I said, "No, I'm living with a guy I like very much. A wife would only get in the way." He laughed heartily as if I were the century's sharpest wit. He added, "That proves it! Pansies always skulk! No, my boy, a salesman has to have push and a good brand of gall and simply the right glands to make a go of it and anyone can see you have them!" I said, "You can?" He clapped me on the back and shouted, "Sure, son, I can tell one-"

"But what about Mrs. Peters? Her sales record always has been better than yours from those charts up there. Where does she get her push and gall? Injections?" He looked suddenly sad and sober: "Women, my boy, are boy, are something else again. Now let's get back to work, huh? I want you to get out there with that great big good-looking smile of yours and plug and persevere and don't take no for an-etc., etc"

There followed a peculiar situation. I wanted to prove that a gay guy can have all the success that anyone else has in a supposedly "normal" field like selling. My record soared and everyday in everyway short of swishing I reminded Father Peters that I was one of the boys. He only laughed and became surer that I wasn't. He couldn't be fooled, no sir! Oh, the old boy came to love me. Nothing was too good. Raises, gifts, dinners with the family (to which I brought my room-mate whom they also loved) and he even insisted his son find me dates. One night they dug up two girls for my boy and me. His son wanted to go to the amusement pier down on the beach. But what happened in the Tunnel of Love is another story.

That son, by the way, was his father's pride and joy. He'd excelled in every sport known to man, had trophies in all of them, a terrific jail record for street fights and a reputation for being the worst of cads with more girls than ever graduated from Bryn Mawr. He was a huge young guy and this father, over whom he towered scared him stiff. He lived in constant terror of the paternal frown. One day I put my arm around his shoulder and said to his dad, "You know, I like this boy of yours. Better keep him out of my reach." Dad laughed fit to kill and went to tell Mrs. Peters my latest funny. But Sonny leaned over me to growl softly, "Look, bub, lay off that stuff. I'd hate to think what would happen if he ever found out about me." They tell me my smile was pathetic as I stood there looking up at him.

Once I saw him down at a gay bar called the Red Heron ("Where Witches Hunt!") but he was so uncomfortable that I only said hello and walked on by. That was around the time his remarkable father ran into a customer with three daughters whom he promptly began wooing for his son, my room-mate and me. The idiot actually got as far as a large banquet at which we were all supposed to meet and fall desperately in love. Nothing came of it except my boy came home profoundly dazzled with the boss's son. Things were a little too confusing to

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