My Queer War

Jerry led me along past the Public Garden to the Hotel Statler, telling me never to forget how to get there, as this would be my jumping-off place in Boston.

The lobby was long and high, expensive, gold-plated, busy with wartime visitors. This was where guests registered for the weekend. It paid off to reserve a room in advance, Jerry said, because when cruising the bar, you’d want someplace to do it if you picked up a trick.

The crescent-shaped bar was packed with servicemen, several rows deep, too many to count, a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty, most of them drinking beer from the bottle, loud with flighty talk and piercing laughter. Crowded tight together, jostling back and forth, not one lady or girl among them, only a handful of civilians.

‘Yes,’ said Jerry, ‘they’re all gay.’

‘But this is a public place. People who don’t know could come in, couldn’t they?’

‘Oh, yeah. Straights stray in. It happens. But usually they notice something and stray right out again. I mean, we have a right to Lebensraum, haven’t we? Anyway, there’s a straight seating area right up there to keep things looking honest.’

Back a polite distance from the bar, up three or four steps behind a metal grille, were a lot of small tables, clients seated there, a proviso of women among them, waiters in snappy jackets dancing around to serve them.

‘But don’t they know?’ I wondered. ‘Can’t they tell?’

‘Hell, no. Decent people don’t want to know. And anyway, they couldn’t tell if their grandmothers sold snuggle on the side. It’s an obstacle course getting to the bar to get served. Use your elbows. But watch out for your pants. It can get real feely in this crowd.’

Elbows, knees and ‘sorry’ got us through. Jerry asked for a Rheingold. I said Tom Collins.
Some of the servicemen were exciting to look at, and some of them obviously knew it, glancing round the crowd with chancy eyes and the aura pervasive throughout was edgy-sexy readiness for anything. I’d never known the like or known myself like an element of it.

An English marine lance corporal in dress uniform wedged along in front of me, said, ‘Hi there, Yankee Doodle, what say we make out below stairs in the Gents?’ his fingers fooling free-and-easy with the buttons of my fly.

Of course in the confines of the crowd it would have been difficult to see what he was doing, and he was good-looking enough, ruddy, bright-eyed, brawny in the tight-fitting uniform; and the incursion of his fingers roused me all right, though his breath in my face was brewery, and I knew perfectly well what the Gents meant; it was shocking that I wasn’t all that shocked, yet I couldn’t let myself go so easily so soon, and I brushed aside his hand, saying – but with a gasp – ‘Sorry. Some other time.’

Jerry was chatting up a lieutenant in pinks – yes, there were a few officers – but I bumped between and said, ‘Can’t we get out of here? I need some air.’

‘Christ,’ Jerry gurgled. ‘Hold on, will you? Let me say a word to Glen for a minute. I’ll catch up with you in the lobby.’