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Chapters (51)
  1. Introduction by Michael Bronski
  2. BEGINNING
  3. II
  4. III
  5. IV
  6. V
  7. VI
  8. VII
  9. VIII
  10. IX
  11. X
  12. XI
  13. XII
  14. XIII
  15. MIDDLE
  16. II
  17. III
  18. IV
  19. V
  20. VI
  21. VII
  22. VIII
  23. IX
  24. X
  25. XI
  26. XII
  27. XIII
  28. XIV
  29. XV
  30. XVI
  31. XVII
  32. XVIII
  33. XIX
  34. XX
  35. END
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44. X
  45. XI
  46. XII
  47. XIII
  48. XIV
  49. XV
  50. XVI
  51. About the Author

Groups of townspeople, mainly women and young girls, lined the canopied walk that led into the club, waiting to see Toni Lansing arrive. As the car pulled in under the portico and John Grandin stepped out to assist the women to the curb, the faces of the crowd fell with disappointment; an actual moan of dismay and reproach went up from the women and girls. It was, of course, though on a much smaller scale, a down-­East variation of the well-­known Hollywood phenomenon—the frenzied “preem” of Sunset Boulevard—transferred for the evening to this small New England island, in tribute to the visiting movie star.

XVIII

XVIII

John Grandin was not alone in his feeling of being an outsider. If other civilians present did not feel themselves unwelcome guests, they did look upon the real guests of the evening with a kind of awe. The hundreds of uniformed young men—heartbreakingly young, most of them—of all ranks and branches of the service and each looking his cleanest and best, were the admiration and envy of all, the very spirit and beauty and life of the evening, while the Nantucket dignitaries at the reception table were anonymous and less than nothing.

The clubhouse had become charged with an atmosphere of youth, an oppressive feeling of young masculinity so real as to be almost tangible, unlike anything John Grandin (or for that matter, any one of them) had been accustomed to in the recent and comfortable past. Evening parties, receptions, dances and other public gatherings of this sort had always largely been given over to the attraction of, and response to, pretty women and girls. Young women in bright dresses set the tone of the evening, and the success or failure of the social occasion depended on the femininity present, its quality, glamour, or charm. Now the reverse was true. The evening was given up to the worship of the male; it was his night. The uniform dominated the scene like a physical lure, it imposed itself on the consciousness of all, and made even the least imaginative respond to its attraction. Something of this feeling seemed to have entered into the behavior of the young men themselves. The normal shyness characteristic of youth in the presence of girls and older folk was nonexistent. The boys were too aggressive in their attitude toward their adoring partners; and what ordinarily would have been commented on by their elders as arrogance or actual rudeness was recognized tonight as the natural and charming play of young men about to go off to war. Under the influence of the predominant uniform, women and girls bloomed like flowers, and the citizenry responded alike with pleasure, with admiration, and with affection. No one could do enough for the boys.