Hold Tight

by Christopher Bram

  The sun sank rapidly on the other side of the river. Blair waited until the boat was a distant shadow in the blue haze. He came out from behind the boxcar and approached the dockworker returning to his shed. He asked the man when the boat was expected back.

  “Sometime after one, thweetie. Your boyfriend leave you behind?”

  Blair did not deign to answer. He turned and walked back toward the gate, where his car was parked. He had a pint in the glove compartment and his first gun, purchased only a few hours ago.

  15

  KATE SMITH’S PRE-FOURTH OF July Aquacades and Garden Party, which was what the hostess called his floating ball, made its way up the Hudson, music and giggles pealing over the water. The lights on the lower deck and in the paper lanterns were turned on: the boat became a vision of fairyland floating through a world at war. The Narrows to the south was fretted with ships massing for a convoy to Britain; a black blimp rode the smoke-streaked sky above them. Liberty ships in war paint lined the waterfront, loading up with munitions, tanks and folded airplanes. Behind the spotlit piers, the browned-out city unrolled as a handful of lamps, like a dim, earthbound constellation. There was only the bubble of light of the Hotel Astor’s rooftop dance floor to suggest that people on shore still enjoyed themselves.

  The boat passed beneath the stern of a troopship moored in the old berth of the French Line, coasting into a smell of fresh laundry that blew down from the ship’s fantail. Soldiers in underwear and dog tags began to appear along the railings overhead, whistling and hooting. “Look at those babes, will ya?” “How’s about a kiss, sister!” “I love ya, ladies!”

  Guests packed the starboard side, hooting back and throwing kisses. “Yoo hoo!” “Oh boooys!” “Jump down and join us if ya ain’t got nothin’ better to do!”

  One soldier climbed on the railing and pretended he was going to dive overboard. Then someone shouted, “Those aren’t dames! That’s a boatload of fairies!”

  “Like we can be choosey?” cried someone else. The soldiers continued their hollering and pleas for love until the vision vanished behind the next pier.

  Juke looked for Hank, then decided to use his time to prepare Lena for their moment of truth. He lightly stepped over to the bar and ordered a cold rum daisy. The white bartender asked if he were Lady Day, and a bitch from Chick’s said he looked like Bessie Smith, but Juke was Lena, sleek and beautiful and resiliently vulnerable. Wearing Lena’s cool sexiness, Juke felt freed from his usual need to be tough and knowing. He turned himself inside out with drag, so that his toughness was hidden and his softness public. He would not have to hold his cards so close to his heart when he was feeling so feminine and elegant.

  Hold tight, hold tight.

  I bite all night

  An’ ’jaculate my jack

  Into some seafood mama.

  I browned him twice.

  Was very nice.

  They sang camp versions of popular songs around the piano while couples shook shirtfronts and earrings out on the dance floor. Juke recognized sisters and customers from Chick’s, the Harlem fancy house where he had lived and worked for a year, before Freddie. He recognized Sash, the snob from Valeska’s who thought he could fuck his way up in the world if he listened to the right music. Sash was in drag tonight, preposterous and tacky: dotted swiss, too little makeup, a goldilocks wig and men’s black tie shoes. His sugardaddy was a long, cadaverous man with tailored evening clothes and banana-yellow hair. Juke looked forward to humiliating Sash back at the house for being a woman, and a tasteless one to boot.

  There was Freddie, just as Kate had warned. Juke noticed him standing off to the side, sternly watching everything like some deacon from an important uptown church, which was what Freddie was. Short and black and built like a child’s coffin, Freddie escorted a timid colored boy wearing a flat little hat. Juke recognized the boy’s blue Sunday dress and pearl necklace. Freddie kept a wardrobe for his “wives” and chose partners based on whether they could wear what he already owned. Only Juke’s shoes had been new the three months he lived with Freddie. Juke wasn’t cut out to be a deacon’s wife, but at least it had gotten him out of Chick’s.

  Freddie saw Juke, and coldly turned his square black back to him. The snub meant nothing to Juke. Insisting Juke be a woman and nothing but a woman, Freddie had used a strap on him if he so much as peed standing up. There had been no love left when Juke finally got his black and blue butt out of there. And Juke, or Lena rather, was in love with somebody else tonight.

  He had finished his daisy and ordered another when he spotted Hank again. The sailor must have been on the other side of the stairway bulkhead before. Taller than the others, blond and fresh, he stood out like a stiff pecker. He glanced around as he wandered through the crowd, as if looking for Juke.

  “So sorry, darling. But I won’t be needing that second daisy,” Juke told the bartender. Faintly goofy with alcohol and fear, he adjusted his gay deceivers and reshaped his snood, then drew a deep breath and walked his coolest, most killing walk toward Hank. He was making a fool of himself, but it was Lena’s doing, and Lena was hopeless. The slight tilt of the deck almost pitched her off her high heels. “Darling! Wherever have you been?”

  “Oh, there you are,” said Hank, halting. “Wondered where you’d gone to.” But he stood there looking like a dog who had chased a car and caught it.

  “You’ve been neglecting me, you naughty boy.” She took Hank’s arm but the arm remained stiff, held away from Hank’s side. The reluctance hurt. Juke wanted to kick Hank in the seat of his pants, but Lena remained a lady. “Shall we take a little night air on the upper deck?”

  “Any different from the air down here?” Hank uncomfortably looked around, as if to avoid looking at Juke. “Now that I found you, I’m thinking we should go find Erich. He’s not used to this stuff.”

  Juke noticed the little bookkeeper up toward the bow, clutching his fat briefcase under one arm while he tried not to watch two men kiss. Hank could not be in love with such a pursey four-eyes. He must have dragged him along tonight for another reason. Screw the hymie, thought Juke. “Don’t be silly,” said Lena, pulling Hank toward the stairs. “Anyone who didn’t know you might think you were afraid of being alone with me.”

  Hank took one step up the stairs, then another, then said, “I am.”

  The honest answer threw Juke. He said nothing as they climbed into the shadows of the upper deck. Fear confessed seemed like intimacy.

  The only light was the glow of the red paper lanterns. The breeze was cool and brackish. There were couples up here, but it was early and they were only talking. For a moment, walking arm in arm toward an unoccupied stretch of railing over the bow, Juke felt he and Hank were a couple. Then Hank pried his arm loose so he could grip the railing with both hands, and the feeling was broken.

  Juke stood with one hip against the rail, leaning out a little so he could see Hank’s red-lit face. “What’re you afraid of, darling? You afraid bad man-eating Lena’s gonna throw herself at you?”

  He did not look at Juke, only at the terraced darkness of Washington Heights now chugging beside them. “Not that,” he muttered. “But the other stuff.”

  “What other stuff?”

  “You know.”

  “What, darling?” But they could talk like that all night, each trying to get the other to say it. “Do you mean if Lena’s in love with you and wants to know if you’re in love with her? She is, darling. And she knows you must feel something for her, or you wouldn’t be so scared of hearing it.”

  What Juke could not say in his own voice, even to himself, was said by Lena’s lipsticked mouth as easily as a remark about the weather. He waited for Hank to respond. The sailor rocked himself on the locked arms that held him back from the rail. He suddenly turned and looked at Juke.

  “Could you lay off with this Lena crap? Could you just go back to being you?”

  “Me? But I am Lena, darling. I’ve always been Lena.”

  �
��Horseshit. You’re Juke in a dress saying ‘darling’ all the time. That’s all. It’s getting on my nerves. Give it a rest.”

  Juke’s pride was hurt to hear Lena dismissed as a bad job. “What’s the matter, darling? Don’t you like girls?”

  “I don’t feel easy around them, no. Especially when I know they’re men. And when I’ve been to bed with them.” He was looking ahead again, at the George Washington Bridge approaching them like an enormous airborne cage. “I don’t love you, Juke. I don’t fall in love with men and I’m not in love with you.”

  “But maybe you’re in love with Lena. Or you wouldn’t be such a mind reader.”

  “Juke! What the hell do you want from me?” he pleaded. “Look. You wanna fuck again, we’ll fuck again. But you’re putting me off with all this love and Lena crap!”

  “You want to do it again?”

  “Yeah. Why not?” He lowered his head. “Wanted to do it last night. Almost came downstairs to see if you were still awake. Wanted to see what it’d be like for me to fuck you. Alone.” He nodded to himself. “Was a slow night last night.”

  “Oh, darling!” Juke cried, grabbing Hank’s shoulders and going up on tiptoes to kiss him. But before his lips touched, Hank’s hand covered Juke’s mouth and shoved him back. It was like an elbow in the heart.

  “Why’re you doing that? We’re not gonna fuck here. And you got crap on your face.” He wiped his hand against the rail. “If I wanted someone soft and smeary, I’d go after real women. Wait till we’re back at the house if you want to do it tonight. When you can clean up and there won’t be these people.”

  And Lena angrily understood: Hank was granting him nothing. Fucking without money changing hands didn’t mean a thing to a faggot too dumb to feel guilty. It was a way of passing time, like drinking or cards. Hank hadn’t been hiding any feelings when he said last night had been slow. It would have meant more if Hank were afraid to go to bed again with Juke.

  “You want to fuck me?” said Lena. “To even things up for me fucking you?”

  “Kind of. I want to see if I can give as good as I got.”

  “You really loved it the other night, didn’t you?” Juke sneered.

  “I liked it, yeah. Who wouldn’t?”

  “Real men, baby. Don’t you know? Only queens take it up the ass.”

  “That’s horseshit. Who cares who puts it where so long as you enjoy it?”

  “And what if it’s a nigger dick?” said Juke. “Or is that rule horseshit, too?”

  There were rules, and they were never stronger than when you broke them. Juke loved to break rules. Hank knew few rules and seemed dumb and unchangeable because he never broke any, except one.

  Hank was looking down at his hands, as red as Juke’s hands in this light. “Yeah. Well. I sometimes forget you’re colored. Least when you’re in civvies,” he argued to himself. “And you see white men with colored girls sometimes, even in Texas. It’s for pussy, not love, but nothing wrong with that. Only bad thing is babies sometimes happen, which ain’t gonna happen with us.” He had dug a finger into his ear, as if to hear his own thoughts better. He suddenly flipped the hand at the air. “Hell, Juke! It’s tough enough me admitting I want us to fuck some more while I’m still at the house. What else do you want me to say?”

  “While you’re still there?” said Juke. “Where you going?”

  “Wherever they ship me out.”

  “Navy kicked you out for cocksucking. You ain’t going anywhere,” Juke insisted.

  “Yeah. Yeah, they did,” Hank admitted.

  “Right. Just because you’re in sailor drag, don’t forget Uncle Sam spit you out for good.” But that brief moment of panic made Juke feel very vulnerable. Hurt and angry, he had let Lena slip away. He gathered her up again and took refuge in her attitude. “Darling. If it’s just pussy you want, forget it. You can’t have Juke without loving Lena. Lena is nobody’s whore. Juke may turn a trick now and then when Lena’s away, but not while she’s around. And Lena is always around when her fool boy’s in love.”

  Hank had his hands on his hips. He was frowning at Juke. “Why you got to muddy it with mush? Okay. You’ve laid your cards down and I’ve laid mine. I’m not gonna play your game and say I love you, Juke, because I don’t. There. Nothing else for us to say. See you later.” Hank turned and walked toward the steps, hands still parked on his hips.

  Juke refused to run after him. Watching the white, butt-snug uniform undulate through the red darkness was like seeing Hank naked again, and Juke turned back to the river. He propped one elbow on the rail and rested his chin in his hand, reaching back with the other hand to unbunch the garter snaps digging beneath his dress. Juke knew he’d end up back in bed with the cracker, despite love and pride and Lena. Maybe he’d hate himself so much after the next time he could cure himself. Then when Hank came sniffing around for nookie, Juke would refuse to give it to him. There was still time to turn the tables on the oh-so-butch clod. Juke just hoped, for pride’s sake, he wouldn’t get in bed with Hank tonight.

  Wishing hard that Juke wouldn’t be following him, Hank hurried down the steps into the light. The party was going off in all directions. Some guests were loud and hysterical. Others were passed out in the corners. The fat man who called himself Kate stood on the piano, flipped his skirt above his knees and sang “Most Gentlemen Don’t Like Love.”

  Hank walked once around the stairway bulkhead. He stepped over a row of shoeless legs in real or painted nylons. He found Erich on the other side, somberly listening to a hawk-nosed man in feathers. Hank grabbed Erich’s arm and turned him around. “When the hell do I get out of that damn house?” he demanded.

  Erich looked blank. “Toscanini proves the shallowness of the American music scene,” he told the man in feathers. “Uh, excuse us,” He stepped away with Hank. “Not so loud,” he whispered. They stepped around the corner to the side of the bulkhead that faced the bow. “You’ve finished with your friend?”

  “Damn straight I finished. Crazy little bughouse coon. Everything’s gone bughouse. This boat’s a floating bughouse. If I don’t get somewhere normal soon, I’ll be ready for the bughouse myself.”

  Erich knocked his head on the life ring behind him. He stepped over an inch and leaned back. “There are worse places to be than that house, Fayette.”

  “Yeah. Like here.”

  “Other places. Prisons and mental hospitals—the bughouse,” Erich said gently. “Which is where the authorities frequently send men with your inclinations.”

  Hank only half listened to him. Looking around the deck, he blamed the party for his confusion and Juke’s craziness. All this frou-frou crap. Sex usually cut the crap, but these people seemed as sexless as women to Hank. It had been sexier back on his destroyer, where everyone pretended they never thought about each other’s cock. Even Juke seemed sexless here. But Hank remembered otherwise.

  “You shouldn’t take your good fortune for granted.” Erich seemed to be telling him to quit complaining and enjoy it while it lasted.

  Hank had told Juke the truth. He felt terrible about it. It was one thing to lay with a colored—skin was skin in bed and accidents do happen—but perverse to want to. Saying it out loud was downright obscene. But Hank had said it, had humbled himself to the boy, only to have it thrown back in his face. He wanted to strangle the kid, but when he thought about grabbing Juke’s neck, he thought about kissing his face. Sex in the head was less innocent than sex in bed. Hank usually got it out of his head when he got into bed with the next person, but the wrongness of it made Juke stick. He wasn’t in love with Juke. Love meant more than thinking about the same person every time you thought about sex. He had to get out of that damn house before he forgot the difference.

  Erich took forever to say whatever he was saying.

  “I need a beer,” said Hank. “You want something?”

  “Thank you, no. Do you understand what I’m suggesting, Fayette?”

  “Yeah. I’m not getting
back to my ship anytime soon.”

  “That, yes. But also…You can’t believe everything people tell you.”

  “I’ll buy that. Hard to believe half of what I tell myself nowadays.”

  “Fayette! Have I been so oblique? What I’m trying to tell you is you should consider the possibility they won’t send you back to your ship. You should consider the possibility they might send you to the bughouse or even to prison.”

  Hank looked at the startling idea from a long way off. “Why?”

  “For being a sexual deviant, of course.”

  “But so’s everybody else here,” said Hank. “Except you.”

  “Yes. But you’re the one the Navy knows about and is using. They’re not comfortable with that. One way they could assuage their consciences would be to place you in an institution when they’re finished with you.”

  “Who told you this? Did Mason tell you this?”

  Erich was rigidly silent. Then, “No. Nobody’s come right out and said this. If they had, I would have told you sooner. But no, Hank. I’ve worked with Commander Mason long enough to understand he thinks deviance is an illness and should be treated. Other superiors think it should be punished. I shouldn’t be going behind their backs like this, but I had to share my suspicions with you. I like you, Hank.”

  Hank thought a moment, studied Erich and said, “You’re a Jew, right?”

  Erich was taken aback. “Yes. Why?”

  “Jews are naturally suspicious. They don’t trust anybody. I’m not judging you or anything, but that’s the way you people are.”

  “Perhaps,” Erich admitted. “With good cause. But everybody on this boat has good cause to be suspicious, you included. You’re a criminal in the eyes of most people, Fayette. You cannot afford to be so trusting.”