who called him a sissy-and it is in the light of this experience that he approaches his first love affair (perhaps it's the captain of the football team). The homosexual boy, of course overcome with gratitude, loses his perspective and either exposes himself to society's wrath or is eventually rejected by the object of his dreams and hopes.

Inevitably there follows a long, sad period of disillusionment. In one way or another the homosexual usually discovers during this period other members of his own kind. He is simultaneously overjoyed and dismayed. He is overjoyed, because he had hitherto supposed himself to be the only one like himself in the world. He is horrified, because he almost always discovers his own people first in the bars of the skid rows of a big city, in the public toilets or at the Turkish baths of some sordid district. Before this his feeling for other men has been an exalted one. (Has he not identified himself with all the greatest actresses in all the greatest love storiesstage, screen, opera?) The reality he first encounters is more than he can accept the dream and the reality are too far apart.

Eventually he finds his own kind of people. Perhaps they are the kind with good jobs and who live in nice districts of town, people who are "married" (but the serious homosexual puts no quotes on the word), people whom one's mother could respect "if she were able!" Perhaps they are male prostitutes or bar-hoppers. But when he reaches this point the average homosexual is a man of twenty-five or thirty with a lifetime of experience behind him. What he does with the years yet to come have socialogical import.

At this point it is possible for the astute homosexual to perceive

that homosexual society splits into three main groups which I call the Revolutionaries, the Tories and the Liberals. They are essentially the same but use deceivingly opposite forms in expressing themselves. They are the same, because they are all in revolt against a society which simultaneously persecutes and steadfastly refuses to recognize them. The Revolutionaries can be found swishing down Hollywood Boulevard or Constitution Avenue. They have rejected society, because society has rejected them. They tell themselves that they don't care what the world thinks of them and that they think the world stinks. Actually they care very much about society and its opinion of them or their way of life would be utterly meaningless. The Revolutionaries can also be found (if their orientation is intellectual) among the ranks of the social workers, the labor leaders, the left-wing political or religious organizations.

The Tories are the elegant ones who have decided to express their social hostility by being more correct than the foremost representatives of the dominant (and dominating) culture. They work for TIME magazine or the NEW YORKER. They are in the diplomatic service; they occupy key positions with oil companies or the FBI (it's true!). But perhaps most of them sell men's accessories in the Campus Shops of large department stores and ostentatiously vote Republican.

Between these there is another group, the Liberals. Despite their social oppression, the Liberals are able to view the world with an element of detachment. Such are the movie actors, the dancers, the playwrights, the artists, the musicians, the psychiatrists, the doctors and lawyers, the great creative

5