Page 34 - Titanic: The Untold Tale of Gay Passengers and Crew

20 Jack Fritscher

I could only guess, as could Edward, what all this upper-
body promise meant below his carved waist, cinched tight
with a rope holding up his coal-heaver’s blackened leather
pants. His big feet, spread wide in black boots, formed a tri-
angle up to his crotch where the leather barely con cealed the
thickness of his long driving ram. He was an animal, born
so, the kind of man rich men hire to power their empires,
their factories, their ships.
He was, I sensed, the man who made Titanic go.
He waited as if he knew Ed ward was advancing toward
him and him alone. He groped his huge crotch. He groaned
deep from his big balls. His lips parted the dark thatch of his
short, rugged beard. His white teeth shone, not in smile, but
in heat. Men kept their distance. He towered well over 6-3
and weighed in at a hard-packed good 265. He was a Goliath,
perfect for Titanic. Perfect for Ed ward. Actually, perfect for
me. For the first time, I felt a fleet ing, just fleeting, twinge
of jeal ousy. It wasn’t I didn’t want Ed ward to have him. It
was more I wanted him too, but that, as it turned out, was
never to be.
Edward walked straight up within three paces of the
Stoker. Each surveyed the other. Edward’s hard, lean-muscled
body looked good to me in the dim red light. He pulled off
his shirt, exposing his sculler’s chest and broad shoul ders.
The two men stood stripped to the waist, squared off, stanced
like men who are about to make love like fighters. The Stoker
raised both his massive arms, flex ing them the way I had
seen Mr. Sandow exhibit his biceps in a gentlemen’s salon in
London. Eu gen Sandow, having set the fash ion for physique
posing, would have fled back to Germany had he seen the
Stoker’s arms, his sweaty armpits, and the twin mountains of
his nipple-crowned chest. He low ered his challenging arms