And so Lee and Robin assisted Dr. Rad in his numerous vegetable, fruit, and red clover projects throughout the summer. They began work at sunup, stopped for a brief lunch, and worked until sundown. Their assignments varied. Some days they spent outdoors maintaining crops and occasionally field equipment. Other days they worked in the greenhouses harvesting seeds, tending to seedlings, assisting Dr. Rad with field experiments, and keeping the environment sterile. On lab days, they collected, recorded, and organized data.
Lee and Robin often went into town for dinner, after which Lee would return to his room in the lab and Robin to her parents’ home nearby.
The research projects fascinated Lee, and while Dr. Rad was generous with his time in explaining things, Lee often couldn’t understand some of it due to Dr. Rad’s thick accent and rapid speech, and there were only so many times he felt he could ask him to repeat himself.
When Lee wasn’t thinking about the work he was doing, he thought about Robin. She was the first girl he had ever known as more than just a casual acquaintance, and he thought he might be attracted to her. He suspected other boys his age would have fantasized about being in bed with someone as pretty as Robin, but when he forced himself to think about what it would feel like to be close to her, really close to her, it did nothing for him. At first, he rationalized that by telling himself she just wasn’t his type. But that only triggered the question as to what was his type. I have no type.
One day when Dr. Rad was away at a lecture, Lee and Robin took a longer-than-normal lunch break. Eventually, he got up the nerve to ask her if she had a boyfriend.
“No, silly. I’m a homo,” she replied.
What? He didn’t know any homosexuals, nor had he ever heard anyone utter that word before. Isn’t that just grand. The first girl I think I may like is a homosexual…the second girl, if you count Catherine.
“I’m sorry...I mean...no, I’m not sorry. I mean...I am sorry but not that you’re a homosexual. Actually, I don’t know why I’m sorry.” He paused to catch his breath. “Can we start over?”
Robin took it in stride. “I’m the one who should apologize. I know it shocks people to hear me say that. I just don’t hide it like some others do. I refuse to. If someone doesn’t like me for who I am—a homo—then that’s just too bad. I am who I am.”
Lee liked her style and high level of self-confidence.
“Can I ask you something very personal?” he asked. “If you don’t want to talk about it, just say so.”
Robin nodded.
“How do you know you’re a homosexual?” His stomach knotted up as he waited for her to answer.
“First of all, you can say homo. Or even queer. And gay is okay even for girls, but I hate the word lesbian for some reason. Anyway, I knew from when I was just a kid I was different from the other girls. I didn’t know why. I just knew I was. Then in fifth grade, Bobby Wentworth kissed me. I didn’t see it coming. I was so appalled, I ran into the bathroom and washed my mouth out with soap. Looking back at it, I would say that was probably the beginning.”
She had known she was different from other girls. That sounded familiar.
“Do your parents know?”
“They do now.”
“And they’re okay with it?” He wished he hadn’t said that. “I mean...”
“I know what you mean. It’s okay. At first, they thought—like a lot of other people do—that I needed to get treated for it. It took time to convince them it was no longer considered a mental illness. Probably the worst few months of my life. But I have very loving parents. Eventually, they accepted it and me for who I am. My mother has even attended a few PFLAG meetings.”
“PFLAG?”
“Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. I think if my parents had their druthers, I wouldn’t be this way. ’Course, if I had my druthers, I wouldn’t be this way either.”
“You don’t have a choice?”
“Not the way I look at it.”
“So do you have a...uh, a girlfriend?”
“No, not at the moment. Last year I dated someone for almost ten months until I discovered she was cheating on me...with a man of all things. So we broke up. God, I felt betrayed.” She didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I really loved her. I haven’t dated anyone since.” She paused. “Okay, so now you know way more about me than I do you. What’s your story, Lee? Do you have a girlfriend?”
Since Robin had talked about herself so openly, Lee thought he should do the same, even though he didn’t have that much to tell. Still, he worried about what she would think of him if he told her everything.
“No, I don’t have a girlfriend. I’ve never had a girlfriend. In fact, I’ve only been on one date in my whole life, and that was a disaster.”
“How come?”
Lee shook his head. “Long story.”
“I would think girls would find you cute.”
Lee blushed. “I don’t know about that.”
“Do you have any brothers and sisters?”
“I have two older brothers who are...well, normal.”
“Like you’re not?”
“That’s a long story too.”
“Well, you seem perfectly normal to me.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek—his first kiss, and from a homosexual.
“Hey, why don’t we go out one night. You can take me to a regular bar for a drink, and then I’ll take you to one of my hangouts. It’ll be fun!”
“I don’t know...”
“C’mon. I haven’t been out in weeks, and something tells me you need to get out more too. Just for a couple of drinks. Friday, after we finish up here.”
“Well...okay.”
After thinking it through, Lee decided his plan with Robin wasn’t such a good idea, and over the course of the next two days, he practiced a few different ways to tell her he wasn’t going to go through with it. But the more he thought about it, the more he found he wanted to support someone who had also suffered the consequences of being different. And what harm could there be in it?
On Friday, they wrapped up their work in the lab by six o’clock and drove in separate cars to Champaign. Not being familiar with the town, Lee relied on Robin to pick both bars. Their first stop was The Flyin’ Frog, not too far from the U of I campus, on a busy street with many other bars. Hundreds of college students roamed the sidewalks and streets, laughing, talking, and obviously having a good time.
Inside the Flyin’ Frog, twenty or so people Lee and Robin’s age sat at the bar or at one of the tiny tables that surrounded the empty dance floor. He approached the bar and ordered two beers while Robin stood on the periphery. Beers in hand, he walked across the dance floor and handed one to Robin.
He glanced around the room. “Not very lively, is it?” he asked Robin.
“Pretty early. Most kids don’t even come out on a Friday night until ten or so.”
They drank their beers and watched two couples slow-dance to In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins.
A half hour later, it was time to move on.
Rosco’s, one of Robin’s frequent haunts, was in another section of town on a far less travelled street. Lee followed Robin to a parking lot behind the nightclub and then spent ten minutes trying to find a place to park.
“They draw quite a crowd, don’t they?” he asked her after parking his car in the last row of the lot.
“You should see it for their late show—cars parked a half-mile up and down the streets in all directions.”
“There’s a show?”
“Just wait, my naive little hetero. You’re about to be enlightened.”
Lee opened the door, allowing a deafening blast of noise to escape from inside the bar. A man’s voice seemed to come out of nowhere. “That’ll be five dollars each,” he said.
Lee looked around for whoever it was who asked him for the five dollars, but all he saw was a very unattractive girl with bright red hair wearing a blue boa around her neck. The poor girl had glopped so much makeup onto her
face that it looked distorted.
Robin nudged him in the back. “Pay the lady, Lee.”
“Pay who?”
Robin took the ten-dollar bill from his hand and handed it to the redhead. “C’mon. I’ll buy the first round,” she said to Lee.
Trying not to think too much about what he had just seen, Lee followed Robin through the crowd, nudging his way through scores of mostly young men, many of whom wore outlandish outfits. Lots of leather. Lots of feathers. And sometimes not much else. One man wore nothing but a leather jacket and a pair of very brief briefs.
They eventually reached the bar where three topless male bartenders were serving up drinks. Robin ordered two beers. As soon as two bar stools opened up, they sat down.
Lee turned around to see what was going on behind him. The crowded dance floor bustled with men making explicitly sexual dance moves. They didn’t appear to be in couples, at least not for very long. Like moths to flames, they were constantly being drawn to other parts of the dance floor in search of a new partner.
Embarrassed, Lee looked away from the dancers only to spot two gold-colored cages hoisted ten feet above their heads, each holding a nearly naked male moving his body in an even more provocative way than those on the dance floor. The more Lee observed, the more foolish he felt being there.
“So...what do you think?” Robin asked.
He turned around to face her. “I think I’m way out of my element here, but now that I’ve said that aloud, I’ve felt out of my element my whole life, so I don’t know why this shouldn’t be any different.”
Robin smiled. “Just think of it as a new kind of different.”
Lee felt something rub up against his leg and turned to find a shirtless man about his age smiling at him.
“Hello,” he said to the man.
“Hi there. You can call me LaRue. Actually, you can call me anything you want, honey.” He held out his hand, palm down. Lee wasn’t sure what to do with it, so he did nothing. The man frowned. “Don’t tell me. You’re not a friend of Dorothy’s?”
“I beg your pardon.”
Robin poked him in the back. “He’s coming on to you, but he doesn’t know if you’re his type or not,” she whispered.
“No, I don’t think so,” he replied to the man. He glanced down and saw he wasn’t wearing anything but a pair of black briefs and a pink scarf tied around his waist.
“Too bad. You’re cute.”
“Nice meeting you,” Lee said, now feeling completely uncomfortable.
He didn’t know where to rest his eyes—the mirror behind the bar made it impossible to avoid looking at the bizarre characters who surrounded him. He focused on their faces, as that region of their bodies was the least shocking. He gave them credit for one thing—they knew how to have a good time.
Lee guzzled the last of his beer and turned to Robin. “I think I’ve seen enough. Are you almost finished?”
“You got it. Let’s go.”
They were halfway to the door when it burst open. The first policeman to enter held a megaphone to his mouth. “No one leave!” he shouted. “This is a raid!” A stream of policemen rushed in after him, causing complete pandemonium. The overlapping high-pitched screams from the patrons made it impossible to hear what the police were saying.
Lee turned around to seek out Robin, but she was nowhere to be seen. Several people headed toward the back of the bar, and Lee followed suit.
But before he got more than a few feet, a policeman grabbed his arm and said, “You’re not going anywhere.”
He pushed Lee into a corner with about twenty-five others and said, “If any of you move, you’ll be tased.”
Lee stood among the other detainees, petrified of what was going to happen next. Where was Robin? Had she gotten away?
They were escorted to one of several paddy wagons parked in front of the nightclub. Lee took a seat next to the guy at the bar who had hit on him.
“First bust?” he asked.
Lee nodded. “What are we being busted for?”
“Oh, they’ll come up with something, you can be sure. They think if they harass us enough, we’ll go away.”
“You’ve been arrested before?”
“Many times, honey.”
A policeman slammed the back door shut, and a minute later, the vehicle started moving.
“What happens now?” he asked LaRue.
“They’ll put us all in a cell, and then book us one by one. We’ll be out in a few hours.”
LaRue turned out to be right. Squeezed into a holding cell, they were called out one by one for booking. Robin was not among them. Lee was one of the first pulled out. They searched him and then took down his name, address, date of birth, social security number, and place of employment. When he told them he was a student, they asked for the name of his school. After being photographed and fingerprinted, he was led back to the cell.
When everyone had been booked, they were each handed a Desk Appearance ticket that included a court date. The charge was public lewdness. They were told they could leave.
Lee followed the others outside, and not knowing what else to do, stood with them while they talked about how they were going to get back to their cars. The group headed down the street. Lee followed.
They walked several blocks until they came upon a drug store. One of the more conservatively dressed men went in and called for several taxis. It was a twenty-minute ride back to Rosco’s, four people to a taxi.
Lee stewed the entire weekend over what happened, highly upset with Robin for abandoning him. He didn’t have her home phone number, so he couldn’t call her, but she could have called him at the lab.
When Robin arrived to work the next day, Lee was talking with Dr. Rad about their tasks for the morning. She joined them but avoided eye contact. They were assigned to pruning peach saplings in the main greenhouse, and as soon as Dr. Rad was out of earshot, he confronted her.
“Where the hell were you Friday night? Do you know what happened to me?”
“I heard. Look, I’m sorry. But when I saw that door burst open, I knew what was coming. My parents are understanding, but not that understanding. And my father being dean and everything...and I was there with a fake ID, so I would get whatever you got plus drinking as a minor. I had to book it out of there.”
“Thanks a heap.”
“I’m sorry. What did they get you with?”
“Public lewdness. And they asked me for the name of my school. Why would they need to know that?”
“What’s your school’s policy on students having an arrest record?”
“I have no idea. This may come as a surprise to you, but that subject has never come up for me before now.”
“I don’t blame you for being mad at me. I never should have taken you there.”
“You got that right. And you could have called me over the weekend…you know, to see if I made it out okay. I would have called you, but I don’t have your number.”
She jotted down her number and handed it to him.
I don’t need it now.
He thought he knew her. Now he wasn’t so sure who she was—a friend who panicked and ran or just some self-absorbed girl who couldn’t care less about what happened to him. He didn’t know if he was supposed to forgive someone for doing something like that.
Lee and Robin were cordial to each other as they finished up their internship that summer. The charges against Lee were dropped, and Robin offered to compensate him for any expenses he had incurred due to the arrest. He declined the offer. They shook hands on their last day and wished each other well.
* * *
Back at Cornell, Lee was assigned to the same private dorm room he’d had the previous year. When he arrived, an envelope with his name on it was waiting for him, summoning him to the office of the dean of students.
Lee’s stomach churned as he walked across campus to get there. Since the lewdness charges had been dropped, he didn’t think that was why he was being s
ummoned, but he couldn’t think of any other reason.
Dean Larsen was an older man, with an expressionless face and imposing demeanor. His six-and-a-half-foot frame towered over Lee.
He led Lee into his office. “Sit down, son,” he said to him.
The dean stared at Lee for several seconds and then looked down at the open file in front of him.
“Public lewdness.” He crossed his arms over his protruding belly and peered at Lee over his reading glasses. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Those charges were dropped, sir.”
“I didn’t ask you that.”
“A bar I was in was raided. Maybe there were people in there guilty of lewd behavior. I don’t know. But I wasn’t one of them. They just hauled us all to the station.”
“You go to Rosco’s often?”
“That was my first time.”
“How was it for you?”
Lee felt his throat tighten. “I was clearly outside of my normal element, sir. A so-called friend invited me there as her guest. I had no idea what I was getting into. And I can assure you I was not involved in any lewd conduct. That’s not me. Never has been nor will it ever be.”
“But being there does demonstrate poor judgment at the very least. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes, I agree.”
“Are you aware of the school’s admission policy on applicants with arrest records?”
“No, but I can guess what it is.”
“When was the last time you read our Student Code of Conduct manual?”
“I read it at the beginning of my first year here.”
“I suggest you read it again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I could recommend a suspension to the Disciplinary Committee, and given who’s on that committee, I’d say your chances of being suspended are pretty good. You could get up to a year.”
“But the charges were dropped.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He looked down at the file. “Says here the case was dismissed after you were arrested.” He leaned back in his chair. “Or I could recommend a year’s probation. Of course, probation means exclusion from all extracurricular activities.”
“Like attending football games and such?” Lee couldn’t care less about football.
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