A Gentleman's Pleasure

by

James Barr

I cannot speak for my fellow American homosexuals on the Montagu Case in England last March for I do not know what they think of those three unlucky gentlemen who were convicted and imprisoned for having had unnatural relations with two Royal Air Force members. In the first place, other than a few senile titterings from Walter Winchell, a New York columnist with a large, scandal loving following, our newspapers over here gave the case very little space. Secondly, for months at a time, while writing or living in the heart of my family, I am completely isolated from all homosexual contacts other than short business letters to and from publishers on the subject. Such is the case at this time. I speak, therefore, only for myself, and what I've read in the British news-

papers.

I believe, with their jury, that Montagu, Wildeblood and probably Pitt-Rivers were guilty as accused in spite of their denials and the logical explanations for their actions. As a homosexual and a writer I have deliberately sought out many people on several social levels other than my own for information and even companionship. Usually intimacies. did not occur. Wildeblood was right in saying that writers must know all sorts of people as a part of their trade. That goes almost without saying. He was also correct in stating that some writers, as well as homosexuals, are very lonely people. Why this is true I don't know, but tragically it is. Perhaps, used to manipulating fictional characters as we are, we withdraw from flesh and blood that refuses to be molded as easily to our purposes. This cuts our roster of friends as well as the effectiveness and authenticity of our work dangerously and our loneliness grows by what it feeds on. So far Mr. Wildeblood's excuse for knowing the airmen is acceptable to any unprejudiced jury. Whether or not intimacies occurred is still very much a matter for conjecture at this point in his testimony. But the next point made by the prosecution was a telling one. Why were extremely affectionate letters exchanged by Wildeblood and Airman McNally? Or Montagu, or PittRivers, and Airman Reynolds? Now I have written love letters that I'd give a lot today to know were beyond the hands of those State employed puppets who officially tear a passion to tatters during such times as the Montagu trial, and to my own possible damnation as well as imprisonment, I must admit that I felt there was a good reason for every expression of affection I set down in writing at the time. Wildeblood's statement that he had been incapable of any physical manifestation of desire for three years makes a good defense against his letters, but it also makes his expressions of tenderness for the serviceman so ironic as to appear ludicrous. Obviously, the prosecution, representing a blue-nosed society, had a fete to the horror of every homosexual who followed the controversy. (And the coincidental appearance of the name, Mc Carthy,

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