Page 366 - Some Dance to Remember

336 Jack Fritscher

Solly went to the kitchen and came back with three brandies. “I pro-
pose,” he said, “a Christmas toast.” He passed the two glasses and raised
his own toward the young blond hustler. “We have to thank the fathers
and mothers of the United States for continuing to turn out, at so much
trouble and expense to themselves, so many beautiful sons for our contin-
ued enjoyment. To Jake!”
They drank their toast.
“Merry Christmas, Solly.” Ryan hugged his friend.
“Merry Christmas, Ry.”
Ryan held Solly out at arms’ length. “I know,” he said, “somewhere
tonight, with someone else, doing what we’ve always done, the sonuv-
abitch is all pumped up and has a hard-on.”
“Who has a hard-on?” Jake asked.
“No one,” Solly said. “At least, no one you know.” He stared into
Ryan’s eyes. “Sometimes,” he said, “the inevitable arrives faster than we
expect.” He shook Ryan’s hand. “Congratulations! You’ve never called
him a sonuvabitch before.”
“You know what he told me before he left for Birmingham? If he had
been anybody else, I would have laughed in his face. He said, ‘A man’s got
to do what a man’s got to do.’”
“Then do it,” Solly said. “Maybe he was telling you indirectly what
he wants you to do.”

10

Ryan sang the blues. “Blue Moon.” “Blues in the Night.” “Blue Vel-
vet.” “I’m Mr. Blue.” “Blue Bayou.” Blue by you. Blue without you. Blue
enough to kill you, Baby Blue. But deep down he knew he didn’t mean a
word he sang. He was only posing. Blue doesn’t mean a thing when you’re
a whiter shade of pale. Besides, he couldn’t pose anywhere near as well as
Kick who was the best poser in the world.

11

San Francisco was the last-chance sanctuary of men who could live
their special lives nowhere else in America. They were immigrants invent-
ing, each in his own way, styles of masculinity that had never been lived
so publicly before. The love that once had dared not speak its name sud-
denly would not shut up. In this way, and in this way only, these men were
exactly like the women who at the same time all across the country were

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