My Queer War

We walked up Tremont opposite the Common, to Schrafft’s, and had some pot roast and blueberry pie. Jerry told me I’d better settle down and learn what I wanted to do about what was inside my pants or I might turn out to be one sad and lonely faggot. It was common sense speaking, I knew, but I felt the gnaw of worry I’d be found wanting when called to act on the lesson of my sexual ABCs.

‘Back to the Statler?’ I asked when we came out on to the sidewalk.

‘Better try something else,’ said Jerry. ‘Now you know your way to the Statler you can touch base there any time. Now’s a good time for the Napoleon.’

‘Napoleon? As in Bonaparte? You must be kidding.’

‘Hell, no. Shit, ever since Alex the Great and his boyfriend what’s-his-name, groovy guys in uniform are doable, and anyway, Alex didn’t go in much for clothes, did he? The Napoleon’s a gay club. Right down here.’

In the darkling side street, the houses all looked stunted, their doors steeped in secrets, to which our presence brought no enlightenment, and I wondered how the hell I was going to get out of this.

He pressed a button, a piercing light lit the doorway, a peephole popped open, and he said, ‘Hi there, honey child, it’s your uncle Wiggly.’

Honey child was a black six-footer wearing a purple T-shirt and apple-green skullcap. ‘Hello, Auntie,’ he said. ‘You come in. Bring your boyfriend.’

‘Just say my friend’s friend’s all,’ said Jerry. ‘Trust him in your hands, honey, you give him a push. Me, I’ve got a date, gonna boogie with a looie at the Ritz.’

Jerry pinched my behind. ‘You’re on your own, Jim. You’ll be OK. See you back at St Mary’s.’ And he skipped away into the incautious dark.

Honey child led me inside. A staircase with a cherry-red carpet and a pink droplet chandelier. He said, ‘You trot upstairs now like a good boy, find yourself any friend, you hear me,’ and he gently prodded the small of my back.

In the high, long room upstairs a comfortable crowd of men eddied along the bar; there was a huge painting of Napoleon astride a charger and a baby white upright piano against the other wall, a bald gent in a tuxedo tickling the ivories and singing ‘Mad About the Boy’ in a whispering falsetto.

‘Are you?’ someone murmured in my ear.

‘What?’ I exclaimed, turning. ‘What is it?’

‘Like that?’ said the stranger, a dark-haired, tan-cheeked young fellow in civvies, nodding at the singer, who was still singing about being mad about a boy.