On a gray autumn afternoon, Waymon Sullivan and friends thread through the festive throng spilling out of Hovey Field onto the grounds of Virginia Union University.

The tiny campus, dotted with Victorian granite buildings, pulsates with students, alumni and visitors for the Gold Bowl Classic, a weekend of football, tailgating and other social events that for nearly 30 years has been a tradition for black Richmonders.

Minutes earlier, Sullivan, a robust, sociable senior, left the football game between VUU and Bowie State when the home team lagged by 19 points. Besides, everyone knows the real action unfolds outside the stadium, where folks grill, people-watch and flirt to thumping hip-hop music.

"Waymon!" attractive young ladies shout as he passes. A smiling, upbeat Sullivan wades through the crowd on several occasions for greets and hugs.

At times like this, Sullivan seems part of the mix, a typical college student moving with ease among his peers. But on many days, his ideas about sex and how others view his sexuality make him feel like an outcast.

He has never dated or romantically kissed a girl, although his closest friends are females. He plans to lose his virginity to his spouse, ideally after establishing a business or journalism career.

"I'm waiting until I reach my goals," said Sullivan, who exudes a quiet confidence. "If I date right now it will distract me. It's my choice not to date. I'm not ready," he said with conviction.

Sullivan struggles in a society that often measures manhood by sexual activity. Those who defy expectations of heterosexual male behavior risk being ridiculed, ostracized or labeled gay. His story raises the question: What does it mean to act like a man?

A recent major study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 92 percent of men between the ages of 22 and 24 have had sex with a woman. The study also found 10 percent of males age 15 to 44 were virgins who had not had anal, oral or vaginal sex.

"My parents instilled in me that I should wait, get my education," said Sullivan, a mass communications major at VUU on a scholarship and on track to graduate next month with plans to attend graduate school. "The relationships come later."

Sullivan is an outgoing young man, with an easy grin, a musical laugh and a constantly ringing cell phone. His life mirrors that of most college students. Parties, late-night studying, stress over grades. It differs in that he's not interested in pursuing sex and has no qualms about saying so.

Such restraint is not easy in a sex-saturated society, where shampoo causes orgasms in commercials, department stores sell thongs for young girls and popular music glorifies pimps and nearly naked gyrating females.

Sullivan's defiance of the stereotype of overly sexualized young African-American men draws praise from his friends at VUU and his loved ones back home in Chicago.

"I think it's commendable and refreshing," said Thomas Boyd, a VUU junior from Roanoke. "He's not afraid to say what he believes in and stands up for."

Patrice Baltimore, also a junior, called Sullivan's decision admirable. "People these days take sex so lightly. It is a choice. Some people aren't responsible with that choice. That's what makes it so dangerous these days."

Tameka Davis-Aleman, a Chicago friend since high school, said Sullivan "represents the Bible to its fullest extent. I commend my friend for waiting on his significant other because there are so many traps you can get involved in."

For Sullivan, remaining celibate on the North Side campus, where 60 percent of the students are female, is far easier than dealing with those who question his sexuality.

Since his childhood in Marianna, Ark., kids ridiculed his reluctance to get his starched and creased clothes dirty, play sports and hang out with boys instead of girls. A soft voice, which remains, didn't help, either.

Verbal abuse, painful snubs and mocking gestures have trailed him like a shadow since childhood, cloaking him in a world of pain few know about.

"Since he was 4, they have called him sissy, faggot, gay," said his mother, Yvette Sullivan, during a phone call from the family's Southside Chicago apartment. "He may not have known what the words meant, but he knew they weren't anything good."

The harassment followed him to the private university minutes from downtown Richmond, where "no one ever knows when I am sad unless I make it clear to them," Sullivan said. "They don't know what is hurting me."

"But they shouldn't happen at all," said Sullivan, who tries to shrug off negative comments and keep stepping. Besides his five classes, he works as a resident assistant in his dorm, reports for and edits the VUU Informer newspaper, heads up publicity for the Student Government Association and is the former president of the Library Club.

Effeminate or homosexual men are often the targets of abuse by a cross section of the black community, from gay-bashing rappers to moralizing ministers. Earlier this year, the Rev. Al Sharpton called on black preachers to assist him in confronting homophobia among blacks, particularly in the religious community.

It is sometimes the black men "with the extra-deep voice" who may be homosexual, said Sullivan, who wrote for the school newspaper about "down low" brothers -- men having secret homosexual sex.

"I know I have a light voice. People say you talk like that because you was raised around a lot of females. I disagree. This is how God made me," said Sullivan, who was raised a Baptist but considers himself "spiritual, not religious."

The intolerance has affected Sullivan's mental, emotional and physical health. Between ages 10 and 16, he suffered from depression, although he never received counseling. As an adolescent, he spent more time indoors than outside, holed up in the house eating Little Debbie snack cakes and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Junk food became his "hiding place" from tormentors, including gang members. He packed 290 pounds on his 5-foot-6 frame by his junior year of high school.

One afternoon during 11th grade, he felt ill. By the time he reached the emergency room, his blood sugar was 700, when the normal range is 70 to 110. He spent a week in the pediatric intensive-care unit after being diagnosed as diabetic. Doctors said his weight was a factor in him getting the disease.

"After I left the hospital, I realized that life is precious and that God wanted me here for a reason. By stating that, I knew that I had to dig deeper and go after my dreams."

He started eating better, and after nearly a year of pills and insulin shots started managing his condition with pills alone, which he continues to take.

The insults "will happen. I have to accept it and realize I can't change it. When people read this, a few will look at me totally different. I can respect that because they have learned something about who I am, who they thought they knew."

On a sunny October morning, while sipping coffee outside at the Starbucks near Lombard and Broad Streets, two of his closest friends, Baltimore and Andrea Woodbridge, learned more about Waymon.

Both students describe Sullivan as an excellent person to discuss problems with. Asked how Sullivan reacts to taunts, Woodbridge recalled a day when a basketball player screamed at Sullivan "Hey f------ faggot, get out of my f------ way.

Last spring, that same basketball player and two of his buddies called Sullivan names and threw rocks at him as he carried his Chinese take-out food back to his dorm.

Although he has never had a conversation with the basketball player, "he hates me. I can look at him and see it, his body language. When he's by himself, he ignores me. He acts up when he has a lot of people around."

"I'm afraid to a certain extent of what they would say and how they would say it. People say words can't hurt but I disagree, because they can hurt as much as someone beating you. Words can pierce your heart. They can mess up your health."

In an e-mail, he wrote: "The black community has destroyed the black male image, period. They want black men to be a certain thing. If you are not drug dealing, gang banging or have more than one baby mother, then something is terribly wrong. That is the standard in the black community. When they see black males trying to do better, they get nervous. I am here to say that I stay in the black community and I will not be a statistic to any of this. It is all in how you were raised. My mother has molded me into the person I am today. I am a strong black male that has goals and I will make it."

Raised by his mother in a home with two sisters, Sullivan said he was taught to respect women, one reason he doesn't view them as sexual conquests or refer to them as "bitches and ho's."

"My friends confide in me, they know I'm not rude or nasty. My friends are pretty girls, the ones guys want" and the source of some jealousy among the guys who tease him.

Occasionally Sullivan feels tempted to date. "I'm in college and I know a lot of people are dating, that's the thing people are doing at my age. Sometimes I want to ask someone out but I am afraid of rejection. I just keep in the back of my mind that I am pursuing my goals," he said.

"They say, 'What is wrong with him? Oooh, I wouldn't want a man like that, I want a man who can take charge.' I think you really are a man in charge" if you've kept your virginity, Yvette Sullivan said.

His father, Willie Hammons, who became close to his son once Waymon moved back to Chicago, says his son is "sensational. You seldom hear a young black man around his age say he will put his education first."

Sullivan graduated second in his class from Chicago's Martin Luther King Jr. High School and earned a full scholarship to VUU. Despite changing his major three times, he will graduate from VUU in less than five years. He hopes to earn a 3.5 GPA. He plans to study public relations, print journalism or fashion journalism in graduate school next year. Reaching his academic goal is the main reason he has avoided relationships.

When asked if reading Harris' work suggests that he's open to either bisexuality or homosexuality, Sullivan strongly says no. He says that he reads the author because his stories are well-written and illustrate that love is universal and can't easily be defined.

"I am looking for a lady who possesses the same kind of qualities that I have. Someone who is caring, loves God, wants something out of life. If my wife . . . was making more money, I'd be happy. We still have to file taxes together."

"Stay true to yourself. Look deep within. Say, 'This is me and this is what I am going to do' and believe God will help you through. A lot of young people don't like to pray. You can't do anything without God, without faith. You have to say, 'This is what I am here for, this is what I want and this is what I am going to do to get it.'"

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