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was going to be--you know, was I going to spurn him. And I sat there absolutely lost in thought, and he said, “What are you thinking about?”

I said, “How could I have been such a fool not to have caught on!" The fact that he was a homosexual didn't mean anything to me at all; it was only rage at my own stupidity!

And you kept up your relationship--?

Well, that's an interesting part of the story. After we stayed up all night talking--he had pointed out all the times he had tried to tell me and that I unconsciously didn't want to hear it... Finally he said, “Do you think I can tell--?” He had a best friend down in Wall Street. I'll tell you about him in a while. He was a big, husky, outdoorsy fellow. I said, “His reaction will be the same as mine. He's only going to be outraged that he didn't guess it.”

So Herbert went down and told him, and I was absolutely correct.

So this made my uncle so confident that now he went from one extreme to another and began boring everybody in the world by telling them about himself. At last he felt free to live with another man, which was what he really had wanted to do all the time.

I'm deeply interested. Obviously your uncle had an influence on you at a time in your life where it was most important.