And the nose didn't lie. André was born in France; His family had immigrated to the US when World War II started, part of the Exode. That was the first thing that ignited our friendship, our French connection. I was only "half" French. My mother had been born and raised in the Champagne region, and had raised my brother and me to be bilingual. The fact that both André and I could converse fluently in French with each other had created an instant bond between us, and over the past few years we'd become as close as brothers. He even spent the holidays with my family, and my mother adored him. He knew all of my secrets except one: he didn't know that I'd fallen completely in love with him, and I was determined that he never would.
For the past two years we'd been roommates, and become inseparable. We went out together, ate together, double-dated...although those dates usually ended up with him making out with his girl and me politely kissing mine on the cheek. I played it off against my persona, the nice young gentleman from a good family who was simply prim and proper, not some whacked out queer who lusted after his roommate all the time.
And that was getting harder and harder, both literally and figuratively. There were only two people who could penetrate my tough shell: André and my mother. Yet even those two weren't allowed into that deep recess of my brain, the part that housed my sexuality. I'd only had "sex" with one guy that I knew, my cousin Billy Schluter, and I think he just wrote that off as some experimental thing from when we were teenagers. "Sex" in any event consisted of jacking each other off, and me blowing him. Now he was in the Navy, married with two kids.
With André it was different. It was love. I wanted him more than anything I'd ever wanted. More than the professorship at Northwestern, more than my new Pontiac, more than fame and respect as a scholar. And I was worried, worried that my feelings were starting to leak through my shields. It was getting tougher and tougher to maintain the façade, but I had to. What if he found out? That would be the end of our friendship. He was in the ROTC program, in a few months he'd be off to training, then into the big dangerous world as a Lieutenant. What military man wants a queer best friend? What military man can risk having a queer best friend?
Worse, what if he was so disgusted that he told everyone? Professor Rosenberg, with all his nice phrases, well, that would change. Who would hire me? Who would want a queer professor? Worse yet, what if I got arrested? Sodomy is illegal everywhere. What would my family say if I were tossed in jail for being a queer? I would become a freak.
He stared at me with a look of concern on his face. The shield was already cracking. "Hey Iceman, what's bugging you?" He called me Iceman to tease me into letting down my guard. No way that was happening today.
"Nothing. Had a good meeting with Rosenberg and I was just deep in thought. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be working?" Changing the subject was important.
"Nah. Got the night off. Wanna go out dancing? We could call those two chicks we met last week or maybe go stag and try to pick up some new ones?" He always got this sexy leer when he was talking about women. It made me jealous, and uncomfortable.
"Sure, let me take a quick shower and change." Dancing would be fun. I enjoyed it. My mother, conscious that a young man should be able to dance correctly, had made sure that I learned the basic ballroom steps despite my total lack of rhythm. I ended up as a very good dancer, from a competence standpoint probably better than André, but I couldn't come close to matching him in passion and style.
Barbara and Peggy posed near the bar, making sure they had a view of both the dance floor and the door. Both girls were regulars here, and they were looking for the two guys they'd seen last Saturday. They'd dressed to attract. Barbara, tall and blond, wore a flowing skirt with a tight sweater to accentuate her big boobs. Having found that some guys didn't like tall women, she leaned slightly into the bar, to make herself seem shorter and to push her breasts out even further. Peggy was much shorter. She wore a frilly top to hide her relative lack of cleavage, but her skirt was significantly shorter, designed to show off her best feature, her amazing legs.
Barbara spotted the two guys as they walked into the hall, exhaling smoke from her Chesterfield into Peggy's face to get her attention. The guys were as oddly matched to each other as she and Peggy were. Leading the way was the tall one, with his dark hair, dark eyes, and lithe movements. There was something distinctly foreign about him, and that made him intriguing. His friend was much shorter, probably about 5'7, and looked, well, he looked pretty, like a blond Ricky Nelson. Yeah, that's it. That's exactly what he looked like. A short, blond, pretty, Ricky Nelson. Barbara shared her observation with Peggy, which made them both laugh. The laughter attracted the notice of the tall guy, and he casually ambled over towards her, his short friend in tow.
Before long they had paired off, and spent the night dancing together. Barbara learned that her partner, the tall, dark, handsome one, was André Clerreault. He was born in France but had immigrated to the US with his grandmother during WWII, fleeing from the Germans. He hated his parents, who had stayed in France and collaborated with the Nazis, and he had no contact with them. For holidays, he went home with his friend, and considered the friend's parents to be his real family now. He never missed a chance to head to the beach, although he didn't surf, and he liked to play soccer and tennis. He was in the Army, so he expected to head off to active duty soon, and after that he was hoping to get stationed in France as part of the NATO force. He loved all kinds of food except Indian, because curry made him nauseous, but he could drink anything. His favorite drink was beer, and even though he drank Old Milwaukee all night he sneered at American beer in general, saying he preferred French and Belgian brands. He liked to swing, twist, cha-cha, did a mean tango, and a wicked "Mashed Potato." He whispered French words into her ear during slow dances, words that she didn't understand but that excited her nonetheless. She let him dance closer than she normally would, felt him grow against her, found herself pressing back against him. She knew that, alone with him, she'd find it hard to say "no".
Peggy had chatted happily with her pretty partner all night, but in the end, all she found out about him was his that name is John Paul Crampton, but everyone called him JP, and that he was a professor. And a good dancer.
March 17, 1962
I woke up in a bad mood. First of all, there was the hangover from drinking too much last night. The taste of cheap gin was still resident in my mouth, and I fought off the nausea that threatened to leave an entirely different taste instead. As if that weren't enough, I was tired, having gotten no sleep last night. André had brought Barbara home and spent the whole night trying to fuck her. From what I could gather from the thin walls, André had ended up settling with a blow job. At first it had been erotic, and I'd jacked off listening to their groping and panting. After that, it had just been annoying. And finally, today was St. Patrick's Day, which meant that I'd probably end up out drinking again.
To clear my head I took a shower. André teased me all the time about taking too many showers, said that Freud would diagnose me as anal retentive, but the water refreshed me and woke me up, and I liked to be clean. André didn't have a car, and he'd need to take his bimbo home, so I left my car keys and a note for him and strolled down to the local diner. Some coffee and some food began to soften my mood, while I delved into the newspaper, catching up on current events. I was soon absorbed in the latest news on the Evian peace talks between France, Algeria, and the paramilitary forces involved in the revolution. So much violence, so many dead. Britain was granting its colonies independence at a rapid pace, and it didn't seem to cause them the same convulsions that it had in France. In France the Algerian Conflict had not only brought down an entire government, it had caused a virtual re-drafting of the constitution. That's primarily because the British viewed their colonies as, well, colonies, while the French viewed theirs, especially Algeria, as a part of France, as much a part of France as Provence or the Midi. But fortunately the conflict was winding down and the Evian talks looked to be successful.
