In One Person

“group.” I was still living in New York in ’68, and even in New York there wasn’t what I would have called a gay “community,” not a
true
community. (Just all the cruising.)
    I suppose the frequency with which gay men encountered one another in doctors’ offices might have constituted a different kind of community; I’m kidding, but it was my impression that we had more than our fair share of gonorrhea. In fact, a gay doctor (who was treating me for the clap) told me that bisexual men should wear condoms.
    I don’t remember if the clap doctor said
why
, or if I asked him; I probably took his unfriendly advice as further evidence of prejudice against bisexuals, or maybe this doctor reminded me of a gay Dr. Harlow. (In ’68, I knew a lot of gay guys;
their
doctors weren’t telling
them
to wear condoms.)
    The only reason I remember this incident at all is that I was about to publish my first novel, and I had just met a woman I was interested in, in that way; at the same time, of course, I was constantly meeting gay guys. And it wasn’t only because of this clap doctor (with the apparent prejudice against bisexuals) that I started wearing a condom; I credit Esmeralda for making condoms appealing to me, and I missed Esmeralda—I definitely did.
    In any case, the next time I heard from Tom Atkins, I had become a condom-wearer and poor Tom had a wife and children. As if that weren’t shocking enough, our correspondence had degenerated to Christmas cards! Thus I learned, from a Christmas photo, that Tom Atkins had a family—an older boy, a younger girl. (Needless to say, I hadn’t been invited to the wedding.)
    In the winter of 1969, I became a published novelist. The woman I’d met in New York around the time I was persuaded to wear a condom had lured me to Los Angeles; her name was Alice, and she was a screenwriter. It was somehow reassuring that Alice had told me she wasn’t interested in “adapting” my first novel.
    “I’m not going down that road,” Alice said. “Our relationship means more to me than a job.”
    I’d told Larry what Alice had said, thinking this might reassure him about her. (Larry had met Alice only once; he hadn’t liked her.)
    “Maybe you should consider, Bill, what Alice means,” Larry said. “What if she already pitched your novel to all the studios, and no one was interested?”
    Well, my old pal Larry was the first to tell me that no one would ever make a film from my first novel; he also told me I would hate living in L.A., although I think what Larry meant (or hoped) was that I would hate living with Alice. “She’s not your soprano understudy, Bill,” Larry said.
    But I
liked
living with Alice—Alice was the first woman I’d lived with who knew I was bisexual. She said it didn’t matter. (
Alice
was bisexual.)
    Alice was also the first woman I’d talked to about having a child together—but, like me, she was no fan of monogamy. We’d gone to Los Angeles with a bohemian belief in the enduring superiority of friendship; Alice and I were friends, and we both believed that the concept of “the couple” was a dinosaur idea. We’d given each other permission to have other lovers, though there were limitations—namely, it was okay with Alice if I saw men, just not other women, and I told her it was okay with me if she saw women, just not other men.
    “Uh-oh,” Elaine had said. “I don’t think those kinds of arrangements work.”
    At the time, I wouldn’t have considered Elaine to be an authority on “arrangements”; I also knew that, even in ’69, Elaine had expressed an on-again, off-again interest in
our
living together. But Elaine was steadfast in her resolution never to have any children; she hadn’t changed her mind about the size of babies’ heads.
    Alice and I additionally believed, most naïvely, in the enduring superiority of writers. Naturally, we didn’t see each other as rivals; she was a screenwriter, I was a novelist. What could possibly go wrong? (“Uh-oh,” as Elaine would say.)
    I’d forgotten that my first conversation with Alice had been about the draft. When I got summoned for a physical—I can’t remember exactly when this was, or many other details, because I had a terrible hangover that day—I checked the box that said something along the lines of “homosexual tendencies,” which I vaguely recall whispering to myself in an Austrian accent, as if Herr Doktor Grau were still alive and speaking to me.
    The army