Spring 1983: Viju and I Compete Over Pecs

During my first year as a M.A. student at Indiana University (1982-83), I went crazy -- so many options!  Augustana offered only the standard French, Spanish, German, Latin, Greek, Swedish, and Russian, but Indiana offered everything from Afrikaans to Nahuatl to Mongolian!  I ended up taking Mandarin Chinese, Russian Folklore, and South Asian Anthropology, in addition to English.

But I didn't meet Viju the Gay South Asian in South Asian Anthropology. He was a doctoral student in English, interested in John Milton.  We met in my class in Renaissance Literature, when I suggested facetiously that Sir Philip Sidney might have been a crossdresser.

"You'd better be careful, Jeff," Viju exclaimed.  "People might think you mean he had bisexual tendencies or something."

I managed to blurt out "No, I think he was gay!" before the professor put a stop to the discussion and assured us that there were no "homosexuals" in Renaissance England.

Viju turned out to be gay himself, but closeted, even more closeted than most guys in the Midwest in 1983.  He wouldn't go to the gay student organization on campus, or to Bullwinkle's, Bloomington's gay bar.

Instead, he opted for the hour drive into Indianapolis, where no one knew him.  He preferred the Varsity Lounge, for older guys (over 40) and their admirers.



We never dated (although there was a bit of incidental fondling), but we became friends.

In the spring 1983 semester, we registered for a seminar in Modernist Literature, or rather, all Great Writers Who Ever Existed (everybody else being hacks): D. H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner.  Most of their works had no gay content, of course, but we had lots of fun misreading the texts to add some.

 We often drove into Indianapolis to cruise together.  We were both into guys who were husky or muscular and A+++ beneath the belt, so we sometimes ended up competing for the same bodybuilder, bear, or pro wrestler.

My strategy was: "Hi, you have nice pecs.

Viju's strategy was: "Hi, I'm exotic, and I know all sorts of ancient Hindu sex secrets."

He usually won.

The story of Viju continues here, when he meets my Cousin Joe.