Before there was a Gay Scene, there was The Closet, which, writes Howard Junker, Amherst ’61, “was not a small domestic space, used for storage or to hold some nasty item, like a toilet. It was neither a territory nor a policy. It was an existential void you couldn’t choose to enter; you could only, if you were not Normal, as everybody else was Normal...you could only contrive to lurk there, noticed at your peril—of being teased, mocked, harassed, bashed, blackmailed/fired, killed. “It flourished in the Fifties, began to evaporate with Gay Liberation, and was smashed by the AIDS crisis, which forced the world to pay attention. “These days, Diversity and Inclusion is the watchword. Even though not everyone is out.” Junker’s oral history takes testimony from his classmates, contemporaries, and such classic gay writers as Martin Duberman, Edmund White, Gore Vidal....Junker examines the 1960 downfall of Smith professor Newton Arvin, caught receiving gay porn through the mail. He offers a dozen mini-profiles of contemporaries, including Dale Freeman, who infected his wife with HIV, nursed her for seven years, and then, after her death, felt that, all in all, he felt better, he felt authentic at last.In 1959, Junker met the last Lord Jeffery Amherst (1896-1993), who was gay and spoke out in the House of Lords against the repression of homosexuals. The College discarded “Lord Jeff” as a mascot in 2016.Junker wonders if, back in the day, there had been a quota for gay professors (and students), just as there was for Jews. Whether today’s massive “Diversity and Inclusion” infrastructure marginalizes exactly those individuals who should be striving for integration.He calculates that the achievement of Amherst alumni post-coed has significantly declined; his own era, for example, produced two Nobel Laureates, a CIA director, four college presidents, etc., of whom there have been zero in the past half century of alumni. He cites two incidents of Robert Frost’s homophobia.He denounces current Amherst President Biddy Martin, an out Lesbian, for refusing to help him with his research. Included are 26 prints by Junker’s friend at Amherst Charles Wells, harrowing portraits of such gay icons as Rimbaud, Whitman, Hart Crane, and Nijinsky, as well as Cardinal Spellman, James Joyce, and Frederick Douglass. Junker, 78, lives in San Francisco with his wife, Rozanne Enerson Junker, the author of Renatus’ Kayak. He founded the literary magazine ZYZZYVA in 1985; he discovered such writers as F.X. Toole, whose stories inspired Million Dollar Baby, and Jill Soloway, creator of Transparent. He is the author of An Old Junker, a memoir.