Sort of an odd story.  EG says up front "I'm going to ask a question for which I know there will be no answer," and that sets the tone.  Man loses muse, drinks, gets in a fight, gets committed to an asylum, etc.

I was shocked at the entry of the word "homosexual" into the  CBSRMT lexicon.  Jack Grimes plays a character who gets into a fight with the protagonist and who later casually lets drop that he's a homosexual, but that he wasn't coming on to the protagonist, he just wanted to meet him because he admired his writing and wanted to pick up a few tips.  Later, after talking to the protagonist, Grimes' character asks him, when he meets "someone like me", to not be afraid.  "What's to be afraid of?" the writer wonders.

This was 1975.  Stonewall was only six years prior, and the first gay Americans had been elected to public office just the year before.  To have a gay character show up, appropos of nothing in the story, and give a little tolerance lesson, on a major broadcast network, was pretty surprising, at least to me.