/D.F.

THE LONELY

SEASON

by Frank Golovitz

Particularly at Christmas, the word "Gay" seems, to me, an ironic and cruel misnomer for homosexuals. For many, perhaps for most of them, Christmas is a lonely season, often a miserable one.

Our entire society goes "gay" for a while. The warm old songs and symbols are everywhere. Old friends are remembered, feuds forgotten, families reunited, and for a brief season, everyone loves everyone else.

But for the homosexual it is often a different story. I'll never forget Maves Thomas-the Christmas she spent down the hall from me in a cheap Miami hotel. I didn't meet Maves actually til the morning of New Year's Eve. She had been shut up in the hotel room for eight days, going out on Flagler Ave. only a few times to get something for sandwiches to eat in her room. I'd seen her once and would hardly have noticed her but for that haunted, fey look.

We literally ran into one another-coming around the corner in the lobby-the collision almost crushed her. As I helped her up she was on the point of crying. "Brace up kid." I said. "let's be butch about it." She gave me the most godawful startled look. then asked, "Are you gay?" When I nodded, she began to sob. but in a few minutes. she was grinning. "Have you got time for a walk?" she asked. "I have to bend somebody's ear or I'll break."

We walked. All over Miami and over to the Beach. She talked all the while. Unbelievably charming and unbelievably naive, she'd left her folks in Wilmington three weeks before to find a woman she met at a skating rink. She found her. but it was no good. Maves was seventeen. The woman had a partner. She told Maves to come back in a few years, "Maybe I'll have some spare time then." And then the bleak Christmas-eight days of crying in a hotel room, nearly broke in a strange city, resolved never to see her parents again. I introduced her to some friends and she was settled down in a few weeks. I doubt if she ever did much more crying. I got letters for awhile-her next Christmas was a good one, but she wrote on the card she sent. "I don't think I can ever really have the Christmas spirit again after that awful lonely season."

Paul Praker would never admit being lonely. A thin, grayish man, still vaguely attractive. A few Martinis and he could be quite the camp. But the holiday season made him as brittle as Christmas candy. Paul was promiscuous-the sort that believes sex and friendship don't mix. He never seemed to lack either except

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