an interview at Christmas time

This is the time of year when the age-long custom of giving and receiving gifts brings into focus the question, what is there worth giving or receiving? What would you really like to have most of all if some Genie or some Santa Claus asked that question? Would homosexuals, when it came right down to it, settle for that Jaguar, that year in Paris, that cool little beach house, or even that boundless supply of sexy tricks trotted out each month in the model magazines on the newsstands?

If you ask them, perhaps most homosexuals would fervently reply, most of them, that is, who have graduated from that starry-eyed stage when visionary goals still hold promise for them, that above all the things they desire in this world would be the gift of a true and lasting friendship. "Give me a lover," they say, "to cherish, to enjoy, to live with and, above all, to just be there. That would be the gift of gifts." But would it?

For do such persons understand what it might take in the way of sacrifices and struggle and pain to achieve such a friendship, much less to keep it alive? Let those who want love and constancy pause for a bit to see the cost, then ask themselves how much they would be willing to pay for such blessings.

Let them read what the price was for Jon and Don. Let them see what it has taken for one couple to earn and win the way into a deeper, richer kind of living, one where the presence or

the absence of glamor and excitement are not at all what really matters, where partnership and love both mean the same quiet, happy thing.

Perhaps the place to begin their story is with the way they met. It was a case of cruising, as it is so often, our society being what it is. Don was a married man with nearly grown children, at long last discovering himself in middle life and struggling toward some solution for his situation. Jon was about twenty-five years younger and still living at home with his parents.

One meeting led to another, and another. Before long each had visited the other's home for dinners. There were gifts exchanged, most disastrously an expensive one to Don upon Jon's return from a trip to Europe. That did it. Wifey became suspicious and wanted to know what was happening? Being an honest person Don told her.

From then on a dreary reign of harrassment was alternated with hopes for resolving the problem. One daughter was detailed to spy upon her father and report his whereabouts. He was remanded to a psychiatrist's attention and threatened with exposure to the F.B.I. The wife now sought sexual attentions which formerly she had repelled.

As time went on, Jon and Don continued to see each other, becoming more and more interested in each other's company. It was clear that Don's marriage was a hopelessly lost cause. So the two of them moved to-

by Valentine Richardson

7