Rocky Mountain High

The Way Things Ought To Be by Gregory Hinton tells a variation on coming out that becomes odd in its contemporary historical narrative. I think some of this comes from being published in 2003, but telling a story from 30 years earlier, in 1974 Boulder, Colorado.

We open on the break up of our main character, Kingston James, and his boyfriend, Lex, following witnessing an airplane crash while hiking. We hear bits and pieces out their foibles, from moving to California and back, how they met in a bible study group, how their Study group leader Nicolas called King's parents and told them about their son's sins.

King ends up moving out, taking on a rental room in an off campus apartment, where his new roommates share a bedroom with a bunk bed. The one roommate's girlfriend, Jen, makes lot of noise when she visits. He starts dating Sam, but Sam worries that King is growing too attached. Sam and Theo get King to attend a dance, where same sex couples dance to gain visibility, seeing one of Jen's sorority sisters on the floor. This leads to his roommates kicking him out, leading King to move into a studio courtesy of Theo, who's the brains behind the local Gay Rights organization. (Theo isn't comfortable being the face of the movement, so that falls to Sam; Theo is the one behind the scenes organizing everything.)

King goes back to a hotel with Matthew, whom he meets at a bar. Matthew is a romantic, like King, but Matthew, who's real name is Ralph, is also married to a woman in Pittsburgh. He buys King a leather jacket and goes back to Pittsburgh.

Jen winds up pregnant and moves in across from King and adjacent to Theo. When King's friend Tim gets killed by the cops after being caught doing lewd acts behind the Taco Bell, Jen joins the protest with King.

We see King meeting his Creative Writing teacher. Connie, at Le Bar, one of the 3 bars at the Boulderado hotel. She shows up with her bisexual boyfriend, Robert, because Allen Ginsburg will be there reading his work. (There's a bit of name dropping in here, as Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs both show up. By far the best moment is a few pages when Ginsburg and King wind up doing Transcendental Mediation together later on.)

King and Theo hook up, but despite Theo's insistence on sex being sex, it becomes obvious he has feelings for King; indeed, when Theo winds up dating Barry, Theo starts bringing home as many men as he can to make enough noise to annoy King through the walls.

Barry is the UC quarterback whom King meets at the local bathhouse. While Barry is very closeted (indeed, he has a fiance) due to his football stardom and likely draft by the Miami Dolphins, he and King share a very nice romance. Which ends rather abruptly one night as King sends Barry home so he can think, and the next thing we as readers know is King is in the hospital having been raped and bleeding profusely. Given Barry is the one who called the ambulance, everyone thinks he did it, but King denys that. (We do find out later on what actually happened.)

King's father gets drunk and drives to the hospital, but he takes a header off a cliff on the way. (King's family relations are a long involved subplot of the book. Dad's a drunk who gets sober; Mom hates sober dad. His brither is distant from the parents, and is also gay.)

Anyway, eventually all the plots come around and we finish with King graduating.

So, ultimately, I can't really comment on how close to reality this is in terms of 1974 Boulder. I will say it is nice to read a book about gay folks of the 70's which isn't coastal or all about rich gay folks, or worse, some midwestern morality play. On the other hand, most of the language of liberation and assimilation take on more modern terminology, and no one gets referred to as a homophile. While I'm sure someone will point out where I am wrong here, I don't think there was any kind of coordinated national movement quite this early, most of the organization was regional at best.

However, I think King is kind of Shakespearean in his own way, I'm sure more than a few readers can identify with his struggles with love and sex, and how the two, while separate, intertwine.