Kevin Stood Under a Spotlight.
Dave and Kevin’s parties were the place to be. Everyone knew this. During my freshman year, we’d hear that one word: “Daveandkevins” – and we’d be on our way.
To this day, I have no idea how their parties were better than everyone else’s parties, because they were held in their room on campus, not in a house and not in a bar. The small space alone should have made a mess out of every attempted soirée. It should have been a disaster every single time.
But if that was true … you didn’t know Dave and Kevin. Their parties were somehow sized perfectly – people coming and going but always a tight-knit happy crowd inside. In spite of the single-gender male dorm, party-goers were mostly female.
Dave and Kevin’s parties were the only parties I attended that didn’t require me to prep beforehand with a couple of beers. They always provided enough alcohol for everyone, but that’s not the reason I had fun. The reason Dave and Kevin’s parties were fun, quite honestly, was because of Kevin.
Kevin told stories. He waved his arms around in grand gestures and rolled his eyes dramatically as he talked. His stories started small and ended huge. And every, single story was fall-on-the-floor, laugh-out-loud, can’t-stop-crying hysterical. It was like watching stand-up without the fee.
Dave played the straight man to Kevin’s funny. They’d been roommates for a couple of years and they made a great team. Dave was super nice, too. But I remember those parties as if Kevin stood under a spotlight, waving his arms with a circle of people around him laughing, Dave standing slightly askance, rolling his eyes one step behind.
Way later in college, when I was a sorority girl and needed a date to the sorority formal, I invited Kevin. Any party would be better with Kevin; any event would be bearable with Kevin nearby, telling his stories and making us all laugh. And Kevin did exactly that.
We all drank like swine, of course, since a sorority formal is known for its drinking … or at least, that’s what I believed. I think it’s supposed to be a dance. But after dancing, we all went back to our rooms and drank more, crashing in our fancy hotel rooms until checkout the next morning.
I remember drunkenly hanging on Kevin in our room and trying to kiss him. Kevin swatted me away like an annoying insect that had crawled onto his arm.
This was a reaction I’d never gotten before. “Just nooooo!” he said.
Kevin had every stereotypical nuance that became popularized decades later by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, so maybe he was gay. Until Ellen, ten years later, I was as ignorant as the rest of the American public. In the 20th century, people were extremely hesitant to announce their homosexuality.
I’d had absolutely no clue that Kevin was gay until that moment. And even then, he never admitted it. Maybe he was planning to be a priest.
I wish Kevin had felt safer then to be himself, all of himself, and been free in college the way – I hope and imagine – he was able to be free a decade later. And I wish I’d been less oblivious to the signs and more intelligent about life when I was younger.
Mostly, I just wish Kevin knew how much I adored him from the very first time he opened his dorm room door. And I hope he went on to be adored for decades longer, wherever he may have gone.