Hold Tight

by Christopher Bram

  “He has his dick in your asshole, sailor.” It was only Blair’s contempt that enabled him to use such words. “Did you know that? Did you know this nigger is fucking you like a woman?”

  Erich heard the man through the headset and shifted in his seat, flexing his buttocks together.

  “What’s happened now?” said Sullivan.

  “Uh, an act of sodomy.”

  “What! Isn’t that what they’ve been doing all along? What else is there for queers to do?”

  Erich nervously shook his head. He wouldn’t tell Sullivan who was doing it to whom. Sullivan might renounce the whole enterprise if he knew their man was the pedicant. Without knowing why, Erich was disturbed to learn that himself, as if he expected something better from Fayette. As if he thought a man’s honor was in his ass. He didn’t like remembering that part of his body.

  Their bodies were sweating and as slippery as tongues. Hank’s balls and cock rode against the warm, wet stomach like they were part of the cock that rode inside him. He was so deep into fucking that a moment passed before he realized the spy had said something. It was of no matter. The men in the cellar would catch it if it were anything important. And remembering the men, Hank had to choke back his urge to start moaning.

  Juke kept going. It was a long, slow fuck, the kind he liked but rarely got. If only Hank could admit his pleasure with a little noise, then Juke could admit his. Their heavy breathing made it sound like work, but Juke wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence. Whores, they were both experts, he told himself. That’s all this was, and he raised his knees so he could use his legs to push deeper.

  “Just like a woman,” Blair repeated, annoyed the insult was getting no response. “Is the Navy full of women? There are no women in Hitler’s navy.”

  The blond queer—he was no longer a sailor or even a man—lifted his mouth from the houseboy’s mouth and looked at Blair. His eyes were half closed, his lips thick and dark. And he just looked at Blair while his body continued its slow, obscene squirm. The houseboy rolled his head over and looked at Blair through his heavy eyelids, shining black body rocking away.

  It was suddenly disgusting, all of it. If one of them were hating it, if there were the suggestion one was violating the other, then Blair might be able to watch. But to have both of them shamelessly look out at him from their shared pleasure was sickening. They made him feel like the pervert.

  “All right,” he said. “That’s enough. You can stop now.”

  Erich drew a deep breath, relieved.

  Juke went at it harder, to stop Hank from listening to the man.

  Hank closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “Stop it! I told you to stop!”

  But Hank gritted his teeth and kept going. It wasn’t just the sex. It was his anger with the spy, with the men listening, even with Juke for being part of this that made Hank hold tight to the fucking. To hell with the others. This was his body, his pleasure. And he let loose with a deep, loud groan.

  Juke responded with his own high, sweet sounds.

  Erich heard two people killing each other.

  Blair jumped up from his chair. “Stop or you won’t see that fifty bucks!” They made vile noises at him and he stepped forward, burning to slap the white’s face and bring him to his senses. Then he saw the white ass with black testicles. “You’re being fucked by a nigger! Good white hillbilly. What would your pappy say?”

  Hank threw his hand out and grabbed the man’s necktie. With a flip of his arm, he whipped the tie twice around his hand and yanked the man’s face in. Gripping the tie, he turned back to Juke and violently kissed the boy.

  Blair tried to pull back and his tie choked him. He tried to use both hands to undo the sailor’s grip, but the fingers were like a knot. The sailor’s other hand gripped the back of the boy’s neck. Blair was so close to their faces he felt their humid breaths and smelled their hot skin, saw the black tongue and was horrified the sailor would force Blair to kiss the boy.

  Juke saw the red face straining at its necktie and was afraid Hank would kiss the man, pull him on the bed and make him part of this. Juke fucked harder, so they could finish alone. But Hank went at it harder, too, kissing, then biting, holding the man’s face a foot from theirs.

  “Okay, mister.” Hank broke the kiss and spoke in gasps. “You wanna sneer? Sneer at this!” And he threw his head back and came, yanking at the tie and thrusting into Juke. He crowed like he was raping the spy, or raping Hitler and ending the war. It felt so strong it had to accomplish something.

  Seeing Hank go, feeling the squeeze around his cock, Juke let go, loudly, closing his eyes and giving in, like it was a busted artery that could bleed him white of Hank.

  They heaved and groaned like epileptics, faces clenched around their open mouths. Blair panicked. “Let go, you damn—” He pulled back so hard his necktie choked him and he couldn’t speak. He thought he would pass out. He squeezed his eyes shut and heard the accelerating breaths and moans of two animals being tortured to death. He wanted them to die.

  Erich closed his eyes. He opened his mouth a little, as if that could help him picture what was happening. He knew they weren’t killing each other. The women in brothels in Vienna groaned like that. So did the barmaid he saw for a time in Cambridge. But one voice dropped out, then the other, and Erich remembered these were two men. Women went on much longer, although Erich had suspected they were pretending sometimes. He wondered if Fayette and the houseboy had been pretending. He hoped so, because it was difficult to condemn such passionate pleasure, no matter how unseemly or unnatural it was.

  “They’ve finished,” he calmly announced.

  “About time,” said Sullivan. “I hope for your sake the creep says something. Or you would’ve had to hear all that for nothing.”

  Erich remembered the spy and wondered what Fayette had been doing to the man to upset him. He thought he should feel sorry for the spy—the two of them had something in common here—but, spy or not, he despised the man.

  Blair opened his eyes. It had seemed to go on forever, like an instant when you think you’re drowning. The hand suddenly dropped from his tie. Blair stumbled back. The sailor lay on the boy like a corpse. The boy lay very still, breathing through his bared teeth. There was a harsh smell in the room like the stink of the ailanthus trees that were budding all over the city.

  He could kill them both, if he had a gun or knife in his hand. He was humiliated. He had been a fool for thinking he could humiliate a degenerate, when such people were beneath shame or human feeling. He refused to let them know how ashamed he was of his helplessness. And there was his purpose in being here to consider. Blair had not forgotten that. He backed into the chair and sat down again.

  “Yes. Very good. That’s what I wanted to see,” he claimed.

  The sailor slowly lifted his head and looked at him.

  “Quite a show. You can get dressed now.”

  The sailor rolled off the boy, but lay on the bed, facing Blair. His penis was a vile shade of red, the hairs on his stomach matted and gluey.

  “You can get dressed, I said. Please.”

  “You don’t want to talk? About the war and stuff.”

  “Of course. You know I enjoy talking with our servicemen, getting ‘the real skinny,’ as you call it.” He was pleased to have the sailor suggest it, despite their battle of wills. This was going to be easier than he thought. “But wouldn’t you feel more comfortable if you had some clothes on?”

  “No. I feel comfortable like this.” He propped his head up with his arm and elbow. There was a look of defiance in his eyes.

  Blair refused to acknowledge the look. “Very well. But what about your…colored friend. I can’t imagine he’d have much of interest to contribute.”

  “Juke?” The sailor whispered to the boy and lightly jostled him, without taking his eyes off Blair.

  The boy seemed to have fallen asleep. He murmured something, then rolled against the sailor, covering
the white nakedness with a black one.

  “Never mind. Let him sleep,” said Blair. He wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible, while his cleverness was still intact. “So. Any new scuttlebutt?”

  The sailor’s eyes roamed the room. “What do you want to know?”

  “Nothing in particular. Just some more inside information with which I can impress my drinking companions. Such as, oh, something more about Sledgehammer.”

  “That Africa thing? Wahl,” he drawled, “I know about that only because of the charts they sent us. They tell us nothing, you know.”

  Erich’s pencil raced over the pad, getting as much of it down as possible. He knew no shorthand. The man’s questions were certainly dangerous, but he didn’t talk like a spy. His conversation was so transparent, even direct, that Erich thought he might be what he said he was, a prying civilian who wanted to be let inside. The man wasn’t even suspicious when Fayette suggested they talk, despite all that had happened before. If the man were a spy, he must think Fayette a complete idiot. But Erich had once thought that himself.

  “Oh, before I forget,” said Blair, reaching into his pocket and extracting his money clip. A book of matches fell to the floor. Blair noticed them, then forgot about them while he concentrated on keeping the sailor talking. “Your fifty dollars.” He peeled off two twenties and a ten and returned the clip to his pocket. “But you said it was going to be Dakar. French West Africa. I presume they’ll drive north and attack Rommel from the rear, after they beat the French.”

  The sailor reached across the sleeping boy and accepted the money. He just held it in his hand, as if fifty dollars didn’t interest him. Blair wondered if he’d made a mistake flashing the rest of his money.

  “There hasn’t been any word about when this invasion might be?”

  “Hell, no. That’s the last thing they tell us. But there’ve been rumors,” said the sailor. “Like January.”

  “Next year?” Blair couldn’t believe that.

  “Or August.”

  “That’s only next month.” Blair felt the sailor was toying with him, teasing him with something he really knew. Or mocking him for watching them copulate. “What makes people think it’ll be so soon?”

  “War’s been going on for six months now. Time we invaded somebody.”

  “But has there been anything to substantiate the rumors? Back them up?”

  “Wahl, we been doing landing drills every day now, like it was gonna be sometime soon. That’s why I think it’s gonna be August. And the ack-ack guys just got an issue of those big-brimmed helmets like you see in Tarzan movies.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Also, and this is why I don’t think it’s gonna be any earlier, everybody in my section who had leave scheduled for August or after has had their leave cancelled. But not the July guys.”

  “Really?” Now that suggested something.

  “And, best of all, the officers’ wives and families are starting to trickle into town for visits, no matter what part of the country they live in. Like they know they’re not going to see their honeys for a long time.”

  When the sailor started, he sounded almost as though he was making it up as he went along. But that was only the hillbilly’s slow-witted way of speaking, Blair decided. Because it certainly sounded convincing. “Can you think of anything else that points to August? What makes people say January?”

  “Nothing really. Except that they don’t want to think they’re going overseas anytime soon.”

  “I see. But if you were a betting man, you’d bet your money on August?”

  “At two-to-one odds, mister.”

  There. He was finished with the degenerate. He did not have to pretend to be friendly anymore. “So. Africa in August. You should love Africa, sailor.” Blair smirked and nodded at the sleeping boy. “If you live to set foot on it.”

  But neither the insult nor threat disturbed the sailor. He coolly looked straight at Blair and said, “You’re real smart, mister. And tough. But I scared the shit out of you a minute ago, just by fucking.”

  “Nonsense. I was worried you were going to get my suit dirty.” But there was no need now for Blair to defend himself politely. “Anyway, you weren’t fucking.” He spat the word out. “You were the one being fucked. By a nigger.”

  “Better him than you up my ass, mister.”

  “I’m no pervert, you degenerate.” He kept his voice as low as the sailor’s, manfully refusing to lose his temper.

  “Yeah? I hear your buddy Hitler’s got a streak of pansy in him too.”

  “Hitler—!” He was sick of hearing that about Hitler, and to hear it now from a pervert? “Adolf Hitler knew how to deal with sickness like yours. When he found Roehm in bed with a catamite, he pulled out his pistol and shot both of them himself. Which is what you deserve. Only this country is soft on perversion. I’d go to prison if I killed you and your friend, and you’re not worth it!”

  The colored boy just lay there, but he couldn’t be sleeping through this. Sex probably blew away the little intelligence coloreds had.

  The sailor just smiled, as cool as ice. “So why do you come here, mister? Why did you pay to watch us? You envious?” And he began to whistle, then sing:

  Goering has two, but they’re both small.

  Himmler has something similar.

  And Goebbels has no balls at all.

  Blair despised that low song, which reduced everything to sex. “I come here just to see how bad things are in this country. Your kind of behavior wasn’t tolerated before Roosevelt. And it wouldn’t happen under Hitler.”

  “So you and your friends’ll take care of me.”

  “My friends and I will see to it that your kind is wiped from this country. Look at this city. It’s worse than Weimar Berlin. You’d think war would put an end to such filth, but no, it’s made it worse than ever. Girls sleeping with servicemen. Pansies picking up sailors. Sailors sleeping with niggers. War has proved how depraved this country really is. We deserve to lose!”

  “I don’t see you doing anything, mister. You just like to watch, huh? That’s all you’re good for.”

  “What do you know?” Blair sneered. “For all you know, I could be a Nazi spy.” He finally said it. He’d been dying to say it, just to put the fear of God into the pervert, to shake his arrogance. “What if I am? What if everything you told me tonight will go straight to Berlin, and a fleet of U-boats will be waiting for you at Dakar? Won’t you feel like a fool, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths because you were so busy satisfying your animal lusts?”

  That startled the sailor. He glanced at the ceiling, then shook his head and said, “Naw. You’re not a spy. Right?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” But Blair would only go so far. This fool might believe him. “Of course not. I’m an American. A better American than you. But a city as rotten as this one is full of spies. The way you talk, you’ve probably already cut your throat.” Blair stood up. “For all you know, I’m with the FBI. Maybe I came here just to test you, to see if you knew how to keep your mouth shut. But you’ll never know that for certain, until they come to arrest you.”

  “You leaving, mister?” The vague threat must have unnerved the sailor, because he spoke much louder than before.

  “He’s leaving,” said Erich, although Sullivan had been reading all of it over his shoulder and was already putting his coat back on. “You ready?”

  Sullivan patted his pockets and holster. “Dumbest spy I ever heard of. Or the craziest. I bet I trail this clown right back to a ward at Bellevue.” But he hurried up the steps and out the cellar door.

  Blair fixed the knot against his throat and smoothed the crumpled necktie flat against his shirt. “Yes. This has been most interesting. Most entertaining. The depths we’ve sunk to.” He opened the door.

  “Good riddance,” said the sailor. “See you in hell.”

  For that, Blair left the door wide open. Let anyone who walked by get a glimpse of them in there.
He wanted to be able to tell someone, “I just watched a nigger screw a sailor. Most amusing.” But there was nobody in the hall or on the stairs. What Blair really wanted to do was kill both of them. Going down the stairs, he felt ashamed again for seeing such indecency and not being able to punish it.

  The front hall was empty. He opened the front door and stepped outside. His feelings of shame and helplessness suddenly lifted. He never had to come here again. He breathed the thick night air and wondered where he could catch a taxi. He wanted to get home and telephone Anna. She had promised to come see him the very night he learned what he had learned. He couldn’t wait to tell her what he knew, in his apartment, among his things, in his bed.

  The street was dark and wide open. Stars were visible overhead. The silence was wonderful, freeing him to think about Anna, love and his success as a spy. His footsteps lightly echoed in the bay of blacked-out buildings, like a second pair of shoes.

  Juke heard the man leave, then felt Hank’s warm weight get up from the bed when Hank went to shut the door.

  “It’s over. He’s gone,” Hank said loudly, as if to wake Juke. But he looked down at the bed and said, “I knew you was playing possum.”

  Juke rolled over and faced Hank, smirking. “Oh, but I wasn’t,” he sang. “You loved me silly, Blondie.” He watched for Hank’s response to his taunting, not wanting to show any real feelings until he had some idea what Hank felt.

  Hank only bent down and picked a book of matches off the floor.

  “And I fucked the bejeezus outa you,” Juke announced. “You ain’t telling me that’s the first time you got fucked.”

  “That’s for sure,” Hank muttered, opening and closing the matches, reading what was printed on them. “What’s an El Morocco?”

  “Huh? Just a place. A clip joint for whites with too much money. That circus queen forget her matches?” He knew Hank was stalling, ashamed to admit he’d been fucked and enjoyed it. But a guy who was truly ashamed would have pulled his clothes on fast, and Hank just stood there, bulky and naked, like they’d done nothing more than had a nice swim together.