Queer Ulysses

by Guy Willard

  But did he only get his kicks from playing voyeur? It was even possible that the other two didn’t know about this predilection of his. That would explain why he’d been so furtive earlier. I didn’t dare make any allusions to what I’d seen. The only thing to do was to keep my ears open for a clue, and perhaps find out in time.

  We smoked on for perhaps an hour more, and though we enjoyed a lively discussion, none of our topics came even close to the subject of homosexuality. For all I knew, these three were absolutely straight, and the scene I’d witnessed earlier had been nothing more than a mirage.

  Finally Richie got up and stretched. “Well, I guess I’ll be going down below. How about you, Doc?”

  The tone of his question implied that he wanted me to leave, and I immediately asked myself why he didn’t ask the others. Did he want to speak to me alone? My heart raced. And then a more likely explanation came to me; he probably only wanted to draw me away from Brad and Kyle so they could be left alone to continue their play.

  I got up and turned to the others. “And you guys?”

  “We’ll be staying up here a little while longer,” said Brad. “I have watch in two hours anyway, so I can’t sleep tonight.”

  “See you guys, then. Thanks for the….”

  “Don’t mention it, Doc.”

  Richie stepped aside to let me down the ladder first. I felt as if I were a prisoner being escorted away. Still, there was a chance he wanted to talk to me. When we were inside the skin of the ship I asked him, “Why’d you leave so early?”

  “I have a watch early tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” I tried to hide my disappointment.

  He saw me all the way to the forward crew’s lounge, and our talk was devoid of any suggestiveness. The lounge was empty except for a boy studying for his oceanography class. (We had a professor on board teaching it; the course was good for college credits.) The TV was on but its sound was turned down.

  “Well, see you in the morning,” I said as I headed down the stairwell. Before I ducked under, I noticed him taking a seat in the lounge. Was he going to watch TV, or was he guarding me to make sure I stayed down in the compartment? My heart was pounding too hard for me to think straight.

  I went to my rack but was too excited to undress for bed. Anyway I had no intention of doing so. After waiting an impatient ten minutes I crept back up the ladder and poked my head above the hatch. Richie was gone. I climbed out and rushed through the lounge, down the portside passageway until I came to the ladder just outside the radio shack. Using this, I hurried up to the next level, and then the next, until I could step outside the skin of the ship once again.

  My eyes adjusted to the dark quickly this time; the compartment and the passageways had been lit only with red night-lights now that it was after taps.

  The outside air felt warm to my skin as I made my way back toward the helo hangar. From the corner of it I glanced up again to the lookout deck to see if the two boys were still there. Sure enough I saw their silhouettes against the stars, and this time there was no orange glow of a joint. With a racing heart, I inched along the bulkhead until I was next to the fenders. I knew if I got on top of one of them, I could easily climb up onto the swab locker, from the top of which I could get a much better view than I’d had before. Praying for speed, I pulled myself up the side of the locker until I could roll onto its top.

  Made it. Cursing the lack of light, I wiped the salt spray out of my eyes and peered upward in the dark.

  Brad—it had to be Brad—was leaning back against the railing to brace himself. And Kyle—it had to be Kyle—was crouched before him on his hands and knees, his head bent downward.

  I caught my breath, tightened my grip on the projection I was clutching to keep from falling off. There could be no mistaking the bobbing motions of Kyle’s head: he was sucking Brad off.

  I wished I had a better view. My arm was crooked around the tool-shed projection, and was getting cramped. I saw Brad put his hands on Kyle’s head to urge him on. Kyle’s rhythm picked up speed.

  I thought I heard a stifled sob.

  My head began spinning as I fumbled my fly open with my free hand and liberated my straining erection. It took only a couple of pumps of my stiff shaft before my body was wracked with exquisite spasms as my dick shot spurts of semen out into black nothingness. I was holding my breath so I wouldn’t be heard, and the blood was pounding in my head as I quickly did myself up again, not even bothering to wipe my dick clean.

  Shakily, with one hand clutching the tool shed, I slid down the side, landing on the deck in a squat. Peering around to make sure I was unobserved, I hurried forward again until I came to the ladder leading down to the radio shack. I now felt something like panic lest I should get caught outside the ship at this time of night. I hurried into the skin of the ship.

  By now the red night-lights within seemed extra bright to my eyes. I dreaded the prospect of meeting anyone. But luckily no one was about at this hour and I made it back safely to my compartment.

  Down by my rack I undressed for bed. I slid under my sheet, naked, my heart pounding furiously. I felt as if I’d just run a mile.

  Just above my head was the familiar slap of the water against the hull. And accompanying it tonight were the keen, ear-piercing pings of the sonar, screaming down into the hidden depths of the ocean to seek out subs. My eardrums ached from it.

  But I felt a profound elation...as if a whole new world was just opening up for me.

  Paradise Beach

  They called it Paradise Beach and it was their counterpart to the crew’s Fantail Beach and Flightdeck Beach—so called because so many sailors sunned themselves there during the day on beach towels. Paradise Beach, however, came alive only at night, and was known only to the three friends who met there.

  I too had now become a regular visitor, but though from night to night the talk gradually grew bolder and more open, I still hadn’t learned anything further about the three boys’ homosexuality.

  It was Kyle who played a leading part in these get-togethers, and he seemed to be the acknowledged leader. With his unstoppable flow of talk, he kept the conversations alive. Because he’d never made a secret of his inclinations, he dauntlessly joked around on homosexual themes. And I admired his cocky openness, though I never let it show. Occasionally he put on a campy queen act, slipping an arm behind my back and blowing into my ear. The others only laughed, but I felt uncomfortable, and shoved him away in embarrassment.

  One night, as the four of us were smoking some pot up on Paradise Breach, Kyle placed the lit end of his joint into his mouth and leaned over to blow me a shotgun. I opened my mouth just inches from his lips as he exhaled a steady stream of smoke into my lungs. The proximity of his mouth excited me.

  He turned the joint around and took a hit from it; then, looking at the other two for approval, said: “Should I tell him?”

  Brad and Richie seemed a little uneasy and looked at each other.

  “Tell me what?” I asked.

  “We’ve talked it over among ourselves and decided you’re cool, so I think I’ll go ahead and tell you.”

  “Tell me what?” I repeated.

  “I’m gay.”

  I tried to work up a surprised expression.

  “You mean you never guessed?” he asked, incredulous.

  “I...I don’t know. I mean….” I was confused. Why was he confessing to what was already an open secret?

  “Does it shock you?” he asked.

  “I’m a little surprised, I guess.”

  “Does that mean you won’t be coming up here anymore?”

  “No, it doesn’t change anything. I mean, it doesn’t bother me what a guy’s sexual preferences are. We can still be friends, right?”

  “You’re all right, Doc, you know that?” He dropped a limp hand onto my lap.

  I brushed it away. “I said friends, and that’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Oh, shucks.”

  The others laughed. T
hough it all seemed casual enough, I felt as if I were being subjected to some sort of test, like an entrance exam which, if I passed, would allow me entry into their inner circle. I glanced at the other two because I’d noticed looks passing between them as I answered Kyle’s questions. Were their confessions coming up, too? Or were they going to continue their charade as liberal-minded friends who accepted an avowed homosexual as a companion?

  “Oh no, don’t get any wrong ideas,” said Brad, correctly interpreting my look.

  “Oh, they’re hetero, all right,” put in Kyle quickly.

  “Just wanted to be sure,” I said.

  “That would be too much, wouldn’t it?” giggled Kyle. “I mean, if we were all queer.”

  And nothing more was said about it that night.

  We’d caught up with the task force, the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and its complement of destroyers, supply ships, and submarines. A task force is virtually self-sufficient out at sea and can go for months without hitting port. Unlike a smaller ship such as ours, (which, alone, must constantly go into port for replenishments), a carrier is like a floating city, with its own bakery, hospital (staffed by doctors), dental office, and library. Mail can be flown onto it every day by plane (and then shuttled by helo to the smaller ships around it.) As for medical and office supplies, we could requisition them at any time while the supply ships were with us. For refueling, there were the fleet oilers, floating gas stations which made port calls unnecessary; we could perform underway replenishment indefinitely.

  It was because of all these ships around us that we were able to have such a long at-sea period—much to our chagrin. However, when I went topside and saw all the other ships around us, flashing signal lamps at each other, lined up in formation and performing maneuvers, I felt excited at being part of it all. It was like being in a war movie.

  The carrier itself was huge, dwarfing us by its mass. It left a wake miles wide, and I’d heard that it was almost impossible to notice its rolling onboard because it was as smooth as being on land. In the open hangars below the flight deck could be seen its jets with their wings folded up, their wheels chocked, and mechanics at work on them. Their wings and tails were adorned with colorful splashes of color: stripes, arrows, numbers, and other insignia.

  As a frigate, our main duty within the task force was to sweep the seas before the carrier and search the hidden depths for unfriendly subs. The carriers are the heart of the Navy’s fighting force and have to be protected at all costs. (With their planes’ striking power, they are the nerve center of any combat operation.) If, for example, during a war, we were to spot a torpedo heading toward the carrier, our inglorious task was to intercept it, even blowing ourselves up if necessary. We were, like any low-ranking soldier, expendable.

  Another of our jobs was plane guard duty. This meant we tagged along behind the Kitty as it conducted flight ops, which often went around-the-clock. If a pilot were careless enough to ditch his plane into the sea, we would be right there to pluck him out of the water. Night ops were particularly fascinating to watch, and I often went topside to Paradise Beach in order to enjoy them.

  As the jets climbed into steep take-offs, their engines roared like thunder, and their tails belched out a bizarre plume of smoke tinged green and purple and white. Amazed, I watched an artificial sun light up the night in brilliant rainbow colors as a gut-numbing tingle vibrated through my stomach. Almost immediately afterwards, another plane came whining in for a landing, its cockpit canopy glowing dimly green from the instrument panel lights within. I could even see the pilot’s helmet with its squadron insignia decal on its side.

  “It’s a sexual sight, isn’t it?” said Kyle.

  I nodded, for that was exactly what I’d been thinking. I was sitting with my legs dangling over the side of Paradise Beach, leaning against the railings, and Kyle had just come up from below. Lately we two were the only ones up here, for Brad, with his sonar watches (12 on and 12 off) was busier than ever, and Richie had been switched to night watches.

  Kyle sat down beside me and I felt his knee brush against mine and instinctively moved aside a little. It was only after I’d done so that I realized that the seemingly accidental brush might have been intentional.

  “That’s a pretty big ship, the Shitty Kitty,” he said.

  “Sure is.”

  This time when his knee touched mine I didn’t budge.

  Forward of us we could see the dim forms of our signalmen moving back and forth on the signal bridge. Flight ops was a particularly trying time for them. And in front of them one or two points off the starboard bow, the huge dark shape of the carrier towered like a hill, its wake fanned out like a ghostly shore.

  “Ever been on a carrier, Bill?”

  “Just once, to pick up some supplies.”

  “I have a friend on the Eisenhower and he says he hates it.”

  “I can imagine.” On a carrier the size of the Kitty Hawk, with its crew of 4,500 men, it was impossible to get to know more than a handful of people. You were just an anonymous face in the crowd. And like any city, it undoubtedly had its share of social problems. “I hear you can get mugged in the passageways at night if you aren’t careful,” I said.

  “That’s right. You can’t walk around at night without a buddy.”

  “Damn.”

  “Speaking of buddies, did you know that they even have a gay ghetto onboard most of those things?”

  “No kidding? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where is it on the Eisenhower?”

  “S-2 berthing, in supply. They say if you sleep down in S-2, you’d better keep your ass to the bulkhead, or sleep with your dixie cup over your butt.”

  “I love it. Is your friend in S-2, by any chance?”

  He chuckled deep in his throat. “I’ll leave that to your imagination. Not all my friends are gay, you know, though most of them are. My best friends all are.”

  “Isn’t it hard for you? I mean, being gay and in the Navy?”

  “The hardest part is resisting the temptation.”

  “No, seriously. Why did you join up in the first place?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was always falling in love with boys in uniform. And the idea of wearing a sailor’s suit—it was so romantic. What a disappointment I was in for. The Navy is romantic, all right...until you join up.”

  “Why don’t you get out? It’s not that hard.”

  “What, fess up to being queer? That’s a hell of a way to get out of the Navy. I don’t know. I think I wanna stick it out for as long as I can. There’s worse things in life.”

  As we were talking, the activity of the jets had picked up quite a bit. One came screaming in for a landing, and as I craned my neck up to watch its descent, I felt the brush of Kyle’s hand against my thigh. I glanced sideways at him to determine whether it had been accidental, but he was gazing up at the jet.

  “I can almost read the markings on that one’s tail,” he said.

  “K...M,” I read aloud. Immediately another one came whining in for a landing.

  “Good God, how many of them are out there?”

  I felt the hand brush my thigh again but pretended not to notice.

  “I’ll bet you they land more than seven planes within the next five minutes,” he said.

  “How much?”

  “Ten bucks.”

  “You’re on.”

  I slipped my wristwatch off and brought it up so I could read the phosphorescent markings. I was trying to make my breathing seem normal because I knew his hand would descend onto my thigh again, and the thought of it was agitating my heartbeat. Sure enough, it did...and this time stayed there.

  “What’d I tell you?” he said. “Another one. This one says KB. I wonder what those markings stand for.”

  “I don’t know. It probably has something to do with what squadron they’re in.”

  His hand slid down
between my thighs and cupped up against my dick. I prayed that it wouldn’t get hard, but rebelliously it swelled out and stretched tight against the inseam of my dungarees, responding to the pressure of Kyle’s hand.

  “Here’s another one—that’s three. How much more time do I have?”

  I glanced at my watch. “Three and a half minutes.”

  With the palm of his hand he began rubbing the underside of my erection. There was no way now I could keep up my end of the conversation.

  “This is busier than Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, I bet.”

  His fingers closed around my dick and began stroking it. I gazed forward to the signal bridge but the signalmen were busy at their tasks. Even if one of them were to glance back in our direction, Kyle and I would be nothing more than a dark blob in the night.

  The stroking was even and smooth.

  “Those pilots have to be crazy to try to land on that deck. It doesn’t look like it’s moving, but it is, you know. One slip-up and you’re nothing but a ball of fire. But I hear they have computers on the planes nowadays that will compensate for the ship’s roll.”

  The stroking continued.

  “There’s another one now. That’s, what, four in under three minutes. At this rate I think I’ll win that bet.”

  From the corner of my eye I saw that he was gazing up at the landing jets. But down below his fingers never ceased their regular stroking. I clenched my toes as I felt a weakness spread through my body. All my vital energy became concentrated on the six-and-a-half inches of hardness being stroked by Kyle’s hand.

  “What’s the writing on that wing...?”