Once an English major, he was expelled halfway through his junior year after a scandal that no one would talk about. With no degree, no job, and nowhere to go, he got some faculty allies to help him open his little bookstore.
What scandal? A same-sex affair, perhaps? I asked Dr. Burton, the gay professor who held the infamous Handcuff Parties, but he didn't know
It made sense: Adam never dated girls, or talked about girls. Actually, he never said much about his personal life at all. It sounded like the hesitations, dissimulations, and omissions that gay people made in the Midwest in the 1980s to avoid revealing their "secret."
But there was only one way to find out for sure: get him alone, and then zoom in for a kiss! It worked with Fred, my boyfriend last year.
On a cold, drizzling Friday afternoon in March 1981, the campus was nearly deserted. I had been alone in the bookstore for nearly an hour, studying Paleontology on the green couch by the western window, while Adam sat on his stool reading the underground Zap Comix. This was a perfect opportunity!
“I'm heading over to the Comics Cave," I said in a tentative voice. "Why don't you come along? I don't think you're going to get any more customers today."
Adam stared at me in shock, as if I had suggested skinny-dipping in the pond behind Old Main. "Um...sure, why not?" he said finally. He wrapped on his coat and locked up the store, and we walked out into the blustery gray afternoon. He talked nonstop about R. Crumb and Steve Ditko, and then of Little Nemo who explored Dreamland in the newspaper comics of a century ago, as if he couldn’t bear a moment of silence.
He was really nervous! That must mean he was gay!
“Have you heard the secret of Bell Tower?” he asked.
“I don't know. I’ve heard a lot of secrets since I came to Augie.”
“The Fratboys bring their dates there, because if you kiss a virgin under the bell, it rings. Thus notifying everybody up in Andreasson Hall that she is 99.99% pure.” He gestured toward the freshman girls’ dorm on the ridge.
"Cool! Let's check it out -- I've never seen it up close before."
"Um..ok, I guess." We turned away from the path, crossed the wet grass, and stood under the Bell Tower with its graffiti-blackened benches where Fratboys and their girlfriends kissed. It was very damp, and smelled of sawdust and brine.
“Did the bell ring for any of your....dates...when you were a student?” I asked, deliberately avoiding the word "girl."
The full story, with nude photos, is on Tales of West Hollywood.