that sometimes there ISN'T any happy ending except, maybe, the bitter consciousness of a fight well fought, the knowledge of going down with the flags flying?

"As long as anyone can be 'depressed by facing facts, she hasn't admitted yet that they are facts. But they are-for the present, at least, facts---hard, solid, massive, real facts which no amount of sugary happy-ending stories, full of froth and sweetness, can ever disguise. They might give the Lesbian a few minutes of escape from the world she has to live in---but they surely won't add mything to her self-knowledge or give her any added strength to face herself and the world.

"We can fight against facts. We can chip away at the mountains of misunderstanding, and try to lessen them somewhat, and look forward to the day when the walls of Jericho will crumble before our blasts. But even God's Chosen People had to spend forty years in the wilderness.

"The woman who can't face the world soberly, without needing the artificial 'lift' of a sweet, sugary love story with a 'simply lovely' happy ending---well, she'd better go and start conforming, because she is doomed to beat her head eternally against the rock of Things as They Are...and her head will probably crumble before the rook will.

"Here's to more sober understanding, and much less 'happy' positive, bright hopefulness". Certainly anyone with the courage to be a Lesbian in today's world ought to be able to dispense with the feeble aphorisms of complacent or rampant Peale-ism. There may be a power in Positive Thinking', but damnit, there is also a power in REALISTIC thinking---neither positive or negative, but squarely neutral, sober, balanced thinking which faces facts fearlessly, sees good and bad with equal eyes.

"Furthermore---an adolescent who goes into homosexual living starry-eyed, feeling that everything is beautiful, natural and fulfilling' is due for the same sort of rude shock, someday, as comes to unrealistic honeymoon brides who try to believe that their Cinderella dreams will last through the Golden Weddings, including

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