Page 32 - Titanic: The Untold Tale of Gay Passengers and Crew

18 Jack Fritscher

“Thank you, kind sir.” She patted her hourglass figure.
“I have appeared on the stage,” she said. “Make of that what
you will. Everyone else seems to.”
“I apologize,” Edward said.
“Don’t be an ass,” Molly said. She took us both by the
arm and like a decorated tugboat steered us toward the prow
of the ship.
“The night is lovely.” I tried to make conversation.
Two decks below us, a piano and concertinas and tin
whistles rose in harmony with the gales of Irish laughter of the
hundreds of passengers dancing and singing in steerage. We
peered over the railing. The sight was sweet. Young couples
held each other close. A young father danced with his two
infant sons in his arms while his wife, all of them looking
straight from County Cork, danced with him, her arms
outstretched to his waist, cir cling in her family. The dance
floor was circled by men waiting their turn to catch some
idle girl. Even the homeliest would do. The men in steerage
outnumbered the women six to one.
“So this is what the simple folk do,” Edward said.
“Don’t be a snob,” Molly said. She turned an inquisitive
glance on both Edward and me. “What do these men do?”
Edward and I broke into laughter.
“That’s what I thought,” Molly said. “Stop laughing and
tell me. I left Colorado to find out everything about the
world.”
Needless to say, Molly got an earful, though Edward was
too much the gentleman to distress her with certain facts, or
worse, certain rumors. Titanic, some said, was built so fast
by its construction crew, welding massive iron plates, driven
to even speedier work by inves tors, that stories spread that
laborers who lagged behind were welded up alive, abandoned