There must be six or eight million homosexuals in this country, so it's not surprising that here and thereone narrow sliver of Miami Beach, another in Santa Monica, Laguna Beach, Provincetown, the "Indiana dunes," and a few spots like Fire Island-a few cramped areas have come to be known as "gay beach," "faggot's beach," "queer alley," "bitch beach," etc. But in all the learned claptrap I've read by so-called authorities on homosexuality, I don't recall any realistic description of a gay beach. The "authorities" prefer the clammy atmosphere of the bathhouse or the clandestine bar.

There's a lot of difference between a gay bar and a gay beach. For one thing the beach is more truly "gay" and in a much healthier sense. And although some are "on the make" the percentage isn't as high as in the bars. Nor is the tension. With rare exceptions, a beach is out in the open, and as Marty said, it is probably the only place where large mixed groups of homosexuals can be freely observed "acting natural." And class boundaries fall away even more at the beach than in other sectors of the gay life.

Ronnie

Chaise,

Chaise, an angel-faced, willowy young bank clerk I met at the beach that summer, exploded one Sunday when a husky married couple

one

and two noisy kids settled down near us, looked around a bit. then muttering about "damned queers taking over the place," picked up bag, baggage and brats and headed for a more moral beach. Ronnie had just come, slim and dripping, out of the water and was settling down on his towel when he heard them. "Well, go somewhere else if you don't want to be contaminated," he howled. "You've got fifty miles of beach around here. and this is all we've got. So disappear!"

His antagonist managed one parting shot, unprintably suggesting that all homosexuals should be locked up and castrated.

Ronnie boiled all afternoon. "Did we hurt them? We don't say anything about the way they behave on the beach. But just let one queen raise the pitch of her voice and it's a public scandal."

I suggested that he'd offended them -hardly good public relations.

"I offended them? They offended us. Why always put the blame on this side? They started it. We weren't doing anything to spoil their day, except existing. Let them go somewhere else. This is our beach. It's small and crowded. but it's ours."

"What claim do we have to it?" I goaded him. "The cops and the papers don't think it's ours. And those people had just as much right here as we have."

"Rights, hell. You have the rights you earn. So we don't have a spelledout legal title to this hundred yards of sand, but neither do heterosexuals have a title to all the rest. or any right to chase us off here, like the police try to do every once in awhile. They've taken squatter's rights on the rest and we've taken squatter's rights on this. And if they don't want us 'contaminating the rest of their beaches, then they'd better leave us alone here.

"Nobody told those people they