Lasting relationships are possible even in....

TWILIGHT MARRIAGE

by Chris Wetmore and John Arlee

This is a frank report from two adult men who have established a successful and permanent private life relationship, covering a period of nine years. It shows how love, even between persons of the same sex. can be beautiful and creative. a spiritual and health-producing power. Its success in this case, and others unknown to the heterosexual world, throws a promising light toward solution of the problem of loneliness faced by many inverts. It can be done. But the social stigma presently attached to homosexuality in American culture will need to be dissolved. We believe public education is the means toward that end. In a forthcoming issue the MATTACHINE REVIEW will publish an article by the members of a successful Lesbian alliance.

IT HAS BEEN SAID that nothing

new has been written since the writings of Shakespeare. Through his writings he delineated all the passions and pleasures, all the vexations, frailities and wretchedness of mankind. That which has been wriiten since his death is repetitiouswritten only in different light, for different reasons, and perhaps on diíferent planes of thought. Whatever thoughts we may construe here upon our readers are hardly original.

We believe we have found within the framework of our lives (and this

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has not come easy by any means) a partnership built upon the basis of loyalty and devotion which has proven itself. With each other our minds are at rest. We can, between ourselves, tell our most intimate thoughts. We can be surly or sorrowful, angry or happy, despondent or gay. To each it matters a great deal, for we know and understand. We do not try to make each other over for our own selfishness. Some of the changes we may endeavor to make within ourselves have been for the purpose of strengthening the welfare and happiness between us. Sometimes we try to change the things we can; sometimes we don't, But either way we go we are together.

mattachine REVIEW

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As a result of the years we have been together, and the thousands of iniles we have traveled throughout America and in other lands, there is one thing in particular which occurs to us: Why are there so few couples like us in the "twilight world"? John and I have related within our set about our life together-what we have done, what we have accomplished, and how we have managed to stay together-in fact, how much more closely knit we are now than when we first knew each other.

Somehow there is something about the expressions of others, a sign of doubt, as if to say, "We'd love to believe you, we want to believe you, but somehow we don't. You spin a wonderful Alice-in-Wonderland story fellows, but it is just too, too much to be so."

In the past I used to become quite frustrated and sometimes angry when I sensed they were only listening to our words and taking no stock in their meaning. It was to them as if we were trying to give a sense of understanding, not a picture of ourselves. We had no reason to vent our ego on anyone. It was as if to say, "See, this is what we have done; you, too, can do the same". Perhaps in our eagerness to help others find themselves we played the part. Also, at that time we had not been together long enough to discuss all the intricate details which only time and understanding can bring about. So as we see it today, had we been single and listening to a couple like ourselves at that time, probably we too would have taken a similar view. With more years added, there are a few more lines around the eyes, and attainment of considerable more knowledge and wisdom which comes from life's experiences. We feel with some justification that we are better

prepared to write an article of this kind.

We met in a U. S. Veterans Hospital. Both of us were there because of a recurrence of old injuries suffered during World War II. Each had been in the same branch of the service, but in different parts of the world. The strange thing about our early relationship is the fact that. we did not have any particular common bond to hold us together. John was born on a Southern farm where life for him was hard at best. He was small in stature and it was almost impossible for him to carry out the farm tasks which his father compelled him to do. Because of his father's treatment of him and his brothers and sisters and of his mother, John packed his belongings and left home at 15. From that day on he never became dependent upon any member of his family again. At 16 he joined the army by misrepresenting his age, and served until he was seriously injured in North Africa. After a year in the hospital he was given an honorable, medical discharge. Then John met a girl from up-state New York. After a short courtship they were married. But this marriage didn't work because it was never meant to be, as John puts it.

After living together for more than two years, it was legally dissolved. Fortunately, no children were involved.

I was born and raised in an entirely different part of the country and by a different type of people. Where John's parents were farmers who sweated out their living behind a two-mule plow, my people were city-born and bred. My father was a moderately successful business man. Whereas John never knew anything but hard knocks and hard work, I never knew either. I was not a "mamma's boy", by any means, nor was I a pansy. The most that