Toby Sharpe's Twisted World
As an undergraduate at one of America’s mediocre universities in the Midwest, I naively used to try to find secluded places on campus to study, unaware that these also tended to be spots for homosexual cruising. Deep in the bowels of the subterranean stacks of the university’s main library had seemed like the perfect reading retreat, even if there were gross graffiti on the desks like drawings of dicks and instructions to the effect of “tap foot three times for blowjob”. I finally had to give up on these isolated recesses of the library, however, after a pudgy, grubby-looking flutterer in gym shorts had done a walk-by a couple of times and given me an unsavory smile. Then I tried an alcove of the student union building, deserted on a Saturday night. I remember having the area to myself, with James Joyce’s Ulysses , the Harry Blamires guide The New Bloomsday Book , and probably a dictionary spread out on a table, trying to do some serious work, when I became aware of another person be