Pete Hamill - Loving Women

I examined the magazine as if it were a papyrus discovered in some pharaoh’s tomb. There seemed to be a woman in every ad: standing cheek to cheek with a guy in the Chlorodent toothpaste ad, holding her head in the Anacin ad, dressed as a bride in the Kingston sewing machine ad, scrubbing the floor in the ad for Flor-Ever vinyl flooring and a smaller shot of a woman with a sheet wrapped around her, shoulders bare, as a nurse noted her weight on a scale. She was selling lemons as a diet aid. She didn’t look fat to me.

In the news part of the magazine, there were photographs of some quintuplets from Argentina and a lot of pictures of Republicans taking over the House of Representatives from the Democrats. Harry Truman was still president, and they showed him sitting with some senator named Johnson, who had big ears and was smoking a cigarette, his hair sleeked back. The pictures made me think of Tony Mercado’s camera, and I tried to imagine the photographers looking through their cameras at these events. How did they know where to go to take pictures? Did someone send them or call them? And did they take the film to a drugstore or develop it in some mysterious way themselves? Another story said that 1952 was the first year since 1882 without a lynching of a Negro in the United States, and that made me think of Bobby Bolden. How would he feel reading this news? Would he feel better? I didn’t think so. If I was colored, I’d want to go out and lynch someone back.

I stopped at a full-page ad for Kotex. There was a woman in a tailored suit the color of oatmeal, with dark brown shoes, reddish gloves, a hat and earrings. In her right hand she was holding a leather-trimmed bag. She touched her throat nervously with her gloved left hand. In the distance, a man in a business suit was waving to her with his hat; he had a briefcase and raincoat under his arm. Behind him was a small two-engine airplane. I wasn’t quite sure how Kotex worked, although I knew it had to do with a woman’s period. The ad didn’t exactly expand my knowledge. “Not A Shadow Of A Doubt With Kotex” said the headline. But the rest of the copy promised Protection, and Absorbency, and a Fresh, Dainty Feeling. What did all of this mean? And what did they mean by “no revealing outline”? Most of all I wondered about the nervous woman in the ad. Since this was a Kotex ad, she must have her period. But was this some secret she was keeping from the guy coming off the plane? If so, why? He looked like a husband, she looked like a wife. But she was wearing gloves, so I couldn’t check for a wedding ring. Was she somebody else’s wife? And had she made a date with this guy, only to discover that she had her period and wouldn’t be able to sleep with him? Life was full of mysteries.

A few pages later, I saw a woman on skis, soaring through the air up in the mountains. She was wearing ski pants and boots but no shirt. “I dreamed I went skiing in my Maidenform Bra …” A blonde. Tinted glasses. Good teeth. I imagined her coming into a small dark room to meet me, the heavy boots making a clumping sound, her tits shoved up by the satiny bra. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, and sat down on the edge of my bed. I put my hand on her back, the flesh soft, and pulled her close. The hard breasts pushed up against my bare chest, the bra making a satiny noise as her tits touched me … Without working at it, I had another hopeless hard-on.

I looked over at the yeoman, who was still asleep. But I tried to distract myself from the loveliest sight on the dreamscape. Through the window, I could see Captain Pritchett and two other officers walking slowly down the paths. The captain was looking at the lawns. They were browned from the snow and the cold. He squatted and ran his hand across the top of the grass, then plunged his fingers into the dirt. He stood up and shook his head sadly, like a man about to cry. I closed Life , and watched Captain Pritchett walk away, his body sagging. At that moment I liked him very much. No matter what else he might be, he was a man who loved something.

Eisenhower was sworn in, but there was still no sign of my paycheck. “Maybe Truman stole it,” Dunbar said. “Put it in a deep freeze. Put a down payment on a vicuña coat.” The Journal said that more than 10,000 people crowded into two inaugural balls, paying $12 apiece, and they were so crowded nobody could dance. Back home, Republicans were a separate nationality. But at least now, for sure, the war would end. Eisenhower had gone to Korea between the election and the inauguration. He was a general. He would end it. One way or another. Maybe it wouldn’t be like the last war. No celebrations, no V-J Day, with everybody running wild in the streets and block parties everywhere in the neighborhood and sailors kissing girls in Times Square. Korea was different. Nobody knew what Korea was about. But at least, if it ended, the men would stop dying, would stop being wounded, would stop being lost behind enemy lines. And that meant that there would be no need to train any more helicopter pilots. The Navy could close Ellyson Field. I could go to sea.

The weather turned warmer, but it was still not the hot weather of the day I arrived. During those weeks, I took seven trips to Mainside. Becket promised to teach me to drive. Most days, Sal and Max came to the Supply Shack, telling me that Dixie Shafer was asking for me at the Dirt Bar. I told them again that I wasn’t going anywhere until I got paid. They offered to try to smuggle her onto the base some night, disguised as a case of pontoons. I donated a pint of blood to the Bloodmobile and later Captain Pritchett sent around a notice congratulating everybody on the eighty percent donation rate, adding up to 478 pints of blood. Walking back from the library one afternoon, I saw Bobby Bolden and nodded. He said hello.

“I miss hearing you,” I said. “Maybe you could play some night at the EM club.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Too many crackers.”

“Ah, they won’t bother you.”

“They won’t serve a black man there. Why should a black man play for them?”

“You’d be playing for us, not for them.” I thought about the lynchings, and masked men from the Ku Klux Klan dragging Negroes out of their homes. “Most of us are from the North.”

“Forget it.”

I wanted to keep talking to him, wanted to get to know him. I thought that maybe Navy small talk was the best way. I gazed off at the helicopters, trying to be casual.

“You give blood yesterday?” I said.

“Are you a fool or what?” he said. “They won’t take our blood.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Wise up, chump. This is the Navy. You can’t integrate blood in the United States Navy. Spose one of them crackers learned he had a black man’s blood in him?”

“What would he care if it saved his life?”

“He’d rather fucking die.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You better learn, chump. This is America. They got laws down here.”

I felt awkward, but also pleased. At least Bolden was talking to me. I mentioned musicians I’d heard on the radio, Max Roach and Kenny Clarke, Roy Eldridge and Milt Jackson. He liked them all, talked about their best work, then said, “You’re pretty hip for an ofay motherfucker.” And laughed. It was as if he’d pinned a medal on my chest. I said I’d like to come visit him and hear him play. He said he’d think about it.

“I’m waiting to get paid,” I said. “If the Navy ever finds the check, maybe we could go out and spend a day at the beach.”

He made a blubbering sound with his lips. “Don’t you understand nothin , man? This is Florida . These beaches are segregated.”