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I said nothing, but he continued, "Guess they're getting pretty choosy about their officers in the Navy any. more, aren't they?""

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instinctive desire to avoid unplea I replied there had been some fricantness for everybody. Thanks to tion and went back to my business gossipy postal employees, long with the teller behind the grill. distance operators and FBI men, Encouraged by the grins of the checking me for naval security clearfarmer folk about him, the banker ance, a previous visit of a few moved in closer. "Those FBI men months duration, had made me an asked some of the funniest ques object of no small curiosity. My tions," he winked at someone over books were known and presumably my shoulder, "About your politics. my supposed sexual aberrations the and how many girl friends you ever. source of lively speculation and the had around here." usual basic attempts at humor, though never in the hearing of the family, who, fortunately, have always preferred their own company in the privacy of their homes to con Usually I never think of proper siderable social intercourse with any group. Because my appearance on the retorts until they're too late, but scene did cause some family tense. luck must have been with me that ness, my aloofness was approved day to cause me to say, "For a man whose son is only two years my and encouraged. The townspeople who had made up their minds about junior and has yet to serve one day my stay among them seemed to be in the defense of his country, I think divided into two camps, neither very you're on a very risky subject, sir." hostile to the other. On one hand, The man grew pale and for a the charitable said, 'Isn't it a shame! few seconds I thought I had a fight He might have been thus and so, but on my hands, but he turned and for this horrible disease." On the walked back to his his office and other, the more malicious chuckled, slammed the door. Americans still "You see! No matter who they are, love to see a bully stopped, even if they can sire freaks the same as any it is by a sexual deviate, it would one else!" Encounters were to be seem. expected, and they happened, and There were a few other episodes because I felt rather like a mouse in which I didn't fare so well, but whose every action was being as the months passed and my public watched with hawklike ferocity, I behavior remained as exemplary as knew I must make my defense cay it usually is, I was accepted for there tiously, which probably saved me was nothing sensational for their extreme embarrassment on many curiosity to feed upon. I think the occasions. -people had begun to realize that whatever I was, I was not some sort The first attack, in the form of of tabloid monster that might prey a bing, came from the local on their school children or catapult banker, a typical glad-hander, and the name of their town into infamy hence the town's first citizen. Before with an outbreak of a Jekell-Hyde somne half dozen people one morn. nature. ing, he said to me, "I guess you had

On the positive side of the ledger,

a pretty bad time before they let you I noticed increasing signs of friend. out of the Navy this time, didn't liness. People nodded, then spoke, commented on the weather (of

you?!

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which Kansas always has too much) and at last asked me to share coffee or beer with them. I never refused, for it had suddenly occuredto me that I had before me an excellent laboratory in which to observe the social relations between homo and heterosexual individuals. I started keeping notebooks and as my interest in my fellow townspeople grew, their acceptance of me seemed to increase. In spite of being a kind of Puddinhead Wilson, I was one of them.

seen Oscar Wilde here in the Mid. west. (Checking later, I found his train had passed through a town in which she had lived as a girl and the citizenry had viewed him, flowing cape, flowing hair and all.) As if to relieve the personal implication of this bit of information, she told me she had also seen Sarah Bernhardt's Joan of Arc, (After the performance, she had been one of twenty or so young ladies who trouped across the stage, each to present to the divine Sarah, who leaned against a large white horse, a prairie flower,) and Pavlova dance The Swan. papers.

Last spring a candidate for county sheriff asked me to write him some publicity stories for the local Later, the county" commissioner asked me to serve as a judge on the local election board. About the same time, I was named for possible jury duty, until it was learned I do not believe in capital punishment.

But the most colorful indication of cordiality came from a seventy year old Nady. She called me one afternoon, identified herself and asked bluntly, What do you know about Plato?"

I told her very little, other than his famous Republic had been successfully paralleled with both Fas cim and Communism, and that he had practiced the vilest literary de ceit by putting his own views into the mouth of Socrates to give them added credence.

"Can you prove that," she asked. "I think so, if Russell and H. G. Wells are good enough for you." She said they were, and asked me Jif I would like to become a member of a Great Books discussion group she attended in a small city fifty miles away. Having heard excellent reports of the work of this founda. tion, I accepted the invitation. During the drive to the first meeting, she told me, apropos of nothing and in he most casual manner, that she bad

ހ

I asked her what Sarah Bernhardt was like. She replied, "Oh, she was dark, and very foreign looking." Inadequate as the answer was, for an instant the old lady, in trying to extend her understanding, had brought me very close to that age from which I am often accused of being a leftover. I was grateful.

Thus, I am rediscovering the mores of the American small l'town, but this time as an alien. In some ways I like the position better than being taken for granted as one of their group. Certainly I am proving in a small way theories of social toleration and respect that I would not have guessed possible ten years ago. It is a dangerous business, for where there is great ignorance there is a great potential violence, but who can say how close I am in this experience to that future time, when the sexual deviate will be understood and integrated with equality into society throughout the land?

Just the other day, a wheat farmer stopped me on the street. He'd seen 3

television program about, "this fellow Freud" he said, "who, be lieved everything we do is a result of sex!" He looked at me as I might have looked at a flying saucer that

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