and sick at heart, still, that those lessons were necessary at all. So what if I can chat with preacher or politician or farmer or jock, and appear at ease? It remains just appearance. It is all masks and pretense. I tell them nothing genuine and they hear nothing honest or real from me, all good manners and hail-fellow-well-met and expected modes of behavior and scarcely a word of it from the heart. And yet ...

I was valued. I was. Eunuch, virgin, other ... but I was wrapped for two years in the concern of friendly (not loving), smart (not sensitive) men, and it was wonderful to learn that not all men were like my brothers-by-blood, that there were men in the world who were tolerant and decent and who might value what I had and what I was. "That I would be good for the house ... that the house would be good for me ..." How had Ray known? Was I so obvious?

Derek used to kiss me on the cheek when he was drunk, just there. It was enough then. It would not be enough now ... but I would not be able to speak out today if I had not endured that anxious silence twenty years ago.
SALON | March 31, 1999

L.E. Wilson is a writer living in Chicago.

First published under the title "In Flux" in "Out on Fraternity Row: Personal Accounts of Being Gay in a College Fraternity" published by Alyson Publications in association with Lambda 10 Project, a national clearinghouse for gay, lesbian, bisexual Greek issues in college fraternities.