couldn't spend the day here. They objected to us and left. But there are plenty of other heteros around here that mind their own business, or maybe even enjoy our company."

There was justice in his argument. In my Texas coast home town, with four miles of good sandy beach fronting the city, the Negro third of the population had only one block of poor rocky beach and another little strip. eight miles from town. And they resented intruders in their own little zone. I asked Ronnie if that was what he wanted for us, a tight little ghetto.

"Of course notin the sweet by and by. We want the right to go where we please. But homosexuals haven't even gotten as far as the Negroes. We've got to make people admit we're human first. With that guy that just left here it's not a question of where we should swim and where he should swim. He thinks any beach is too good for us and that we should all be in prison for life.

"We've got to establish our right to have our own little corner, and when guys like that accidentally stumble into it. we have to see they act decent or get out fast, or we won't even have this. Later we can take up the crusade against segregation. Now come on, let's go out and plunk in the water. I want to get cooled off. I didn't come out here to talk politics."

The next week-end. Ronnie was his usual bubbling self. We ran into almost everyone we knew, and he at least knew them by the hundreds.

Marty was there. My neighbors Wally and Harry were there with a couple of eye-shattering young huskies bouncing a beachball-though there was hardly room for that sort of thing. Paul and Terry, two young engineers I knew (Paul was a tall, traffic-stopping redhead and was wearing a brilliant new snug swimsuit that came almost to his knees) were busily directing the construction of the most

elaborate sand castle I'd ever seen. A bevy of queens were watching (Paul or the sand castle?) "Isn't that just the most beautiful thing you ever saw?" One was straining to get away. "Oh, come on Tillie Mae, your sister wants to damp her tootsies."

Jo Anne and Virginia were there with their kids. I'd met Jo Anne the month before at Barry Donalsen'sshe was Barry's ex-wife. It was a "marriage of convenience" that proved inconvenient. Now she and Virginia were raising the six-year-old boy and a pixyish girl of four. I'd wondered if a lesbian marriage was a good background for youngsters, but the girls were conscientious, and the kids love it they got plenty of warmth and attention, especially on the beach, where everyone adopted them.

We ran into Barry later. He was breathless about a new musical his group was putting on. He and Jo Anne and Virginia had once danced together. He was with a fully dressed solemn-faced, tense young writer who was second-guessing everyone's horoscope, and a plump pleasant girl who was reading Les Fleurs du Mal and griping about her husband. Barry was also a mine of assorted gossip. I asked him what he thought about the beach. and he went into a metaphysical lecture about the "group soul." He

9