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Rachel grew up in the large family of a plumber who was too poor to send her to college. "I probably wouldn't know that a good relationship was possible if it wasn't for my mother and father. I was pretty much of a loner, and to this day I do horrible things like going to the movies alone. I never had a crush on a girl; I had an affair with a boy behind my parents' back when I was 18."
Rachel met Katie shortly after that affair ended. "Gradually there was definitely a growing feeling," she recalls. "When I realized it, I was very upset. I didn't want to be gay. When I first went to a psychologist, I thought, 'Gee, I'm such a creep!' I thought that being in love with a girl made me a boy. He told me that I most certainly was not a boy. I couldn't erase the fact that I loved another woman, but I began thinking that as long as I was a woman too, things couldn't be all that bad."
Rachel and Katie have both told their parents about their relationship. "Our mothers both said, 'You're my daughter and I love you anyway,' " says Rachel. They refuse to live an exclusively gay life and engage in tennis, horseback riding and softball games with a circle of many straight friends (who also know the nature of their relationship). Muses Rachel: "Do I see myself living with Katie the rest of my life? Off and on, yes. I will probably date, because it's nice to get involved with other people, but that's difficult to work out. I certainly don't think our relationship ought to be exclusive. All I know is that life ought to be loving."
What was it like to be gay? "There were peaks and valleys of despair," says Tom Kramer, 28, a tall New York City public relations man who was a practicing homosexual until 2½ years ago. "Throughout high school and college, I would try to put it out of my mind. I had sissified gestures, and when I was with people I would concentrate on not using them. I would constantly think they were talking about my homosexuality behind my back. In my homosexual contacts, I'd try to be surreptitious, not telling my name or what kind of work I did. When I read about somebody being a pervert, it was like a slap in the face—my God, that's what / am!"
Two years after college, and weighed down with feelings of hopelessness, Tom heard that therapy was possible for homosexuals and went into treatment with an analyst. His prognosis was good: unlike many homosexuals, he desperately wanted to change. Twice a week for two years he discussed his past: the disciplinarian father who said Tom should have got straight A's when he got only A-minuses; the mother who made Tom her favorite. Gradually, Tom says, "I learned that my homosexuality was a way of handling anxiety. Some men drink. My way was homosexuality."