BOB WALTRIP

ON LIFE AND ART AND THE HOMOSEXUAL

It seems to me that every homosexual is in constant fear of growing old and being lonely. But we must realize that old age and loneliness are not exclusively homosexual conditions. If you look about you you'll find that there are a great many heterosexuals sitting on park benches who have nothing to do and no pep left to do it with. It's true that they might once have been men who had wives and children to come home to where the homosexual had nobody. But this might have been the fault of the homosexual, and not the fault of Cruel Fate. All too often gay young men roll themselves up in a comforting ball of self-pity and make themselves so completely unreceptive to others that they never find a mate. Like brainless birds, they perch on bar stools and spend their beautiful. fleeting youth in nothing more pro-

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ductive than screaming greetings to each other. They are secure in their despair, and afraid to try and find a permanent lover.

Another curious thing is that every homosexual thinks that he's entirely and completely unique in his misery. He thinks no one-absolutely no one

is as unhappy as he. No one has suffered as much, no one has undergone so many indignities, and no one has loved so often or so fruitlessly. (No pun intended.) The individual homosexual believes that he is the only one who lies in bed at night wishing there were were someone else there. He is the only one who walks down a street and yearns for the sexual embrace of various passing men. He is the only one in a cage from which he cannot escape cannot escape to be himself and openly love other men. He is the only one who

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