The man did not look back at Mitchell, but started a conversation with a man down the bar. Mitchell poured his beer, watching the foam rise and thicken in his glass in the mirror. His eyes moved up and down the circuit of eyes in the mirror and finally rested on those of the youth named Pat. Damned if you aren't like Mike, he thought.

He recalled again the scene in the bar when he had knocked down the old man. He had stepped on the old man's glasses and then someone had grabbed Mitchell's arm behind his back. Mike had freed him but then more men had come at him. There had been one soldier who hit squarely in his adams apple, he remembered, and he had nearly choked. It had felt like a pool of beer had soured around the edges of his throat. He could taste it now. And then he had thrown a bottle and in spite of all the noise and skirmish, had heard it break somewhere in back of the bar. Then the M.P.s had come in fiercely swinging their blackjacks, and everywhere there were flashes of black and groans. It's funny, he thought, the odd places you are hit. One M.P. had raised his blackjack and brought it down on Mitchell's stomach. He had doubled in pain.

Mitchell felt again the blackjack hitting his stomach. Once more he felt in his stomach the nausea and pain of that old experience. But this time the nausea was more like a vacuum. drawing in at the pit of his stomach. And then it raced through his muscles and demanded release. The eyes of the Pat in the mirror looked intensely at him. He felt the boy's leg resting against his own. Then the gathered pressure in his body exploded and he could feel the muscles of his leg. against his will, working and pressing themselves against Pat's leg. It was like vomiting all at once and suddenly seeing before you what had caused your nausea. All the sickness he had felt turned into the strength and longing of this one pressure. My God. Mitchell thought.

"My place isn't far from here. How about coming up for a drink." the Pat in the mirror was saying.

Mitchell suddenly became aware of the eyes. The eyes that gleamed on all the bar's surfaces and lit on him. Mitchell, and laughed. The eyes that crowded and bounced and jeered in the air. They surrounded him in judgment. It wouldn't be so horrible except for the eyes, he thought. They found him out. They swarmed about his leg and shone accusingly on the tables. He would have to

escape.

Maybe somewhere outside this place he could clear his head, he thought. He could find out what was happening to him. Nobody need ever know.

Mitchell rose and followed Pat to the door. The reflected eyes converged on him. But I am not one of you. Mitchell thought. He stepped onto the street and the swirl of eyes vanished. Everything was sharp and solid once more.

About Our Authors

JOHN NORRIS has been published before in both American and English magazines. Mr. Norris says of himself. "Though I try to conceal it from my friends, I am a born crusader who believes that homosexual love peculiarly reveals human freedom and transcendence of natural ends." He hopes to continue writing and move to England for a more congenial "intellectual and social climate."

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