Free Mirrors of Narcissus by Guy Willard Page B

Perhaps I’d built him up too much in my imagination, but the middle-aged professor wearing old-fashioned glasses wasn’t quite what I’d come to expect. Unlike some of the younger instructors, whose hairstyles and clothes made them virtually indistinguishable from their students, Professor Golden was immaculately groomed and dressed. There was an air of old-world culture about him, even though apparently he was from someplace in Indiana. With his gold-rimmed glasses and goatee, he seemed quite cosmopolitan, a little out of place in this university.
    In any case, the lecture hall was packed. Unlike most of my other courses, in which by the end of fall term half of the students had dropped out, his class showed no signs that attendance had diminished at all.
    It was easy to see why: his lecture was fascinating. Quite apart from what he was discussing—in this case the art of the Weimar Period, with music from the era softly accompanying his slide presentation—his voice was mesmerizing. It was deep, soothing, and authoritative, somewhat like a doctor’s, and I wished it would go on and on. And his absorption in the topic was so infectious that I noticed students sitting on the edges of their chairs—students who probably normally wouldn’t have been interested in art at all. The hour that I spent listening to him was like a wonderful time trip into a glamorous past.
    When the class was over, even after most of the students had left, there was still a small crowd around him, eager to ask more questions. He was apparently something like a sage for these hangers-on. Perhaps it was the distance they felt from him which gave him this special aura, and I could understand their feeling, for he seemed so different from anyone I’d ever met before.
    I wondered how many of his students knew he was gay. This secret knowledge had colored some of the things he’d said; a brief mention he’d made of the beauty of Michelangelo’s David was for me tinged by the knowledge that he undoubtedly found the statue as sexually exciting as I did.
    However, as I listened in on his talk with the students, I discovered that he made no secret of his gayness. I caught the word “homosexual” just as I joined the circle gathered around his lectern. One of the boys was asking him about a book called Maurice , by E.M. Forster.
    “I’ve read some of his other books,” said the boy, “but they didn’t interest me at all. I thought they were kind of boring. Flatulent. I’ve never understood why the critics regard him so highly.”
    Golden had been putting his notes into order, and now he put them aside and looked animatedly at the students around him. “A thing about literary criticism you have to understand is that there are certain academics who seem to feel that the more boring and obscure a book is, the deeper it is. Apart from Forster’s other books, with which I feel you’re being a little too harsh, what did you feel about Maurice ?”
    “It seemed a bit corny to me.”
    “Well, you have to understand the times in which it was written. Remember, when Forster was a young man, homosexuality was actually a prisonable offence. So you can easily understand why he remained a closet homosexual all his life, and why he didn’t dare publish Maurice in his lifetime—which is a pity, because I think it’s quite a good novel. He did leave instructions for it to be published after his death, though. But by that time his treatment of the subject had become rather passé. When he first wrote it, it was no doubt a daringly straightforward and honest portrayal of a homosexual love affair, but by today’s standards, it’s almost quaint. After all, by the time of his death, in 1970, we had seen the publication of writers like Burroughs, Vidal, Rechy, and Genet, who are much more explicit in their depictions of sexuality.”
    “Who’s Genet?” asked one boy.
    “A French writer who’s still alive, though he hasn’t written anything for quite