A Boy Named Beverly : He said, ‘I’m one of them, you know.’

I made two significant discoveries last week.

I found, first, that the bigot who tried to fan flames of homophobia in Studio City has instead ignited a torch of human decency that could bring light to the entire San Fernando Valley.

And the second thing I discovered was that one of my best friends is gay.

I was able to deal with the former a lot better than I was able to deal with the latter.

The revelations emerged from my effort to determine if hate mail calling for a war against homosexuals represented an underlying community attitude or was simply the manifestations of an individual pathology.

It began last Monday.

A flyer that railed against “social sickness groups” was attached to a Studio City Residents Assn. newsletter and its misanthropic message rang like a battle cry among the community’s large gay population.

Chief among those to react was the Valley Business Alliance, a 10-year-old homosexual organization not unaccustomed to responding swiftly to odious attacks by those who write from the safety of anonymity.

An instant response to hate is vital not because the prose of the flyer is necessarily of high incitive quality, but because dangerous instabilities lurk behind words of smoldering acrimony.

“The letter per se is a piece of garbage,” Alliance President John Maceri said. “But what it represents can kill people.”

The residents’ association was equally swift in first denying it had anything to do with the hate tract attached to its newsletter and in then disavowing its contents.

“This kind of thing is abhorrent,” said association President Polly Ward. “It is absolutely dreadful.”

If the creator of the venomous tract believed that war would start there, he badly underestimated the sensitivities of both sides in the budding confrontation.

There was no invective exchanged in a quest for answers. No accusations. No cross fire. They said simply “let’s talk.”

Members of both the alliance and the association met instantly, and what emerged from their meeting was not only a belief that the homeowners had nothing to do with the anti-gay flyers, but that the two groups had more in common than they had previously believed.

“The only thing that divides us,” said Polly Ward, “is sexual preference, and that shouldn’t.”

“Whoever was behind that letter meant it to be divisive,” John Maceri said. “Instead, it brought us together. I came out of that meeting feeling good.”

The two groups are already discussing the formation of a joint committee to deal with future problems before they turn deadly.

From what could have been an explosive situation has emerged what one gay businessman calls a grand coalition of human beings on behalf of human rights.

That much was easily a column.

It isn’t often that the demands of adversity are shaped so quickly into crusades for basic decencies. I saw a light shining out of Studio City and I wanted to write about it.

Then came my second discovery.

The focus of human relations on the scale I had been investigating was suddenly tightened into my own arena of self-interest when a friend of 15 years told me abruptly he was homosexual.

It came during a conversation on the Studio City issue.

He said, “I’m one of them, you know.”

“One of who?” I said.

“I’m gay.”

An announcement of homosexual preference is no longer enough in the abstract to cause drums and bugles. Doors to the closets of sexual secrecy were flung open a long time ago. But Dennis? How could it be?

“I though you might already know,” he said with a nervous smile.

“How would I know? You never . . . well . . . “

“Minced?”

I shrugged self-consciously.

“Because I never”--. . . he paused, whispering--”peeked at you over the urinal top?”

Then he laughed loudly.

His announcement evoked memories. In junior high school, that most terrible of times, we knew a boy named Beverly. It was an English name, he said, and that was good enough for me.

But word spread that Beverly was “queer” and ought to be shunned. Peer pressures are awesome at 13, so I avoided him.

It bothered me for years because I saw no real reason to avoid him. He was a boy without malice and whatever his sexual preference, it had never intruded on our friendship.

Years later I find the same is true with Dennis. Once more, like the boy in junior high, I am confronted with the necessity to choose between friendship and social regimentations.

There is no peer pressure now, only a lifetime of structuring that tells me they are different from us. They can never be our friends. They are forever outside our sphere of relationships.

It isn’t easy to confront the qualms and deficiencies of one’s own generation, but I’m long past junior high. If they can talk in Studio City, I can talk to a close friend.

I telephoned Dennis and we had a drink together. It was, as always, a pleasant moment . . . though I was relieved to observe that he didn’t order a strawberry daiquiri.