made him interesting, is separate. It is the small real things that get obliterated in a holocaust, forgotten. The horrors are distinct and do not connect with the people, but it is the horrors that get remembered in history.
When it got dark, we would go back down, and I hated it because each day it was getting dark earlier and earlier. We'd get back and find that there had been — oh — a macaroni fight over lunch, great handprints of it over the windows and on the beds, that had been left to dry. Once we got back to the waiting room, and there had been a fight, a real one. Lou had given one of the Boys a bloody nose, to stop it. There was blood on the floor. Lou lectured us all about male violence, saying anyone who used violence in the Station would get violence back.
He took away all of Tom's clothes. Tom was beautiful, and very quiet, but sometimes he got mad. Lou kicked him out of the building in punishment. It was going to be a cold night. Long after the Grils had turned out the lights, we could hear Tom whimpering, just outside the door. 'Please, Lou. It's cold. Lou, I'm sorry. Lou? I just got carried away. Please?'
I felt Royce jump up and throw the blanket aside. Oh God, I thought, don't get Lou mad at us. Royce padded across the dark room, and I heard the door open, and I heard him say, 'OK, come in. '
'Sorry, Lou,' Royce said. 'But we all need to get to sleep. ' Lou only grunted. 'OK,' he said, in a voice that was biding its time.
And Royce came back to my bed.
I would hold him, and he would hold me, but only, I think, to stop falling out of the bed. It was so narrow and cold. Royce's body was always taut, like each individual strand of muscle had been pulled back, tightly, from the shoulder. It was as tense through the night as if it were carrying something, and nothing I could do would soothe it. What I am trying to say, and I have to say it, is that Royce was impotent, at least with me, at least in the Station. 'As long as I can't do it,' he told me once on the mound, 'I know I haven't forgotten where I am. ' Maybe that was just an excuse. The Boys knew about it, of course. They listened in the dark and knew what was and was not happening.
And the day would begin at dawn. The little automatic car, the porridge and the bread, the icy showers, and the wait for the first train. James the Tape Head, Harry with his constant grin, Gary who was tall and ropey, and who kept tugging at his pigtail. He'd been a trader in books, and he talked books and politics and thought he was Lou's lieutenant. Lou wasn't saying. And Bill the Brylcreem, and Charlie with his still, and Tom. The Boys. Hating each other, with no one else to talk to, waiting for the day when the Grils would burn us, or the food in the cart would have an added secret ingredient. When they were done with us.
Royce talked, learning who the cameras were.
There were only four Grils, dividing the day into two shifts. Royce gave them names. There was Alice and Hortensia, and Miss Scarlett who turned out to be from Atlanta. Only one of the Grils took a while to find a name, and she got it the first day one of the cameras laughed.
She'd been called Greta, I think because she had such a low, deep voice. Sometimes Royce called her Sir. Then one morning, Lou was late, and as he came, Royce said. 'Uh-oh. Here comes the Rear Admiral. '
Lou was very sanctimonious about always taking what he assumed was the female role in sex. The cameras knew that; they watched all the time. The camera laughed. It was a terrible laugh; a thin, high, wailing, helpless shriek.
'Hey, Sir, that's really Butch,' said Royce, and the name Butch stuck.
So did Rear Admiral. God bless all who sail in him.
'Hiya, Admiral,' gasped the camera, and even some of the Boys laughed too.
Lou looked confused, a stiff and awkward smile on his face. 'It's better than being some macho prick,' he said.
That night, he took me to one side, by the showers.
'Look,' he said. 'I think maybe you should get your friend to ease up a bit. '
'Oh Lou, come on, it's just jokes. '
'You think all of this is a joke!' yelped Lou.
'No. '
'Don't think I don't understand what's going on. ' the light caught in his eyes, pinprick bright.
'What do you think is going on, Lou?'
I saw him appraising me. I saw him give me the benefit of the doubt. 'What you've done, Rich, and maybe it isn't your fault, is to import an ideological wild card into this station. '
'Oh Lou,' I groaned. I groaned for him, for his mind.
'He's not with us. I don't know what these games are that he's playing with the women, but he's putting us all in danger. Yeah, sure, they're laughing now, but sooner or later he'll say the wrong thing, and some of us will get burned. Cooked. And another thing. These little heart to heart talks you have with each other. Very nice. But that's just the sort of thing the Station cannot tolerate. We are a team, we are a family, we've broken with all of that nuclear family shit, and you guys have re-imported it. You're breaking us up, into little compartments. You, Royce, James, even Harry, you're all going off into little corners away from the rest of us. We have got to work together. Now I want to see you guys with the rest of us. No more withdrawing. '
'Lou,' I said, helpless to reply. 'Lou. Fuck off. '
His eyes had the light again. 'Careful, Rich. '
'Lou. We are with you guys twenty-two hours a day. Can you really not do without us for the other two? What is wrong with a little privacy, Lou?'
'There is no privacy here,' he said. 'The cameras pick up just about every word. Now look. I took on a responsibility. I took on the responsibility of getting all of us through this together, show that there is a place in the revolution for good gay men. I have to know what is going on in the Station. I don't know what you guys are saying to each other up there, I don't know what the cameras are hearing. Now you lied to me, Rich. You didn't know Royce before he came here, did you. We don't know who he is, what he is. Rich, is Royce even gay?'
'Yes! Of course!'
'Then how does he fuck?'
'That's none of your business. '
'Everything here is my business. You don't fuck him, he doesn't fuck you, so what goes on?'
I was too horrified to speak.
'Look,' said Lou, relenting. 'I can understand it. You love the guy. You think I don't feel that pull, too, that pull to save them? We wouldn't be gay if we didn't. So you see him on the platform, and he is very nice, and you think, Dear God, why does he have to die?'
'Yes. '
'I feel it! I feel it too!' Lou made a good show of doing so. 'It's not the people themselves, but what they are that we have to hold onto. Remember, Rich, this is just a program of containment. What we get here are the worst, Rich, the very worst — the sex criminals, the transsexuals, the media freaks. So what you have to ask yourself, Rich, is this: what was Royce doing on that train?'
'Same thing I was. He got pulled in by mistake. '
Lou looked at me with a kind of blank pity. Then he looked down at the ground. 'there are no mistakes, Rich. They've got the police files. '
'Then what was I doing on the train?'
Lou looked back up at me and sighed. 'I think you probably got some of the women very angry with you. There's a lot of infighting, particularly where gay men fit in. I don't like it. It's why I got you out. It may be something similar with Royce. '
'On the train because I disagreed with them?' Everything felt weak, my knees, my stomach.
'It's possible, only possible. This is a revolution, Rich. Things are pretty fluid. '
'Oh God, Lou, what's happening?'
'You see why we have to be careful? People have been burned in this station, Rich. Not lately, because I've been in charge. And I intend to stay in charge. Look. '
Lou took me in his arms. 'this must be really terrible for you, I know. All of us were really happy for you, when you and Royce started. But we have to protect ourselves. Now let's just go back in, and ask Royce who and what he is. '
'What do you mean?'
'Just ask him. In front of the others. What he was. And not take no for an answer. ' He was stroking my
