The usual disclaimers apply. Hit the back button if you're not supposed to be here, and you know who you are. The story is copyrighted. Permission to share with commercial intent or to reprint can come only from the author.

The contents are pretty much true, although names and some events have been modified. For those of you who don't know, the gay world was not all that gay in 1956, when this happened. Scary times for queer folk, academic types definitely included. For one example, I couldn't take a course from the great American Lit scholar, F. O. M., because he'd jumped out of a window a few years before. R. C., dramatist and ace teacher, was deep in the Eliot House closet. N. A., at Smith, would be destroyed by scandal in 1960. These are just a few of the more famous guys. The spirit of Joe McCarthy and, hmm, Roy Cohn still hovered over our heads. Even though, as I soon discovered, Harvard was and is loaded with gays.

But enjoy. "Cumming of Age at Harvard" will run in about four parts. If it's too hi-falutin' or slow moving for your taste, go someplace else. Comments to dorsalslit@hotmail.com.

CUMMING OF AGE AT HARVARD, PART ONE.

For S.S. In Memoriam.

Cambridge. November, 1956.

The temp had dropped, and fast. Up till now, mid-November, I'd wallowed in a dry, bright Cambridge autumn, filled with days that make you want to take a book down to the banks of the Charles and pretend to read it. But tonight I'd need that heavy overcoat with the raglan sleeves I'd bought on sale last spring at the Coop. Hmmm. What else would I wear? Boxers? Briefs? Jock? Face it, I was plenty nervous. Maybe that's why I was obsessing about clothes instead of . . . what was really on my mind.

I'd been hopeless at dinner. Couldn't keep my mind on anything. Ten-second attention span. Dropped my fork three times. My roomies couldn't help smirking over their gray Friday-night mutton. "Heavy date. Heavy date. Old JP's sweating his heavy date."

That's all they knew about it. And yeah. I was getting sweaty. And yeah. It promised to be a real heavy date, if that's the right word. Mind-blowing assignation might be more like it.

We split up after dinner. Jorge the science nerd headed for the lab. Rick had some stuff to do at the Crimson before picking up his girlfriend. I went back to the room to grab a shower and do some more fretting. Did I need another shave? Any new zits? Towelling off, I stared hard into the mirror I used for shaving, tie-knotting, and, um, other more personal things. Same gawky frame, six feet plus, 140 pounds, 29 inch waist. Defined pecs. Short brown hair and big brown eyes. Absolutely smooth skin. Dangling smugly from its dark pubic bush, a more or less virginal cock--long and straight and narrow just like me. Good old John Thomas. I gave him a tug and he thickened right up, friendly-like.

And, dammit, I still looked about fifteen.

What the hell. Maybe after tonight, whatever happens, I'll look different. Older. More worldly. Sexy instead of sweet. I was weary of being taken for Tony Perkins's scrawny kid brother. So I splashed on the cologne (Jean-Marie Farina, if you have a need to know), climbed into the obligatory Brooks button-down, the dark tweed suit, rep tie and old cordovans, and took another long look in the mirror. I hadn't jacked off for a couple of days now, saving myself up? And maybe this might be the last night for Narcissus?

Oh, yes. Tonight promised to be something entirely different, as the Monty Python crew would one day remark. Personally, I'd been in a state ever since Wednesday when Mr. Stone, my French prof, had asked me to hang around for a minute after class. I thought I was about to get it for my shitty pronunciation. Au contraire, as it turned out. Stone mentioned that he had a couple of tickets for the Harvard-Yale glee club concert at Sanders Theatre on Friday night before The Game. Did I want to go? With him?

Wait a minute. With him? With the instructor at a college notorious for its icy climate for student-faculty relationships, where undergrads prided themselves on their independence and the faculty was only too happy to keep its distance? Besides, Stone--I mean Mr. Stone--was a teacher, for God's sake. And I was a skinny sophomore from way out West, working my ass off trying to keep up with the Andover-and-Exeter crowd.

Oh, the prof and I had spoken once or twice after class, usually because I'd been day-dreaming and missed catching the assignment. So, in a way, the invitation wasn't entirely out of the blue, I guess. But there was another thing. I thought I'd been intercepting glances from the guy during class. At first, we'd both looked away, and I figured, no big deal. But a couple of times this past week the eye-meets had lingered on both our parts--only for a second, but long enough to make me wonder. Was the good prof playing the flirt? Checking me out? And was I, consciously or not, hitting back? Even watching his crotch? I got an odd feeling that something might be about to happen that I didn't altogether want to happen but that I knew was probably going to happen anyway.

So when Mr. S made his concert proposition, I said yes, without even thinking, and immediately went breathless. Like I could hear somebody else doing the talking. Sure, I'd come by his apartment around 7:30 on Friday. Sure, we'd walk over to Sanders together. Sure, it was only a concert. Sure.

Most of me suspected what was on the agenda. And if my suspicions were right, I figured that besides losing my cherry, I could get kicked out of school, he could get fired, and we could both find ourselves in a Cambridge Police Court. I had plenty of time to think it over, change my mind. I could tell him after class on Friday. Something had come up. My uncle was in town. Anything. I had his number. I could even call him up and say I was sick.

And I was, wasn't I? Because when I thought about Friday night, I got scared and John Thomas got excited. Who was boss here, anyway--me or Little John? I could always chicken out. But chicken out of what? Nothing? Another chorus of "Fair Harvard" followed by the ever-popular "Gaudeamus Igitur" followed by a beer? So screw it. Nothing venture, nothing win. Stone was probably harmless. I didn't call, and now it was quarter past seven, and I was getting into that blasted overcoat, winding into a muffler, and heading out of Kirkland House. North to Trowbridge Street and who knows what.

Besides being nervous as hell, I had plenty to think about as I trudged up cold Dunster Street. Passing the Indoor Athletic Building, the IAB on the right, I remembered last year's athletic scam. Freshmen men had to pass a swimming test. We also had to take some version of PE. Seeing as how my favorite sport was a solitary one, performed daily in private, it didn't qualify for college credit. So I figured it out. No PE for me. I'd hang around the IAB pool for an hour or so every week, perfecting my, um, breast-stroke so I could blast the swim test.

And, as it turned out, getting an eyeful. Bathing suits were a no-no, unless you were one of the hunks on the swim team sporting big bulges in their black Speedos. Every Monday afternoon about fifteen of us slacker freshmen would stroll bare-assed out to the pool where we'd be obliged to jump into the water for a few minutes. Our instructor, if you could call him that, was a fat, bored junior assistant swimming coach with disgusting genitals who lacked much interest in our aquatic ability. He just wanted to check us all out, and after a few desultory splashes, we hopped out of the water and spent the rest of the hour following coach's good example--checking each other out while conducting high-minded conversations, like about who was scoring what with whom.

I'd always taken a healthy, I called it, interest in masculine equipment, mine own in particular, especially after I found out that I could get about half of my meat into my mouth whenever I wanted to. Despite an occasional backache and what the Boy Scout Manual hinted about crotch naughtiness, I'd spent many a happy evening fucking my mouth. But opportunities for ogling and accidentally bumping into boycock in the high school locker room ceased entirely when I'd got excused from PE to do musical stuff. The IAB pool offered a brave new world of cocks on parade--fat ones, middlin' ones, most cut like me and a few like those dreamy uncut Hispanics back home. (How did I know about those guys? That's another story.) At long, long last, John Thomas got out of my pants and invited to a party.

Pretty soon we had a kind of club going. Nearly everybody figured out the same scam. We could all more or less swim. But what better place to hang out for a weekly starkers session? Fourth century Athens had nothing on us except, maybe, some massive erections. (I'd checked out the dirty vase-painting at the Fogg.) Among the regulars, Warner was a townie philosophy major--medium build, low-hanging balls, dark brown dick. Andy was pale and small and uncut. Steve was an older guy, like 24 maybe--stocky, hairy, and Greek with a perpetual semi-stiffie. Stearns was the major stud of the group, and did he ever know it--at the pool everybody called him Tripod. And John Thomas measured up to the company pretty well.

It didn't take long, maybe two minutes, before I realized that, hey, I really liked to ogle guys' dicks. And do some fantasizing when I jerked off back at the dorm. There'd been the usual furtive junior high/high school self-abuse sessions when I was a kid back home. But this was different. We were all college men now, right? It was time for the real thing, wasn't it? And for me, all that that had meant so far was dreaming about Steve's hairy body and thick, stiff, uncut, experienced, ex-Marine cock whenever I pounded away.

OK, OK. Cut the dream episodes. I was well past the IAB by now and almost across the Yard. One thought led to another. Forget Corporal Steve for a minute. How old was Stone, anyhow? Since he was a prof, he must be ancient, right? But no. I knew he was just another overworked graduate student, probably teaching a couple of sections to pay the bills. What--maybe six or eight years older than me? How ancient was twenty-six? From what he'd said in class from time to time, I knew he'd lived in Paris for a while. Worldly guy. Not bad looking, with a sort of Monty Clift crooked smile and plenty of attitude. Nice build. And I couldn't resist wondering. What might he be carrying around in his pants? How'd he stack up against the gang at the IAB?

I'd found Trowbridge Street by now and kept an eye on house-numbers. There it was--a big Victorian place that could use a lick of paint. I stepped into a dimly lit foyer, wood-panelling and musty wallpaper, and found Apartment B back on the left. My mouth was dry and my palms were wet. A slight scent of cat lingered in the air. I knocked.