A wonderful tongue-in-cheek article about a child's and young adults mis-perceptions of homosexual men. I wish commentaries such as this were around when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s.

I always thought a fag was what non-US English speakers called a cigarette. A fagotto, of course, is a medieval bassoon.

The word in my neighborhood was "queer" and kids would play "smear the queer". However everyone got smeared because nobody knew what a queer was. Sweet innocence.