SEPTEMBER 1976

such relationships. If there were any gay bars in Cleveland then, I did not know of them, and, because I looked much younger than my age, I probably couldn't have got in anyway. Contacts were made at the movies, at the library, or on Public Square while I waited for my streetcar. They began always with furtive glances and my fearing that I would be found out.

Being found out was my greatest anxiety. I knew that my very being was illegal. My parents must not be shamed. My friends must not reject me. wanted to belong, but I was sure that I didn't.

It is in that respect that Jim seems to be a more integrated person than I was. He knows (with a sophistication that may not be typical of sixteen yearolds just as my naivete may have been atypical) who he is and where to find people with whom to share his feelings. In talking of his life, he uses positive terms rather than words like "guilt," "furtive," and "dirty" that I've resorted to in order to convey the feelings I had at sixteen. Jim has a sense of community that sustains him. That sense of community is the most valuable result of gay activism of recent years. Jim has the advantage of beginning his adult life with a bulwark that I floundered to discover. We both owe much to those who created the gay awareness that we now enjoy by risking their careers and sometimes even their physical wellbeing to demonstrate the legitimate claims to a place in society for all gays.

Securing that place is a countinuing task, but there is another task facing gays who feel obligations to their brothers and sisters which is also evident in Jim's comments. Although he feels comfortable as part of a community (granted that he has to pretend to be older than he is to gain entry to it), Jim suffers from loneliness in other ways. He has had the experience of having a lover and losing him, a painful experience surely but also an instructive one. He speaks of having very few male gay friends. Among gays there is a need to promote relationships of friendship as well as of sexuality so that when Jim looks. at a sixteen year-old a generation from now, he will have the same recognition of progress from which he has profited that I have had in comparing his present and my past.

GRANT

CURING BY THE LAYING ON OF HANDS

HIGH GEAR

A QUARTER CENTURY

OF LOVE

CLEVELAND

-

On Wednes-

day, September 22, John Losi, 48, and Bob Hoy, 47, will celebrate their 25th year together in a big bash at J.J.'s 2402 St. Clair. The two men who first met

in 1951 at Buffalo's Five O' Clock Club claim their relationship has lasted because "we have a complete understanding of each other."

Said Bob: "We share everything in life. We've always lived as one, not two. In the past 25 years I wouldn't have changed anything about our relationship. Although we've had arguments, we've never had a fight that was destructive."

Added John: "We treat our relationship as a marriage and share all the responsibilities."

When asked what the key to their lengthy stability was, John answered, "You've always got to try to make the other person happier. It comes back to you."

Both Losi and Hoy have been faithful to each other for the last 23 years. Within the last two years, they've experimented with three way relationships and this has brought them closer together. According to Bob, "We appreciate each other more as a result."

Those wishing to share in John and Bob's commemoration are invited to J.J.'s on September 22nd. Free champagne and a buffet are scheduled for the party which begins at 8:00 p.m.

John Losi And

Bob Hoy,

1951

Losi And Hoy, 1976

Clothed in leather drag

you conceal

self-conscious compensation of effeminacy

a

-self--torturous vice-

inflicted-

schemes to conceal the nature of the beast.

Be what you need

Show what you be

Know it as show; Under the skins of the beast we kill

we all lay, nakedbut lie, clothed.

J.E. STRUBBE, NO

VEMBER 1975

*

Page 23

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