preserved forever--the grand illusion. If you don't snuff out a match, it burns out soon enough. But they engage a priest to bless the cold ashes with which they live-pretending they still tend the flame."

Gerald Albritten was a promising young State Department official. Extremely brilliant, he had an ability to "pump" people without seeming to, striking facility for languages, a good, conservative appearance, and infinitely charming social manners. I met him through New York friends shortly after McCarthy's rise. Gerald was seen too often with 42nd Street hustlers. He fought his dismissal, but in vain. He had it rough till he got an overseas job with an export firm.

"If some homos are sensitive to blackmail," he said, "it's society that forces them into secrecy. The best men in foreign service are single, and usually homosexual. Its the man who puts his family first who's really a security problem."

The Church of England not long ago urged homosexuals. who couldn't be changed, to abstain. Armin Thompson had done this for years, he was a "Y" counsellor in my home town, and I was referred to him for advice about my own problem. His aggressive masculinity left me unprepared for his own confession: "You're not alone. Millions of us have to find ways to face this problem. It's up to youwhat kind of moral fibre you've got. You can spend your life feeling sorry for yourself, if you want. You can live in slinking degradation, shock society and alienate those who respect you. live like a crazy bohemian, if you want. But if you want, if you have the moral fibre, the will power, the faith in God to carry you through, you can turn this terrible urge into a beautiful and useful thing. Man's love for man is the purest emotion of which we are humanly capable, but it must not be corrupted."

6

I argued. Why should physical expression of this love be more corrupting than with ordinary love? But to him overt sex was the first step to ruin.

"We don't find it easy to resist our impulses. Working in the 'Y.' temptation tears at me every minute. It's not just seeing men and boys and having desire toward them, it's knowing the things that go on here . . . I chose to work here so I would always keep my guard up. If I forget these evil desires for one solitary minute, and they suddenly sneaked up behind me, I'm afraid to think what would happen."

I soon grew tired of his preaching, and convinced his approach to homosexuality was dangerously unhealthy and unnatural. I had to begin my own quest for that perfect life-partner. I found that quest was a way of life in itself, and a deflector of my other ambitions. As Dorothy Parker said:

"Accursed from their birth they be Who seek to find monogamy, Pursuing it from bed to bed. I think they would be better dead."

Yes, many homosexuals are single, not by choice, but because they haven't found the "one."

Some set impossible standards. Ray Pittrucci set his so high that thirty years hunting found him no nearer his goal. But his nightly hunt goes on, and each new friend is met with pledges of eternal love, and invited to share Ray's house and bank balance. Somewhere in this frantic engagement, the newcomer is inevitably tried in the balance and found wanting, and next morning, cast forth into utter darkness.

Some don't go easily, and Ray had paid dearly for his mistakes. He is an extreme type, but not rare.

Marcia Deal has been carrying on the same process longer, though her trial runs last long enough for her to