Editorials & Other Articles

edcantor

(325 posts) Fri May 11, 2012, 08:10 PM May 2012

CRANBROOK AND ROMNEY by Edmund White

I already knew I was gay by the time I got to Cranbrook, and I looked forward to this all-male environment. In vain. The school placed the boys in individual rooms in order to cut down on buggery. Kids were run ragged with endless sports practices that consumed the entire afternoon. There were only two brief fifteen-minute periods during the day when boys were allowed to smoke (with their parents’ permission) and to socialize. I did manage to seduce two or three fellow students while at Cranbrook, but only after Casanova-like strategies, whereas I’d heard that some prep schools in the East were real bordellos. I’ve written a novel, “A Boy’s Own Story,” based on my experiences at Cranbook.
I was friends with two writers while at Cranbrook, both of them resolutely straight though strangely tolerant of my “tendencies.” One was Thomas McGuane, who turned out to be a talented novelist and a real Montana rancher and cowboy, a man who’s had movie-star lovers (Margot Kidder and Elizabeth Ashley) and who’s now married to Jimmy Buffett’s sister; he’s said in print that he knew I was gay in school and thought it was “funny.” The other one was Raymond Sokolov, who became a preëminent film and later food critic, who’s lived in Paris and worked for Newsweek, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and whose wife is on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum.

From what I can gather from the few details that have come out about Romney and his bullying of a student who was perceived as gay (forcefully cutting off his long, bleached-blond hair), a familiar picture emerges. Romney was not a good student nor was he athletic; he was the manager of one of the school teams, a sort of default position for boys who wanted to be athletic and cool and popular—a water boy, in essence. He was considered a class clown, always up to rather cruel pranks. I can picture his situation, though it’s only speculation on my part (I’ve never known any of his friends, though one of his older brothers was a classmate). On the one hand he had an embarrassingly famous father, the governor of Michigan, whom he idolized as the youngest child. On the other he was the sole Mormon, a member of what was definitely seen as a creepy, stigmatized cult in that world of bland Episcopalian Wasps (we had Episcopalian services at chapel three mornings a week). When his father was president of American Motors, he lived at home and was a day student, an envied status. When his father was elected governor and moved to the state capital of Lansing, he became a boarder. Suddenly he was surrounded by other Cranbrook students and the strict “masters,” 24/7. He no longer had the constant support of his tight-knit family. Now he had to win approval from the other boys.
No wonder he became a daring and even violent prankster. He who worried about his own marginal status couldn’t bear the presence of an unapologetic sissy like Lauber, with his long bleached hair (the Mormons, then as now, have insisted on a neat, traditional, conservative appearance, especially in their young missionary men whom they send out all over the world). In scorning and shearing a sissy student and leading a gang of five other boys in this “prank,” Romney may have felt popular and in the right for the first time. According to one of Romney’s repentant accomplices, Lauber was terrified, weeping and begging for help.
A few years ago I was invited back to Cranbook to deliver a talk to the students. I sat in on a meeting of the gay-straight alliance, an ecumenical group that allowed its twenty or thirty members to be identified by their tolerance, not their sexual identity, which can still be troubled and undecided at that age. As the author of biographies of three French writers, I was invited to join the advanced French class and chat with them in that language. Finally I gave a well-attended talk about my painful experiences as a gay student in that tough, competitive world of straight boys. My remarks were warmly received, and one of my classmates from that era made a point of showing up with his wife. I felt that this school, once the very emblem of privileged heterosexual hegemony, had evolved as much as our President has.