This NCO transient billets was theoretically for male NCOs only. So
at 0830 in the morning I had to go around and tell the sleepy-eyed
corporal on duty at the desk to please run upstairs to room 29 and let
Master Sergeant York, Alvin, C.M.H., know that I was waiting. He
stumbled off without even thinking of the registration book or anything
at all and I got my skinny hunk outside. For the sake of troop morale I
went back in and told him sorry, he'd be here by today, and oh, 29 is a
linen closet, well, it was a bad telephone connection, sorry about
that, and went out again.
The ex-dyke (as I had smugly come to think of her already) and I
loitered in front of the Club's entrance until it opened for breakfast
at 0900, as it was a Saturday.
Over plates of ham and eggs that neither of us much wanted but both
badly needed, we got better acquainted. Socially speaking, that is. She
was from New York, she said.
“Where?”
“Manhattan.”
“Where?”
“West Seventy-first. But don't go getting any more ideas now.
It's over, done, I've had it.”
“You sure as hell have. About time too.”
She blushed. Really. Then she said, “I mean it! And it wasn't the
first time, damn you.”
“Oh. Which was it then?”
She honest to god blushed again. Loudly. “The second, you
sonofabitch!” Then she followed my glance to the waitress's cold stare
and bit her lip so hard it started to bleed. I reached over and
tenderly wiped it for her with my already-ketchuped napkin, and she
brought her arm up to take a swing at me. But she looked quickly toward
the waitress again and turned back to me ducked halfway under the table
and suddenly started laughing, and it was all right. Even the waitress
flashed us a big grin finally.
Over the coffee she asked me if I would walk her to the bus depot.
“Sure,” I said obligingly. “As a matter of fact I'll keep you company
all the way. I've got a week's leave left to kill and I'm sick of this
post. Believe I'll blow it in the Big City.”
“Where do you plan to stay?” she asked suspiciously.
“Oh, I'll find a cheap hotel somewhere.”
And then we went through about a gallon more of coffee and a pack of
cigarettes as she elaborately explained to me all she knew about forty
or fifty cheap hotels in New York. And she knew plenty. She had worked
a year once for a pizza shop as a delivery (boy? girl?). Anyway, it
seems that residents of New York City's cheap hotels are great on
having pizzas delivered. In fact that was how she had gotten to meet
most of her—start, blush—girl friends.
“You're not ashamed of that, are you?” I put my hands on hers on the
table. I already had my legs wrapped around hers under it.
“N-no.”
“You don't have to be, you know. Not with me.”
“Most men don't understand about... about lesbians. Or like them.”
“I'm not most men,” I said brightly. “And you're not most like most
dykes either, at least I don't think so. I thought they were supposed
to be tough as nails, not soft, skinny, little pizza-pushers who blush
like rose petals.”
She laughed deliciously and kicked me. I got her still more coffee
and told her to wait while I went next door again to pack a sack.