across the room to a pair of female enlisted personnel who’d just
entered the lounge. One was a rather plain-looking girl who worked in
personnel, but the other was a brunette bombshell from Disbursing who
filled her too-tight uniform blouse with wondrous, bobbing motion. “You
know, guys, it just ain’t fuckin’ fair. They went and made it legal for
queers to join up in this man’s Navy. I mean, there they are, right?
Sleeping in our compartments. Crowding in with us nuts to butts right
there in the shower heads. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, and no shit.
When they let us shower with the girls on this ship, I’ll stop bitching
about them letting fags take showers with me! I mean, am I right? It’s
the same thing, right?”
“Fuckin’-A, Big-K,” Hernandez said. “Man, oh, man, lookit that nice
ass.
Betcha that looks Grade-A prime in the shower, huh?”
“It’d look better in bed,” Jankowski volunteered. “With her legs spread
apart like this.” He demonstrated, rubbing his crotch suggestively, and
the others agreed with moans and laughter.
There had always been gays in the Navy. Always. Until the early
nineties, however, they’d kept their presence secret for the most part,
for anyone who admitted to being gay was immediately discharged from the
service.
Sometimes the discovery ended tragically. In October 1992, a young
seaman aboard the U.S.S. Belleau Wood–a ship with a fleet-wide
reputation for being especially rough on gays–had had his face brutally
smashed against a urinal in a restroom in Sasebo, Japan, until he was
dead. There had long been dark rumors of other, similar incidents, men
reported missing overboard in a storm or AWOL in some foreign port.
Not until the abrupt liberal shift in the government with the Clinton
Administration had the official ban on gays finally been lifted.
Recruiters were no longer allowed to ask prospective recruits about
sexual orientation.
Unfortunately, lifting the ban had not solved the problem. Relatively
few gays had come out of the closet, for there was no way to change the
embedded prejudice of their shipmates, not overnight. Kirkpatrick’s
complaint was a common one: If we can’t shower with the female sailors,
why should gays be allowed to shower with us?
No civilian could imagine the closeness of the quarters, the complete
lack of privacy aboard ship. Even aboard a floating city like the
Jefferson, with most of her thousand-foot length reserved for her
aircraft and the gear and supplies that kept them flying, space was at a
premium. When morale was poor, when stress was high, slights, attacks,
or harassments, real or imagined, could explode like a magnesium flare
in an avgas fuel-storage tank.
More than four years after the ban on gays had been lifted, there were
still far too many suspicious “accidents” at sea.
Margolis was scared. As the rumor that he was gay had spread, he’d been
getting more and more harassment–shipmates banging into him in the
passageways or the chow line, apparently by accident but hard. Once his
sheets had been stolen from his rack. He’d even received a couple of
threatening letters telling him to get off the ship or else.
But Margolis had been working on a plan for two weeks now, a way to
fight back. He had the necessary equipment. All he needed was some
help. And if he managed to pull it off, he’d prove that he was a
red-blooded guy just like the rest of them. He’d show them!
“All right, guys,” he said. He crushed his Coke can for emphasis, then
let the crumpled husk clatter on the tabletop.
“I’ve got a little scheme going, and you’re going to help me. It’ll
prove to you, once and for all, that I’m no queer.”
“Yeah?” Kirkpatrick asked. “How you gonna do that, Marge?”
“Just listen up,” Margolis said. He snickered. “You’re gonna love
this!”
CHAPTER 7
Thursday, 12 March
1330 hours (Zulu +1)
CAG’s office
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
“Come in.”
Master Chief Mike Weston, Jefferson’s Chief of the Boat, entered
Tombstone’s small office. “Afternoon, CAG.”
“Hi, COB. What can I do for you?”
“Well, this is kind of the way of an informal invitation, if you know
what I mean.”