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that part of his body to me in the locker room. I sensed he was malingering, and I had the doctor deal with him.
    Denny was attractive too. He would have caused a riot on Sheridan Square, even though I had forced him to cut off his long blond hair. I kept chewing him out and running him into the ground and trying to break his spirit. Then I'd have to get up at 4:30 A.M. and run fifteen miles to kill the thought of him.
    For two months, Denny tried every way he could think of to get my hand inside his jock strap. Then he did what so many piqued lovers do: he took revenge.
    He cheerfully and casually told a couple of his teammates, "Hey, you know, I think the coach is a queer."
    "No kidding," they said, quite amazed.
    "Yeah," said Denny breezily, "he kinda flirts with me when I'm in his office to talk."
    The rumor went like wildfire, and wasn't long in reaching the ears of the dean, Marvin Federman. Fed-erman called me in and told me about the rumor.
    I was simply stunned.
    Federman was cold and brusque. "The boy says that you have shown sexual interest in him."
    I was seared with shock and panic, but I managed to keep a calm exterior. "That's simply not true."
    "The rumor has reached a few of the trustees and
    alumni," said Federman. "There is heavy pressure on me. We can't have that kind of scandal. I'm sure you understand my position."
    "But this is ridiculous," I said.
    "Are you prepared to contest his statements legally?" said Federman.
    How could I contest them? I was afraid they would find out the truth about me. I was silent.
    "The best thing for you to do would be to resign. I've noticed that you look tired and strained lately. You can say that it's for reasons of health."
    With that rumor, and that brief chilling conversation with the dean, my coaching career at Penn State ended. I submitted my resignation that day.
    As I left my office for the last time, I saw Denny, beautiful Denny, walking out the building in his sweats. He was going to the track to work out, whistling.
    But the rumor stayed around, and continued to poison my life. It reached my wife. She had been looking for an excuse to divorce me, and now she had one. She put on a big act of self-righteous anger, got the divorce, and the house, and the children, and a really punitive alimony and child-support settlement of $12,000 a year. She told the rumor to my mother and the rest of my family, and they turned their backs on me and froze me out. (At least I didn't have to bear my father's disapproval—he had died the year before.)
    There were no headlines, except PENN STATE TRACK COACH RESIGNS FOR REASONS OF HEALTH, and a casual quote from me that I was thinking of going back to newspaper work. But the rumor washed gently through the track world and died out. A number of people said they didn't believe it. "After all, he was married, and he acted so masculine." But the thought stayed there, in the back of people's minds.
    Shattered and angry, I fled to New York and took a small apartment downtown in the gay ghetto. My savings went to pay my lawyer and the initial alimony payments, and then I was faced with finding money or going to jail for nonsupport. "The first check you miss," my wife had sworn, "I'm having you arrested."
    Bruce Cayton, an old buddy from the New York
    Post, offered to help me find a newspaper job in town. But I was all panicky, sure that everybody in the world now knew the rumor, and that I would be turned down because I was a homosexual. Besides, the last thing I wanted at the moment was to be part of a big institution again, where I could be scrutinized and pressured. The best thing would be self-employment, that would let me drop out of sight and sneak over into the gay world sometimes for relief.
    So I told Bruce thanks, and I forged off on my own.
    There wasn't much skill I had, to start earning immediate money on my own. I tried freelance writing, but the market had become very difficult to break into. I ran ads offering to work as a