Hold Tight by Christopher Bram Page B

huh,” went Hank. “Do you remember that soldier from the night we got arrested? A wop? Or spick, maybe.”
    “Soldiers are soldiers, honey. I see so many.”
    “This one danced with you. He seemed to know you pretty good. You two did one of those Mexican dances.”
    “Oh him. I kinda remember. Why?” Juke didn’t remember, but he wanted to hear what the cracker was driving at.
    “Does he still come around?”
    Juke laughed. “Baby! This place is Grand Central Station. You almost never see the same dick twice!” What a Willy Cornbread this boy was. And romantic? He had come to a whorehouse pining after an old trick. “You poor dear. Whoever he was, he’s out getting his cookies off in Japland or somewhere. Take it from me—you can’t fall in love with trade.”
    Hank dug in his ear, then shook his head and laughed. He was so slow he had to decide if something was funny. “Get out of here. I was just asking. Anyway, I don’t fall in love with guys.”
    “You’re one of those?” cried Juke in mock horror. “You just do it for the green?”
    “Well, no. I do it cause it’s fun. If that’s what you mean.”
    “Well, thank God.” Juke pressed one hand to his chest. “Then you are queer. I was afraid you were one of those poor dears going against nature just to make a dollar. Times are rough, and a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Even if it means a little cocksucking.”
    The cardplayers glanced over, looking uncomfortable.
    “It’s a good time,” said Hank. “That’s all.”
    Juke felt he was wasting his spiel on the cracker. The boy had no irony, but he didn’t take offense, either. “Then count yourself one lucky girl, Blondie. Because everybody else here thinks it’s work.” The cracker didn’t even nettle at being called a girl. But Juke felt the others in the room listening. He could always play to them. “Nasty and unmanly. Nothing but real men here. Real men who have to make money. That’s what I admire about white people. Their discipline. No colored man could go down on a dick unless he really enjoyed doing it. Shiftless. But these tough white boys?” Juke swept his hand at the room. “They just close their eyes and suck. Give them some jack and they’ll swallow their pride. Swallow just about anything.”
    “Hey, coon!” shouted one of the cardplayers. “Put a sock in it!”
    “Ignore him,” said Smitty. “Just nelly crap from a nelly nigger. We got to put up with it all the time.”
    The angry cardplayer was a sailor who had never been here until last night. He seemed tough. Juke had to see how deep that toughness went. “Put a sock in it? You put a cock in it. Darling.”
    The sailor hunched over the table and clutched his cards. “Somebody ought to knock that fairy on his ugly black ass.”
    “Fairy, huh? Fairy!” Juke struck an indignant pose, perching the back of one hand on a tilted hip. “I may be more ki-ki than some of you trade. But today’s trade is tomorrow’s queen. And I know for a fact that that big old stevedore you took upstairs last night settles for nothing less than the deep, brown eye.”
    The sailor jumped up, cards flying. He grabbed Juke by the front of his shirt and shouted, “Shut up, nigger, or I’m punching your headlights out!”
    Juke was up on his toes, thinking of the new shirt he didn’t want ripped. “Oh, but I love being touched by a real man.”
    “You think I’m kidding? You think you’re funny?” The guy wasn’t twenty yet. He had more pimples than hairs on his chin.
    But before Juke could needle him about his skin, the cracker elbowed his way between them. “Come on. The kid didn’t do anything to you.”
    “The hell he didn’t. I didn’t come here to be called fairy by no nigger.”
    “You just come here to be a fairy,” said Juke.
    The sailor’s grip on Juke’s shirt tightened and the big Southerner tried to elbow them apart.
    “Back off, squid. This is between him and me.”
    “Yeah, swab,”