there in front of that pious pulpit of political zealots and petrified fellow travellers. It was the scared ones Jack despised most. At least the true believers believed, insane Utopians though they were, but the ones who knew he was right were beneath contempt. They just did not have the guts to risk offending the current sensibilities and so they nodded and sighed and stayed silent, mindful of their thin electoral majorities back home. It was McCarthyism in reverse. The liberals had become the witch-hunters: “Are you or have you ever been a homophobic?” There was a terrifying new orthodoxy abroad and as far as Jack was concerned whether it was happening on Capitol Hill or in Camden Council it had to be confronted.
“We take communal showers in the army, you know that, Polly,” Jack said bitterly. “You think about that. In the field we live in the same dugouts, wash in the same puddles. I don’t want no queer grunt staring at my ass instead of the soap.”
Polly did not want to discuss this, but like Jack she simply could not let it go. His attitude was just too disgusting. Every liberal instinct in her body screamed to reply.
“Gay men are not sexual predators, Jack.”
“How the hell would you know? Straight guys are sexual predators!”
“Well, yes, you certainly showed me that!”
“Exactly,” Jack said loudly, as if this proved his point.
“Keep your voice down! There’s a milkman asleep downstairs.”
On the floor below, the milkman was not asleep. Jack’s voice had woken him up again and he was gleefully making a note of the time of the disturbance:
Little did the milkman imagine that within a few hours his notebook would be in the hands of the police.
Jack reduced the volume but his tone remained combative.
“If you think I’m a predator, well, let me tell you, honey, I ain’t the worst by a long country mile. I’m the norm.”
Jack was remembering Bad Nauheim and the night that the German girl Helga had pushed her luck too far. Not all men were of the type involved in that terrible incident, but all men were men none the less.
“If you put any of the men in any unit I ever commanded in a showerful of women,” Jack continued, “they are going to check them out for sure, and if they can they’re going to try and get with them.” “Well, then, they need to rethink their-” Jack had just sat back down in his seat, but his frustration made him leap up again and take a step towards Polly.
“
Jack was standing over Polly now.
“I know you don’t like it, Polly, but that’s what young men do! They check out babes and they try to have sex with them and you can make up all the laws you like but that won’t change.”
Polly rose from the bed and squared up to Jack. There was no way this man was going to win his argument with intimidating body language.
“Yes, it can, Jack, it’s called civilization. It’s an ongoing process.”
“Yeah well it’s got a long way to ongo.”
Polly checked herself. What was she doing? She did not want to have this discussion, she had work in the morning. In fact, it very nearly was the morning.
“Look, Jack. I really don’t know what we’re talking about!”
“We are talking about gays in the military.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk about gays in the military!”
“Well, I do! It’s relevant!”
“Relevant to what?”
“Relevant to me! I want you to understand me.”
The urgency of Jack’s tone subdued Polly for a moment.
“You know what straight men can be like,” he continued. “You feel I showed you that.”
Oh yes, Polly certainly felt he had done that.
“So why not gays? What’s so different about them, huh? Are you going to tell me that if you put a healthy young homosexual in a showerful of young men who are in the peak of physical condition he is not going to check out their dicks?”
Polly tried to stop herself replying. She did not wish to be having this conversation. On the other hand she had to reply. Jack simply could not be allowed to get away with this reactionary bullshit.
“Well, he might look, but-”
Jack leapt on the point. “And when he does he’s going to get himself beaten to a pulp.”
“That’s not his problem-”
Jack laughed. “Excuse me? Getting beaten to a pulp is not his problem?”
“Well, I mean, obviously it is his problem if he’s being beaten up.”
“It’s encouraging that you spotted that.”
His attitude was unpleasant. Polly’s point was not an easy one to make. Particularly if Jack was going to take cheap shots.
“But the problem originates with the people who are doing the beating!”
“Great, next time I get shot I’ll take comfort from that. Hey, this is not my problem. The guy with the gun, he has the problem, he needs to get in touch with his caring side.”
How many times in how many pubs had Polly had discussions like this one? The reactionary point of view was always so easy to put, the complex, radical argument always so easy to put down.
“Just because the world is full of Neanderthal morons doesn’t mean we have to run it for their benefit and by their rules.”
Jack searched his brain for a telling argument. Somehow it was important to him that Polly understood his point of view.
“Listen, Polly, when the guy who digs up the street checks out your butt you’re pretty pissed, am I right?”
“Well, yes-”
“You’re furious. You’d like to knock that guy off his scaffolding and drive a dump truck into his asshole cleavage. Well, men don’t like having their butts checked out either, but unlike you they’re actually going to do something about it, they’re going to attack the guy who is checking them out and you cannot run an army with guys either sucking each other off or beating each other up.”
Of course it sounded reasonable. Polly had spent her life listening to reactionary arguments and they always sounded reasonable. Which was why it was all the more important to counter them. Even at nearly 3.15 in the morning. Even with a mysterious ex-lover who had turned up out of the blue after more than sixteen years’ absence. Polly had a policy. It was embarrassing at times and always boring, but her view was that casual racism, sexism and homophobia always had to be confronted.
“People have to learn to restrain themselves,” she said.
Jack had a rule too. It was that he would never suffer pious liberal bullshit in silence.
“Says you, babe, and you and your people can keep on wishing!”
Polly was shocked at how bitter Jack’s tone had become.
“Me and my people?” she said. “What people, Jack? I don’t have any people! What are you talking about? Why are you bringing me into this? None of this is any of my business.”
Polly was not even sure that Jack heard her. He looked strange. There was a different look in his eye; she could see real anger there.
“You know what’s coming next, don’t you? Pacifists.”
“What about pacifists?”
