Tongue tied

"It was obvious that soon?"

"He invited me to go sit in his car with him. Which I did with no hesitation. I had been inside cars twice before, and I'd even ridden in one once. This alone made me a kind of Me

"You each guessed the other was gay?"

"Ro

"The only sex I'd ever had up until that time was with farm animals," Diefendorfer said, as casually as I might have mentioned carving polar bears out of Ivory soap when I was a Cub Scout. "But," he went on, "I'd been fantasizing about human beings-all guys-since I was nine or ten. And Ro

I said, "The male of the species is so efficient in these matters."

"It's our vestigial caveman genes. Spread that sperm around."

"And love followed close on the heels of lust?"

"Not close," Diefendorfer said, "but Ro

"And all of this was kept secret from your friends and families?"

"Amazingly, yes. People found it a little peculiar that Ro

"His parents had him committed involuntarily? This was legal in Pe

"Ro

"It's hard to imagine that this medieval stuff has gone on in our lifetime."

"Well, it still goes on, I've read. Certainly in a lot of traditional societies. In the Middle East and parts of Asia and… where else? Alabama? Idaho? I know people here in the city who think the gay revolution is over. The legal fights that directly affect them have been pretty much won. Their main worry is that gay culture whatever the term might mean to each of the wide variety of people who use it-is being diluted or is even disappearing. But for most gay people in most places west of Hoboken and east of Sweden, they might as well be living in 1951-if not 951.

It's something I think about down on the farm. I've got a pretty good life now, but I know that an awful lot of people don't, and I'm not doing anything about it anymore."

"Do you go back to Ephrata?" I asked.

"Not often," Diefendorfer said evenly. "Last year my mother died. I wrote to the elders and requested permission to go to her funeral. They said no."

"They can do that?"

"I could have gone. They wouldn't have called the police. But… that's not the point."

"No."

"They complimented me on the righteous life I've led. They knew about my FFF exploits. Within the context of my being a si

I said, "I guess it's a distinction Pat Robertson and his type of Christian don't take the trouble to make."

"That's right," Diefendorfer said. "It's why I still consider myself Amish. Through its history, the Me

"On the farm, it's my partner Isaac and me, plus Sarah Mintz and Esther Fenstamacher and their daughter Lizzie, who's three. Sarah is pregnant, and it'll be six of us in October. Isaac is Lizzie's biological father, and I'm the father of Sarah's baby-though only, so far, as a sperm donor through a clinic in New Brunswick.

Sarah and I are the best of friends, though not lovers, praise the Lord."

"It sounds like a nice family," I said. "Though not, as the J-Bird pointed out, your classic, picturesque Amish household."

Diefendorfer laughed. "You don't know the half of it. We all met on-guess where?

The Internet." "I'm not surprised."

"There are Me

"It's hard sometimes. Isaac has never really dealt with his family's rejecting him, and he sometimes falls into black bouts of depression that last for days. And I get restless once in a while and yearn for my comical lost career as a jazz musician and my not-at-all-comical exciting youth, when I was the scourge of homophobes. But basically we like the lives we've made, and we manage pretty nicely. And since Sarah and Esther joined us three years ago, it's been even better-and easier, too, with the four of us working the farm. Financially, it's touch and go, but it helps that none of us are big consumers."

I said, "No twin Range Rovers parked side by side in the driveway of the Diefendorfer farmhouse?"

"No, but I have no objections to a beautifully made machine. It's one of the theological differences I had with the elders of my community in Ephrata. That and-as the J-Bird so eloquently put it-an appetite for corn-holery."

"Speaking of which," I said, "what became of Ro

Diefendorfer's sunburn seemed to intensify for an instant. He said, "Ro

"Oh no."