hair.
'He'll hate me if I do that!' I tried to push him away. He grabbed hold of my hair, and pulled it, smiling, almost as if he were still being sexy and affectionate.
'Then he'll just have to get over that kind of mentality. What has he got to hide if he needs privacy? Come on, Rich. Let's just get it over with. ' He pulled me back, into the waiting room.
Royce took one look at us together as we came in, and his face went still, as if to say, 'Uh-huh. This is coming now, is it? “His eyes looked hard into mine, and said, 'Are you going to put up with it?' I was ashamed. I was powerless.
'Rich has a confession to make,' said Lou, a friendly hand still on the back of my neck. 'Don't you, Rich?'
They all seemed to sit up and close in, an inquisition, and I stood there thinking, Dear God, what do I do? What do I do?
'Rich,' Lou reminded me. 'We have to go through this. We need to talk this through. '
Royce sat there, on our bed, reclining, waiting.
Well, I had lied. 'I don't really know who Royce is. We weren't lovers before. We are lovers now. '
'But you don't know what he was doing, or who he was, do you, Rich?'
I just shook my head.
'Don't you want to know that, Rich? Don't you want to know who your lover was? Doesn't it seem strange to you that he's never told you?'
'No,' I replied. 'We all did what we had to do before the revolution. What we did back then is not who we are. ' See, I wanted to say to Royce, I'm fighting, see I'm fighting.
'But there are different ways of knuckling under, aren't there, Rich? You taught history. You showed people where the old system had gone wrong. You were a good, gay man. '
Royce stood up, abruptly, and said, 'I was a prison guard. '
The room went cold and Lou's eyes gleamed.
'And there are different ways of being a prison guard. It was a detention center for juveniles, young guys who might have had a chance. Not surprisingly, most of them were black. I don't suppose you know what happens to black juvenile prisoners now, do you? I'd like to know. '
'Their records are looked at,' said Lou. 'So. You were a gay prison guard in charge of young men. '
'Is that so impossible?'
'So, you were a closet case for a start. '
'No. I told my immediate superior. '
'Immediate superior. You went along with the hierarchy. Patriarchy, I should say. Did you have a good time with the boys?'
'This camp is a hierarchy, in case you hadn't noticed. And no, I kept my hands off the boys. I was there to help them, not make things worse. '
'Helping them to be gay would be worse?' Every word was a trap door that could fall open. The latch was hatred. 'Did you ever beat one of the boys up? Did you deal dope on the side?'
Royce was still for a moment, his eyes narrow. Then he spoke.
'About four years ago, me and the kids put on a show. We put on a show for the girls' center. The girls came in a bus, and they'd all put their hair in ringlets, and they walked into the gym with too much make-up on, holding each other's hands, clutching each other's forearms, like this, because they were so nervous. And the kids, the boys, they'd been rehearsing, oh, for weeks. They'd built and painted a set. It was a street, with lights in the windows, and a big yellow moon. There was this one kid, Jonesy. Jonesy kept sticking his head through the curtain before we started. ‘Hey everybody! I'm a star!''
Royce said it again, softly. 'Hey everybody, I'm a star. And I had to yell at him, Jonesy, get your ass off that stage. The girls sat on one side of the gym, and the boys on the other, and they smiled and waved and threw things at each other, like gum wrappers. It was all they had. '
Royce started to cry. He glared at Lou and let the tears slide down his face. 'they didn't have anything else to give each other. The show started and one of the kids did his announcing routine. He'd made a bow tie out of a white paper napkin, and it looked so sharp. And then the music came up and one of the girls just shouted. ‘Oh, they're going to dance!' And those girls screamed. They just screamed. The boys did their dance on the stage, no mistaking what those moves meant. The record was ‘It's a Shame. ''
His face contorted suddenly, perhaps with anger. 'And I had to keep this god-damned aisle between them, the whole time. '
'So?' said Lou, unmoved.
'So,' said Royce, and gathered himself in. He wiped the moisture from his face. 'So I know a lot about prisons. So, some of those kids are dead now. The boys and the girls wanted each other. That must be an ideological quandary for you, Lou. Here's a big bad guard stopping people doing what they want, but what they want to do is het-ero-sex-u-ality. ' He turned it into a mock dirty word, his eyes round.
'No problem,' said Lou. 'All women are really lesbians. '
Royce stared at him for a moment. Then he began to laugh.
'I wouldn't expect you to understand. But the first experience of physical tenderness that any woman has is with her mother. '
'Gee, I'm sure glad my old aunt Hortensia didn't know that. She would be surprised. Hey, Alice. Are you a dyke?'
Lou went pale, and lines of shadow encircled his mouth.
'Yes,' said Alice, the camera.
'Well, I'm a faggot, but it doesn't mean everyone else is. '
Lou launched himself from the bed, in a fury. He was on his feet, and shouting, flecks of spit propelled from his mouth.
'You do not use demeaning language here!' His voice cracked.
Alice had been working nine hours, and now she was alone, on the night shift. She had been watching, silently, for nine hours. Now, she wanted to talk.
'I had a girlfriend once who was straight,' she said. 'No matter how hard she tried, women just didn't bring her off. Mind you, that's better than those lust lesbians. They just want your body. Me, I'm totally dedicated to women, but it's a political commitment. It's something I decided. I don't let my body make my decisions for me. '
'Yeah, I know what you mean,' said Royce. 'It's these lust faggots, I can't stand. ' He cast his eyes about him at the Boys, and they chuckled.
'We do not use the word ‘dyke' in this station,' said Lou.
Royce looked rather sad and affectionate, and shook his head. 'Lou. You are such a prig. Not only are you a prig. You are a dumb prig. '
The floor seemed to open up under my feet with admiration. Only Royce could have said that to Lou. I loved him, even though I did not love myself. The Boys chuckled again, because it was funny, and because it was true, and because it was a little bit of a shock.
'Alice,' said Lou. 'He has just insulted women. '
'Funny,' said Alice. 'I thought he'd just insulted you. '
Lou looked like he was in the middle of a nightmare; you could see it in his face. 'Alice is being very tolerant, Royce. But from now on, you talk to and about the women with respect. If you want to live here with us, there are a few ground rules. '
'Like what?'
'No more jokes. '
Royce was leaning against the bar at the foot of our bed, and he was calm, and his ankles were crossed. He closed his eyes, and smiled. 'No more jokes?' he asked, amused.
'You mess around with the women, you put us all in danger. You keep putting us in danger, you got to go. '
'Lou,' said Alice. 'Can I remind you of something? You don't decide who goes on the trains. We do. '
'I understand that, Alice. ' He slumped from the shoulders and his breath seeped out of him. He seemed to
