I) Tour 3
tommyb
Registrant
__________
(30OCT2009)
'Took off my gear in mine and Royal’s room.
“What was it like being waited on by young nurses when you haven’t seen a woman in so long?” Mace asks.
I told him I always had to lay sideways.
_________
(midnight)
“Yeah, rumors were flying,” Irby says, his voice echoing in the shower trailer. “They were saying you weren’t coming back, that you were going to Germany to have your foot amputated, we heard some of everything -- Where’s Royal been? I haven’t seen him in awhile.”
“Leave.”
“He may not come back you know,” Irby says. “It’s so close to our next movement, I heard we might not see the ones going to the states until we get there. And that’ll be two months. But I heard that only applies to people leaving at the end of the month, not the beginning.”
__________
(Saturday, 31OCT2009, Halloween)
Eric’s house was a sanctuary when I was a teenager. He had problems at home, but they weren’t extreme. We never talked like that, we were too busy trying to be normal. I noticed years ago that most of my close friends since then have simply been another version of Eric.
He went into the Marines as soon as he was old enough, did well. When I knew him all he talked about was the military and weapons and campaigns. His father made fun of him for it, acted like it was a sign of his weakness, as he was on the outside looking in on manhood.
'Think about if he met me now, if Eric and I were to run into each other at one of these FOBs, what he would think of me ten years older. If he calls me on it I’d tell him: Neither Jesus or Satan could’ve done better.
__________
(Sunday, 1NOV2009)
A scene from the movie “Singles” plays on the television in the hanger. The most amiable, eligible guy is a wreck, his apartment and hygiene unkept. Him and his girlfriend have decided to be friends because their relationship has gotten so close it begins to have a power they are afraid of. He has changed his mind and tried to get her back but failed.
His neighbor comes by to check on him. He tells her, “You know, in modern society it never becomes necessary to leave your apartment. Everything can be delivered, work can be emailed.”
“I don’t understand what’s wrong,” she says. “It was just a girl.”
“I trusted my instincts,” he says. “And they were wrong -- the opposite of right.”
__________
The kid-from-love sits near me on one of the buses to Qatar. I ask him about his case.
“It’s a travel guitar. Do you play?”
“No. How do they make a guitar that small?”
“Yeah, they put the top part at the bottom.”
“Oh,” I said, as if I understood.
His name is Jon.
__________
(on bus)
“Oh, you slap-e-da base,” I joke, referencing a movie.
“I love that movie!” Jon says. “Paul Rudd is funny in that.”
Jon is a little guy, with brown curly hair and dark eyes. He looks like something out of a 1990s Calvin Klein ad. Tank is a big guy, with glasses and a short army hair cut. Joe is effortlessly popular, talkative. He's only twenty-two and already on his third deployment.
Jon and Tank are musicians whose MOS has them travel Iraq to entertain soldiers. Jon's father is a preacher.
_________
'Took the first shower I’ve had in three days. Since I haven’t slept in so many days I am surprised to be punch drunk.
I pass Jon in the hall. He stops me and asks what my plans are.
“You know, just going to relax for awhile,” I say.
“Well, we were thinking about heading back to the USO and tomorrow going swimming or something,” he says.
I agree.
_________
(morning)
'Woke to the sound of an effeminate male voice.
“Hey,“ he says. “Do you want to go on the mall run?”
Jon says something amounting to no, then turns back to sleep.
__________
(afternoon)
Our group goes swimming, then we eat at Chili’s. Dan, the effeminate voice, somehow, joins us. He is more obviously taken with Jon and the meal is awkward.
Afterward, we enjoy how lost we are, trying to find the USO and make it in time for a comedy show and our three drink maximum.
(evening)
Tank forgot to pack civies. He raids the free closet. He steps out wearing a Hawaiian shirt that might be a target for Russians.
We all raid the closet. Jon steps out in a green smoking jacket and Joe a slimming bowling shirt straight out of “Big Lebowski.”
The three of us discuss what Joe’s nickname will be. We ask each other references in infantry movies. We decide on Gomer. Joe doesn’t like that at all, so we decide on Murphy. Joe can’t believe this, so I say Joe will be his nickname, “You, know, like a GI Joe.”
“Joe’s already my name,“ he says, exasperated.
(next evening)
Jon's wallet slipped out of his pocket in the backseat of the van used to take us out on the beach trip. The company found it and will return it to him tomorrow. I advise him to explain the situation to his bank so they'll put a hold on, just in case.
“But I don’t want them to cancel my card,” Jon says.
“Say that in the email,” I reply.
“Maybe I should just call my Mom.“
It catches me off guard when he says that.
Joe blows up, cursing and exclaiming.
Jon tries to be conciliatory: “But I don’t understand, I had it, I was talking to them just fine, then you walked up all loud.”
“I was trying to help my friend!”
Offended, Joe stops talking to us for awhile. Jon and I look at each other and finally have to go on without him. On the bus ride to the pool, Jon says “There’s always one guy like that, wherever you go. Always with the drama.”
In a discussion covering the latest in theology, science, and current affairs, Jon says thoughtfully: “Maybe you're one of those people who thinks it's possible to know. As an empire. The ease of education will cause its children to build the same tower of Babel...”
"Like ... a radio tower ..." I reply. He laughs.
__________
(Day 3, On boat trip)
'Hung out with Tank for awhile. Like an old man, he plans to dangle in the water all day in his life jacket.
I peg him for a stoner. He laughs. “After this deployment,” I say, floating beside him. “I'm going to become a hippie.”
(afternoon)
Jon meets a girl, Karen.
Joe is excited because Jon is still talking to her and making us wait. “He seems like one of those guys who would ditch his friends over a girl.” he says.
Jon steps out too-cool-for-school in his brown aviators. “I know that girl from a past gig,” he says. “I’m meeting her for dinner tonight.
(evening)
“You asking me if I’m a virgin, then yes I am. I‘m going to wait till after marriage,” Jon says proudly after his date at Chili's.
“I have friends at my FOB that are virgins.” I say. “For some reason I attract the virgins ... “
We move to the now-empty hot tub.
“Oh, you were adopted?” Joe asks.
“No,” I say.
“Because I was.”
“You must have been a good looking kid.”
“Why didn’t you get adopted?”
“I don’t feel bad about it. I would’ve been a foster parent’s nightmare. Not even a year old and my whole life already in my own hands.”
“I was never really a foster kid.”
“I couldn't imagine already being distrustful and being in foster care,” I say. “You'd notice how the ones related can gossip while it's not gossip, while the one not, must learn to be a gossip in order to pass … crimes would add up...”
“How did you get past the anger,” Jon asks.
I don’t know how to answer him. “I would have these memory problems because I would have such bad dreams as a kid … “ I begin. “So I would take notes, write things down. Sometimes I’ll post them online for like a few weeks, you know, just to answer a few questions I have … like a social experiment --
“-- he keeps a blog … “ Joe says, ending the conversation.
I lean forward to answer Jon properly. “Anger was my best thing …” I say lowly.
Joe tells of why he joined the military. Upon high-school graduation his parents sat him down and told him how they weren't actually his parents. His aunt and her tragically-killed husband were actually his parents. She was so devastated by his death she felt she couldn't take care of her baby well enough. He doesn't go into what must've been done to the details of his life, his mother turning out to not be his mother, but I understand why he has such an underlying anger about him, like he's lost and struggling to still come across as normal.
__________
(Day 4, On Doha City Tour)
(afternoon)
Turns out Qatar is the wealthiest country in the world. Peaceful, content, home to Al Jazeera, world class medicine, education, music, and art, the land brings me back to my ancient days in Palermo. Islamic, non-democratic, and powerful, there is no such thing as moving up from class; meanwhile there is no such thing as taxes. They adhere to Arab law and send their criminals to Saudi Arabia to have their hands – and the like – chopped off.
“You guys ain’t shit compared to me,” Joe growls beside me as we sit on the bus. He’s referring to the fact he’s deployed three times.
“I’m ready for him to leave,” Karen says from behind us.
(late afternoon)
We sit at the Starbucks, where a black coffee is nine American dollars. I ask how they feel about Joe.
“Frankly, I’m to the point I don’t give a shit,” Jon says. It was rare for Jon to curse, he always says things like That’s so F’d up. Literally, he would say the letter F.
(midnight)
As we walk down the sidewalk back to our bay, Jon hangs his head down like a little kid would. He walks beside Tank, the two of them in front of me. “Why did the girls leave early?”
“Because it’s now two in the morning,” Tank says, in a low voice. “And they go running at five in the morning.”
“But it was our last night and who goes running at five in the morning?”
“The rest of the people in the Army -- besides us -- are morning people.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“We’re in a rock band, we’re night owls. That's how it works.”
(1 AM)
“Good thing Dan didn’t keep on us too long,” I say in the hallway as we all work, packing and cleaning our barracks.
“Yeah,” Jon says, “We met him actually, before you did; that’s why we were trying to hang out with you when we got here.”
(evening)
Most of my travel home is the same itinerary as Joe. Jon and Tank's itinerary sent them North instead of South. I am easy with him.
I step into a temporary quarters at an air base and see a familiar face. I say hi as I shuffle to a cot with my gear, my duffel long digging into my shoulders.
“How was Qatar?” SGT Cordona asks in his easy New York.
“Man, it might have been the most fun I’ve had in my life.”
“Of your life?” SGT Cordona says, with an inquisitive cock of his head and a smile.
(night)
Willahford rode on the same truck as me to our home FOB.
“'Had to tell my story at Qatar-- more than I told you -- because everyone else was telling theirs,“ I say over the hum of the MRAP. “One of the guys said, ‘But you’re so normal.' It was surprising because I had a hard time when I first got out of that place I come from.”
“I know you did,” Willahford says softly.
(midnight)
Mace scuffles a bit on the other side of the wall, then appears out of the darkness yawning and rubbing his stomach. “Wanna hang while I smoke a cigarette?” he asks sleepily.
As he lights up, I ask him what’s been going on way out here in the desert.
“Rain.”
__________
(Tuesday, 10NOV2009)
'Laid low. Though I've signed in, my superiors never figure out I am back from pass so I manage two more days off.
Later, through a clever twist of events, I manage two more days off.
“Man, I thought I was a good shammer,” he says, laughing. He bends low with his hands pressed together. “You have surpassed the Master, young grasshopper.”
(Thursday, 13NOV2009)
'Am on guard duty when Moser walks by, telling me Royal has just arrived via Blackhawk.
He cocks his head and squints at me, like he thinks my reaction is odd. “So you got your -- roommate -- back,” he says, his lips forming the word ’brother’ before self-correcting and saying ’roommate.’
After my shift, I shower while thinking, You have your own. I use the internet café, then enter the tent, wary of triggers and the wildness I have known. I poke my head into Mace‘s room instead of my own and say hi.
“Oh, you come in here to hang with me when your brother’s back?” he says. “I’m shocked.”
“Is he back ...”
“Yeah. When he stepped in, the first thing he said when he saw you guy’s room was What the f-ck?”
“He said that …”
“Yep,” Mace says with his devilishly friendly laugh.
I clean the room even though it is already clean.
Royal enters with a sudden swing of the door and a grin when he sees me. We catch up outside over cigarettes. He has flawless ease. Everything I try hard to do, to understand, to feel, he does effortlessly.
He says the first thing he saw when he entered the room was the new coffee maker. “I’ve never seen you drink coffee, Chuck.”
He tells of how he and his battle tricked the airport into giving them an extra day, the eight-ball they acquired, the strip club they used at, and the comedic chaos of getting their cab to the airport in time while tripping.
__________
(Tuesday, 24NOV2009)
(morning)
During the revelry Royal and I look at each other.
Hidden by the mortar barriers around us, he begins his chicken jerk, writhing intently with tightly-closed eyes.
I bend down, bump my knees together and cross hands in rhythm to tantric head-twisting.
(evening)
Royal says it’s only his girl that has these ideas of their permanence. “Just because she’s got herself thinking like that,” he says. “Doesn’t mean I’m leading her on. I was always clear with her.”
(night)
We stand in a circle between the back-entrances of the two tents.
“When I get home I want a daughter,” Moser says to me with a grin. “I want to be a father. Maybe have a wife, really just me and my little girl, me running down the street with her in the stroller.”
“When I was on leave,” Royal is saying to Moser. “She had met this guy who started out gay, then bi, then went straight.”
“Like an accessory … “ I ask him accusing while laughing.
___________
(Monday, 21DEC2009)
Royal receives a red cross message saying that his dad is in the hospital and not looking good. He will be leaving shortly.
He says he’ll have to travel back to us in country, just to turn around and redeploy back to the states with us. I feel relieved. Later he tells me that the red cross message will most likely be extended, and that he probably wouldn’t be back. He is told he is leaving tonight.
He talks a lot, like old times. He says often, “when we get home.”
We play ping pong, like in the early days when we first hit Kuwait and played ping pong for six hours at a stretch.
“Would it be wrong for me to get my red cross message extended?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“But then I wouldn’t come back,” he says, “This would be it.”
“Deployment is so close to being done with, there’s no point in coming back.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he says.
He talks about college and about how he has changed his outlook. He doesn’t want to go to third world countries as a cultural anthropologist anymore.
”Not only do the Ivy Leagues disagree about American history,” I say to him. “But Russian history books teach Russia as the winner of World War II and the Cold War, not to mention the history of the world from the Far East's point of view.”
He doesn’t want to spend a year of his schooling in Africa.
“I noticed how the Arab's practices look so much like the Jew's,” I say. “And the Jew's like the Catholics. They have some idea that they're going to sit and wait for God to do something in order to show the world there is a God and that He is their God.” I keep on him, slicing my paddle, after having proved a new serve. “It's so primitive – necessary, respected, but not important now – This idea that there are 'peoples' and each has a reputation according to history and human life is to be lived within that context. The mathematics of it always lead to the Final Solution. Meanwhile American Presidents still bow down to two crossed sticks, expecting magic, due to storytelling designed to seduce.”
“I hate these people, now,” he says. “I hate the Iraqi’s. I hate the Arabs -- not as individuals. But just being around them all the time, it pisses me off. They sell their sons and daughters to men to be raped. They rape and beat and oppress their women. Look at all the homos everywhere … Only the sons from wealth are allowed to copulate with a woman. They're society is savage. All this time one after another was standing right in front of me not perceiving like a human.”
I stand still with the ball in my hand. He motions with his paddle for me to start playing again.
“Apparently, to be in Arabia is to be wandering in the desert,” he says, then pauses, as if changing his mind. “It is possible to rape a culture. They have to start from scratch learning not to hate themselves. And I get that. I just wanted an experience, you know,“ he says, the baritone underneath his voice filling the empty room. “Of some kind. This deployment was supposed to take the place of that but it turned out to be a load of sh-t.”
“I think I know how the world works,” I say quickly, as if we were running out of time. “If you won the last war you get treated well, if you didn't do so well in the last war, your people get treated like shit. And you get born when you get born. That's just the way it is.”
(late night)
Royal is to immediately board a convoy to start his journey. He has last minute notes for me, laundry he hasn’t done, packages to be sent. He acts casual.
Shortly after he leaves, Mace looks at me and jokes: “Chuck, you look like you’ve lost your best friend.”
Several minutes later, Royal suddenly walks back in. He looks at me sheepishly, because it has been so many times: “Do you have a pair of eye pro I can borrow?“
__________
(Wednesday, 23DEC2009)
There is an awkward pause as Mace leans forward in his chair; he says, soberly: “You know … you’ve come a long way, Chuck.”
__________
(Sunday, 27DEC2009)
Postal has arrived at our FOB and will stay for three days. It had been a lot of work, packing up Royal‘s stuff, figuring out the logistics of it. The first day I waited four hours to mail off two boxes.
Mace looked at me mournfully, back in the room, the night before, watching me stuff the crumpled paper into the corners of the box before I placed the address label.
“No more guitar,” he said, mostly to himself.
___________
(Monday, 28DEC2009)
The next morning I wait three hours. The soldier beside me in line is Specialist House, who I work with but isn’t in my company.
He is a skinny guy with average height. Twenty-three years of age but looks eighteen because of his build. He has green eyes, short dark hair, tanned skin, and tattoos all over his arms. He used to be in a line platoon, but started a fight, broke a guy’s arm, and was removed. I’d look for him whenever the convoys came in late at night, dreary-eyed and yawning, glad to see me.
_______
(Tuesday, 29DEC2009)
While waiting another seven hours at postal, I ask Willahford about the Nature Nurture question.
“What .. ” he says, incredulous, “You think that stuff doesn’t shape who you are, who you become?”
“I think people can surprise you,” I reply.
“I don’t think something bad necessarily means anything at all,” he says. “Because you then make that bad into good. And that good shapes you. It made you who you are. So it's good. ”
Sometimes I think Willahford is the most mentally healthy person I know.
“When I was in high school,” he says. “Me and Canon hung out with a third guy who I always ragged on because he was such a poser. I mean I was brutal. Then one day he just turned on me and said I was not gonna rag on him no more, never again or he was gonna beat me into the ground. When I came back from Basic three months later he was dating the hottest girl in school.”
(night)
'Gotten into the music Royal gave me. Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin, Cream, The Who, the Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails … listening to them on black market copies while reading about them.
__________
(Wednesday, 30DEC2009)
'Stopped by House’s duty station. He makes a point of stepping outside and talking for an hour over cigarettes.
“Did I tell you about my Mom having a boyfriend I didn’t know about?” he says, as if it were assumed he tells me everything.
___________
(night)
'Don’t believe him when he tells me.
“Yeah, I know right?“ Specialist Hawkings says. “It’s New Year’s Eve.“
We laugh as we direct the incoming supply convoy.
(midnight)
'Walked to the internet café. Willahford happens to be there and asks me if I want to get a few hodje near-beers and hang out in his room.
We have a five hour conversation where I give him the account of the salon. I tell him about the affair, what it was like traveling the countryside with Elise.
_________
(Sunday, 3JAN2010)
Willahford and I hang out again a couple night’s later, and again a couple night’s after that. We eat at the local Arab restaurant.
Willahford and I haven’t talked about the year long break in our friendship. We act like it never happened, even though it’s still present, a certain aside look here, a re-posturing there.
__________
(Monday, 4JAN2010)
Royal and I go on a backpacking trip together They are simple scenes: eating at a restaurant, cycling, hiking, acting the same way we had through the deployment.
At one point we argue. The dream shows the argument twice.
The first time is honest, genuine, and goes well. I do and say everything on impulse. The second time I am overly polite and overly-professional in dealing with him.
__________
(Tuesday, 5JAN2010)
House, standing outside my duty station, waiting on the forklift, talking about Willahford:
“Can’t stand him. Never could. Total fag. All he's about is being a cop.”
(night)
'Stepped into one of the dining rooms in order to get a particular flavor of Gatorade and see the back of Willahford’s head. I almost said hi, but he doesn’t quite see me.
A minute later Willahford sits himself in front of me and starts talking.
__________
(Wednesday, 6JAN2010)
“But I liked you then.” I say.
“Oh, as in you don’t like me now.” Willahford replies, jokingly.
“No, I like you; I just mean, not everyone liked you then.”
“Who didn‘t like me?”
“I mean that you seemed to always be around me back then.”
“Well yeah, you were the only one in our unit who wasn’t a total dou-che bag.”
(night)
We find a tower we think might be suitable for hanging out in. We climb to the top as I begin the sordid story of deployment. We remain black silhouettes under a midnight sky bright with stars. Back in artillery we chose this brigade as the best to deploy with because we would be grunts surrounded by grunts. What did we know. Grunts are treated like grunts by the non-grunts. When we get to the top, the tower is occupied by Ugandan guards. They seem to believe I really did go all the way out here just to check on them.
Willahford doesn’t understand how I can be effortlessly steadfast without being effortlessly confident. He tries to fix me with stories of others he has known who were once insecure but changed into confident persons.
__________
(Friday, 8JAN2010)
'Am checked out by a medic following up on my foot.
He says, “You have very low blood pressure. Mine is too low, so I have to take medication because they say I‘m hypo-something; you’re just above that.”
(night)
While Royal makes me want to smoke pot and back pack the world for five months, Willahford makes me want to go back to work, cash in the GI Bill, meet a girl, settle down.
__________
(Sunday, 10JAN2010)
(night)
He seems to be exhaling, barely pausing between stories, stories I didn’t ask for or lead into.
He tells me about his three best friends at his job, how they are a second family for him. He tells me the reason for the break without my asking him. For the two years Willahford and I were close friends he was with a girl named Holly. In the beginning she was eighteen and from an unfortunate home, he was nineteen and just back from a violent deployment.
Willahford explains how Holly sees the massage parlor on their credit card statement, even though it lists under a cryptic name. Willahford couldn’t explain himself well and finally went with the story that it was my idea and he was tagging along. They were married shortly after. I wasn’t invited. Turns out there's even more to it: how Holly comes from rape, how she never liked Willahford having such a close friendship with me. “She would roll her eyes whenever she caught me sending you a text.”
“I understand if you hate me,” he says, looking down at the table, then up at me. “And don’t want to be my friend.”
Breathlessly, he leads into another story, this time about his time while on leave and how he almost cheated on his wife, but didn’t.
He explains that the reason he came so close was because she had betrayed him during this deployment. He explains that about a year after they had married, divorce was imminent.
“We were taking each other for granted,” he says. “I was really focused on my new career as a cop, something I’ve wanted all my life, you know, but I worked all the time, you know.” He describes Holly as being a strong woman who deserved better and had demanded it.
He says that the deployment has been difficult, that the majority of their conversations on the phone were made up of him complaining to her. She got tired of it. Finally there was an argument.
Over the phone, she told Willahford about her platonic betrayals, and again divorce was imminent. Still, within weeks, Willahford forgave her. He says it is because she asked him to, because he had gone online and researched if marriages could still be good after betrayals, and because his battle buddy during the deployment had advised him to.
I was the second person he had talked to about it. The first person, his battle buddy, was a fellow cop who told him that cop life was hard, and that his marriage was normal. “He was the closest thing I had to a battle buddy,” he says. “He had to leave early – maybe a month ago – and when I found out – I kind of stopped talking to him.”
“So what do you think?” he asks me, slumping back in his metal folding chair, his slanted eyes studying mine.
“What do I know … Don't ask me.”
“Just tell me what you think.”
(midnight)
We walk back to Willahford’s tent. House lives there too and asks me if I want to smoke a cigarette.
Outside, he asks me about the West-coast bicycling trip I've made an itinerary for.
“It’ll probably be a few weeks after getting home,” I say.
He tells me about a get-together he is planning for when we get home, involving an expensive hotel suite on a street full of bars.
“Only the cool people here know about it,” he says. “Maybe you don’t know them, but if you did you’d like them. Obviously, some people won’t be invited,” he adds, pointedly, as Willahford walks back from the latrine and enters the tent.
__________
(Monday, 11JAN2010)
Shifted to a series of rooms where either Royal or Willahford are caught up in sexual tensions with me. At one point Royal and I are arguing because I lay down to sleep and he made a move toward me, as a challenge, and I allowed it, but then didn’t.
He says he did it because he needed to know who I was. In the dream I don’t get dressed, so that the scenes are like those French films where the characters play out scenes nude. That’s the thing about being in your twenties, it doesn’t feel different being unclothed or clothed; it doesn’t matter, you’re always in the wild.
The dream starts again, this time with Willahford, and a similar thing happens. I wake up, the dream still trying to insist the seamlessness between friendship and sexuality, human connection and sexuality.
__________
(Tuesday, 12JAN2010)
(evening)
“My throat’s hoarse; it‘s not used to talking so much.” I say to him, rubbing my vocal cords. “Maybe if you had been around the last two years I wouldn’t have so much to tell you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he retorts as we piss in side-by-side porta jons.
“Where’s your weapon and cover?” Willahford asks him as he steps out of the porta jon.
“Man, don’t f-ck with me right now,” Gadly says, brushing past Willahford in the dark.
I step out of my own porta jon, rubbing hand sanitizer over my hands. Willahford stops Gadly. They stand in the light emanating from the open door of the MWR. “Hey, I’m talking to you,” he says.
“Man, who are you to even be talking to me at all?!” Gadly yells back.
“I’m a f-cking Sergeant and you’ll address me properly from parade rest!”
“Like f-ck I will.”
“Yeah, I know you don’t give a f-ck, that’s why you’ve been demoted four times this deployment.”
(night)
“You studied war,” Willahford says, sitting among the empty cots. “You've found a way for every aggressive attack against you to be taken advantage of.”
“There's no way cops have anything to offer me,” I reply. “I was this tall.” I hold out my flattened hand in front of me. “I know cops are oblivious to someone in danger.”
“We are trained to not be too good at that. You could end up lost,” he says.
(midnight)
'Repacked my gear, trying to see how little I can get away with carrying back to the states on my back. Ever since the unit replacing us has arrived, there hasn’t been much to do but pack and repack. I hear SGT Fyke calling my name, “Chuck!” he says, “You have a visitor.”
It is Willahford. He has never come to where I lived before. “Hey, man,” he says with a grin as he enters my new cubicle of a room, “Just wanted to stop by, out of boredom, really.”
He has just come back from his meeting with the First Sergeant about Gadly and wants to tell me about it.
(at midnight chow)
“Are you the guy who was talking to me outside the MWR?” he asks angrily.
Willahford sets his Pepsi down on the table, then turns his attention away from the game playing on the TV in front of us. “First of all, I’m not the guy, I’m the Sergeant, and yes I’m the one who spoke to you outside the MWR.”
“What’s wrong with you that you’d just walk up to someone and ask ‘where’s your cover and weapon.’ I mean where the f-ck did you get the idea --”
Willahford turns his whole body to face Gadly. “-- Are you ever going to address me properly?”
“What by calling you Sergeant? F-ck no. Never in my life will I ever address you as sergeant -- “
Willahford holds up his hand, “Okay. You’re done. Have a nice night.”
“No, I’m not done --”
“You’re done, have a nice night.”
“-- you don’t seem to know who I AM; I’m Gadly! No one can talk to me that way! I’ll beat your ass.” He walks toward the exit door of the chow hall, talking to no one in particular, causing a scene. “NO one talks to me like that. I’m GADly,” he says as he leaves the make-shift building.
(2 AM)
'Helped Willahford carry his bags out onto the flight line; his section is slated to start their journey to the States.
Mucci is there and asks about Royal.
“Maybe he only wanted to be friends during the deployment,” I say. “But not after.”
The birds are expected and I have to go. “In case I never see you again--” I say to Willahford while walking away backwards.
“-- you’ll see me again-- “ Willahford says.
“ -- but chances are ... Have a good trip.”
House and I were to be on a convoy at 0500 so I walk back to my tent to get my weapon and ammo ready and don my gear.
It is my third day not sleeping. During the convoy House remains curled up in the corner of the vehicle. He opens and closes his eyes like he is deciding whether he might can catch a wink. He looks at me and smiles, “This is our first adventure, Chuck.”
(afternoon)
Something strange happened, so House and I suddenly have to dismount during the convoy back.
“Okay so if they come from over there,” House says, “We’ll flank to the left, and if it comes from over there, we’ll flank to the right.”
I look at him inquisitively.
“I’m just f-cking with you, Chuck.”
The ramp opens and we move out.
___________
SPC P__ stood up in the FOB church and announced he was gay.
Turns out he actually got caught with a guy, and everyone knew it, and the preacher referenced the fact that some in the audience were dealing with homosexuality, which basically outed P___ , causing him to then react.
Later it comes out that actually a third person is involved, one of higher rank, who turns out to be a close Sergeant in my chain, who I’ve always found suspicious in a shower-room kind of way. He then makes a pass at Gadly, who gets violent, and ends up arrested for real.
“They went too far,” SPC Hawkins says to me of Gadly. “They beat him up. Beat him.”
__________
Shifted to being home from deployment. I stop by work. The insides of the building are all different. All the employees are different.
I am selling an old red convertible which I have never seen before but really like.
'Can’t remember what my house looks like, I drive around and find what I think is my house but turns out not to be, because it is dilapidated.
__________
House knows he is good looking; I hadn’t noticed it all the way before, then I noticed how he assumes his good looks, expects them to work for him when dealing with others.
House tells me how he wishes he could gain weight. I notice how little he is. I know I’m meaty and that my abdominals were too well-known for awhile, but I might trade both to have his face.
House explains himself by describing the Punk and Skins scene, by having me listen to music by Star F_cking Hipsters and the Pixies. I’m wary of labels like Punk and Skin.
“It’s that baby face,” House says, yet again being allowed more than what was easily believed. “You see how I just got away with that?”
“It takes about a year,” House says. “To find out my girlfriends are crazy.”
I’ve never known anyone from that much abuse who’s still functional. Maybe when he gets his vehicle, everything will change. It’s his first real vehicle, so even he doesn’t know how it will be.
Over a period of days House describes his family setup, he describes his close friends, the structure of his civilian life. Finally he says he doesn’t want to go back to his old scene: a bunch of junkies.
House is too good looking for his own good. That’s why he can’t grow up. He doesn’t know how to fight on his own. I can’t imagine having been liked.
I’ve gotten used to his face. I see him and don’t immediately think: good looking. Now I just think: House.
I tell him the story but stop at nineteen years of age. I tell him I can’t remember much before age twelve, but by the evidence, I know what must’ve happened. He nicknames me “Dex,” for Dexter.
“You’re like a forty year old in a twenty five year old’s body,” he says, reiterating his need to stay with me when we get home.
House tells me his abuse story. He tells me his sexual history. None of his girlfriends were normal, but for one, and she cheated on him. He always cheated on his girlfriends.
“People don’t like to admit how young they were when they first hit sexuality,” he says as we sit inside a mortar barrier smoking. “Like an early puberty. Then they put stock in their high school years. It was an influx of hormones – that's all. Then, the ones not-sexualized early are arrogant about it. They're like – get over it -- they don't get that when you were sexualized your adult emotions began.”
“Actually, in four days,” he says. “I’ll be twenty three.” As he speaks I pray he’ll say the words twenty-four. I turned twenty-seven not long ago.
He says he feels incredibly behind. He considers me accomplished.
He talks a lot to everyone, sometimes supplementing our conversations later with a conversation with someone else. I wonder about it, how much he talks, how impressionable he is.
Boyd__, as I entered our new tent: “Nu uh, you were gone all day yesterday and all night!” With the deployment nearing its end, the soldiers left here have consolidated tents. I’m now staying with first platoon, a platoon I used to take care of at the beginning of the deployment. They invite me to chow regularly. Between Willahford and House, I haven’t been around much, so I play off their complaints and agree to play dominoes.
“I’ll have to pass you off as my little brother,” I say to House, as we sit in the chow hall for lunch. I think of Thacker and how much it would take to make any sort of change in his world.
House grins to me. I think I see him try to reign the grin in, like it was too pure for his taste. I wasn’t sure.
I explain to House the dreams, how strong they are, what they’re like for me, how I shift into them so that they‘re as real and present as the wake world.
He asks me to go with him to Virginia, when he visits his family.
He tells me about the heroin addictions he’s had in the past.
“I’ve told you stuff I’ve never even mentioned to them,” he says, referring to his friends and family.
He yawns when I lean back and think I might be getting sleepy. He looks at his watch just at the moment that I wonder to myself what time it is.
“Maybe we’re long lost brothers,” House says me.
For such a popular, confident guy, House doesn’t like it when we get separated. He is concerned that we might end up on different chalks for the first movement home.
House uses words like Dank. Like that’s so Dank, or that food was so Dank.
On the last day, I burn the last of the S4 documents. Delta Company’s final investigations are a part of the last stack. According to the draft memos, Supply Sergeant Thomps, Andrew's replacement, was found liable and charged nine thousand dollars, 1SG Trenchton was found liable and charged fifteen-thousand dollars. CPT Kenley was found liable for nothing. Neither Mace nor I are mentioned in any investigations.
I have no one to tell the good news to. For most of the deployment most in Delta would not sit near me in the chow hall, but for Moser, Royal, and Mace. House and I sit in the second to last group. The final group has collected not far away. We all wait in the dark for the birds.
(Sunday, 17JAN2010)
“I know things you don‘t know. Bigger things,” thinks the Westerner.
“I know, that you know,” says the Easterner, lyrically. “What you do is wrong … leaving the common man behind as if you're running from him. I Know, as if my own voice, were the word of God … My God is stronger than you … and yours. “
Education is celebration, that’s how it stays in the wild. Everyone remembers the wonderful day when something new was discovered, figured out. The fluttering of wings, the rustlings of growth, as the music of history spreads.
War is peace cause that’s the way: There must be more than one way, even if the principle has to be fought for. So it will be, by God’s Will, and all that certainty.
(night)
(acoustic guitar)
You can’t murder Cain. No you can’t murder Cain. You can only follow him. Farther into the abyss, Able tries again, Coming closer and closer, the best of the best, not realizing. The spirit of a priest, the form of a warrior, brothers deciding which uniform is which, Sergeants resurrecting memory, as the dead rise, Officers taking charge of young, fresh, armies. Able lets Cain murder him. Because he believes in God. He has no idea Cain exists.
___________
(30OCT2009)
'Took off my gear in mine and Royal’s room.
“What was it like being waited on by young nurses when you haven’t seen a woman in so long?” Mace asks.
I told him I always had to lay sideways.
_________
(midnight)
“Yeah, rumors were flying,” Irby says, his voice echoing in the shower trailer. “They were saying you weren’t coming back, that you were going to Germany to have your foot amputated, we heard some of everything -- Where’s Royal been? I haven’t seen him in awhile.”
“Leave.”
“He may not come back you know,” Irby says. “It’s so close to our next movement, I heard we might not see the ones going to the states until we get there. And that’ll be two months. But I heard that only applies to people leaving at the end of the month, not the beginning.”
__________
(Saturday, 31OCT2009, Halloween)
Eric’s house was a sanctuary when I was a teenager. He had problems at home, but they weren’t extreme. We never talked like that, we were too busy trying to be normal. I noticed years ago that most of my close friends since then have simply been another version of Eric.
He went into the Marines as soon as he was old enough, did well. When I knew him all he talked about was the military and weapons and campaigns. His father made fun of him for it, acted like it was a sign of his weakness, as he was on the outside looking in on manhood.
'Think about if he met me now, if Eric and I were to run into each other at one of these FOBs, what he would think of me ten years older. If he calls me on it I’d tell him: Neither Jesus or Satan could’ve done better.
__________
(Sunday, 1NOV2009)
A scene from the movie “Singles” plays on the television in the hanger. The most amiable, eligible guy is a wreck, his apartment and hygiene unkept. Him and his girlfriend have decided to be friends because their relationship has gotten so close it begins to have a power they are afraid of. He has changed his mind and tried to get her back but failed.
His neighbor comes by to check on him. He tells her, “You know, in modern society it never becomes necessary to leave your apartment. Everything can be delivered, work can be emailed.”
“I don’t understand what’s wrong,” she says. “It was just a girl.”
“I trusted my instincts,” he says. “And they were wrong -- the opposite of right.”
__________
The kid-from-love sits near me on one of the buses to Qatar. I ask him about his case.
“It’s a travel guitar. Do you play?”
“No. How do they make a guitar that small?”
“Yeah, they put the top part at the bottom.”
“Oh,” I said, as if I understood.
His name is Jon.
__________
(on bus)
“Oh, you slap-e-da base,” I joke, referencing a movie.
“I love that movie!” Jon says. “Paul Rudd is funny in that.”
Jon is a little guy, with brown curly hair and dark eyes. He looks like something out of a 1990s Calvin Klein ad. Tank is a big guy, with glasses and a short army hair cut. Joe is effortlessly popular, talkative. He's only twenty-two and already on his third deployment.
Jon and Tank are musicians whose MOS has them travel Iraq to entertain soldiers. Jon's father is a preacher.
_________
'Took the first shower I’ve had in three days. Since I haven’t slept in so many days I am surprised to be punch drunk.
I pass Jon in the hall. He stops me and asks what my plans are.
“You know, just going to relax for awhile,” I say.
“Well, we were thinking about heading back to the USO and tomorrow going swimming or something,” he says.
I agree.
_________
(morning)
'Woke to the sound of an effeminate male voice.
“Hey,“ he says. “Do you want to go on the mall run?”
Jon says something amounting to no, then turns back to sleep.
__________
(afternoon)
Our group goes swimming, then we eat at Chili’s. Dan, the effeminate voice, somehow, joins us. He is more obviously taken with Jon and the meal is awkward.
Afterward, we enjoy how lost we are, trying to find the USO and make it in time for a comedy show and our three drink maximum.
(evening)
Tank forgot to pack civies. He raids the free closet. He steps out wearing a Hawaiian shirt that might be a target for Russians.
We all raid the closet. Jon steps out in a green smoking jacket and Joe a slimming bowling shirt straight out of “Big Lebowski.”
The three of us discuss what Joe’s nickname will be. We ask each other references in infantry movies. We decide on Gomer. Joe doesn’t like that at all, so we decide on Murphy. Joe can’t believe this, so I say Joe will be his nickname, “You, know, like a GI Joe.”
“Joe’s already my name,“ he says, exasperated.
(next evening)
Jon's wallet slipped out of his pocket in the backseat of the van used to take us out on the beach trip. The company found it and will return it to him tomorrow. I advise him to explain the situation to his bank so they'll put a hold on, just in case.
“But I don’t want them to cancel my card,” Jon says.
“Say that in the email,” I reply.
“Maybe I should just call my Mom.“
It catches me off guard when he says that.
Joe blows up, cursing and exclaiming.
Jon tries to be conciliatory: “But I don’t understand, I had it, I was talking to them just fine, then you walked up all loud.”
“I was trying to help my friend!”
Offended, Joe stops talking to us for awhile. Jon and I look at each other and finally have to go on without him. On the bus ride to the pool, Jon says “There’s always one guy like that, wherever you go. Always with the drama.”
In a discussion covering the latest in theology, science, and current affairs, Jon says thoughtfully: “Maybe you're one of those people who thinks it's possible to know. As an empire. The ease of education will cause its children to build the same tower of Babel...”
"Like ... a radio tower ..." I reply. He laughs.
__________
(Day 3, On boat trip)
'Hung out with Tank for awhile. Like an old man, he plans to dangle in the water all day in his life jacket.
I peg him for a stoner. He laughs. “After this deployment,” I say, floating beside him. “I'm going to become a hippie.”
(afternoon)
Jon meets a girl, Karen.
Joe is excited because Jon is still talking to her and making us wait. “He seems like one of those guys who would ditch his friends over a girl.” he says.
Jon steps out too-cool-for-school in his brown aviators. “I know that girl from a past gig,” he says. “I’m meeting her for dinner tonight.
(evening)
“You asking me if I’m a virgin, then yes I am. I‘m going to wait till after marriage,” Jon says proudly after his date at Chili's.
“I have friends at my FOB that are virgins.” I say. “For some reason I attract the virgins ... “
We move to the now-empty hot tub.
“Oh, you were adopted?” Joe asks.
“No,” I say.
“Because I was.”
“You must have been a good looking kid.”
“Why didn’t you get adopted?”
“I don’t feel bad about it. I would’ve been a foster parent’s nightmare. Not even a year old and my whole life already in my own hands.”
“I was never really a foster kid.”
“I couldn't imagine already being distrustful and being in foster care,” I say. “You'd notice how the ones related can gossip while it's not gossip, while the one not, must learn to be a gossip in order to pass … crimes would add up...”
“How did you get past the anger,” Jon asks.
I don’t know how to answer him. “I would have these memory problems because I would have such bad dreams as a kid … “ I begin. “So I would take notes, write things down. Sometimes I’ll post them online for like a few weeks, you know, just to answer a few questions I have … like a social experiment --
“-- he keeps a blog … “ Joe says, ending the conversation.
I lean forward to answer Jon properly. “Anger was my best thing …” I say lowly.
Joe tells of why he joined the military. Upon high-school graduation his parents sat him down and told him how they weren't actually his parents. His aunt and her tragically-killed husband were actually his parents. She was so devastated by his death she felt she couldn't take care of her baby well enough. He doesn't go into what must've been done to the details of his life, his mother turning out to not be his mother, but I understand why he has such an underlying anger about him, like he's lost and struggling to still come across as normal.
__________
(Day 4, On Doha City Tour)
(afternoon)
Turns out Qatar is the wealthiest country in the world. Peaceful, content, home to Al Jazeera, world class medicine, education, music, and art, the land brings me back to my ancient days in Palermo. Islamic, non-democratic, and powerful, there is no such thing as moving up from class; meanwhile there is no such thing as taxes. They adhere to Arab law and send their criminals to Saudi Arabia to have their hands – and the like – chopped off.
“You guys ain’t shit compared to me,” Joe growls beside me as we sit on the bus. He’s referring to the fact he’s deployed three times.
“I’m ready for him to leave,” Karen says from behind us.
(late afternoon)
We sit at the Starbucks, where a black coffee is nine American dollars. I ask how they feel about Joe.
“Frankly, I’m to the point I don’t give a shit,” Jon says. It was rare for Jon to curse, he always says things like That’s so F’d up. Literally, he would say the letter F.
(midnight)
As we walk down the sidewalk back to our bay, Jon hangs his head down like a little kid would. He walks beside Tank, the two of them in front of me. “Why did the girls leave early?”
“Because it’s now two in the morning,” Tank says, in a low voice. “And they go running at five in the morning.”
“But it was our last night and who goes running at five in the morning?”
“The rest of the people in the Army -- besides us -- are morning people.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“We’re in a rock band, we’re night owls. That's how it works.”
(1 AM)
“Good thing Dan didn’t keep on us too long,” I say in the hallway as we all work, packing and cleaning our barracks.
“Yeah,” Jon says, “We met him actually, before you did; that’s why we were trying to hang out with you when we got here.”
(evening)
Most of my travel home is the same itinerary as Joe. Jon and Tank's itinerary sent them North instead of South. I am easy with him.
I step into a temporary quarters at an air base and see a familiar face. I say hi as I shuffle to a cot with my gear, my duffel long digging into my shoulders.
“How was Qatar?” SGT Cordona asks in his easy New York.
“Man, it might have been the most fun I’ve had in my life.”
“Of your life?” SGT Cordona says, with an inquisitive cock of his head and a smile.
(night)
Willahford rode on the same truck as me to our home FOB.
“'Had to tell my story at Qatar-- more than I told you -- because everyone else was telling theirs,“ I say over the hum of the MRAP. “One of the guys said, ‘But you’re so normal.' It was surprising because I had a hard time when I first got out of that place I come from.”
“I know you did,” Willahford says softly.
(midnight)
Mace scuffles a bit on the other side of the wall, then appears out of the darkness yawning and rubbing his stomach. “Wanna hang while I smoke a cigarette?” he asks sleepily.
As he lights up, I ask him what’s been going on way out here in the desert.
“Rain.”
__________
(Tuesday, 10NOV2009)
'Laid low. Though I've signed in, my superiors never figure out I am back from pass so I manage two more days off.
Later, through a clever twist of events, I manage two more days off.
“Man, I thought I was a good shammer,” he says, laughing. He bends low with his hands pressed together. “You have surpassed the Master, young grasshopper.”
(Thursday, 13NOV2009)
'Am on guard duty when Moser walks by, telling me Royal has just arrived via Blackhawk.
He cocks his head and squints at me, like he thinks my reaction is odd. “So you got your -- roommate -- back,” he says, his lips forming the word ’brother’ before self-correcting and saying ’roommate.’
After my shift, I shower while thinking, You have your own. I use the internet café, then enter the tent, wary of triggers and the wildness I have known. I poke my head into Mace‘s room instead of my own and say hi.
“Oh, you come in here to hang with me when your brother’s back?” he says. “I’m shocked.”
“Is he back ...”
“Yeah. When he stepped in, the first thing he said when he saw you guy’s room was What the f-ck?”
“He said that …”
“Yep,” Mace says with his devilishly friendly laugh.
I clean the room even though it is already clean.
Royal enters with a sudden swing of the door and a grin when he sees me. We catch up outside over cigarettes. He has flawless ease. Everything I try hard to do, to understand, to feel, he does effortlessly.
He says the first thing he saw when he entered the room was the new coffee maker. “I’ve never seen you drink coffee, Chuck.”
He tells of how he and his battle tricked the airport into giving them an extra day, the eight-ball they acquired, the strip club they used at, and the comedic chaos of getting their cab to the airport in time while tripping.
__________
(Tuesday, 24NOV2009)
(morning)
During the revelry Royal and I look at each other.
Hidden by the mortar barriers around us, he begins his chicken jerk, writhing intently with tightly-closed eyes.
I bend down, bump my knees together and cross hands in rhythm to tantric head-twisting.
(evening)
Royal says it’s only his girl that has these ideas of their permanence. “Just because she’s got herself thinking like that,” he says. “Doesn’t mean I’m leading her on. I was always clear with her.”
(night)
We stand in a circle between the back-entrances of the two tents.
“When I get home I want a daughter,” Moser says to me with a grin. “I want to be a father. Maybe have a wife, really just me and my little girl, me running down the street with her in the stroller.”
“When I was on leave,” Royal is saying to Moser. “She had met this guy who started out gay, then bi, then went straight.”
“Like an accessory … “ I ask him accusing while laughing.
___________
(Monday, 21DEC2009)
Royal receives a red cross message saying that his dad is in the hospital and not looking good. He will be leaving shortly.
He says he’ll have to travel back to us in country, just to turn around and redeploy back to the states with us. I feel relieved. Later he tells me that the red cross message will most likely be extended, and that he probably wouldn’t be back. He is told he is leaving tonight.
He talks a lot, like old times. He says often, “when we get home.”
We play ping pong, like in the early days when we first hit Kuwait and played ping pong for six hours at a stretch.
“Would it be wrong for me to get my red cross message extended?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“But then I wouldn’t come back,” he says, “This would be it.”
“Deployment is so close to being done with, there’s no point in coming back.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he says.
He talks about college and about how he has changed his outlook. He doesn’t want to go to third world countries as a cultural anthropologist anymore.
”Not only do the Ivy Leagues disagree about American history,” I say to him. “But Russian history books teach Russia as the winner of World War II and the Cold War, not to mention the history of the world from the Far East's point of view.”
He doesn’t want to spend a year of his schooling in Africa.
“I noticed how the Arab's practices look so much like the Jew's,” I say. “And the Jew's like the Catholics. They have some idea that they're going to sit and wait for God to do something in order to show the world there is a God and that He is their God.” I keep on him, slicing my paddle, after having proved a new serve. “It's so primitive – necessary, respected, but not important now – This idea that there are 'peoples' and each has a reputation according to history and human life is to be lived within that context. The mathematics of it always lead to the Final Solution. Meanwhile American Presidents still bow down to two crossed sticks, expecting magic, due to storytelling designed to seduce.”
“I hate these people, now,” he says. “I hate the Iraqi’s. I hate the Arabs -- not as individuals. But just being around them all the time, it pisses me off. They sell their sons and daughters to men to be raped. They rape and beat and oppress their women. Look at all the homos everywhere … Only the sons from wealth are allowed to copulate with a woman. They're society is savage. All this time one after another was standing right in front of me not perceiving like a human.”
I stand still with the ball in my hand. He motions with his paddle for me to start playing again.
“Apparently, to be in Arabia is to be wandering in the desert,” he says, then pauses, as if changing his mind. “It is possible to rape a culture. They have to start from scratch learning not to hate themselves. And I get that. I just wanted an experience, you know,“ he says, the baritone underneath his voice filling the empty room. “Of some kind. This deployment was supposed to take the place of that but it turned out to be a load of sh-t.”
“I think I know how the world works,” I say quickly, as if we were running out of time. “If you won the last war you get treated well, if you didn't do so well in the last war, your people get treated like shit. And you get born when you get born. That's just the way it is.”
(late night)
Royal is to immediately board a convoy to start his journey. He has last minute notes for me, laundry he hasn’t done, packages to be sent. He acts casual.
Shortly after he leaves, Mace looks at me and jokes: “Chuck, you look like you’ve lost your best friend.”
Several minutes later, Royal suddenly walks back in. He looks at me sheepishly, because it has been so many times: “Do you have a pair of eye pro I can borrow?“
__________
(Wednesday, 23DEC2009)
There is an awkward pause as Mace leans forward in his chair; he says, soberly: “You know … you’ve come a long way, Chuck.”
__________
(Sunday, 27DEC2009)
Postal has arrived at our FOB and will stay for three days. It had been a lot of work, packing up Royal‘s stuff, figuring out the logistics of it. The first day I waited four hours to mail off two boxes.
Mace looked at me mournfully, back in the room, the night before, watching me stuff the crumpled paper into the corners of the box before I placed the address label.
“No more guitar,” he said, mostly to himself.
___________
(Monday, 28DEC2009)
The next morning I wait three hours. The soldier beside me in line is Specialist House, who I work with but isn’t in my company.
He is a skinny guy with average height. Twenty-three years of age but looks eighteen because of his build. He has green eyes, short dark hair, tanned skin, and tattoos all over his arms. He used to be in a line platoon, but started a fight, broke a guy’s arm, and was removed. I’d look for him whenever the convoys came in late at night, dreary-eyed and yawning, glad to see me.
_______
(Tuesday, 29DEC2009)
While waiting another seven hours at postal, I ask Willahford about the Nature Nurture question.
“What .. ” he says, incredulous, “You think that stuff doesn’t shape who you are, who you become?”
“I think people can surprise you,” I reply.
“I don’t think something bad necessarily means anything at all,” he says. “Because you then make that bad into good. And that good shapes you. It made you who you are. So it's good. ”
Sometimes I think Willahford is the most mentally healthy person I know.
“When I was in high school,” he says. “Me and Canon hung out with a third guy who I always ragged on because he was such a poser. I mean I was brutal. Then one day he just turned on me and said I was not gonna rag on him no more, never again or he was gonna beat me into the ground. When I came back from Basic three months later he was dating the hottest girl in school.”
(night)
'Gotten into the music Royal gave me. Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin, Cream, The Who, the Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails … listening to them on black market copies while reading about them.
__________
(Wednesday, 30DEC2009)
'Stopped by House’s duty station. He makes a point of stepping outside and talking for an hour over cigarettes.
“Did I tell you about my Mom having a boyfriend I didn’t know about?” he says, as if it were assumed he tells me everything.
___________
(night)
'Don’t believe him when he tells me.
“Yeah, I know right?“ Specialist Hawkings says. “It’s New Year’s Eve.“
We laugh as we direct the incoming supply convoy.
(midnight)
'Walked to the internet café. Willahford happens to be there and asks me if I want to get a few hodje near-beers and hang out in his room.
We have a five hour conversation where I give him the account of the salon. I tell him about the affair, what it was like traveling the countryside with Elise.
_________
(Sunday, 3JAN2010)
Willahford and I hang out again a couple night’s later, and again a couple night’s after that. We eat at the local Arab restaurant.
Willahford and I haven’t talked about the year long break in our friendship. We act like it never happened, even though it’s still present, a certain aside look here, a re-posturing there.
__________
(Monday, 4JAN2010)
Royal and I go on a backpacking trip together They are simple scenes: eating at a restaurant, cycling, hiking, acting the same way we had through the deployment.
At one point we argue. The dream shows the argument twice.
The first time is honest, genuine, and goes well. I do and say everything on impulse. The second time I am overly polite and overly-professional in dealing with him.
__________
(Tuesday, 5JAN2010)
House, standing outside my duty station, waiting on the forklift, talking about Willahford:
“Can’t stand him. Never could. Total fag. All he's about is being a cop.”
(night)
'Stepped into one of the dining rooms in order to get a particular flavor of Gatorade and see the back of Willahford’s head. I almost said hi, but he doesn’t quite see me.
A minute later Willahford sits himself in front of me and starts talking.
__________
(Wednesday, 6JAN2010)
“But I liked you then.” I say.
“Oh, as in you don’t like me now.” Willahford replies, jokingly.
“No, I like you; I just mean, not everyone liked you then.”
“Who didn‘t like me?”
“I mean that you seemed to always be around me back then.”
“Well yeah, you were the only one in our unit who wasn’t a total dou-che bag.”
(night)
We find a tower we think might be suitable for hanging out in. We climb to the top as I begin the sordid story of deployment. We remain black silhouettes under a midnight sky bright with stars. Back in artillery we chose this brigade as the best to deploy with because we would be grunts surrounded by grunts. What did we know. Grunts are treated like grunts by the non-grunts. When we get to the top, the tower is occupied by Ugandan guards. They seem to believe I really did go all the way out here just to check on them.
Willahford doesn’t understand how I can be effortlessly steadfast without being effortlessly confident. He tries to fix me with stories of others he has known who were once insecure but changed into confident persons.
__________
(Friday, 8JAN2010)
'Am checked out by a medic following up on my foot.
He says, “You have very low blood pressure. Mine is too low, so I have to take medication because they say I‘m hypo-something; you’re just above that.”
(night)
While Royal makes me want to smoke pot and back pack the world for five months, Willahford makes me want to go back to work, cash in the GI Bill, meet a girl, settle down.
__________
(Sunday, 10JAN2010)
(night)
He seems to be exhaling, barely pausing between stories, stories I didn’t ask for or lead into.
He tells me about his three best friends at his job, how they are a second family for him. He tells me the reason for the break without my asking him. For the two years Willahford and I were close friends he was with a girl named Holly. In the beginning she was eighteen and from an unfortunate home, he was nineteen and just back from a violent deployment.
Willahford explains how Holly sees the massage parlor on their credit card statement, even though it lists under a cryptic name. Willahford couldn’t explain himself well and finally went with the story that it was my idea and he was tagging along. They were married shortly after. I wasn’t invited. Turns out there's even more to it: how Holly comes from rape, how she never liked Willahford having such a close friendship with me. “She would roll her eyes whenever she caught me sending you a text.”
“I understand if you hate me,” he says, looking down at the table, then up at me. “And don’t want to be my friend.”
Breathlessly, he leads into another story, this time about his time while on leave and how he almost cheated on his wife, but didn’t.
He explains that the reason he came so close was because she had betrayed him during this deployment. He explains that about a year after they had married, divorce was imminent.
“We were taking each other for granted,” he says. “I was really focused on my new career as a cop, something I’ve wanted all my life, you know, but I worked all the time, you know.” He describes Holly as being a strong woman who deserved better and had demanded it.
He says that the deployment has been difficult, that the majority of their conversations on the phone were made up of him complaining to her. She got tired of it. Finally there was an argument.
Over the phone, she told Willahford about her platonic betrayals, and again divorce was imminent. Still, within weeks, Willahford forgave her. He says it is because she asked him to, because he had gone online and researched if marriages could still be good after betrayals, and because his battle buddy during the deployment had advised him to.
I was the second person he had talked to about it. The first person, his battle buddy, was a fellow cop who told him that cop life was hard, and that his marriage was normal. “He was the closest thing I had to a battle buddy,” he says. “He had to leave early – maybe a month ago – and when I found out – I kind of stopped talking to him.”
“So what do you think?” he asks me, slumping back in his metal folding chair, his slanted eyes studying mine.
“What do I know … Don't ask me.”
“Just tell me what you think.”
(midnight)
We walk back to Willahford’s tent. House lives there too and asks me if I want to smoke a cigarette.
Outside, he asks me about the West-coast bicycling trip I've made an itinerary for.
“It’ll probably be a few weeks after getting home,” I say.
He tells me about a get-together he is planning for when we get home, involving an expensive hotel suite on a street full of bars.
“Only the cool people here know about it,” he says. “Maybe you don’t know them, but if you did you’d like them. Obviously, some people won’t be invited,” he adds, pointedly, as Willahford walks back from the latrine and enters the tent.
__________
(Monday, 11JAN2010)
Shifted to a series of rooms where either Royal or Willahford are caught up in sexual tensions with me. At one point Royal and I are arguing because I lay down to sleep and he made a move toward me, as a challenge, and I allowed it, but then didn’t.
He says he did it because he needed to know who I was. In the dream I don’t get dressed, so that the scenes are like those French films where the characters play out scenes nude. That’s the thing about being in your twenties, it doesn’t feel different being unclothed or clothed; it doesn’t matter, you’re always in the wild.
The dream starts again, this time with Willahford, and a similar thing happens. I wake up, the dream still trying to insist the seamlessness between friendship and sexuality, human connection and sexuality.
__________
(Tuesday, 12JAN2010)
(evening)
“My throat’s hoarse; it‘s not used to talking so much.” I say to him, rubbing my vocal cords. “Maybe if you had been around the last two years I wouldn’t have so much to tell you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he retorts as we piss in side-by-side porta jons.
“Where’s your weapon and cover?” Willahford asks him as he steps out of the porta jon.
“Man, don’t f-ck with me right now,” Gadly says, brushing past Willahford in the dark.
I step out of my own porta jon, rubbing hand sanitizer over my hands. Willahford stops Gadly. They stand in the light emanating from the open door of the MWR. “Hey, I’m talking to you,” he says.
“Man, who are you to even be talking to me at all?!” Gadly yells back.
“I’m a f-cking Sergeant and you’ll address me properly from parade rest!”
“Like f-ck I will.”
“Yeah, I know you don’t give a f-ck, that’s why you’ve been demoted four times this deployment.”
(night)
“You studied war,” Willahford says, sitting among the empty cots. “You've found a way for every aggressive attack against you to be taken advantage of.”
“There's no way cops have anything to offer me,” I reply. “I was this tall.” I hold out my flattened hand in front of me. “I know cops are oblivious to someone in danger.”
“We are trained to not be too good at that. You could end up lost,” he says.
(midnight)
'Repacked my gear, trying to see how little I can get away with carrying back to the states on my back. Ever since the unit replacing us has arrived, there hasn’t been much to do but pack and repack. I hear SGT Fyke calling my name, “Chuck!” he says, “You have a visitor.”
It is Willahford. He has never come to where I lived before. “Hey, man,” he says with a grin as he enters my new cubicle of a room, “Just wanted to stop by, out of boredom, really.”
He has just come back from his meeting with the First Sergeant about Gadly and wants to tell me about it.
(at midnight chow)
“Are you the guy who was talking to me outside the MWR?” he asks angrily.
Willahford sets his Pepsi down on the table, then turns his attention away from the game playing on the TV in front of us. “First of all, I’m not the guy, I’m the Sergeant, and yes I’m the one who spoke to you outside the MWR.”
“What’s wrong with you that you’d just walk up to someone and ask ‘where’s your cover and weapon.’ I mean where the f-ck did you get the idea --”
Willahford turns his whole body to face Gadly. “-- Are you ever going to address me properly?”
“What by calling you Sergeant? F-ck no. Never in my life will I ever address you as sergeant -- “
Willahford holds up his hand, “Okay. You’re done. Have a nice night.”
“No, I’m not done --”
“You’re done, have a nice night.”
“-- you don’t seem to know who I AM; I’m Gadly! No one can talk to me that way! I’ll beat your ass.” He walks toward the exit door of the chow hall, talking to no one in particular, causing a scene. “NO one talks to me like that. I’m GADly,” he says as he leaves the make-shift building.
(2 AM)
'Helped Willahford carry his bags out onto the flight line; his section is slated to start their journey to the States.
Mucci is there and asks about Royal.
“Maybe he only wanted to be friends during the deployment,” I say. “But not after.”
The birds are expected and I have to go. “In case I never see you again--” I say to Willahford while walking away backwards.
“-- you’ll see me again-- “ Willahford says.
“ -- but chances are ... Have a good trip.”
House and I were to be on a convoy at 0500 so I walk back to my tent to get my weapon and ammo ready and don my gear.
It is my third day not sleeping. During the convoy House remains curled up in the corner of the vehicle. He opens and closes his eyes like he is deciding whether he might can catch a wink. He looks at me and smiles, “This is our first adventure, Chuck.”
(afternoon)
Something strange happened, so House and I suddenly have to dismount during the convoy back.
“Okay so if they come from over there,” House says, “We’ll flank to the left, and if it comes from over there, we’ll flank to the right.”
I look at him inquisitively.
“I’m just f-cking with you, Chuck.”
The ramp opens and we move out.
___________
SPC P__ stood up in the FOB church and announced he was gay.
Turns out he actually got caught with a guy, and everyone knew it, and the preacher referenced the fact that some in the audience were dealing with homosexuality, which basically outed P___ , causing him to then react.
Later it comes out that actually a third person is involved, one of higher rank, who turns out to be a close Sergeant in my chain, who I’ve always found suspicious in a shower-room kind of way. He then makes a pass at Gadly, who gets violent, and ends up arrested for real.
“They went too far,” SPC Hawkins says to me of Gadly. “They beat him up. Beat him.”
__________
Shifted to being home from deployment. I stop by work. The insides of the building are all different. All the employees are different.
I am selling an old red convertible which I have never seen before but really like.
'Can’t remember what my house looks like, I drive around and find what I think is my house but turns out not to be, because it is dilapidated.
__________
House knows he is good looking; I hadn’t noticed it all the way before, then I noticed how he assumes his good looks, expects them to work for him when dealing with others.
House tells me how he wishes he could gain weight. I notice how little he is. I know I’m meaty and that my abdominals were too well-known for awhile, but I might trade both to have his face.
House explains himself by describing the Punk and Skins scene, by having me listen to music by Star F_cking Hipsters and the Pixies. I’m wary of labels like Punk and Skin.
“It’s that baby face,” House says, yet again being allowed more than what was easily believed. “You see how I just got away with that?”
“It takes about a year,” House says. “To find out my girlfriends are crazy.”
I’ve never known anyone from that much abuse who’s still functional. Maybe when he gets his vehicle, everything will change. It’s his first real vehicle, so even he doesn’t know how it will be.
Over a period of days House describes his family setup, he describes his close friends, the structure of his civilian life. Finally he says he doesn’t want to go back to his old scene: a bunch of junkies.
House is too good looking for his own good. That’s why he can’t grow up. He doesn’t know how to fight on his own. I can’t imagine having been liked.
I’ve gotten used to his face. I see him and don’t immediately think: good looking. Now I just think: House.
I tell him the story but stop at nineteen years of age. I tell him I can’t remember much before age twelve, but by the evidence, I know what must’ve happened. He nicknames me “Dex,” for Dexter.
“You’re like a forty year old in a twenty five year old’s body,” he says, reiterating his need to stay with me when we get home.
House tells me his abuse story. He tells me his sexual history. None of his girlfriends were normal, but for one, and she cheated on him. He always cheated on his girlfriends.
“People don’t like to admit how young they were when they first hit sexuality,” he says as we sit inside a mortar barrier smoking. “Like an early puberty. Then they put stock in their high school years. It was an influx of hormones – that's all. Then, the ones not-sexualized early are arrogant about it. They're like – get over it -- they don't get that when you were sexualized your adult emotions began.”
“Actually, in four days,” he says. “I’ll be twenty three.” As he speaks I pray he’ll say the words twenty-four. I turned twenty-seven not long ago.
He says he feels incredibly behind. He considers me accomplished.
He talks a lot to everyone, sometimes supplementing our conversations later with a conversation with someone else. I wonder about it, how much he talks, how impressionable he is.
Boyd__, as I entered our new tent: “Nu uh, you were gone all day yesterday and all night!” With the deployment nearing its end, the soldiers left here have consolidated tents. I’m now staying with first platoon, a platoon I used to take care of at the beginning of the deployment. They invite me to chow regularly. Between Willahford and House, I haven’t been around much, so I play off their complaints and agree to play dominoes.
“I’ll have to pass you off as my little brother,” I say to House, as we sit in the chow hall for lunch. I think of Thacker and how much it would take to make any sort of change in his world.
House grins to me. I think I see him try to reign the grin in, like it was too pure for his taste. I wasn’t sure.
I explain to House the dreams, how strong they are, what they’re like for me, how I shift into them so that they‘re as real and present as the wake world.
He asks me to go with him to Virginia, when he visits his family.
He tells me about the heroin addictions he’s had in the past.
“I’ve told you stuff I’ve never even mentioned to them,” he says, referring to his friends and family.
He yawns when I lean back and think I might be getting sleepy. He looks at his watch just at the moment that I wonder to myself what time it is.
“Maybe we’re long lost brothers,” House says me.
For such a popular, confident guy, House doesn’t like it when we get separated. He is concerned that we might end up on different chalks for the first movement home.
House uses words like Dank. Like that’s so Dank, or that food was so Dank.
On the last day, I burn the last of the S4 documents. Delta Company’s final investigations are a part of the last stack. According to the draft memos, Supply Sergeant Thomps, Andrew's replacement, was found liable and charged nine thousand dollars, 1SG Trenchton was found liable and charged fifteen-thousand dollars. CPT Kenley was found liable for nothing. Neither Mace nor I are mentioned in any investigations.
I have no one to tell the good news to. For most of the deployment most in Delta would not sit near me in the chow hall, but for Moser, Royal, and Mace. House and I sit in the second to last group. The final group has collected not far away. We all wait in the dark for the birds.
(Sunday, 17JAN2010)
“I know things you don‘t know. Bigger things,” thinks the Westerner.
“I know, that you know,” says the Easterner, lyrically. “What you do is wrong … leaving the common man behind as if you're running from him. I Know, as if my own voice, were the word of God … My God is stronger than you … and yours. “
Education is celebration, that’s how it stays in the wild. Everyone remembers the wonderful day when something new was discovered, figured out. The fluttering of wings, the rustlings of growth, as the music of history spreads.
War is peace cause that’s the way: There must be more than one way, even if the principle has to be fought for. So it will be, by God’s Will, and all that certainty.
(night)
(acoustic guitar)
You can’t murder Cain. No you can’t murder Cain. You can only follow him. Farther into the abyss, Able tries again, Coming closer and closer, the best of the best, not realizing. The spirit of a priest, the form of a warrior, brothers deciding which uniform is which, Sergeants resurrecting memory, as the dead rise, Officers taking charge of young, fresh, armies. Able lets Cain murder him. Because he believes in God. He has no idea Cain exists.
___________
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