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It was in the fall of 1953 that a tiny man wearing a jockey cap walked into ONE's barren office. He was small enough to have been a jockey. Anyhow, he was wearing the cap. It was a good many interviews later before that cap ever came off, to reveal the baldness of which he was at that time ashamed.

This was little John. He had found ONE Magazine on a newsstand. Bought it one minute and got on the bus the next, to come to the office as the earliest applicant for ONE's Social Service Division. John stuttered rather badly; gradually he managed to get his story out.

It had a good many of the familiar outlines: a rather stormy boyhood and adolescence in a small town in the Middle West; a good deal of rather boisterous slamming around with the gang; a good deal of show at making passes at the girls and at trying to deceive relatives and friends

about himself; a good deal of trying to deceive himself about himself; a good deal of drifting from job to job. This was easy enough for he hadn't gone very far in school. The speech difficulty took care of that. Pretty hard to say he was trained for anything in particular.

By a series of fortuitous circumstances he finally found a pretty good niche, as an orderly in a large veterans' hospital. This gave his longevaded homosexuality some congenial and useful expression. No task was too distasteful for him, nothing too unpleasant or menial, so long as he could feel he was being of service to those men in need.

He cheerfully helped the nurses and usually ran, not walked, for John liked his work. Besides, there were many working side-by-side with him-doctors, nurses, administrative assistants, orderlies-who shared his own emotional orientation. Life was always interesting as a result. At last John had found his place in the world.

The pay was not too bad and left him enough money each month, after paying every bill right on the dot, for buying some sharp clothes, even a little companionship now and then, if it came to that. He found it pretty hard to make much headway in the bars and places like that sometimes. All went along well for a few years until Senator McCarthy's demonic career began to send homosexual tremors throughout the entire structure of federal employment.

In due time a gestapo-type task force got around to the hospital where John worked. The wily ferrets who made it up soon discerned that little John was just their boy. They had been sent to do a job and he was the one that was going to do it for them.

With the friendliest of oiliness they assured him that they were his real pals; that they were sure he was

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