I was met by two young men who might have been professors at any university. No berets, no pink fur ascots, no carved ivory cigarette holders, but a great deal of real charm and friendliness. They were the business and circulation managers, Bill Lambert and Dave Freeman. My bags were collected and I was driven to a small house in the heart of the city and its key given me. My host, Don Slater, also a contributing editor, had simply turned it over to One for my stay because I'd asked for privacy. I began to appreciate these new friends very vividly.

For the next five hours, until dawn, we talked. Questions that had puzzled me for months were answered quickly and concisely. Some of the answers didn't suit preconceived ideas so several times I started arguments, but each time I felt I'd struck a stone wall. These young men seemed to have the answers to every question I threw them. Above all, their answers were based on recent experience whereas my questions sprang from pure theory. By the time we said good night I was beginning to feel that perhaps I was the stone wall.

Saturday night I attended my first Corporation meeting. On the way we picked up a heavily moustached young man who, but for his crew cut, might have posed for a portrait of Edgar Allen Poe. This was Lyn Pedersen, whose resemblance to perhaps the greatest American story teller I soon suspected was more than physical. With every carefully uttered sentence the man's mind opened before us as a story such as one seldom hears, and when he admitted he was working on not one but three new books, I pulled in whatever professional horns that might still be showing.

At the meeting I was welcomed by Ann Carll Reid, an attractive, shrewd but charming businesswoman whose letters had first made me want to make the trip, and Eve Elloree, the art editor whose rather elfish beauty is of that rare type that makes male inverts wish they weren't. I met the others, new members, old ones, the attorney who weighs every word before the magazine goes to press. As the meeting got under way I began to understand the tough, definitive assurance of this group. For instance, the secretary reported, "Last week's subscriptions enabled us to buy the paper for the new edition. In two more weeks we should be able to send it to the printer." Obviously they were getting more out of their bootstraps than most.

When I suggested, rather pompously I believe, that it might be easier to accept a loan to get the edition out on time, I was told firmly but courteously that contributions of any amount were always welcome-but only on the Corporation's terms. "You see, Mr. Barr, One cannot ever be for sale."

And they are right. Homosexuals must support their own magazine if it is to grow. No one on the volunteer staff of One is paid. All work at regular outside jobs every day, several go to school at night. "In between" they put out the magazine. If they get a bit hungry, they laugh about the lean years. Discouragement melts before the thanks that pours in with every mail from every state in the nation: the sailor who sends his last fifty dollars "for such a swell job," and the monthly fifty cents from the boy in a small southern town "alone down here but for your magazine. I don't know what I'd do if it stopped."

No indeed, Mr. Barr, dreams are not for sale. As a writer you should know that. We need your faith, and the faith of every other homosexual in what we are doing here and now. We've made the start. You, and a million others can make us great, or you can let us die. But whatever you do for us, do it with respect and trust.

I ask you, what defense is there against a plea such as that?

On Monday they gave me a farewell party-and a buffet laden with cokes and coffee. Yet in the group were an internationally famous essayist, a photographer whose name ranks in the top five of our nation, and the bearer of an European name so ancient it is almost legendary. They had learned humility too, but as one of them said, "Don't despair, young man, they're fond of us in spite of ourselves. Be pleased with so much!" And needless to say, quite humbly I am.

James Barr