Hank,

I've been thinking about your plan to interview people about sexuality and choice, and what I might have to offer. I think I have some good insights on this subject, but in the advent that the interview became argumentative it occured to me that I should make clear to myself just what those insights were so that I wouldn't forget them when the time came.

Then again, if you choose to include me in your project, you could use this essay to introduce your interview with me — or simply use it instead of an interview if it answered all your questions.

Is homosexuality a lifestyle choice or are you basically born straight or gay? I generally come down on the side of choice here, as I do with a lot of other lifestyle issues that I think people need to shoulder personal responsibility for. And I think it's important for gay people to start being more honest about this issue than they have been lately. On the other hand, I don't think we need be anxious about the efforts of scientists, for example, to find brain correlates to human sexual preferences.

How could anybody rationally choose to have a homosexual relationship? My own history provides the clearest example I know of just how this can happen. When I was a child our small apartment was cold in the winter. Early in the morning I would sneak into my parents bed and warm up by resting up against my mother's back. The very earliest memory I have of any sexual feeling was waking up to find that I had turned over and that my penus was enjoying my mother's warmth: it was very warm and full of pleasure. If human beings were Pavlovian automata then I suppose this would have made me a "motherosexual."

Shortly afterwards I found where my father hid his Playboy magazines and found the novelty of seeing people naked, in sharp contrast to how ordinary people apparently thought they should appear, refreshing and stimulating — and increasingly sexual. I had gleaned just enough of what modern attitudes were about "healthy masturbatory experiences in growing young lads" to know that I was doing a perfectly red-blooded American ritual by sneaking around and jerking off to these pictures. No thanks to my parents, I might add, who to this day stutter hopelessly when attempting to pronounce the word "sex."

Psychologists love to pontificate about statistical averages as if they were guideposts to insight. Because everyone becomes sexual in the early teens, for example, they will make it seem as if the only important thing that happens to us in our early teens is becoming sexual. It is, after all, the only phenomenon they can gather gobs of data about without having to be too selective about who they talk to, and this relative gobbiness starches their collars quite effectively. But although I became sexual in my early teens, what really got me going was a new-found love for books, and the sense of incredible good fortune I enjoyed when I acquired a book that I could forevermore read and re-read whenever the fancy took me. Serendipitously enough, however, my nascent bibliomania lead me to my next experience with sexuality.

At this time I got an allowance of a dollar a week. On most Saturdays when the weather was clear I would spend it as follows: 15 cents to take the subway from the Bronx to that now all-but-extinct but then quite thriving aglommeration of used book dealers on Fourth Avenue between 8th and 14th streets, 25 cents for a hot dog, 45 cents for used books, and 15 cents for the subway back. At that time Strands had outdoor book bins where I got treasures like Roy Chapman Andrews' Ends of the Earth for 35 cents, the very book that told the true story of his finding dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert (another topic more interesting than sex to this increasingly deviant lad). This particular Saturday, however, I went to the Library at 42nd Street.

The Library at 42nd Street was much too intimidating for a boy of ten who had only just mastered outdoor book bins, so I found myself wandering out back to the park that filled the other half of this city block. A man of about thirty standing against a rail asked me how I was "doing." I was polite and answered his questions, but there was something cold and calculating about him I didn't trust. Do I like to go fishing, he asked. Would I like to see some pictures of his most recent fishing trips? We could go to his apartment nearby. By this time I had my Sherlock Holmes deerstalker on, knew the game was afoot, and knew not to let on that I knew. "No thanks," I said and went on my way, fuming. I found a policeman three blocks away and told him this strange man tried to get me to go to his apartment to look at pictures of fish! We walked back to the park and found the suspect now with a cohort (I knew the right terms for these types). The policeman said, "This boy says you asked him to come to your apartment."

Without looking at me the suspect said, "Never saw him in my life. I've been talking with Bill all morning."

"You did too you big liar!" I bellowed, knowing I was taking my ten-year old life in my hands in the cause of justice.

"Get out of the park," the policeman said. The varmints left and the incident was over.

At the time it didn't occur to me that the man was homosexual for the simple reason that I had never heard of homosexuality. I thought that, like other degenerates, he merely wanted to slit my throat and bury me in his lake. But during the next few years I began to put things together. Children have every right to react as strongly as their emotions advise them about perceived threats, and I'm proud to this day of turning this jerk in to the cops. Children also have a right to draw tentative conclusions and frame working hypotheses from a single experience, for the simple reason that a single experience is better than none at all and will do until more come along. Fortunately, my study of the scientific method cautioned me not to judge all sexual deviants from this one foggy experience, and by the age of 22 I was living in a rationally chosen, committed homosexual mated relationship. But for years, this one outrage put a cloud on my being able to relax and enjoy the exploration of homosexual pleasure.

My next experience concerning sex was when I found someone to be sexual with at the age of 19 at college. I'm so grateful to Judy to this day for being just what I needed. I was a battle-scarred veteran of Bronx street fights in which I was never the coward and always the loser. Since my parents never touched me the only physical contact I had involved bruising and blood-letting and never pleasure. Judy had been raised by a womanizing, drunk psychologist in various Washington, DC suburbs, had a very sweet, shy and innocent personality and, best of all, had never gone to public schools! As a result she had no agression skills and thought before she spoke. It was impossible to have arguments with her because she'd just turn away and start thinking. If I did something cruel, instead of fighting back she would fight back tears. The best and maybe the only way to get someone like me to lighten up on hateful behavior is to convince me that I'm actually hurting someone unjustly, and being with Judy showed me in vivid terms that I could improve myself in more ways than academically. I think now that no one had ever given me love me before and something came alive in me for the very first time: the idea that human relationships can be as qualified as books to help you learn about life.

When Judy said she would sleep with me I said I had cold feet and wouldn't know what to do. But she was very patient about it, and sex soon became a wonderful adjunct to my first relationship of trust in which anything like love had grown. After two years, however, I found that Judy didn't share the scope of my interest in the world. I wanted to understand human nature in its entirely, even if it meant reading a hundred "great books" to do it, and she wanted to become a doctor.

I respect experiments with sexuality that emphasize personal growth and not merely sexual hedonism. This naturally includes celebacy if it is not based on fear. The Ken Russel film "Savage Messiah" depicts a moving relationship between a man and woman that fails to become sexual but achieves significance in any case. Many former Catholic nuns and priests take their sweet time becoming sexual and that's OK by me. Your sexuality ought to serve your interests; if you're not ready, nobody else's readiness counts. And sexual activity often waxes and wanes as couples settle into long-lasting relationships of real psychological meaning and value.

Since I am a social scientist, I can talk about two relevant topics: my personal sexual history, and what I think of human sexuality in general. Since psychologists have all too often in the past concealed the distortions of their world view that were clearly caused by personal trauma, I always talk about my personal history with my students so they can decide for themselves in what ways it has influenced my thinking about human nature in general and them in particular.

Now, about sexuality in general. For many years I have entertained the question, is everybody homosexual? Once you come out, it is tempting to want all your friends to come out too, indeed even your second and third cousins. To believe this you must believe that the homosexuality of most people is "repressed," to use the conventional Freudian metaphor, and that yours somehow found favorable conditions to burst through.

Males have a biological need to ejaculate periodically, true, but I don't think that in general human beings are puppets on the end of sexual strings (even if some sad folks are).

Since we are not talking for the moment of the problems of starting and expanding a serious relationship, it is important to realize that sexual fantasy is about pleasure. Pleasure given as well as taken, perhaps, but pleasure nonetheless. And pleasure can only be judged by its intensity, not on any moral basis.

Sexual fantasy, which is what most people mean when they speak of preference, is also different from sexual need. Fantasy, like any esthetic habit, can be educated. Is it better to like classical music or jazz or, for example, both? A person whose esthetic horizons are broader has that much more to enjoy in life, and the same is true of fantasy.

A person capable of both homosexual and heterosexual fantasy needs rule no one out when lover shopping. To my way of thinking, this is the best of both worlds.

What about the men who say, I've had women but I'll prefer a man any day? To put the intensity of fantasy, or even sexual experience, before all the other ways in which a relationship is evaluated is perverse. Ultimately, questions of sex and celebration must give way to issues of love and personal power. These are probably topics for a different book, however.

I believe the world will be a better place when everyone has access to a rich homosexual and heterosexual fantasy life, and when we don't reject potential lovers because they have the wrong plumbing.

I have been in a heterosexual relationship for eight years. Some would say I've turned away from my homosexuality, but I don't see it that way. Jennifer and I feel right at home marching arm in arm in the Gay Day parade and sometimes joke that she and I have "decided to have a homosexual relationship."

Liberation is a state of mind. I find nothing odder about a straight couple in a gay parade than a white member of the NAACP. We have to liberate everybody, and no matter how eccentric our movement we need to invite everybody to join it.

"While there is a soul in prison, I am not free." — Eugene V. Debs.

One bit of advice I can offer from personal experience is: Don't try to force esthetic appreciation on someone who's not ready for it. It needs to be teased into being. So many of us remember piano lessons that made us hate classical music forever. I can't read Shakespeare because they shoved it down my throat in high school.

And the same thing is true of sexual esthetics: Gay men who force themselves to have sex with woman attain orgasm, not hetersexuality; the ruling class of prison inmates, who usually have male "wives," usually return to hetersexuality on release; abusive fathers who force their adolescent daughters into sexual activities, often with "educational" intent, are shocked when those daughters grow up to prefer lesbian relationships. And in my own life, trying to force myself to become "a homosexual" by allowing a man to give me blowjobs on a regular basis did nothing whatsoever for my sexual esthetics: I always needed to think about my former girlfriend to have an orgasm. (Only years later, when a friendly young man charmed me with unexpected intensity, did I experience my first-ever homosexual feelings.)

Sometimes I ask myself what I'm missing by not have a male lover. And then I look at how much Jennifer loves me and how much better I am able to tackle life's highest challenges because she is by my side, and I shrug off my doubts and get on with the business of living. If Jen and I break up and my next lover is a man, I can think about it all then.

Sexual feeling is not like a repressed force, but more like an acquired taste.

And why does everything need to revolve around gender? Don't hermaphrodites have a right to be in this game too? Haven't we read sci-fi novels about Earth men falling in love with the alien whose genitals were in the wrong place, but how in the end love triumphed and it turned out not to matter after all?

Dean

Hank,

Sorry about the long silence. I was stressed out about the loft negotiations and also there's something about seeing a pile of unanswered letters that makes me, well, NOT want to answer them. It has nothing to do with you or my feelings for you, it's more of just a mild temporary disassociation. (You'll notice, however, that when you needed a one-line autobio from me, I responded immediately.) I've gone through your messages again and will answer your questions one at a time

The loft idea, by the way, fell through because at the last minute I decided the landlord was too neurotic even for me to deal with. (Imagine that?) He teaches Art History at Fairleigh Dickinson, so that should give you an idea of what I was up against.

Actually, I still like that section of Staten Island a lot and plan to explore it on bicycle soon. It made me realize why Paul must have moved to the East Village in 1963. Paul loved lost souls and barren geniuses. Today the East Village is all talented yuppies and would-be punks and wanna-be glamour girls. It hit me when I came back from Staten Island that day: the East Village has become ALL POSTURING AND FACADING! When I spot people like Larry Wheelock, he seems so proud of his physique and the fact that he still has his hair. That's not what the Rosenfels revolution is about. That's not what any revolution is about. That's what our parents lives were about.

Another difference is that the people I met in my walking tour of West New Brighton were simple, unpretentious and VERY FRIENDLY. People in the East Village, on the other hand, have become unfriendly, pretentious and VERY COMPLICATED. I'm still a 1960's hippie who likes to smile into the face of a stranger and make a new friend. In this neighborhood, in this decade, that attitude gets you a haughty sneer. I'm sick of it. My "bump rate" has gone to zero.

I get the feeling that their coldness is actually caused by people having no idea of how they're "supposed to relate to others" and thinking that in the Big Apple you should just do as the Big Applians do: be nasty and conceited. I would never allow personal uncertainty or insecurity to cause me to conform to socially supported coldness and mean-spiritedness, but these jerks have NO PROBLEMO!

Yes, I like Bonobo chimps too. Too bad we can't go back, but we can't. Dummies can't even type let alone whistle Beethoven.

I think you're right about calling our site the Ninth Street Center Web Site rather than The Paul Rosenfels Web Site. (First bait, THEN switch.)

The story of my relationship with Bob is long and ultimately frustrating. Nobody can say I didn't give it my best for 15 years. The bottom line for me is that he refuses to grow. I mean this quite literally. He makes the same life-deadening choices again and again despite Jennifer and John Calhoun's and my best efforts at asking him to stop with the donations, stop with the pointless enslavement to Rosenfels-related stamp-licking activities, stop denying that he NEEDS TO GET A LIFE ALREADY. I could recite many anecdotes that have revealed his willful cynicism about literally everything that Paul actually represented to the people who learned from Paul how to be freer and more secure in their identities. He just doesn't want to hear about it. He wants to go on being a mindless and soulless DRUDGE and expects me to be thankful to him for his remarkable service.

For the last two years I've told Bob that he needs to get away from the whole Ninth Street Center crowd for a few years to find out who he is, and he always stares at me as if I'm just trying to make his life difficult. It becomes impossible to like someone who has frustrated every attempt to help him for 15 years, and I can honestly say now that I don't like him at all and actually don't care about his mental health anymore. There's only so much abuse I can take. (And don't think for a minute that just because he doesn't want to admit to himself that his willfulness is an abuse of my helpfulness that I haven't been victimized by this situation.) I've now washed my hands of him and his rigidity and his, finally, just plain stupidity. I'm always glad, though, to see people like Jennifer and yourself want to leave a pan of warm milk on the doorstep for him, even though I know all too well where this must ultimately lead.

Currently I'm on Fiji Standard Time. That's about 7 hours later than Eastern Standard Time. That means I get up around 2:00 PM and go to bed around 5:00 AM.

I'm not a visual person and don't have any clip art and wouldn't know what would be appropriate for my essay on QBCHOICE. I'm sure whatever you pick will be fine. (How about a drawing of a man sleep-walking to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread?)

You have to allow for the dumb search engines' data collection algorithms in marketing your site. Many articles in academic journals give the title, author and then keywords. I might show some keywords right off the bat to hook the right people and scare away the wrong people, something like: KEYWORDS DESCRIBING THIS SITE: homosexuality, creativity, polarity, introversion / extraversion, masculinity / femininity, social psychology, science of human nature, Paul Rosenfels.

I enjoy Gore Vidal's nasty barbs sometimes, too. I often quote his famous line about "Psychiatry lies somewhere between astrology and phrenology on the scale of human gullibility." He was pretty good jousting with William F. Buckley years ago on television. But his cynicism has become so all-pervasive that I don't think he would be able to understand the kind of positive vision for mankind's future that Paul and the rest of us to believe in. I can't consider him an ally for that reason.

I like the QBCHOICE site and am very proud to have put my 2 cents in. I've told a lot of people to look up my little essay. It's just the kind of encouragement I need, too, because I feel totally lacking in hope when it comes to writing anything for a conventional publisher, even (and in some sense ESPECIALLY) the gay press. I don't think QBCHOICE will "explode" onto the mainstream Internet "consciousness" but I don't think it has too. All it has to do is save a few lives here and there and wake a few people up. That's enough of a contribution to be proud of. And the greatest thing is that you don't have to conform to the standards of any god-damned publishing house's idea of "good standards and practices." (One of them recently stopped publishing teenage fiction by authors who didn't have a medical degree!)

Your initiative has also made me see that the NSC site should be a lot more than just a catalog of books and monographs that can be downloaded. We should have links to other far-thinking sites, like yours, and also quotes from all over the place, and invited mini-essays too. (Start writing!)

Finally, the MS Word document you attached to your message of 6/16 was not understood by MS Office '97. It saw it as a gigantic text message, most of which was gibberish. I've appended this original message to this new one to show you what I got, but I deleted most of the garbage because it doesn't mean anything to either of us.

Dean

Hank,

Thanks for sharing with me the letters that have flown between you and Gayle recently. She reached out to me about you last month, and I sensed immediately how obsessive and hateful she had become. I told her bluntly to wait for you to show interest in her or else, if that was not forthcoming, to move on. To discourage her inappropriate idealization of you, I insisted you weren't at all perfect and came up with some adhoc, and certainly arguable, examples of imperfections in your personality. These were based on hypotheses that I fashioned during the years you and I got to know each other a bit. Oh, well, she asked my opinion! Anyway, when Paul wanted to help seduced people, he'd always raise his voice and say, "Why do you want to love HIM? He's a [random expletive deleted]!" Paul knew perfectly well this wasn't literally true. The point is, it was helpful. In fact, it would usually make his patient break out into a big happy smile!

Gayle doesn't seem sophisticated psychologically, at least by Ninth Street Center standards, so it wouldn't surprise me if she rejected my advice out of hand. In any case, she never wrote back. Your letters to her seem to me to have the right tone of objectivity. When it comes to obsessives, "just say no".

However, since it now appears she seems sick enough to be vindictive, I'll try to offer some further advice. Her delusion is to think she can control you. Don't fall into the equivalent delusion of thinking you can control her. If she wants to be this ugly, there's nothing you can do that would guarantee she pull back. What's the worst she can do?

As for the marijuana, I'd simply ask a friend to hold on to your stash for a few months. Police are dummies, true — but not about police work. They'll smell a jilted lover when she calls them and put the complaint on the back burner. She lives in another jurisdiction, after all. Besides, they'll assume you've been threatened and will have hidden your stash well before they arrive with a search warrant. Since they don't like to spend their time on wild goose chases, I just can't imagine you'll ever see them because of this canary.

As for alarming people about the content of your plays, I say GOOD! If they read the plays they'll see a lot more than "child pornography" in them, and they'll see her for the crackpot she is.

It would be least entangling for you to simply withdraw completely and let her rescue herself from her morbidity. However, if you do care about her, you might try to see this situation from a more parental viewpoint. Her behavior has been horrid, yes, but if your own child behaved that way it would be too easy to simply disown her. You'd bend over backward to talk her down from her craziness. So another course of action to consider is to give Gayle the one last phone call she's asking for. Despite the reprehensible threats and fantastic bluster, if all she really wants is a damned phone call, then you may well find in yourself enough generosity and magnanimity to let your fingers do the walking. I'm not recommending this, Hank. I only recommend you consider it.

Personally, I find her concern about "child pornography" particularly opportunistic, dishonest and conventional. I'll bet I'm concerned about child abuse much more than she is, yet I also know for a fact that many 14-year-old boys have had their miserable lives saved by 29-year-old men. I once had a lover 37 years older than me, remember, and — surprise — I'm currently courting a woman 36 years younger than me. (Guinness, are you listening?) This is not a subject I make up opinions about in a vacuum — as does Gayle.

Finally, I don't believe that people like Gayle have the balls to explore life in an unconventional way. What they have are pet peeves, which they elevate to the status of causes because that justifies castigating anyone who doesn't salute their flag. They are psychological terrorists disguised as psychological freedom fighters. Let's leave these people in the dust-bin of history.

Dean