It comes as a surprise to many heterosexuals that a homosexual may be as physically normal and emotionally conservative as himself. But it is no news to the homosexuals themselves and as a whole, they prefer to have what they consider their best side presented to the public. It isn't a question of suppressing or denying the existence of transvestites or rather feminine men. It is only the honest desire to play up the natural masculinity of many homosexual men; to make an ignorant general public aware of the best and most admirable qualities in these men, rather than the lurid and sensational details they are all familiar with from the press or from the antics of a few unhappy show-offs in public.

I have tried in my own novels to include a majority of good people living their lives the best they know. My principle male in the five or six books I have written so far is a guy named Jack Mann (what else?) who is something of a cynic because of the life he has led. But he has a lot of wit and sympathy for other people. He maintains contact in the straight world. As with most homosexuals in real life, Jack has revealed himself to some straight folks, not to others. I think I hope that he is both believable and likeable. He is not hypercritical of the effeminate element in the gay world, except when some impudence offends public propriety. He is by nature a quiet, peaceable guy, well educated, warm hearted, intelligent. I think he is a perfectly normal man and I have tried to present him that way. What some heterosexuals would doubtless call his "abnormality" is only one aspect of his life. His contacts with women are amiable and constructive. Another unfortunate prejudice that heterosexuals are apt to harbor is the one that says homosexuals never have any truck with the opposite sex. Any homosexual knows what nonsense this is, and in my characterization of Jack, I feel

that a lot is done for the cause of understanding. I am not trying to build Jack up into a hero, or draw him with heroic lines. Rather, I am trying to make him a normal, natural man; interested in other people of both sexes; a simpatico person with a lot of perception and a sort of instinct for people which is the gift of his emotional difference from the majority.

If gay novels, by depicting the best and worthiest elements in the gay world as well as the dramatic and violent, can erase some of the narrowminded misconceptions held by the straight world, it will be worth all those noisy covers with their bedroom eyes and breathless blurbs. Eventually, if we stick closer to the truth and everyday lives of homosexuals, without sacrificing dramatic interest, perhaps we can dispense with the old bromides burdening gay society; that is, that it is a world of shadows; a world in the twilight; a world full of oversexed half-men and half-women, all blundering around in the dusk without giving a damn for anything but who they'll spend the dark hours with.

As of now there are several categories that gay novels have fallen into: The Bleeding Heart-where the protagonist has such problems you wonder why he bothers. There is the hero or heroine standing outside the gay bar with his nose pressed to the glass, telling himself weepily, "this is not for me." But he never gets very far from that window. In the next novel, he gets past the window, makes the contact, but gets even with himself the next morning by jumping out the hotel window. In the third, he goes in, makes the contact, goes home to his hotel and writes to his Mother, "Mom, forgive forgive me. I'm going straight." And in the last novel, he goes through the whole business, then changes his mind and writes to Mom, "Well, don't call me names. It's all

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