I have no problem with gay pride. I’m a straight guy who was rather popular with a lot of gay people. And my best gay friends told me once that, while I was reasonably good looking, one could just tell I was straight. I was also the guy in the schoolyard who stood up for the “fairies,” most of whom were not gay. I don’t like bullies. But I don’t mind fighting. (A guy came by my house, wanting to give me some shit. My wife told that he didn’t want to talk to her husband. He said why not not. And she told him that her husband was not easy to intimidate and had remarkable upper body strength. Why not Straight Pride? I’ll tell you why. You can only be proud of what you have personally achieved. I was born straight. What’s to be proud of? It’s the way I happen to be. My dear friends, harpsichordist Temple Painter and composer Harold Boatrite, used to joke about the time I came by their house and Harold’s mattress was on the sidewalk outside their house smoking away. He had fallen asleep the night before while smoking and set his mattress on fire. Well, when our drinking sessions went on too long and I couldn’t get a train back to Germantown, I would sleep on the pull-out sofa in the living room. Well, that’s where Harold was sleeping for the time being. So that night I slept with Temple in his huge double bed. No, we did not have sex — though I loved both him and Harold (my dear friend Katherine and I shared power of attorney for them). It did, however, become the source of an ongoing quip. “You have, Frank, slept with a known homosexual.”
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