Beauty Queen

could feel his shoulders slumping. He and Mary Ellen had talked about this eerie contingency so often—the possibility that someday they might be ordered to raise their sticks or draw their guns against their own brothers and sisters. Rioting was inexcusable. But they had no way of condemning the anger that might feed that riot, because each of them lived with that anger. Danny knew that Mary Ellen felt the same way.
    Danny knew that the lie he was living almost didn't seem worth it.
    A week later, Bill Laird was there when Jeannie Colter made her second major anti-gay speech. He had sensed that Jeannie was becoming suspicious of him. So he had decided—very much against his better judgment and his instincts—to attend.
    He sat there in the front row, wearing his best navy suit, arms crossed across his chest, and listened to Jeannie's attack. Before coming here, he had a quarrel with Marion over his plans to attend. "You've never been a father," Bill had yelled at his lover, "you have no idea how tom I feel." This time, however, it had been Marion who walked out the door. And, in the past, there had been a time when he could not conceive of the very idea of yelling at Marion, brave Marion, who had lain moaning in agony in the hospital hoping he would come.
    The short speech was at a press conference held at Jeannie's headquarters. The place was crammed with reporters and TV camera crews. Halfway through the speech, he was amazed to see her haul out a list of names.
    "I have said that homosexuals are everywhere," she said, her voice cracking through the room, "and I know whereof I speak. My staff and I have been paying close attention to this question for some time. These people are a spiderweb whose strands, reach into every area of life in our country. They reach into the ranks of our city officials, our law-enforcement people, our teachers, our businessmen, even our religious leaders. We must put away the old myth that homosexualism is confined to the theater and the dance and interior decoration. It is found in all walks of American life today, at every level. It is there"— she stabbed at the air with every word, for emphasis— "because ... we .. . have . . . permitted ... it ... to .. . be .. . there."
    Pausing for effect, she adjusted her glasses and picked up her list, looked at it, then scanned the audience with her burning eyes.
    "I have here," she said, "a list of one hundred names. I am not going to read this list. And it's by no means a complete list. But it is a list of homosexuals of both sexes who can be found at every level of life in our city. These are not open homosexuals. There are many of those in New York, and some of their names are probably known to you. No, these people on my list are known as homosexuals only to a few. You would be very interested to know the positions they occupy in our city."
    Bill sat there stunned, feeling as though a crane-load of something weighing three tons had swung out and smacked straight into his stomach. And that something was fear. He wondered if his name or Marion's name was on that list.
    And then he realized what Jeannie's intention was. Any closet gay of position and power listening to her was supposed to feel that fear.
    He pulled himself together. She couldn't possibly know about him and Marion. He had been too careful. If Jeannie knew, she would have attacked him about it long ago.
    But whose names were on the list?
    An excited buzzing went through the room. When her speech was over, the press people literally sprinted for the nearest telephones. They badgered her for the list, but she refused to show it to them.
    After the press conference, Bill could not contain his curiosity about the list, and he invited Jeannie, Sidney and Winkler up to his apartment for a cup of something.
    While the housekeeper, Ann, was making tea and coffee, they all sank into the sofas. Jeannie was looking very pleased with herself, with the big rock that she had just hurled into the pond that was New York. Her eyes were sparkling. Sidney, however, looked grim, and Winkler looked noncommittal, sitting on the edge of the sofa and cracking his knuckles compulsively.
    Sidney looked at Jeannie. "I can't believe your list number," he said bluntly. "The cheapest McCarthyite trick in the book."
    "Yes, but it worked, didn't it?" she said gaily.
    "It plunged the country into ten years of fear and stupidity, if that's what you mean," said Sidney.
    Jeannie sat up, realizing that