Word: closeting
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Thomas has become a Harvard celebrity, a campus icon synonymous with unrestrained flamboyance, with an effusive, unapologetic sense of self, of gay identity. But for most of his years in Portland, Thomas was a serious closet case. He was a model student, a piano prodigy, a typical overachiever--but he kept his secret to himself. He was afraid of being hated, afraid that his friends would turn their backs on him. He compensated by pounding at the piano for hours on end, obeying the driving beat of his metronome. He also cried...
...finally came out during his senior year of high school, but he returned to the closet during his freshman year at Harvard. "I had vague political dreams. I lost my cool, I lost my sense of myself," he recalls. Finally, in April, he posed for a Time magazine photograph of gay Harvard students opposed to ROTC. Thomas was out for good. He felt relieved. Guiltless. Free...
WELCOME to a legendary Harvard attraction: Thomas's closet. To your right, you'll see a startling array of headgear: a cute blue fez, a polo helmet, a sharp Jackie O pillbox number, white bunny ears. Straight ahead, you'll find a mountain of ties--most of them wide, all of them loud. On the floor, there's a fog machine and a stack of the official Adams House "We're All Gay and We're Coming to Get You" t-shirts Thomas designed. On the left, Thomas hang his dresses--a clingy purple Betsy Johnson, a turquoise suede Halston...
...most of Thomas's dresses are, fittingly, out of the closet. At this moment, he has dresses living in New Hampshire, New York, San Francisco, Hawaii, Paris and God knows where else. Thomas enjoys wearing them, but he really enjoys letting his friends--especially his male friends--wear them. "It's all about accessorizing other people's closets," he says, giggling devilishly."I love that...
...instead of causing Harvard's gay community to rethink its way of life, the issue provoked a widespread mobilization of gay students and a protest at which two respected faculty members came out of the closet...