TC-510 Frost

Foreword

Clint’s stomach and ribs were a corrugation of muscle and bone and skin; the fine hairs on his belly and forearms glowed in the lamplight. Frost pulled off his socks, dropping them on the floor, and said, “The only guy I ever really liked got killed by the MP’s in Saigon several years ago. He was a Negro.”

He heard himself saying it, but only after the words had come out did he fully realize what he’d done. Of all the stupid times to say a thing like that —he’s going to say something dumb or racist, and I’ll have to kick him out.

Clint drained the last of his beer and started unbuckling his belt. Softly, he asked, “Did you like him a lot?”

“Plenty,” Frost said, and then added, “Actually, I loved him like my own skin.”

“I’m glad,” Clint said. “I was beginning to think you wasn’t human.”

For my brothers and sisters in the San Jose Gay Liberation Front Prelude DeWitt Frost was seventeen, a freshman at Ohio State, when someone first called him “queer boy”. He didn’t look queer or act it, and as a matter of fact had never at the time even touched a man in any but the most casual, offhand way, but he was, and he knew it, and in a secret part of his mind he rejoiced in the fact with an almost vicious glee. It happened in Columbus. It was one of those beautiful Ohio September evenings, and he had gone downtown to take in a movie; when the theater let out he decided to walk back to the campus, just for the hell of it.

On High Street a little past Chestnut he spotted a pair of young men coming toward him, half a block away. One of them, he could tell, was a sailor. The year before Frost had toyed with the idea of joining the Coast Guard after high school, and had even gone so far as to make inquiries regarding the Academy in Connecticut, but had finally given the idea up as insane. Nevertheless, he idly studied the sailor’s right arm, looking for the small white shield of the Coast Guard.

The sailor was happily tight, but caught Frost’s scrutiny anyway. He slowed, and did a cocky little jig on the sidewalk, and said, “Hey—whatcha lookin at?” Frost glanced away quickly and passed on by, stiffnecked. Behind him he heard, “Hey—whatcha lookin at, queer boy?”

Frost was scared. He knew he should turn around and say something, or do something, but he just kept on walking. Again he heard the jeering voice—”Up your ass, queer boy!”—but kept right on walking, down High Street, back to the dorm.

When he got in bed he was sweating with anger, wondering why he hadn’t punched the fucking guy in his ugly fucking nose, and the echoed jeer—”Up your ass, queer boy!”—taunted him for days, but at length he buried it in the back of his mind and went on as before, more or less.