Beebo Brinker. Ann Bannon
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were the only men in a big room solidly packed with women. It excited Beebo intensely—all that femininity. She was silent, studying the girls at the table while Jack talked with them. When she shook hands with them, a new feeling gripped her. For the first time in her life she was proud of her size, proud of her strength, even proud of her oddly boyish face. She could see interest, even admiration on the faces of many of the girls. She was not used to that kind of reaction in people, and it exhilarated her. But she didn’t talk much, only answering direct questions when she had to; smiling at them when they smiled at her; looking away in confusion when one or another tried to stare her down.
They had been there half an hour when somebody came over from another table and asked her to dance. Beebo turned around, her stomach in a knot. “Are they dancing?” she asked.
“Sure,” said the girl. “By the jukebox.”
Beebo had heard music without looking to see where it came from. She got up from the table and went to the back room, realizing as she stood up how much beer she had drunk. At the back of the crowd surrounding the dance floor, there was room to stand and watch.
The music was rhythmic and popular. The floor was jammed with a mass of couples … a mass of girls, dancing, arms locked around each other, bodies pressed close and warm. Their cheeks were touching. Quick light kisses were exchanged. And they were all girls, every one of them: young and lovely and infatuated with each other. They touched one another with gentle caresses, they kissed, they smiled and laughed and whispered while they turned and moved together.
There was no shame, no shock, no self-consciousness about it at all. They were enjoying themselves. They were having fun in the most natural way imaginable. They were all in love, or so it seemed. They were—what did Jack call it?—gay.
Beebo watched them for less than a minute, all told; but a minute that was transfixed like a living picture in her mind for the rest of her life. She was startled by it, afraid of it. And yet so passionately moved that she caught her breath and held it till her heart began to pound in protest. Her fists closed hard with the nails biting into her palms and she was obsessed momentarily by the desire to grab the girl nearest her and kiss her.
At that point she murmured, “Oh, God!” and turned to flee. She felt the way she had in childhood dreams when she was being chased by some vague terrible menace, and she had to move slowly and tortuously, with great effort, as through a wall of water, while the monster gained on her from behind.
She caught Jack’s shoulders in her big hands and squeezed them hard. “Let’s go, let’s go,” she said urgently.
He looked at her as if she had lost her senses. “I just ordered another round,” he said.
“Jack, please!” She pulled him to his feet.
“Jesus, can’t you wait a little while, honey?” he said, and triggered an outburst of merriment at the table. But she meant it, and he was not too high to see her panic. He picked his jacket off the back of his chair, apologizing to his friends. “When she wants it, she wants it now,” he grinned, shrugging.
“Who are you kidding?” they laughed.
Beebo was already pushing her way to the exit and Jack had a battle to catch her. He found her waiting for him outside by the door.
“Hey,” he said, and put a friendly hand on her shoulder as they started to walk toward his apartment. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to go back there, Jack,” she blurted.
“What’s the matter with it? Too much fun?”
“It was awful,” she said, not even knowing why she said it.
“You liked the other places.”
She wouldn’t answer, only striding along so fast in her haste to leave the Colophon behind that Jack had to run to keep up.
“Was it the dancing?” he said.
She whirled to answer him, her face flushed with emotion. “I suppose you’ve seen it so many times you think nothing of it,” she cried. “Well, it’s—it’s wrong!”
“Who the hell do you think you are to call it wrong?” Jack demanded. “Those are damn nice girls. If they want to dance with each other, let them dance. You don’t have to watch.”
Beebo listened, her anger fading, to be replaced by a fearful desire.
“Did it make you feel … that way, Beebo?” he said gently.
“It made me feel …” She turned away, unable to face him. “Funny inside. As if it was wrong. Or too right. I don’t know.”
“It’s not wrong, pal,” he said, speaking to her back. “You’ve been brought up to think so. Most of us have. But who are they hurting? Nobody. They’re just making each other happy. And you want their heads to roll because it makes you feel funny.”
She covered her face with her hands and rubbed her eyes roughly. Through her fingers she said, “I don’t want to hurt them. I just don’t want to stand there and watch them.”
“Well, why didn’t you dance?” he said. “Hell, I don’t like being a wallflower, either.”
“Jack, I can’t dance like that,” she said in a hushed voice.
“Why can’t you?” She refused to answer, so he answered for her. “You can. You just won’t. But you know something, my little friend? One of these days, you will.”
“You’re no prophet, Jack. Don’t predict my future.” She started walking again.
He followed her, throwing up his hands. “Okay, okay. It shook you. But not because it was vulgar and indecent. Because it was beautiful and exciting. Besides, you envied those kids on the dance floor. Didn’t you?”
Her confession never came. They walked in silence the rest of the way to Jack’s apartment. He closed and locked the front door and turned on the living room light, tossing his jacket into a chair.
“Beebo,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “You’ve been living with me almost a month now—”
“If you want me to move, I’ll move.” She was surly and defensive.
“I want you to stay. When you move, it’ll be because you want to,” he said. “Besides, that’s not what I want to talk about. In the past month, you have never once told me the most important thing about yourself, Beebo.”
She felt a flash of fear, piercing as sudden light in darkness. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
Jack gave her the freshly lighted cigarette and she hid gratefully behind a smoke screen. “You know,” he said. “But I’m not going to insist on it. I think you want to talk to me, but you’re afraid. I’m trying every way I know to show you that it won’t offend me, Beebo. You think about that. You think about the people who are my friends—people I enjoy and respect—and then you ask yourself what you have to fear.”
There was a long pause. At last she said, “It isn’t that easy, Jack. I should know what I am. But I don’t know myself at all. Especially here in this new place. Back in Juniper Hill, I could only see what other people saw, and I was afraid and ashamed. But here, I look all different. I even feel different.” She looked at her hands. “Don’t push me, Jackson.” And she rushed past him suddenly, to cry in the privacy of the bathroom; to wonder why the girls she had seen that night had moved her so dramatically.
She did not fall asleep until very late. And when she did, she dreamed of sweet, supple, smiling-faced girls, dancing sensuously in each other’s arms; glancing at her with wide curious eyes; beckoning to her. She saw herself glide slowly, almost reluctantly, over the floor with a girl whose long black hair hung halfway down her back; a girl with an old-fashioned name: Mona. Beebo touched the hair, the