They are repelled by the queens and tell me that they couldn't possibly stand to be around them. A great many men will not even have a queen for a social friend. "No," Tom told me on one occasion, "I don't know any personally, and I don't care to. I find their way of dressing and talking disgusting and loathsome. I just couldn't stomach being around one of those flaming faggots, no matter how nice. he might be." Tom continued. "I don't like the way a lot of those queens let themselves be kept instead of earning decent livings, either."

"Oh, Tom, some of the world's highest paid ballet dancers are men. And I'd like to make the money that a lot of fashion designers do, wouldn't you?"

Not all gay fellows have Tom's attitudes. Some of them genuinely like the more effeminate boys as friends. but just don't want to be seen with them in public. "Look at it this way," argued Drew, a slightly effeminate friend of mine who has many acquaintances among the queens. "I like Jerry and the rest of them, and they used to be among my closest friends, but I have a responsible job now. I would be suspected anyway because of some of my mannerisms and the fact that I'm not married. If I associated with a bunch of dizzy queens, people would know for a fact. And I can't afford that with the job I have now."

People like Drew may keep their friendships with their earlier associates in the privacy of their own homes, or they may completely drop the queen as a friend-not out of disgust as in Tom's case, but out of fear.

Just as Tom and Drew are typical of most of the men I know, Dorothy, a successful accountant, expresses a common attitude among my female acquaintances. "Most of the gals I know who play like 'heavy men' just do nothing for me. I'm not attracted

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to them because they're too masculine all they do is gripe hell out of me. And I've never met one that had much of anything on the ball-to say noth-

ing of a higher education."

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"Now wait a minute, Dorothy," I said. "Look at women like Gertrude Stein, Radclyffe Hall and Rosa Bonheur. They're very masculine, and you can't say they don't have brains. You can't say you've never met a dyke with a good education, either look at Ricky and Nick." Ricky and Nick are two mutual acquaintances of ours, both extremely masculine and both with PhDs.

"Take a look. How many stomping dykes do we know who have the responsible positions that the less obvious of us have? Most of the obvious. ones I know work in electronics factories or drive busses. I'm convinced of the ability of the conservative type of lesbian. The career girl who's slightly masculine-you know, wears tailored jackets and all that-is very attractive to me both sexually and as a person. She's the kind you find in top business jobs and laboratories. Now a gal like that is some one we can all be proud of. But one of those diesel dykes does nothing for us."

“Then you don't think a good bus driver's worth while?" I asked.

"Oh for chrissakes, I'm not talking about a bus driver who's trying to get you where you're going. I'm talking about a female who's trying to show how much of a man she is. Besides, most of them can't get too many jobs where they can dress in drag, so they're mostly out of work and being supported by their femmes.

"That's another thing I can't stand," said Dorothy, pounding her fist into her hand. "If these dykes want to play like men, let them behave like men and support their women instead of letting their femmes do all the work." She took a deep breath. "And another thing they bring the

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