NEW FIC: "Walking Between Worlds" 1/4 by Aura218 BJ/Hawk [PG13]

[aura218.livejournal.com]

Title: "Walking Between Worlds"



Author: aura218



Pairing: Hawkeye/B.J.



Genre: PG13, romance, coming out, 50s, postwar, San Francisco



Summary: Go back in time to the years right after the war, before B.J. and Hawkeye were Gentleman Doctors, when the boys were stepping out of their shells into all the world could offer. Part 2 of a 4 part arc.

Timeline: 1955-56

Part of the Gentleman Doctors series

Part 2/4 of the How it Happened arc

Read How it Happened Part 1: When the Wind Blows the Stars

"Walking Between Worlds"

Chapter 1/4

 

When B.J. came home from his trip down the rabbit hole in Crabapple Cove, he knew it was over between he and Peg. He just didn't know how to tell her.

The worst part was that he hadn't missed her while he'd been away. He brought Erin a plastic lobster for tubby time and a stuffed fish to cuddle and a doll dressed like an Indian girl, which she promptly stripped nude. He felt guilty that he'd only brought Peg dish towels with giant lobsters on them. When Peg opened the gift, they looked obscene in her trendy, pastel kitchen.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I love them," she said. "They're perfect for cooking out at the beach house." She put them under the sink.

The Stinson beach house -- another complication. A divorce was going to be expensive. This whole thing was a tangled web and it would be easier to just stay home. But lying in bed with Peg, just as uninterested in her as he'd felt before, moreso because he was now palpably aware of who he'd rather be with, was an agony he couldn't live with for twenty or forty more years. B.J. couldn't put into words why he moved into the guest room. He couldn't lay in bed with her and play pretend. During the day, they put on a show for Erin, but after she was asleep, they looked at one another across the short history of their marriage.

B.J. closed the closet with a click. He could see her in the mirrored door, watching him while she pulled her nightie over her head.

"Peggy--"

"Don't." She pulled away from him. She cried when she was angry and when she was sad, so B.J. didn't know if he should hug her or keep a safe distance. He used to know his pretty, sweet girl better.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I needed to get away and think --"

"And you decided that you don't love me anymore." She was digging for an answer -- or a fight.

B.J. sat on the hamper in the hall. He watched Peggy get out of bed and sit at her vanity, smear on cold cream, and wipe it off. Her face was fresh and she looked younger without her makeup, more like the college girl he remembered. Something was different in her looks; a little more slender in the face, sharper in her eyes. She hadn't given up work when he had come home. Her real estate job was pulling in half the mortgage monthly, had been for almost a year. He took her hand and led her down the short hall to the living room. They'd sit and discuss this like civilized people. On couches.

"Is it the war?" Peg said. "Is that what you and Hawkeye talked about? This was supposed to be our happy ending, you know. You were supposed to come home and we'd have a normal life."

More children. She was supposed to be pregnant by now, that was the plan.

B.J. shook his head. "It's not the war. I'm just different, honey. You are too."

Peggy aggressively picked up his scattered newspaper from the couch and carpet. "I don't understand why we can't be different together! I expected to grow old with you -- emphasis on grow. No one said we were supposed to be the same people all our lives."

B.J. took the crumpled newspaper from her. "I know, Peg, but it doesn't always work out.

She was angry-crying.  "Other couples are separated, not everyone gets divorced after a war. This isn't fair, B.J., you don't give up when it gets hard."

B.J. crunched the paper together and stuck it in the magazine rack. He took her by the hands, but she pulled away. He saw her point. It wasn't a thing he hadn't accused himself of. His parents had made it work, hers had too.

"Peggy." He sighed. He could tell her what he'd been up to, but it could jeopardize his right to see Erin. But she had a right to know. "Peggy, I think I may be a homosexual."

Peggy stared. "Well, sweetheart, that's no reason to get divorced."

B.J. goggled at her.

"Honey, I've known this about you for a long time," she said.

B.J. stared. "No, you didn't. You couldn't -- why would you marry me!"

Peggy smiled, looking far more smug that he thought she had a right to. "B.J., there have been men in your past. Do you think you're the only man in the world who was able to chose a wife and family over his problem?"

B.J. huffed his last breath of air. He was done. Dead. She killed him. "Who?"

"Oh, boys we knew in college."

"Leo? Peggy, we were friends!"

Peg pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and daintily dabbed her teary cheeks. "I wasn't going to suggest him, but it's interesting your subconscious mind goes to him."

He pointed. "Too much reading for you. Watch more television."

Peggy smiled. "That's a Leo-phrase."

He wasn't listening. Chose? Could he do that? He'd told Hawkeye he could. Peg knew him better than anyone.

"B.J.," she said. "Erin needs a father. I need a husband who I can rely on, not someone who will run out when his emotions get the better of him. The time for you to discover yourself is long over. I am things. You should know who you are by now."

Like it's so easy? he thought. Who was she to say when a person got to be done, like a three minute egg? Her eggs were always runny.

"I'm sorry, Peg, but I can't live my life on your schedule. And I won't."

They argued. She was right, really. He deeply wished he could be the husband she deserved, the man who had stood up at the altar and swore before God and their families he would always be there, semper fi. But he lost that man in Korea. Life had happened. Even if he was attracted to her, he wasn't in love with her. She threw a deck of cards at him when he said that, but at least she understood.

He moved out the next day.

*

His house was too big and too green. He painted it yellow. He missed Erin. It took him a month to make pork chops without burning the breading, himself, or the pan. He was bored. He was lonely. He bought a second-hand portable TV set.

He and Peggy agreed to rent the Stinson Beach house and split the income.

B.J.'s lawyer said Peg's lawyer was being very reasonable about alimony and child support. He saw Erin for four days every ten days.

He kicked himself nightly for throwing away the cards in his hand for a deck he didn't know how to deal.

*

Dear H,

I did it, I moved out. I filed papers and everything.

This picture postcard is of the Pink Ladies. My house is a few blocks north and looks sort of like them, but not as pretty. I did Erin's room in mint green, she picked it, well, she picked from my selections. I let her sign her name in the corner, two little squiggles and a triangle. It means "Erin's room at Daddy's, please stay out, is it lunchtime yet?"

Miss you.

Love, B

*

B.J.'s new neighborhood was across the bay from Mill Valley and above Eureka Valley, thirty minutes from both, an even straddle between Erin and this new thing in his life he still didn't understand. It was September, 1955, there were no obvious answers, no official literature he could study. He fired his analyst and three in succession until he decided to handle his nervous condition alone. He stopped going to church because a meeting with his pastor had him briefly convinced he was at worst a monster and at best destined to alcoholism and suicide. He missed the ritual of Sunday -- not only studying God's word, but having a place where he felt welcome and safe. He felt at loose ends without a weekly recentering, like a car that needed its transmission balanced.

So one Sunday afternoon, he took the cable car south and got off at Mission and Castro, the dusty, spread out neighborhood he only knew by whispered innuendo. He stood indecisively in front of a Woolworths where he was eyed by a giggling coterie of teenage Negro girls with beehived hair. The block looked like it had never recovered from the great earthquake when B.J. was a kid in the 30s. Some of the side streets weren't paved. He walked quickly past a barren lot in which a clutch of homeless men lounged on a rusted car and passed a bottle.

This was it: Eureka Valley. Where the blue discharges were said to frequent. Where his mother used to tell him nice people had no reason to go -- for the poverty moreso than any unconventional sexual activities. He passed a warehouse, a faded brick bank, but no blinking sign that said "Homosexuals, Welcome Here!" So he kept walking.

He didn't know what drew him to the diner called The Lighthouse. It looked like any other lunch counter in any city in the country. He was hungry, the menu was visible from the street. Maybe the literary reference pinged the back of his mind, although Woolf had never been his favorite. It just seemed a welcoming beacon.

B.J. sat at the counter and waited for the young waiter to work his way over. He smiled to two men having coffee at the back of the shop -- they looked away. B.J. broke eye contact, flushing heat. They must have been businessmen, they were speaking in low tones with their heads together.  The boy brought B.J. his ice tea -- oh. The soft face belonged to a girl in blue jeans, a rolled man's shirt, and unfashionably shingled hair.

"Th-thank you," he said, but she bussed to another customer too quickly. He almost called her back -- the glass was hot from the dishwasher, melting the ice quickly. But she ignored him.

A willowy thing brought him the rest of his order -- a most unquestionably female figure pretty in pink, so now he was confused. As B.J. ate his burger, he took in the crowd. He was starting to feel like a pariah. The businessmen looked away when his eye caught theirs. They're not businessmen, he thought. At least, not business partners. Look at their legs crossed toward one another, look at how they bicker over the bill. You're in the right place; they can't advertise any more than you can.

God, how do homosexuals get to know one another? Let alone date? Was this the kind of fearful life he really wanted? Not for the first time, he felt homesick for his old life.

"Anything else?" It was that first waitress who gave him a warm ice tea glass.

"No, thanks," B.J. said. How could he tell her that he was one of her? He remembered his Sunday school teacher telling him about fish symbol; how early Christians used to draw it in the dirt to identify one another. To anyone else it meant "where is the fish monger?"

"Where are you from?" she said.

B.J. blinked. "Here. San Francisco. I was from Mill Valley."

"Was?" She leaned against the sideboard, thumbs in her jeans.

"I just moved to North Beach," he said. "I'm divorced. The war . . . " he made a vague gesture.

She nodded. "I'm Jo. And that's Bette." The pretty, willowy waitress smiled at him from the corner. Jo put out her hand.

He shook it. She shook like a man. "B.J."

She poured him a refill of cold ice tea. "You look like you're on a mission, B.J."

B.J. poked his French fry in ketchup. "I thought I was. I heard stories about Eureka Valley."

"This dump?"

B.J. laughed. "It's not quite what I expected."

"Lot of servicemen around here," Jo said.

B.J. looked down at his plate. His nerves were jittering. "Yeah. I heard. I was wondering if there was a place . . . if, you know, since you work here --"

"I'm the owner."

B.J. felt his face flush. "Right. Um. A bar, I guess. That former servicemen frequent."

Jo's stony expressed softened into something like a smile. "Asa!" she barked.

B.J. jumped. Jo reminded him of his third grade teacher who once made him throw up over a spelling test. An older man shuffled up to the counter.

"You rang, my sweet?" he said. His body was shaped like the letter D and his nose took up half his face.

"Gentleman wants to go to the Black Cat," she said.

Asa looked B.J. over. "Are you sure?"

"C'mon, old man, he's local."

B.J.'s head had been snapping between this exchange like a ping pong spectator's. "Look, if there's some problem --"

"Sure there is," Asa rooted in his corduroy coat pockets. "I don't pop these tokens out of my ass like a vending machine."

"Excuse me?" Maybe B.J. had gone into the wrong luncheonette after all.

"Don't scare the fresh hatched fairies," Jo said.

B.J. almost took offense at that. But she didn't say the slur in a mean way. After all, she was in the life more than he was.

Asa produced a wooden nickel from his pocket and pressed it into B.J.'s palm. One either side was printed a black cat, Halloween decoration style.

"You take that to the door, sonny," Asa said, "and tell them I sent you. But if they've forgotten who I am, you're on your own."

Community service performed, Asa shuffled back to the window table with his friend ("friend"?), another elderly man who was one big liver spot.

"Thank you?" B.J. said.

Asa waved an orangutan's arm.

"Don't mention it," Jo said. "Ever."

"What is this place?" B.J. said. "And where is it?"

Jo flipped B.J.'s check over and wrote an address. "End of the rainbow, soldier boy. All the men you could want and most of the men you'd do best to accept no gifts from."

"It's mostly about community," said Bette while she cleared dishes to B.J.'s right. "Even if you don't meet the man of your dreams, at least you meet other people like us."

Jo smiled at her affectionately. "That's my college girl."

When B.J. stepped into the street, he felt like he'd been given keys to a secret world, one he wasn't sure he was prepared to enter. What was he getting into? What if someone saw him? He'd have a criminal record, be fired and unemployable. Peg would hate him and he'd never see Erin again.

He didn't care. Well, he did, but he was more afraid of doing nothing about his new problem than he was of going forward. Isolation and loneliness was an imposing prison.

He realized Jo had written directions to a bookstore below the address to the bar. It was down a cobblestone side street, up a hill so steep the mortar between the cobbles rolled down. When B.J. turned around, he could see the cable cars running between the blocks and the smoke rising up between them. He briefly fell in love with his pretty, filthy, diverse city.

The bookstore was in the bottom floor of a house.

B.J. had always felt comfortable with books. As a kid, he'd been laid up with scarlet fever for three months and when he was well enough, his mother had supplied him with a steady stack of adventure novels that he read voraciously -- down the Mississippi and sliced through the jungles of India.

At first, B.J. wasn't sure why he'd been directed to this shop, he knew so many of the normal, popular authors. But then, a literary purity veil parted: B.J. realized he was finding secret worlds he'd never known: Walt Whitman, also a homo? Proust, Vidal, Cather, Taylor, Dickenson? This bookstore wasn't about exploring places, but people, their lives, experiences. These homosexual people had written their secrets into their work and here they were, on shelves in bookstores and school libraries, hiding in plain sight. Of course, not all of the books were as readily available.

He'd loved Go Tell it On the Mountain but had never heard of Giovanni's Room. The language was some of the most lyrical he'd ever read; he kept wanting to turn to Hawkeye and read a passage aloud. And then there was the nonfiction, a less . . . legitimate section. It was kept in back, behind a black curtain; B.J. found a handwritten, mimeographed pamphlet. For a nickel it answered all the questions he had about homo sex but had been too embarrassed to make Hawkeye tell him. He read the whole thing standing there in the back room while sweat trickled down his back and he tried to decide if that looked too painful to be fun and if that was something he could ever do with anyone but himself.

The cashier, a sweet-faced girl, put his purchases in a plain brown bag and handed them over with a flirty smile. B.J. smiled back and thought, he wasn't married anymore, he could ask her out for drinks. She might say no; she was probably a lesbian. She only smiled at him the way waitresses call you 'sweetheart.'

As he rode back on the cable car, protecting his books as if their plain paper wrapper would invite violent attention, B.J. watched San Francisco at dusk. He didn't like this conflict of attraction. He loved Peg, he always would; he'd loved Aggie O'Shea; he'd lusted after plenty of women. He missed Hawkeye. The hand-drawn diagrams and descriptions in the nickel booklet were undeniably sexy.

He didn't make any decisions in the weeks that followed, but not for lack of pondering as he went about his days, in his quiet moments and stressful moments, without anyone to whom to air his thoughts. He dropped the wooden nickel in the brass ashtray cast from Erin's baby feet along with the other detritus that tangled in his pockets by day's end. He thought about going to the Black Cat, but it just didn't seem that important.

B.J. had been doing his postgrad work when Kinsey's first report, Sexuality and the Human Male, had gone through the country like a case of bedbugs. It seemed everyone was reading it but no one was talking about it. He and Peg discussed it over a bologna sandwich dinner one night, he remembered. She declared herself a 'one' in experience, but said she could see herself as maybe a 'two', if the right woman came along at the right time in her life. B.J., shocked and embarrassed, demurred to chose his own number. He knew why, now -- he had an answer, but he had been afraid to do the math. He had been a practicing 'one' with a shameful 'threeish' history. Now he appeared to be sauntering up the scale.

Peg had had a point about the report: it only focused on behavior, not feelings.

B.J. was pretty confused about his feelings.

~*~

Continued in part 2