ABSTRACT
52For forty-three years a very large part of my life was shared with Baird Searles. We met in 1950, fell in love immediately, and never separated. Although we had vaguely known each other just enough to say hello (he was studying ballet at a local studio and was the dancing partner of the younger sister of my close friend Dick), our apocalyptic meeting was on the Fourth of July at a roof garden party given by Dick at his family's spacious home. It was a singularly romantic situation: the national holiday, the Florida moon shimmering over Lake Worth and across Palm Beach to the ocean, the display of feu d'artifice celebrating more than it could know. I had brought a girl to the party and after the fireworks ended, on the pretext of being tired, I drove her home and sped back to Dick's where Bay was awaiting me. Somehow, almost wordlessly, as I drove him home after the party ended we both knew that we were destined to be lovers. He was still in high school and I was between college years. Above and beyond the casual "hi" on such occasions as we had previously met (before that wonderful night)—in the local record store, at Dick's house, at the library—we each knew that there was something special in the way we looked at each other; there was a recognition, a more than incidental interest, and I knew that I was becoming infatuated with this fascinating boy. Perhaps in the sense of "it takes one to know one," neither of us questioned whether the other was gay. Bay had had no actual sexual experience, but he clearly knew what he wanted. I, on the other hand, had been sexually active, off and on, since the age of thirteen—but then, I did have a few years on him.
