He had the knack for meeting someone and immediately falling in love. Within days, weeks, or months, though, he managed to be left alone, and it was never he that did the leaving. He always truly believed that the latest love would be the last, even after it was over. But a few weeks would pass and he would be seeking romance again. He seemed incapable of functioning without it. By his senior year it had become a frantic search, and he would spend more and more time at the gay bars in the city.

"I'm on a merry-go-round, Fred," he told me, "and I can't get off. One of these days I'm going to be thirty, and it will all be over."

So he pursued his course.

Then graduation time came for Johnny-boy. The week after he received his diploma he came to the city to see me. By this time I had graduated, and was teaching school and living in the city.

"What are you going to do now. Johnny-boy?" I asked him.

"I don't know, Fred," he said. "I could teach school, or go to a graduate school. But at any rate, I'm leaving San Francisco. I'm going back to Minneapolis."

Johnny-boy had always hated Minneapolis, and this statement came as a shock. "What are you going to do back there?" I asked him. "Minneapolis and you will never blend, not after San Francisco."

"I've become something of a derelict here," he said. "I was brought up carefully, but for the past few years I've gone wild. I'm not talking about being gay; that has nothing to do with it. But losing count of all the people you've met has. How am I going to end up? The merry-go-round isn't taking me to any destination."

So he returned to Minneapolis. He began teaching school, and we wrote to each other occasionally. He seemed to be living that quiet life. About a year later he went into the Army, and was stationed in Germany. He apparently spent his free time sightseeing and studying the German language. He was in the Army for two years and sent me an occasional post card. Then Johnny-boy was out of the Army, and I received a Christmas card from him in Minneapolis. Then the cards and letters stopped.

I hadn't heard from him at all during the past three years until several days ago when the phone rang, and it was Johnny-boy speaking.

"Hello, Fred," he said. "I'm back in San Francisco for a few days, and would like to see you. Why don't you come to the rodeo at the Cow Palace and see me ride?"

"Rodeo?" I said. "What is this about a rodeo?"

Johnny-boy had come back to town for a rodeo contest. He was now a rodeo

rider!

Although thinking it must be some kind of a joke, I went to the Cow Palace that evening. Johnny-boy had left a ticket for me at the box office. I sat in a state of unbelief until the loud speaker announced the entrance of twenty-nine year old Jack Stewart from Big Gap, Texas. Out came Johnny-boy riding a stallion, his right hand high in the air, in the authentic picture of a rodeo rider. There was no mistaking, it was Johnny-boy. He was a bit heavier, and he looked more rugged. He was different from the Ivy Leagued student at Stanford, but I could still see a touch of the old poetic delicacy in his tanned face. Johnny-boy stayed on that stallion, and he later roped a calf and dodged a steer. I thought

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