So, if no one understands us and the heterosexual world fears and hates us, where are we and how do we go about the task of living life with pride and confidence? It's a hard question to answer. Most of us stumble through life somehow. A few of us commit suicide. We all constantly seek happiness and none of us really finds it. For it is a part of human nature never to be satisfied. Regardless of what we have, we are sure that things could be much better. For some reason. a good many of us are never really satisfied by sex, and constantly seek a Perfect Partner who never seems to show up. We-like all people-feel that life is somehow passing us by. But this, too. is part of the human condition, and is not the exclusive cross that the homosexual bears.

Through history the homosexual has been used in art merely for the sake of his homosexuality. Since people choose to label things and store them neatly in the mind, the homophile is called a queer, and is forced to remain within that category. In literature, gay people are introduced in order that they may be ridiculed. be witty, be attacked, be the attacker. or commit suicide in order to neatly tie up a story line. They are never really people, and they somehow never really come to life on the page. Ann Bannon and her group are instrumental in writing horribly depressing novels about blathering neurotics who go through life having sex and fist fights. More "literate" authors who are read in colleges and coffee houses choose the homosexual because one can say just about anything about him without fear of contradiction. Since he is queer, he can also be a rapist, voyeur, axe murderer, necrophile, child molester, and maniac. The general public will go along with anything the author chooses, since there is nothing more horrible than a homosexual. He can

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do anything under that title, with homosexuality as the only motivation. Consequently, in high-class fiction. the homophile is (1.) a brooding neurotic, bent on self destruction; (2.) a brainless flit, spouting witticisms without ever touching reality; or (3.) any kind of despicable nut, who is the object of the reader's contempt. He is seldom ever a man who laughs and cries and needs love. He never eats hamburgers and goes to the post office and commits heroic deeds.

In widely-accepted "popular" fiction, the homosexual plays the same role, only a more pornographic one. City of Night is one of the filthiest books I have ever read. Since my mind is just as dirty as the next guy's, I enjoyed it immensely, but it did very little to advance the homosexual's standing. Contrary to popular belief, the homophile does occasionally get out of bed. Too, not every homosexual pays for his sex. Mr. Rechy (rhymes with wretch-ie) would have us believe that one of the most disgustingly untruthful phenomenon in the world-the male whore -is really a wholesome and welcome part of our society. The hustler, in his estimation, performs a service to mankind by renting his sexual organs to these filthy perverts-thus keeping them away from our children. I have nothing against male whores providing they openly admit their homosexuality. Since few of them do, they remain silly little children playing at being super hemen while actually longing for the act which they joyfully allow to be perpetrated upon them. I have no time for silly people playing games.

In the field of non-fiction the homosexual is even more shamelessly mishandled. Great legions of "authorities" set down their volumes of spec ulation, conjecture, misinformation. and distortion in the most blatant

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