Beebo Brinker

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 long dipping curve of the back till her hands rested on Mona’s hips.

The next thing she knew, Jack was shaking her awake. “Wake up! Jesus!” he said, grinning at her in the early light. “You’re beating hell out of the mattress.”

Her eyes flew wide open and she stared at him, stuttering.

“Funny thing about dreams,” he said softly. “They let you be yourself in the dark. When you can be yourself in the morning, too, you’ll be cured.”

“Cured of what?” she said in a disgruntled whisper.

Jack chuckled. “Dreams,” he said. “You won’t need ‘em.”

Beebo was relieved when he went back to sleep. There was no escaping now what she was. The dancing lovers in the Colophon had impressed it indelibly on her. And yet Jack wanted her to confirm it in so many words, and the idea terrified her. It would be like accepting a label for the rest of her life—a label she didn’t even understand yet.

And there was no one to tell her that the time would come when the label wouldn’t frighten her; when she would be happy simply to be what she was.

They went a while longer without discussing it. Jack was on the verge of confronting Beebo a dozen times with his own homosexuality. But she would catch the look in his eye and warn him with tacit signs to keep still. He began to wonder if she understood about him at all. He had tried to make it obvious the night they went barhopping. He wanted to say to her, “Okay, I’m gay. But that doesn’t make me less human, less moral, less normal than other men. You’ve got the same bug, Beebo; only with you, it’s girls. Look at me: I’m proof you can live with it. You don’t need to hate yourself or the people you’re attracted to.”

But if she saw it she kept it to herself. She’s too wrapped up in discovering herself to discover me too, he thought. He tried to kid her. “You think it’s all right for the other girls but not for Beebo,” he said, but she wouldn’t give him a smile. He felt stumped in front of her stubborn silence; aching to help her, afraid of scaring her into an emotional crack-up.

She was very tense. And then one evening, about a week after her night out with Jack, over dinner she said, “Mona was in the shop again. I talked to her.”

Jack looked up in surprise. “What about?”

“I asked if she was Mona Petry. She is.” She seemed afraid to elaborate.

“Is that all?” he smiled.

“You were right about her—she’s gay.” She looked up to catch the smile.

“Did she say so?” he asked.

“No, Pete said so after she left. He said he used to date her but he dropped her when he found out.”

“Well, he’s got it backwards, but never mind. The point is, Mona’s a slippery little bitch. She’s good to look at but she isn’t any fun. She’s out to screw the whole damn world. If I were you—”

“Jackson, I don’t give a damn what you think of Mona Petry,” Beebo said.

“Then why bring her up?”

She colored, and put down a few more bites of the dinner they were eating. Finally, slowly, with her face still pink, she said, “Do you think it would be all right if I went out tonight? I mean—alone?”

“If you eat all your spinach.”

“I am asking you,” she said hotly, “because I value your judgment. Not because I’m an addlepated child.”

“All right,” he said, smiling into his napkin. “Where do you want to go?”

She looked at her plate. “The Colophon,” she said, making him strain to hear it.

“Why? Want to drop a bomb on the dance floor?”

She sighed. “Pete says Mona hangs out there.”

“In that case, I don’t think it’s safe,” he said flatly. “But it should be educational.”

She said, “Jack, I’m scared. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared of anything in my life.”