It is almost impossible to know when something begins or exactly where it ends. Even though a thing seems to blossom suddenly, or suddenly die, there are countless little events that have gone on before, or that follow, to shape what seem to be drastic changes in our lives. A few brief months ago, I considered myself an 'adjusted homosexual.' I'd been Gay for at least seven years; that is to say, at the age of twenty I finally admitted what I'd suspected and feared for several years before that. I was forced to admit it because I fell in love with a young man - PFC Eric Winters who bumped into me one night at the PX and spilled beer all over both of us. We lived together for just over four years. 'Lived' is a misleading word. For the first two years it was far more than simply living together; we were lovers of the first magnitude; we shared everything, completely: bodies, minds, souls. During our third year we made the mistake of moving to Los Angeles; we still shared, still considered ourselves happy and certainly more fortunate than our single friends - who kept telling us 'The third year is always the hardest,' - but we both knew we were moving further and further apart. The fourth year became pure hell - the hell of remembering what we had once been to each other but now were no longer; the hell of starting to hate all the things we had once shared. Both Eric and I had been young and inexperienced when we met; neither of us knew the term 'Gay.' We'd heard of queers and cocksuckers, of course, but neither of us had applied any such terms to ourselves. I'd had several experiences, all born of frustration, all of them unpleasant - especially afterward; Eric had had none, although that was something of a miracle, seeing he was an astonishingly handsome man with a beautifully muscular body. He told me he'd had dozens of propositions, which I could believe, but 'just hadn't felt like it' - until he met me. So we came together as innocents, and our love must have been something only innocents may know. But when we moved to L.A. and met others like ourselves, Eric discovered the premium they placed on faces and bodies like his. I must give him credit: It was probably harder for him, in a way, to stay with me as long as he did, knowing what was waiting for him the minute he could declare himself rid of me. Not that I was ugly or misshapen - no one has ever called me unattractive or undesirable - but beside Eric, I was hopelessly average. And who, in his right mind, would take hamburger when filet mignon was available for the same price? When it finally became obvious that breaking up was the only way to salvage our sanities, I firmly decided to stay unattached and to live alone. And I did. For almost three years. Safe, I told myself. Without complications. A different trick two or three times a week - a few hours of pleasant uncomplicated sex, and then I'd send them home to their own little beds while I crawled alone into mine. And I truly believed I was contented. (I decided there was no such thing as happiness - except as a brief illusion - a far too costly illusion.) I had several good friends, a good job, money in the bank, an almost - new car; what more could I want? But that contentment was based on what I thought I had - or, rather, as it turned out, on what I thought I didn't have. Among the few people I knew well and thought of as friends was a guy named Bert Carpenter, the head bartender at a place called The Talisman - a Levi's and Leather bar on LaBrea, in Hollywood. Looking back at it now, I know that Bert came much closer to being a second lover than either of us supposed at the time.