Queer Ulysses

by Guy Willard

  “Was I? I’m sorry. I tend to get a little absent-minded sometimes.”

  “Uh-huh. Absent-minded in a way your fiancée probably wouldn’t have approved of. I’m ashamed of you.”

  “You’ve got to realize we’ve been away from ‘the world’ for nearly four months.”

  “Starting to get a little restless, are you?”

  “You might say that.”

  “How about a night on the town after dinner?”

  “Why not?”

  After having an aperitif, we took a taxi to the notorious Patpong district, a street solidly lined with bars and nightclubs. This had been a favorite R-and-R spot for American soldiers during the Vietnam War, and though its heyday was over, there were still many bar girls floating around like exotic butterflies: Malay, Chinese, Eurasian. In every bar we went to, they latched onto our elbows cooing for drinks.

  And though the loud disco music, the colored lights and floor shows were what I’d wanted to get away from, I felt happy because Rick seemed to enjoy exchanging bawdy banter with the girls as we grew intoxicated from the drinks. I enjoyed the spectacle of the officer getting more and more slack, and wondered just how far he’d go in my presence. But he always stopped short of taking up the girls’ invitations for a “short time” or “all night.” Perhaps if I weren’t there, he might have gone with one of them.

  “What time is it?” he asked suddenly in a clear voice which belied his apparent intoxication. We were sitting at the counter of a bar and he was trying to peer at his own watch, but the girl at his side prevented him from seeing it, covering the watch-face with her hand. He turned to the jovial mama-san behind the counter but she merely beamed and began mixing up some more drinks for us.

  “I’m serious,” said Rick. “The last bus for Pattaya leaves at eleven.”

  I leaned over the counter and spied a clock on the side wall. “We still have fifteen minutes.”

  “Fifteen? Oh no. We’ll have to hurry if we plan to catch the bus. May we have our check, please?”

  “Check?” The mama-san looked uncertain.

  “The check,” repeated Rick more firmly, brandishing his wallet on the counter top.

  “Ah, check.” She finally seemed to understand. From the ledge behind the bar she produced a pink slip. We consulted the conversion chart printed on the liberty handout and the fee proved to be outrageously high. When Rick raised a protest, mama-san patiently explained that we’d been charged for the tiny plates of snacks and hors d’oeuvres which had appeared steadily, with alarming regularity, and which we’d munched upon almost unconsciously as we drank.

  “No, this is too much,” said the ensign, jabbing a finger at the slip of paper. In an aside to me he murmured, “I should have been on the alert because I’ve been warned about that famous hors d’oeuvres trick. It’s quite common here in the Orient.”

  Mama-san folded her arms. But in the end, seeing that McDavid was adamant, she accepted a much-reduced amount, though it was still too high in our eyes. The old con game had worked after all. Rick fumed as we ran down the stairs and stepped out into the crowded street to hail a taxi.

  In the cab he consulted the liberty sheet again, this time searching among the printed phrases giving directions in Thai. He pointed to the one for the bus terminal, and the driver nodded and smiled. We sped off into the night, down dark narrow side streets just wide enough for one car; I dreaded the possibility of another car coming from the other direction. But the driver seemed totally unconcerned about this, blatting his horn impatiently just before we shot out into a wide boulevard without even slowing down. I didn’t know if Rick was too drunk to care, or if he was more concerned with getting to the terminal on time, but he didn’t say a word.

  We reached the terminal with less than a minute to spare, and made a mad dash for the Pattaya bus. But when we got to the berth, we found it empty. When we asked at the desk, we learned that it had left just a moment ago, early.

  “Shit.” It was the first time I’d heard Rick swear. “For all I know, it probably left here empty. I’m not even gonna ask how many passengers there were.”

  “What do we do now?” I asked. We were standing in the empty lounge of the terminal.

  He shrugged. “Nothing for it but to take rooms for the night. We can catch the first bus in the morning back to Pattaya. It leaves at seven. Do you have duty tomorrow?”

  “That’s not what I’m worried about. I don’t have enough money left to pay for a hotel room.” My mouth turned dry as I told him this because I was lying.

  “We’ll work something out. You can pay me back when we get to the ship.” There was a trace of irritation in his voice. “At any rate, we won’t be staying in the Bangkok Hilton, that’s for sure.”

  With the aid of the liberty sheet again we managed to inform a taxi driver we wished to be taken to an inexpensive hotel. The driver nodded in energetic affirmation and continued nodding vigorously all through our explanation, making us suspect he probably didn’t understand a word we were saying. But miraculously, we were taken to what looked like a fairly presentable hotel, though it wasn’t located in the part of town where most of the foreigners stayed.

  At the front desk McDavid explained that he would take a single room, but that he would like an extra cot brought in. We were guided to a room on the second floor, and I noted with relief that it looked clean and pleasant. It lacked a bathroom but there were showers, probably cold, at the end of the hall.

  After examining the room and tipping the bellboy, Rick began arranging his effects on the night table beside the bed. It was obvious he was taking the bed, leaving the cot to me, which was only to be expected, but my pride was hurt because he should at least have made the offer of the bed out of courtesy so that I could refuse it. That’s what any friend would have done. Apparently, despite the wonderful time we’d had together, calling each other by our first names, the unbridgeable gap between seaman and ensign still existed.

  The door opened and the boy came in again, lugging the cot. I helped him unfold it and set it up at the foot of the bed. As McDavid went down the hall to wash up, I tipped the boy handsomely, and was rewarded by the glow which lit up his face.

  The boy left the room and my heart started to pound.

  I had absolutely no doubt in my mind that McDavid was straight. And though my attraction to a man didn’t differentiate between gay and straight, the very unattainability of straight men made them that much more desirable in my eyes. My social facade had been tempered by the necessary discipline of trying to maintain a hetero friendship on the surface with a guy, while deep inside, my most fervent desire was to have sex with him.

  I think all men (and women) are basically bisexual, and that any man can enjoy sex with another if he only rids himself of the prejudices and inhibitions which society saddles him with. And everybody knows this. But straight men protect themselves from temptation by telling each other: “Watch out; once you try it, you never go back.” This phrase is very revealing: they know that they might like it and are afraid they might never again enjoy women after an experience with a guy. This isn’t true, of course. But they’ll never find out until they’ve tried it...or until they’re talked into trying it.

  McDavid came back and closed the door behind him. He’d taken off his aloha shirt, and was down to his T-shirt and slacks. I noticed little curls of hair peeking out of the neckband of his T-shirt.

  “Lights out,” he said, snapping off the bedside lamp. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I watched him fold his shirt neatly, pulling the collar tight and smoothing out the wrinkles. There was a trace of smugness in his movements which I found irritating.

  “Do you iron your T-shirts, too?” I said.

  “Don’t be so cocky. We O’s are expected to be neat in or out of uniform.”

  He turned his back to me to wriggle out of his close-fitting T-shirt, then slipped off his slacks and put them away just as neatly as the shirt. He said to me over his shoulder, “If I�
�m not up by six tomorrow morning, could you wake me?”

  “Oh I see,” I said, “now that the day’s over, it’s not Rick and Bill anymore—we’re back to officer and enlisted, are we?” I felt a little bit like poor Cinderella when the hour has struck for her lovely dream to end.

  Rick’s answer was unexpectedly sharp. “Listen, Gale. I don’t have to take any crap out of you. I’m a little teed off about what happened tonight, and maybe I’ve been a little curt. If so, I apologize. But that doesn’t mean you can….” He paused, shook his head and sighed. “Never mind, forget it. Let’s try to get some sleep, okay?”

  “Sure, no problem.” As he slipped under his sheets and snuggled down, I began undressing. The creaking sounds from his bed died away and in the silence, the whirring of the ceiling fan overhead sounded loud. From the open balcony window I heard a dog barking somewhere far off, followed by the roar of a small truck passing by just below.

  I lay on my cot in only my briefs. The night was so warm that I didn’t need a sheet. The air blowing over my skin felt like a sensual caress. For the longest time I continued to lie there, still unsure of myself. Finally, I screwed up my courage.

  “Damn,” I said aloud. “If I knew it was gonna turn out like this, I’d have gone with one of the girls back at the Patpong. That way I’d have had some fun, at least.”

  “Not for me, thanks,” he replied.

  “You mean you’ve never gone out with a hook, not even once, since we left the States?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How can you stand it? I mean, officers are human, too, right?”

  “Yes. But we have self-control.”

  “Oh? Even Mr. Whittaker?” This officer was famous among the crew for the beautiful women he got at every port—even though he had a wife and three daughters back in Diego.

  “He’s different.”

  “Do you plan to remain faithful to your fiancée during the whole cruise?”

  “I sure intend to try. We...we’re getting married as soon as this cruise is over.”

  “Oh? Congratulations. But you weren’t thinking of her back at that restaurant, were you?”

  “The German girl? You know, to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have minded....”

  “Oh, I get it; you don’t like dark meat, is that it? It’s gotta be white meat for you.”

  “That isn’t true, Bill, and you know it.”

  I felt a coolness sweep my stomach as I said meanly, “Well, if you decide to look up that German girl, feel free to do so. You can always move my cot out onto the veranda.”

  “I just might move it out there right now if you don’t shut up so we can get some sleep.”

  “Heil Hitler.”

  “Come off it, Bill.” Then, apparently in an attempt to patch things up, he added: “Here, why don’t you take the pillow. It might make that cot more comfortable.” He tossed it over.

  I could smell traces of his cologne on the pillow as I put it under my head.

  For a long time I lay there wondering if I had the guts to go through with it—the plan I’d been working out ever since I knew we’d be sharing a room. If so, I would have to begin before he fell asleep.

  Pretending to be stealthy about it, I slipped my briefs down past my hips, then kicked them off onto the floor. As I did so, the pungent, meaty aroma of semen became quite obvious…no doubt it permeated the entire room.

  Rick apparently hadn’t heard me, or was pretending not to know what I was up to.

  In the darkness I could feel tiny tremors running through my body as I began pumping myself. There was a faint, liquid-sounding snick-snick-snick and the occasional slap of my balled fist against my groin, but otherwise only silence in the room. For all I knew, Rick was asleep.

  At last I heard the creak of bedsprings as he sat up. I stopped.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Gale?”

  I glanced over at him but the darkness hid his expression. “Don’t mind me, I’m only beating off.”

  “Well, cut it out.”

  “I have to do it every night. Otherwise, I can’t sleep.”

  “Well don’t do it in here. Go to the bathroom if you must.”

  “It’s not the same thing.” I still had my hand on my dick.

  “This is disgusting.”

  “Why? Don’t you beat off thinking about your girl back home?”

  “That’s my private concern.”

  “Officers have dicks, too, right?”

  “Do I have to order you to stop this nonsense?”

  “I won’t obey. Not till you admit that you beat off just like everyone else.”

  “All right, all right, I do. I do.”

  “That’s more like it.” I let go of my dick and lay there in silence. This silence continued for a long time. When I glanced over to where he lay, I saw the whites of his eyes gleaming eerily.

  “Do you miss your fiancée, Rick?”

  “God, yes. I miss her so much.”

  “How long has it been since you last saw her?”

  “Too long.”

  “I’ll bet you miss her most at night. Just before you sleep. I know. I’m the same way. There’s someone I miss, too.”

  “Then you know what I’m going through.”

  “Sure. So why don’t you go ahead and beat off while you think about her? It’ll help you sleep. You know I won’t mind it.”

  “No way. It’s not something I can do in front of an audience.”

  “Relax. It’s not like I can see you or anything.”

  “I know. But you’d know I was doing it.”

  “So? Didn’t you ever do it together with a friend when you were a kid?”

  “No, never.”

  “Then you must have had a deprived childhood.”

  He laughed. “It’s not something you can call up on command.”

  “No? Just think about your girlfriend and the good times you used to have with her. In bed.”

  “Oh shit. Don’t remind me.”

  “I’ll bet you’re getting hard now.”

  “I will if you keep up with this lewd talk of yours.”

  “Want me to give you a hand?”

  “No! God, no. Let’s not get carried away.”

  “I’m only trying to help.”

  “If there was a girl here, there’d be no problem.”

  “I don’t think this hotel has that kind of service.”

  “No. Anyway, I don’t think I could be unfaithful.”

  “Sounds like you’re really in love with her,” I said.

  “Oh, I am.”

  “Is she very good? I mean, in bed.”

  “Oh yes. She has all the right moves. We’re good together that way.”

  “I’ll bet you are.” I started to add something...then hesitated...then went ahead and said it: “What would you do...what would you do right now if I was her?”

  “Oh God, don’t even let me think of it.”

  “I’m serious. What would you do?”

  “I’d be inside you in a flash.”

  “Well? If you closed your eyes....”

  “It’d be no different? Come on, you know that isn’t true.”

  “That’s only because you know it’s me.” This was getting dangerous. I knew I had to proceed with caution, yet I was afire with recklessness, almost unable to stop myself from saying the very things which would expose me. “You’ll probably think I’m crazy for asking this, but did you ever do it with another guy?”

  “Of course not. Why, have you?”

  “No, of course not. But….”

  “But?”

  I pretended to hesitate, then went on: “I guess I think about it sometimes. I mean, wonder what it’s like and all that.”

  “Sure, so does everybody. It’s natural. But it’s not the same thing as actually doing it.”

  “Do you think it feels good?”

  He gave a nervous laugh. “There must be something in it if the fags love it so much.”


  “But you don’t have to be a fag to do it, do you?”

  “No, but it helps.”

  “I wonder if it’s as good for the guys who aren’t fags.”

  “I don’t know. But it sometimes happens. I know, because a friend of mine said he tried it once.”

  “And? What did he think of it?”

  “Nothing much. He said it’s nothing like the real thing, but it was a change. He was in the Army and had been away from girls for so long that it almost seemed to happen naturally. I mean, it almost didn’t seem unnatural. I guess it’s nature’s way of compensating when there’s no women around.”

  “Were you disgusted with him?”

  “Not really. You really can’t blame him for what happened. And, I guess, like everyone else, I’m curious about it, too. I wonder what it’s like. But I can’t see myself actually doing it.”

  “Are you afraid you’ll never go back?”

  “No, but….”

  At his hesitation, I quickly put in: “You know...I confess I’m curious, too. I always thought that if I ever met someone who was open-minded enough about it, I just might...well, try it. Once.”

  “A lot of people probably think like that.”

  “And you?”

  “Sure.”

  A long pause. And then, my voice almost a croak: “Well, here we are talking about it....”

  “Come on, you don’t mean to suggest….”

  “Why not? Just to see what it’s like. It’s not gonna turn us queer or anything. We’re not gonna end up wanting it for the rest of our lives.” I paused. “...Or are you afraid?”

  “That’s not it. I guess shame is more like it. I’d be too ashamed….”

  “It’s so dark in here that….”

  “It could never get dark enough for me. Even if you couldn’t see me, you’d know it was me.”

  “We could close our eyes, then.”

  “Or use blindfolds, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you serious? I was only joking.”

  “If we don’t do it now, we’ll end up wondering for the rest of our lives what it’s like.”

  “Come on, we’d better change the subject. This is getting dangerous.”

  I didn’t reply but lay there on my cot gazing up at the ceiling. But I knew he was silently watching me. Without a word—as if I weren’t even aware of him—I turned onto my side and slipped the pillow out of its case. Then I folded the pillowcase lengthwise once, then twice, until I had a long strip of cloth. Sitting up, I covered my eyes with it and tied it firmly behind my head. Thus blindfolded, I lay back again to await the consequences.