the last book I ever read (Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin, excerpt seven)

from Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin:

Yes, there was that. Until the day Denny died, it had never occurred to me that he might be gay. If the long relationship with Carol Austin was meant to fool people, it had succeeded in my case. On the other hand, I was remarkably easy to fool. For me, Denny was in a compartment in my mind that had to do with Yale in the fifties, and there simply weren’t any gay people in the compartment. That must have been true for most of the people in the room, judging from the remarks that came just after the story of Bob had been told:

“It was inconceivable for us in the fifties. I came out of Yale, and I swore I did not know a homosexual.”

“Of course,” Carol Austin said, with some irony. “None of us did.”