convinced that she had been "led into it" by the older

woman.

Then began the weary round of presumed experts for help. The lawyer assured mo that legal action was out of the question. My doctor, eventually to be of the greatest help, was more concerned about the effect of the discovery on mo than trying to find immediate answers to my frantic questions. A psychiatrist tried to help by claiming that homosexuality was the result of a bad relationship with the parent of the opposite sex. This gave me temporary comfort but was not entirely convincing. I constantly questioned whore I had gone wrong in her upbringing. The feeling of porsonal guilt about the situation grow until I could think of little olso. Like most parents, even the most sophisticated, I possessed a little knowledge and many cliches about homosexuality. Later on I was to be scornful of parents who refused to acknowledge the facts or were too stupid to recognize thom. At this point, I displayed the same refusal to face the facts of the past.

Although Jean was exceptionally pretty, she almost never dated. I attributed this to the fact that we were both shy about making friends, and the misfortune of living in a neighborhood whose social status was unacceptablo. I remembered the night she had come home hysterical from a movie date. I assumed from her very real disgust that sho had been assaulted at the very loast, but it turned out the boy had merely wanted to hold her hand. I didn't consider this particularly important or significant, nor the fact that she said other boys, after one date, woro stupid and boring.

In the meantime, after weeks of not knowing where sho was, she began to visit occasionally, but there was no real rapport between us. We both carofully avoided any mention of what was happening in her life, but small comments she let slip finally convinced me that she was really gay. I was ready to blame anyone or anything the camps she had gone to, & teacher who had acted sus-

5