with four of his shipmates, and he was getting mad.
“Hey, Marge!” As he pulled up a chair and joined the group, FFG2 Roy
Kirkpatrick puckered his lips, making a loud smacking noise. “How’s
about a kiss, sweetie?”
Margolis winced at the familiar taunt. How were you supposed to fight
something like this?
“Fuck off,” he said. Angrily, he picked up his can of Coke and took a
swig. “I’m not queer. I like girls! I’ve got a girlfriend back in the
States!”
“Sure, sure,” Gunner’s Mate (Missiles) Third Class Enrique Hernandez
said, a toothy grin lighting his swarthy face. “That’s what they all
say!”
“I’m not a homo!”
“Yeah, well, your boyfriend Pellet’s one, ain’t he?” Radioman Third
Class Mike Weydener said. “I thought all you queers hung out together.”
“Yeah!” Kirkpatrick said, giggling. “How’s Pellet hung?”
“Frank’s a nice guy.”
“Oh, I’ll just bet he is!” Fire Control Technician Larry Jankowski mimed
a kiss and the others howled with laughter.
“How nice was he?” Hernandez asked.
Margolis could feel his face getting red. He never knew how to answer
these guys when they started making fun of him. He took another swig of
Coke, desperately hoping to cover his embarrassment.
“Hey, look at Margie’s face!” Kirkpatrick said, slapping the table. “I
never seen a guy get so red!”
“Matches his hair,” Radarman Third Class Reidel observed. Harold Reidel
looked like a recruiting poster: surfboard blond, health-club muscular,
and as handsome as a teen movie idol. “You must’ve hit a major nerve,
Big-K.”
PH2 Margolis was twenty-one years old. He’d joined the Navy the day
after he’d graduated from high school; his parents were divorced and
life at home with an alcoholic mother was no picnic, The sea had seemed
the perfect escape.
But after three and a half years in the Navy, he was ready to call it
quits. Six more months, he thought, and I’m out of here, a civilian
again and free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I’m free at
last!
It wasn’t that he disliked the Navy. He’d gotten by okay, on the whole.
Going to photographer’s school after boot camp had taught him a trade,
and when he got out he wanted to pursue a career as a professional
photographer, maybe for a newspaper.
The problem was that Tom Margolis was not exactly the athletic, macho
type, not big like Kirkpatrick, not hard-muscled like Reidel. He was
intelligent and his speech showed it. He liked to read, he wore
glasses, and his pale, freckled skin–legacy of his hated red
hair–seemed to betray every intense or unpleasant emotion. He stood
out in a crowd, especially in a crowd of types like Kirkpatrick and
Reidel, and that made his chronic shyness worse.
So he was different from the other sailors of the group he’d fallen in
with lately. As for the issue of his being gay, he wasn’t … at least
as far as he knew. He’d heard that you could be homosexual and not be
aware of the fact, but he’d done a lot of pretty heavy petting with
Doris in the backseat of her father’s car during his senior year in high
school, and he was pretty sure he was all right in that department at
least.
Gays in the military, especially in the Navy, aboard ship, had remained
a controversial issue long after President Clinton had lifted the ban on
recruiting them. Margolis had never had much of an opinion one way or
the other. He’d heard scuttlebutt that Fire Control Technician Third
Class Frank Pellet was gay, but as far as Margolis knew from personal
experience, Pellet was just a friendly, bright, and outgoing guy who
shared Margolis’s love of photography. Pellet had never made a pass at
him, never said or done anything to betray his sexual orientation.
Margolis had decided early on to ignore the rumors and enjoy the
friendship.
And that was when the rumors had started about him.
“I’ll tell you, Marge,” Hernandez said. “If you are gay and we find
out, your ass is grass, you get me?”
“Yeah,” Reidel added. “We don’t want no fags on this ship.”
“Oh, Mama!” Kirkpatrick said, licking his lips. His eyes had strayed