

The Slip Away

Book Two of the Ved Ludo Series

K. Austin

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental.

The Slip Away

Copyright 2011 by K. Austin

Smashwords Edition

For the Black Frogs

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Big Star Jeans ... thank you. No matter how fat I've gotten over the two years I've been diligently writing, you continue to make me at least presentable. Even though I could buy a moderate palace in most third world countries for the same price as a pair of your wonderful Pioneer jeans, I'd much rather have the jeans.

Göt 2b glued blasting freeze spray ... thank you for taming the wild nature of my extremely oily, thinning hair. I will hang on to my youth for as long as I can rely on your trustworthy product, and then, when you can no longer make me look reasonable, I will shave my head and jump off a bridge.

Suncloud Sunglasses ... thank you for making my eyewear look expensive, even if it only costs fifty bucks for well-made polarized and relatively stylish sunglasses. Also, I appreciate the fact that you don't make horrific styles like some of your competitors, such as the ones with the orange lenses, angular ear arms and rimless bottoms.

To my ever present, most cherished possession, my iPod classic ... thanks, man.

My 2000 BMW540i, you are still the coolest car in the world, even if you cost a fucking fortune every time you break down. When you are running properly, you are timeless and classic.

To my newly acquired 1998 IBM ThinkPad, I'm not really in love with you like I wanted to be. The fact that you miss most of the a,h,t, and especially, space bar keys, really annoys the shit out of me. However, I ordered a case, a new battery, a new keypad, a cooling mat and an extension cord for you, so I'm stuck with you now. I hate Craigslist.

To my new fake glasses, you are super cool! I look forward to posing for pictures with you on my face, making me look exceptionally cooler than I am in real life (and somewhat studious as well).

Parliament Lights, Tramadol, Zoloft, marijuana, Starbucks' Venti Hazlenut Breve Lattes, Jack in the Box tacos, Madeleines, Skoal Wintergreen Xtra long cut, Canadian Mist, and, finally, Soma, thank you for shortening my life, but making it more worthwhile. Though I've given you all up for periods of time, know we will always be the best of friends.

To Facebook, thank you for reminding me just how uncool I really was. I would delete you entirely, but I'm not cool enough to be that bold. Damn you.

And to the Tattered Cover in Highlands Ranch, whose baristas are certainly tired of seeing me in my fake glasses, absorbing an entire table for hours at a time, I thank you sincerely. I'm sorry that I'm cheap and buy the English Breakfast Tea so I can get a free refill of the most plentiful substance on earth. I mean, with coffee refills at $0.69 a cup ... we aren't out here writing novels because we're rich, ya know.

To the living ... Mark Poole, Cherra Wilson, Kathy Markley, Frank Radke, Joe Liley, Diane Kraft, Sara Kramer, thank you for reading chapter by chapter, via email. (And still buying the books when they're published for full retail prices.)

To my wife, Emily; my son, Levi; my dogs: Ollie, Laz and Jake (Mr. Nice); and the cats: Pretty Kitty, Sashi, Annie-Nannie-Nannie, Miss Jibbs, I love our home in the mountains. Living remotely and at 9,000 ft. wouldn't be possible with just any combination of personalities, but together, we make it look easy.

To Pearl Jam, Chevelle, Joe Purdy, The Features, The Black Angels, Widespread Panic, The Grateful Dead, The Black Crowes, and that one song by Marc Anthony that I'm too embarrassed to mention by name, thanks for the soundtrack that I've been writing to since the beginning.

To my wonderful family, who I sincerely hope never read these pages, know that I love you all dearly. I do not take for granted the perfection of Kinderhook, the loving conditions that we grew up with, and paths we have followed since.

This book once contained some wonderful Pearl Jam lyrics that my publisher demanded I remove. It breaks my heart to cheat you, the good people of the world, such poignant words.

To Kathy Markley ... my friend and partner, thank you for seeing the other side of things. Your tireless effort (working on a percentage, nonetheless), makes me hope this thing actually sells, or I'll have to advertise one of my kidneys on Craigslist. I love ya, Sass, for everything you do, and everything you have been to me during this process.

Special thanks to Glenn and Cathy (Shoe) Stroud. Without the financial backing needed to produce books en masse, we might not have ever gotten the ball rolling. I am profoundly thankful to you both.

Frank, make me rich.

Mom, I'm serious ... you'll love me more if you don't read this.

Long live the days of the clear blue skies ...
Chapter 1

Slipping Away

Shadows are long and unrecognizable, well, unless you know exactly what you are looking at. They are just as abstract as clouds, and if you stare at them long enough, they become many things. The space that a shadow fills is a void. It's not a painted something. It's an empty something. Colors and heat disappear as the nothing takes over the something, leaving it without identity. The shadow has no identity.

Living in the shadows is simply living in the void. When colors are painted black, they do not reflect in our eyes any longer. When the colors are gone, when the emotions are blocked out by the absence, the will to survive drifts aimlessly away. What we hold so close to ourselves, the one bare desire to survive, plays out in our daily life more routinely than the need to pull in oxygen. Without the will to live, regular people become dangerous people. We count on people's desire to live, assuming it to be essentially the most similar quality that we share as a species.

Suicide was never the answer, but I have never questioned the nobility of it. The sheep, all walking in their own shit, babble something about it being cowardly as they eat from the hand in order to simply shit some more. They babble about their self-righteousness, while bathing in their own shit, yet if you disagree, they will put up some sort of biblical argument.

Suicide, my old companion, has always been my secret friend. I have always felt so connected to death that it hasn't frightened me the way it frightens them. In the closeness of death, when it comes right out and touches you, when you can see its face, you realize that it is not the face of a monster, but the face of your family. When death becomes something that loves you, something that understands you, the fear disappears. Isn't that the case with most things? Isn't it true, that we fear most what we understand least?

Walking hand in hand with my mortality has always made me wiser. When I learned what death really was, I felt privileged rather than threatened. I knew where my beloved was now; I knew not to listen for hauntings, or for things rattling around in a room that bears no breeze. I knew that death was, for the worst of it, unconcerned with the living. I knew that as that airplane broke her into pieces, her tears would be for naught. The coming apart, well, I'm not going to tell you that is a friend of mine, but the silence, the drifting ... out there is little concern for things cherished here.

I could tell you of a cold and calculated Ved walking through the world silently without a smile and without a sense of people, but that would not be the truth. The truth is never as interesting as the lie, but that may be more applicable to the storyteller than the seeking audience. The truth ... the lies ... they are all temporary. The worst part is the recovery; getting better is actually worse than being touched.

I didn't take too long to recover from the loss of ... well, you know. I knew that now she wasn't thinking about me. I knew now that none of it mattered to her anymore, and I felt like an asshole trying to convince myself that she was looking down on me, watching out for me ... That's just not the truth of it.

Anyone who has come close to dying, or especially those who have died and came back, will tell you something that you should remember, something you probably have heard but didn't really hear. They'll tell you that when they died, they experienced peace, an overwhelming peace that transcends anything they have ever felt before. They'll tell you that as they lay dying, they thought of their kids; they cried, longing to kiss their kids or their spouses one last time, but in death, they'll not mention that. Death comes as a warm hand, connecting to them, and electrifying them with peace and ... forgetfulness?

Is the burden of caring simply an attribute of the living? If that is the truth, if death brings us absence of concern like a warm blanket, does that mean we are misled while we are thriving? I have been this close to the dead four times in my life, close enough to know. I have been this close to my own death three times, shaking hands gripping the trigger and begging God to be merciful, begging Him for one more inch of movement from a nervous and trembling finger, only to hear my prayers echoing off the empty walls of my surroundings. No, don't tell me that suicide is cowardly. That is just the words of sheep walking through their own shit, so concerned with a handful of grain that tiny brains cannot grasp the enormity of the afterlife.

To say I had a death wish would be both true and untrue. In my mind, I suppose it is true, but then my idea of death varies from yours. You would think I wished to die, and that I lay awake at night dreaming of the one I lost and longing to be with her, but that's not it. My death wish was more passive than that. I didn't cry. I didn't write poetry and cut myself with razorblades in order to feel something; instead, I vanished into the shadows, into feeling nothing. I moved in, with bags packed like a vacation to Bermuda, settling in comfortably. In nothing, I was two-dimensional; I was alive and dead, somewhere in the limbo between them.

I didn't have a hard time being funny, being light, and talking to people the way I had always done. That was second nature to me, effortlessly simple. I didn't need a therapist to talk me off the ledge. I didn't dream of Heaven. I didn't fear a Hell. I just was.

People who knew me reached out to me, unable to believe I was OK. They'd tell me that they understood, and they'd relate to me with stories of people they'd lost, which were somehow supposed to make us brothers in survival. I endured all of it I could, but my award winning performances wouldn't satisfy them. They continued, the worst of them offering me assurances of their prayers, telling me, "I'm praying for you, buddy," and things like this. I knew the truth of it was complicated, and they had a hard time with knowing I'd lost someone to death; it made them unsettled; it brought them tremors of fear, wondering if they would be the next to lose.

Death reminds the living that it's out there waiting. Death makes them afraid. I was so tired of comforting words being whispered to me while an arm was wrapped around my shoulder or a hand drew small circles on my back, tapping occasionally. They were all so vulgar in the way they distanced themselves from the loss of life, as if death had no means of attaining them. I found it insulting to be talked to as a survivor. I wondered if in the afterlife there was any difference between a long life and a short one. I mean, what are a few years longer on earth when the scope of eternity cannot be measured?

I presented the same man as before when I walked out the door and onto the stage. Eyes watched me closely, wishing to see the tiny details they assumed I was trying to hide. They'd look at me long when the same gazes used to be quick. Even people who hadn't known me before, the ones who heard of my loss, watched me for signs of falling apart, but my recovery was simpler than that.

I came to terms with my life. I came to understand my death, and the dreams I'd been having stopped entirely. There were no more visits from her, at first. I didn't relive the days passed anymore, I didn't remember her, and I didn't even miss her. My pride, that had always been too large to fit quietly into the tiny box I'd built to house it, now encompassed me. My pride was to blame for my lack of emotion, as I knew her to be gone. Not invisible but present ... gone. She was enlightened now. She understood the depths of the afterlife; the mysteries revealed. She knew too much to ever come back, and I knew too little for her to ever relate to me again. It was simply over. I'd lost the key ingredient to being a normal human being; I'd lost the concern for my own mortality.

When what you know to be true separates you from the rest of the population, you become something of a sideshow. People who were abducted by aliens cannot fit any longer into the small circles of humanity. The people around them are afraid of the contagious nature of crazy, fearing it more than loss of limb. Crazy people are dangerous simply because their focus is placed in other directions. When one person differs on a primal level from the rest of the pack, they are quickly ousted, castaway, ostracized.

To speak of what I now knew would be suicide. No, I'd still live and breathe, but when I did so it would be under the watchful eyes of the people closest to me. They needed to see me grieving, they needed me to be predictable; so I compromised with them and gave them normalcy without predictability. I didn't cry; in fact, I don't think I ever did.

I welcomed the fog and rain to my day, and when I awoke with a hangover, I thought to myself that there was never anything so beautiful. The rain fell steadily on the parking lot outside my window, cleansing the planet, while small streams of it flowed unobstructed down the ancient windowpane. I looked through the streams of water onto the blurred landscape of black asphalt and faded tan buildings. The streams of water were moving from left to right. I adjusted my eyes, following the water as it moved sporadically through the streetside gutters.

The black asphalt looked new in the rain, so black, so dark and dead to sensation, so strong and durable. The hundred or so cars parked in the spaces (marked with old sun faded lines and peppered with garbage), sat completely still, shrugging the water off their backs. When the wind blew, the rain traversed the lot with a violent rage, making a cloud of gray water swirl in circles, like a child dancing to the music of an eternal lifetime of optimism.

I closed my eyes, forcing the thoughts away.

Turning around to look at my new room, I was never so alone. The other occupant of room 131 was gone for the weekend, or so I was told. I think that had initially comforted me, but an hour or two later, I realized I was living uninvited in someone else's space, and without his knowledge.

I admit that the first thing I had done was search his shit. I wanted to know who this guy was, and I didn't want the oral introduction. I wanted to know who this guy was. I wasn't planning on employing my gift for the cause; I was going to use it for my own purposes, as destructive as they may be. It was my gift, and it would serve my cause from now on.

I found his uniforms with the name Derrick sewn onto to the BDU shirts. That didn't mean anything to me, but now I had a last name to apply to the face I had created for him in my head. He was a country fan, and a rap fan for that matter, judging by the compact discs I'd found scattered atop his dresser. I saw some terrible garments tossed into his wall locker sloppily, and decided immediately this had been a mistake. Whoever Tom Derrick was, he was a slob who had bad taste in both music and clothing. Cross Colors, baggy SilverTab jeans, Chuck Taylors, and dirty white socks were just the beginning of the horrors. Beyond that, he had a Scarface poster that screamed of mediocrity, like mediocrity wrapped up in the search for identity. There was an acoustic guitar that I imagined was used to sing Boyz II Men songs, and a Harlem Globetrotters basketball that sat on his pillow as if he'd been tossing it into the air while lying on his back in bed.

This was a mistake, a disaster. Whoever this kid was, he wasn't going to like me very much; I would make sure of that. Confidence and indifference were a dangerous combination for a young soldier, making it conceivable to do unspeakable things without a hint of conscience. I lacked morality altogether, but I suppose when you are contemplating suicide, this is the proper state to be in.

I didn't want to help anyone in the self-discovery process. I would rather have a roommate who had already discovered he was moronic; someone resigned to being plain and monotonous instead of trying to achieve some higher self. What I saw as I scanned the room over and over again were the signs of a regular man, a man who had never accepted his individualism for that; instead, he was a man in transition, and I hated him for it.

My new roommate was gone by the time I showed up to the 82nd Signal Battalion to report to my first permanent duty station. Signal means communications, and though I didn't really have any idea what a communications unit did on a day-to-day basis, I was glad to at least know where the end of the road was for me. I'd arrived on a Thursday, only delayed thirty-six hours to attend the funeral. When I'd flown back into Fayetteville, NC, I'd grabbed a cab and headed straight to post. I hadn't cleared my unexpected trip to the Midwest with the Army; I'd just gone.

However, I'd beaten the bus from Benning to Ft. Bragg, making my disappearance unnoticeable. I reported to reception battalion and spent Thursday night with the rest of my mates from Benning, then reported to Captain Dillinger in Alpha Company at 82nd Sig on Friday morning at 0800 hours.

The 82nd Sig was a small battalion situated in one barracks building. Where most battalions occupy up to five buildings, we were one very small family. I noticed from the front, entering that Friday morning, that the building looked horrible. The grounds were as well kept as any other, but the building itself looked to be sixty years old, in disrepair, and lacking any cool architecture that might have made it look naturally older. This was pretty standard for the enlisted barracks; none that I'd seen thus far into my military career had any real oomph to them. The officers' quarters, on the other hand, were all red brick and looked to be a hundred years old in a cool way. They weren't perfect either, but the nature of those buildings made a little disrepair look warming, whereas the enlisted barracks and company areas were simple stucco buildings with ugly metal trimmed windows. Cracked foundations, rusted hand rails on the steps, sloppy paint jobs, and grass that'd worn thin before dying altogether, leaving ugly brown dirt spots that now, in the rain, looked like fucking quicksand—were some of the things I observed. Other than the lack of trash and the well cared for flowers and bushes, the place could have passed for abandoned.

Upon entering the building, I asked a couple of E-4 specialists where the office was. After getting directions, I headed down the long hallway toward the CO (commanding officer) and first sergeant's office. I recognized the smells immediately, identifying Army issue floor wax and Simple Green as the two main culprits. Beyond that there was the distinct scent of Glade-plug-ins, fabric softener, and something cooking in the DFAC. The hallway was a bland white in color, as if it had been bright white years ago, but had been scrubbed into an off white by diligent hands over the course of many ages.

The doors that lined the hallway were all brown. The offices were situated on one end of the building, and the rooms for the troops were everywhere else, making them all look the same. They were painted hastily and without being sanded first, evident because the paint looked thick and, in spots, had dried while running down the door. It looked sloppy to me, unprofessional, something I thought would be impossible in the Army where appearance was everything. When I got to the CO's door, I knocked and waited for his reply. I was expecting him to say "enter" in a military fashion, and then I would begin the process of standing at attention, announcing myself as present and ready for duty, and awaiting detailed instructions on what I should do with myself. This had been drilled into us over and over again at McClellan, and had always been a very formal and scripted procedure. I wasn't at all worried about forgetting my lines; too much emphasis had been put on this performance, so I felt pretty confident. I knew exactly what to say and when, when to assume parade rest, when to snap back to attention, when to salute, when to about-face and exit ... the works.

As I waited in the hallway for an answer, I imagined him reading over my file, hoping that there wasn't anything about the ladybugs in it. In my imagination, he'd be looking at my picture and thinking up the perfect spot for me in his company, smiling cautiously about the new soldier he had been entrusted with protecting for the next few years. But when he answered my knock, I realized this was going to be a little different than I had planned on. "Yo ... come on in," he said, sounding like a surfer or fucking Pauly Shore.

I thought I was in the wrong spot. Maybe this was a barracks door too, or maybe I'd gotten bad directions from that fucking E-4. Those goddamn E-4's, always thinking it's funny to pick on the new guys ...

"I said come on in. Jesus Christ, do I have to come out there and grab your hand?" I heard Pauly say from behind the door.

I entered. Behind the otherwise very bland desk sat the tallest Oriental man I'd ever seen. Even sitting down, he looked to be six feet tall. He had a pleasant smile and what I considered to be very long hair, for military standards anyway. I hadn't seen hair longer than a half-inch on anyone since entering the Army almost a year ago, well, with the exception of the females.

He stood up and reached out a hand to me. I was confused and immediately snapped off a salute, then reached for his hand in stumbling and awkward indecision. He'd gone from a shake, to trying to salute me back, but by the time he got his salute ready, my hand was back out in front of me to shake his hand. He reached for my hand, but of course I'd seen him salute, and my hand was no longer out in front of me, it was on my way to my head to salute ...

"Jesus. Make up your mind. You nervous or something?"

I couldn't believe the voice coming from him was his, even after watching him speak to me. It was eerie how much his looks contradicted his voice, not that I was expecting a broken English-Asian mix or anything, but he sounded like an eighteen-year-old kid from California.

"Sorry, sir," I said, finally finding the position of attention.

"Jesus Christ, man, relax. You're making me nervous. You always like this uh ..." He leaned in to read my name tag, "Ludo?"

"No, sir. Yes, sir ..." Once again, I spoke with perfect clarity.

"Relax, Ludo. Take a seat. Jesus man, you're not in basic training anymore. You need to act like a fucking seasoned trooper; this formal shit is gonna scare people."

"Roger that, sir."

He sat down first, and then gestured for me to do the same. He grabbed an orange soda can from atop his desk, held it to his mouth, and spit something into it. Placing the can back down, he grabbed a file off his desk, put his feet on top of a larger pile of other folders, reclined in his ornate leather chair, and said, "Ludo ... I see you're an NBC guy. Good, we need one."

Even after a few months of Nuclear Biological and Chemical defense training, I didn't remember what NBC stood for immediately. I agreed anyway, deciding I could be anything he needed me to be.

I was seated on a bright orange loveseat made of tacky plastic that was as stiff as a board. I sat rigidly, trying to figure out how casual I was supposed to be with my new commander. I didn't want to be disrespectful, deciding it was better he thought me too stiff and proper than too comfortable with him.

"You just came from Benning?" he asked, as if he didn't know the answer.

"Yes, sir," I said again.

"How was it? Tough?"

"Not really, sir," I said, realizing I should have said yes to that.

"Really?" He smiled. "You used to running in boots and BDUs?"

"No, sir, but I was an overfat in basic ..." I was hoping he'd know what I was talking about.

"Ah ... the hard way ... I see," he said, grabbing the spit can again.

A woman in BDUs, obviously pregnant, came into the office without knocking. She looked at me, was surprised to see me sitting there, gave me a quick and thoughtless, "Hi," and then turned to Captain Dillinger. "Sir, the jump got bumped. The pilots complained about the daytime flight ... They want to do it tonight at 2250 hours. That OK?"

I looked at her a second longer. She was an E-3, PFC, and she was so casual with him. It made me wonder if it were his baby growing inside her enormous belly.

"Fucking Air Force ... Fine, but I hate jumping at night. Those guys know it too ... I swear to God, Kelty, they do it to me on purpose," he said smiling, then grabbing the can again.

"OK, sir, I'll tell them. I'll tell 'em you're pissed about it though."

"Hell yeah. Tell them I'm throwing shit around in the office." He smiled.

"Roger, sir." She smiled. She looked at me. "New NBC guy?" she asked pleasantly.

"Yes, ma'am," I said, instantly realizing I'd just called a private first class, ma'am.

She smiled at Captain Dillinger. "FNGs huh?"

He smiled back. "Yeah, whaddya gonna do?"

After she'd shut the door that led directly into another office, I had to ask, "FNGs?"

"Fuckin' New Guys." He laughed out loud.

Captain Dillinger had Private Moses show me to my office. I didn't even know I would have an office, so I was shocked. I kept asking him, "Are you sure I have an office?" to which he replied, "Yeah, man, you have an office."

The office was decent size, had a big gray desk in the middle of the room, and over a hundred M-40 chemical masks hung on the wall. Dust clung to each of them, and some of them showed hand prints where the dust had been rubbed off by fingers. Maybe someone had hung them up, leaving clean spots where they'd handled them.

I was never a good student, and AIT hadn't been any different. Advanced Individual Training took up the majority of time we'd spent at McClellan. Basic was eight weeks long, and the rest of the time had been spent in classrooms learning the craft of NBC defense. I'd paid so little attention that I couldn't remember a single thing I'd learned as I stood there realizing I was responsible for the entire company. I was supposed to train them, inspect their masks, put them through the gas chamber semi-annually and generally be available to answer any and all of their questions. Fuck.

I was such a terrible student; I didn't know anything. Most of us weren't put into a unit like this; usually new NBC guys went to a chemical company full of NBC guys, where we would cut our teeth over the next three years ... Now I was supposed to take control of this room, this company?

After my tour of the NBC room, Moses took me back to Captain Dillinger's office. Dillinger told me that I was off for the weekend, but I needed to be ready for a jump at 1600 hours tonight.

"Jump?" I asked

"Yeah, you know those wings on your chest?" he asked, still smiling. What was this guy, the fucking Joker? He was always smiling ... Worse than that, it looked like a genuine smile every time. I would have preferred to be yelled at. With him, everything was spoken like it was a joke. I'd obviously known that I was in an airborne unit, but I didn't think I'd be jumping on my first day at my permanent duty station. I guess I'd thought that there would be a break-in period: some time to shake hands and get to know my company. Apparently not.

"OK, sir. I'll be ready," I said, trying to sound confident.

If I told you that I loved jumping, that wouldn't be true. It was a scary deal, and I knew that this one was an 82nd jump, which meant in the dark. The five jumps I'd done at Benning were all in the daytime without heavy equipment. Now I was jumping 82nd style, heavy, in the dark, and sixty-man chalks. I was terrified about doing this, but I couldn't let on to that. I figured it was better to just get it over with and be done with my first division jump. It had to get better than this afterward. I mean, how much more stressful could it get?

"Oh, besides your cherry blast, we leave for JRTC on Tuesday. You know what that is?" he asked.

I was confused. No, I didn't know what JRTC was, and what was a cherry blast? I asked.

He laughed hysterically at this. "You don't know what a cherry blast is? What are they teaching you at Benning these days?"

I didn't answer. I was tired of him already, and that creepy, cheeky smile of his.

"A cherry blast is your first jump in division. Like popping your cherry ... You wear a red helmet to let everyone know that you're the most dangerous person on the plane. No one wants to jump before you or after you. It's an initiation thing ... JRTC is a thirty-day field problem. We fly to Louisiana, jump into the field, live in the woods for thirty days, and then jump back into Bragg. It sucks. Thirty days in the jungles of Louisiana," he said, making air quotations around jungles. He continued, "I know it sucks, not knowing anyone, but you'll meet people when we get there. It's a big deal. We go once a year. It's hot, humid, full of bugs, and just generally awful. You're gonna love it."

I wondered if crying was inappropriate. I'd heard of JRTC, but I didn't know it was that bad. Joint Readiness Training Center in Ft. Polk, Louisiana, was supposed to emulate Vietnam, and truthfully, I imagined that the climate was probably very close. I'd never been to Louisiana, but I'd seen pictures of the Bayou, always with thick clouds of humidity hanging in the air above the very green landscape. "Oh, OK," I said, looking at my boots.

"Oh, come on, Ludo. You're in the Army ... Isn't this what you came here for, or are you here for college money?"

Now I smiled. "No, sir, not for college; in lieu of college."

"Aah ... one of those. All right, Ludo. Be out front at 1600 hours. We'll form up by the flagpole and then roll over to Pope."

"Pope, sir?"

"Pope Air Force base. Jesus, you are a cherry." He smiled. "Be ready for a little hell tonight. These guys love to fuck with the cherries. You'll make it through. Some guys have to be a cherry for weeks before they get their first jump in. You're lucky; you'll be initiated tonight. By the time we roll out for Ft. Polk, you'll be a regular trooper. Welcome to the Sig, Ludo."

He pointed at the door with a quick upward head jerk. I guessed that this was my cue to hit the road. I stood at attention and saluted. He did the same. I walked out of the office, where Moses was waiting to show me to Derrick's room.

"Cherry blast tonight, huh?" Moses asked.

"I guess so," I said, trying to act dismissive.

"Just suck it up. They'll fuck with you a little bit, then afterward they'll give you your blood wings, and then it'll all be over," he said sympathetically.

"Blood wings?" I asked.

"Yeah, they'll take a pair of pin wings, leave the backs off of them, and everyone in the company will take turns punching them into your collar. It's what we do here in division for cherries and for promotions. Every time you get new rank, they do the same. It's tradition; everyone does it. It's not as bad as it sounds."

Apparently, I was standing above a hole full of bad news. It was more like an abyss of bad things to come, and each time I wondered how much deeper shit I was in. Every time I told myself the worst was over, there was another thing to fear. The cherry blast was the first, and I was nervous about that, but JRTC took the cake. A month in the field with a bunch of strangers?

I'd have no friends, no job to do—or at least no idea about what to do in the job I had. I could look forward to being the FNG for the entire month, constantly being tested and picked on by these guys who I didn't know ... I calmed myself with the happy thoughts of dying on my jump into JRTC, or what they all called, "the box."

"Hey, what's Derrick like? Is he cool?" I asked cautiously.

"Cool? No."

"Wait, what does that mean?" I asked.

"He's a nice guy, but he's kinda ... You'll see. He'll be back on Sunday night. His parents live in Myrtle Beach. He goes home to his parents every weekend." He shook his head as if it was still hard to understand.

Entering Derrick's room, I noticed for the first time that it had begun to rain. The dismal parking lot outside my window reflected my desire to bolt. If I'd had a car, I might have run.

After Moses left me in my new room, I sat on the empty bed that Derrick was using as a storage spot for all his dirty laundry. I began tossing his shit onto his bed, hoping it wouldn't piss him off, but what else was I supposed to do with it? I couldn't expect him to have cleaned the room. He probably didn't know he was getting a roommate. As I sifted through his nasty clothes, I grabbed a T-shirt, noticing it was crusty. When I looked at it there was a white splatter across it that had dried, leaving a petrified semen stain. I was holding on to another man's semen. That's fucking perfect.

An hour after I'd gotten to my room, there were suddenly voices in the hallway. I'd had the TV on while I unpacked my duffle bag, trying to figure out how to tell the guys from Benning I wouldn't be able to make it over to hang out tonight, when I heard them. At first it was one guy, screaming nothing in particular, then more and more voices. I looked at the clock realizing it was lunchtime. I was starving, but feared having to sit by myself in the DFAC. I listened to the noises in the hallway attentively, feeling like an outsider. They were so foreign to me, all these people referring to each other by name, harassing each other, and having a good time just outside my door.

I sat on my bed, listening. Finally, I stood up and tiptoed (unnecessarily) across the hard concrete floor to my door and locked the deadbolt as carefully and quietly as I could. When the door was locked, I relaxed a bit, sat back down on my bed, and thought of the people from McClellan.

I thought of Jenney. She'd been at her permanent duty station for a month or so now, so this process was behind her. I wished I could talk to her, but I knew that wasn't an option. I'd chosen Johansen, and now Johansen wasn't ... Well, I couldn't talk to her. Jenney had heard the news about Johansen and the story I'd gotten was that Jenney had said something along the lines of, "Good, she deserved it."

Fuck Jenney. Women have the ability to be so cold. I mean, way colder than men. I could understand Jenney being less than thrilled with her buddy hooking up with her man, but she could have been so much more respectful. I almost felt sorry for her. Even the girl who had blabbed the story to Jenney, intentionally mentioning the affair we were having, thought Jenney was a bitch for reacting that way. It was one thing for her to be mad, but to be mad without expressing any sadness at all? That was unacceptable.

All at once, there was some talk of "Cherry" in the hallway. People were saying the word, one guy was screaming, "We have a fucking cherry?"

A minute later, there was a knock at my door. I walked to it cautiously and unlocked the deadbolt. As I opened the door, doing my best to look pleasant and non-threatening, I saw a red helmet sitting on the tile, just outside the door. On the side it said, I'm a fucking Cherry.

I smiled, not knowing what else to do. I looked at the faces standing just down the hall from me. There were at least twenty people looking at me like I was from another planet. When I went to step out into the hall, someone yelled from the back of the group, "Put the fucking helmet on, Cherry. Don't take it off til' you land on the DZ tonight."

I smiled again, thinking it was a joke. I knew then that it wasn't. They were all looking at me like I'd stolen something from them: their fun maybe? I leaned over and picked it up. Standing half in my room and half in the hallway, I placed the red helmet on my head. I felt something squish down on my head and recognized the smell immediately. Bengay. They must have squeezed more than one tube into the helmet as it dripped from all sides of my head, falling in globs onto my uniform. Some of it fell in front of my eyes and landed on my cheek beside my nose. The heat came immediately. My eyes blurred and watered from the chemical fumes of the gel.

I closed my eyes, afraid to trust myself in a reaction. I was breathing heavily as I yearned to bleed these motherfuckers. I would have run at them, and I would have torn their limbs off; I would have drunk their blood.

Today was not turning out to be a good day. I was too emotional, too dangerously emotional, and with little to lose, little to scare me, I could have seriously gone fucking crazy. I didn't know these people, and initiation or not, this was not the way it should be done. I understood that there were things I had to endure; I could handle that, but to be disrespected this offensively was crossing the line. I wouldn't be part of these things in the future, no matter how comfortable I got with these people. This was juvenile and in bad taste.

"Leave your door open," a bigger dude from the back said.

"Don't take it off, Cherry," another reminded me.

"Suck it up," a female voice said.

It was then that I heard laughter, familiar laughter. Sure enough, Captain Dillinger was standing on the opposite side of the hallway from the mob. He was laughing, again. I considered starting my rampage with him. I'd cut his fucking mouth off, toss it into my own, and swallow the fucking thing, making sure he never smiled again ... He'd scream in agony, but I'd be so fast with my blade no one could stop me. Once I tossed his lips into mine, I wouldn't chew; I would simply swallow. They'd get stuck in my throat; I'd need something to wash them down with ... blood.

I turned around and walked back into my room leaving my door open as instructed. I sat down on my bed, realizing this was basic training again; the mob was back, and this was my blanket party. I knew I had to take it this time and not react. They wanted me to fuck up. They wanted me to react. I would do neither. I sat on my bed that still had Derricks shit on it, leaned back against the concrete wall, closed my eyes, and endured the gel that was burning a ring around my head where the headband rested. The sensation was intense, and the smell was even worse. I thought of Mr. Larsen injecting me with his syringe and fought back the urge to kill people.

At 1530 hours, it was time to get ready for the jump. I nervously got my gear together, dressed myself in some wrinkly BDUs from the bottom of my duffle bag, put camo on my face, and walked out to the flagpole. My red Kevlar helmet shone in the gray and cloudy weather, but I had not taken it off all day. After an hour or so, the Bengay stopped burning and just turned greasy and disgusting feeling. I feared the acne outbreak that it would probably lead to, but refused to take the helmet off one time, regardless of whether I was alone or being watched.

I'd spent the afternoon reading East of Eden. I thought of Johansen a few times, glad she didn't have to see me now, shamed like I had been in our first weeks together. Worse than that, I didn't want to have to imagine her enduring the same things here on Bragg. It was better me than her.

I'd tried to sleep, but that was impossible. Awaiting this jump was torture and now on my way out to the flagpole, I was glad to be doing something. I was glad to be moving freely, not hiding in my room waiting. I was ready for whatever, and I had advantages that no one else had ... This operation didn't scare me.

When I got out there, no one was hanging out yet. The sky had turned lighter, but the gray remained. Everything was wet, and as I sat down on the wet grass, I was glad it was. It suited my mood just fine. The cold water seeped instantly through my BDUs, feeling like ... well, like cold water. It was such a sharp sensation, cold and clinging, that I lay back onto the grass, feeling the cold do the same on my back. My shirt stuck to my back, and when the cold water had warmed to my body temperature, I rolled over onto my stomach allowing the same process to happen all over again. This was odd behavior, even to me, but I knew that I was now somewhat a mystery to myself. Things I had been doing surprised even me, as if I was watching from the side, disconnected. I wanted to be uncomfortable; I wanted to suffer, wondering if I was becoming a masochist.

I wouldn't allow these people to make me beg. I'd take whatever they'd say to me, or do to me, silently. I wouldn't speak unless ordered to, and I vowed revenge on anyone who was especially horrible to me. The first of these people was Jeremy Martinez. He was an E-4 who'd been in the unit for three years and happened to be dating the "princess" of the company, Alyssa Sharpe. She was blond and pretty, a little thick in the middle, but I imagined she was still attractive naked. They'd come out to the flagpole together, holding hands like they were lobbying for prom queen and king.

Jeremy saw me in the grass and immediately started shit talking me. I thought that was pretty bold of him, especially since I was eight inches taller than him and outweighed him by at least forty pounds. Something about his aggressive posturing worried me. Maybe he was extremely popular, or maybe he had a posse that looked out for him, and if I fucked with him, they'd be out to lynch me. Otherwise, why would this guy be so upfront and bold? He didn't want to fight me. He thought I wouldn't hit him? What's the deal with this asshole?

Alyssa said nothing as he began berating me. She looked at me curiously, without giving away her feelings about this situation. As Jeremy called me this and that, I stared at her. She never looked away; she held my eyes. Finally, I turned mine to look at Jeremy who was now talking about me to three new faces I hadn't seen come out.

I obliged them. I stood, locking my arms behind my back, feet spread shoulder width apart, and stared straight ahead. He walked around me like a drill sergeant, looking me over. He referred to me as "Cherry" without even making an effort to read my nametag.

Everyone coming out assumed he'd made me do push-ups in the grass, attributing my wet clothes to his relentless badgering. Most of the guys coming out didn't say anything to Martinez at all, just ignoring us as they smoked cigarettes and talked freely about life.

Martinez did have a following though. Of the hundred jumpers, maybe twenty played "fuck with the Cherry" while the rest didn't pay any attention at all. Before long, I was being screamed at by a small group and doing push-ups and sit-ups for anyone who ordered me to do so. I said nothing as I did whatever I was instructed to do, and I could see the pleasure they were taking in ordering me around. I assumed that as long as I was making them feel good about themselves, they wouldn't really hurt me. I wouldn't, however, answer any questions, look anyone in the eye, or even show a single sign of anger. I just did what they told me to do when they told me to do it.

Before long, the first sergeant came out, immediately ending my abuse. He was a black man in his forties who looked like he could have had a career in professional wrestling. He was a monster of a man, with arms as thick as my legs, and teeth so white the glare from them made it difficult to see his dark features. He came over to me and shook my hand. He was gentle and warm, putting his hand on my shoulder and whispering to suck it up and get through it. I nodded slightly, letting him know that I understood and planned on being cooperative.

When he asked for volunteers to jump before me and after me, a big production was made of everyone saying no. Even the ones who had paid little attention to the spectacle being made of me a few minutes ago said no. Eventually, when the first sergeant made a big deal about the dangers of jumping with a Cherry, and begged the company to give him two volunteers, Martinez and Moses agreed. It was all scripted, well rehearsed, and executed like it'd been done a thousand times before. It had been.

When we boarded the plane five hours later, Martinez turned up the heat. He began fucking with my chute, acting like he was pulling my static line out, saying that there were problems with it ... just trying to scare me. It didn't work; every time I boarded a plane, I was ready to die. Since I had a peace about dying, the threats were funny to me, and it robbed him of the fun.

"Cool. I hope it malfunctions," I said dryly.

"Yeah? You do speak," he said.

"Yes, specialist, I speak, and I hope it malfunctions."

"We'll see about that when the doors open," he said with a smile and with eyes that looked at me closely to see if I was serious.

"Yeah, we will," I said with a smile to match his.

I considered telling him that I would take him with me, but I refrained from saying it. However, I knew if there was a way to take him with me, I would. I didn't need him pressing charges against me, or saying that I was threatening him. He did, after all, out rank me, even if only by a couple of grades. I didn't need any more enemies; however, Martinez was a little shit who got his ego from dating the prom queen. Attractive females were rare on Bragg, and in extremely high demand, so landing one was impressive.

He was the guy who held himself above everyone else and had been handed too much power. If it befell me to die today, I would, but if I could do it in his company, I'd gladly involve him.

When the doors finally opened after a very long five-hour flight, it was after 0100 hours. I didn't know that in division this was how it was done. The jump time really meant the departure time. The Air Force pilots wanted to get flight hours logged, so every jump came after a long and bumpy flight. I felt no nervousness when the doors opened, but when I went to stand up, I slipped and fell. It turns out that vomit is slippery, and in the one hundred degree heat that we'd been sitting in for the last few hours, some of these seasoned troopers had tossed their cookies. I put my hand down to try and push myself back up, slipping again, and landing face down in someone's supper. Motherfucker.

The light was about to turn green as I struggled to right myself. I couldn't. My pack was so heavy and the floor so slippery, it made it impossible. Martinez was yelling at me to get up, but not offering me any help. Finally, some of the guys in the next chalk stumbled forward to where I was still trying to get up, and lifted me off the ground. I thanked them, and they accepted my thanks with kindness. "No problem, Cherry. Martinez is an asshole."

I wanted to explore this last statement further, but in the darkness, the plane that had been offering an eerie red glow now showed a green one instead. The light had changed. I was jumper forty-one, making Martinez jumper forty, so when I turned to look at the door, I could see people exiting the door, but we hadn't moved yet. Just before Martinez took his first step toward the door, I grabbed his chute and pulled violently on it. He turned around to look at me, fear in his eyes, as I did my best to show concern.

"Oh shit, bro. Your chute is sticking out."

He screamed over the roar, "What? Don't fuck with me, Cherry."

"I wouldn't, bro."

He turned back to the front, and the jumper before him was wobbling toward the door. There was a growing gap between Martinez and the guy before him. Martinez scrambled toward the door, and I followed closely behind. He rushed toward the front of the plane where the jumpmaster was controlling static lines. Martinez stopped in front of the jumpmaster, pointed to his chute, and screamed at the jumpmaster; it was inaudible to me. I pushed forward too, knowing we'd lost our sequence. This was it, the real deal. When I went out the door, I knew I had a fifty/fifty chance of colliding with the guy jumping opposite me. I was in the right door waiting as Martinez showed his back to the jumpmaster and safety. They were not interested in his dilemma; they wanted him out the door. Martinez was standing with his left side facing me as I neared the door. I closed the gap between us, trying to decide if I was supposed to go without him, or wait for him to go. I stopped, looking for instruction from the jumpmaster who was screaming to Martinez to "Get the fuck out." Martinez, who felt like he wasn't getting his point across to the jumpmaster, turned again, pointing his left side to me as he addressed an unconcerned jumpmaster.

"Get the fuck out or I'll kick you out," the jumpmaster screamed.

"You don't understand; my chute is pulled ..."

I was ready. No matter what he'd done to my chute, he hadn't gotten the satisfaction he was looking for; I hadn't been scared at all. Without even considering the gravity of my actions, I raised my right foot and placed it against his side. When I thrust it forward, Martinez disappeared out the door. The jumpmaster looked at me, with my bright red helmet on, but before he could say a word, I was gone.

Before Martinez had even cleared the door, I was out there with him, no more than a couple of feet between us. We fell through the prop blast and into the cold night. We crossed the back of the plane, missing the left door jumper by less than a foot. I didn't even see him screaming toward me until I heard him pass me. Just as the opposite jumper cleared me, my chute opened, pulling my groin hard enough to let me know I was going to live. When my chute opened, the noise fell away. It was suddenly quiet. No more wind rushing past me. No more sounds of a noisy plane; just me hanging by a cloth in the sky. Martinez began screaming at me, threatening to kill me when we touched down. I said nothing, anticipating needing this threat for a self-defense case. Everyone in the sky could hear him swearing at me as his voice carried across the drop zone in the dead of night.

"Slip away, shit bag!" he screamed at me from somewhere beneath me in the darkness.

I tried to pull a diagonal slip on my chute, but instead of feeling any tension on the diagonal, it felt like I was pulling the chute down. I looked from up, to down, realizing I had crossed at a diagonal and was now coming through Martinez's chute. I was heavier than he was, significantly so, making my chute fall faster than his. Since we'd jumped so close together, it was only a matter of seconds until my feet touched down onto the top of his canopy.

We'd learned that the proper thing to do at this point was to run off of the chute, literally. The problem with this solution was that I wasn't standing on top of his chute, like a patio ... I was falling through his chute, pretty well guaranteeing that we were about to become tangled.

"Slip to the left, Martinez!" I screamed.

"You slip away!" he yelled back, not seeing me now just a foot or so above his head.

"Hey, dumbfuck ..." I said, almost beside him now.

"Holy shit!" he began his left turn.

A second later I was free of him, and I was initially directly beside him, but now I was falling below him. As soon as he saw me off to his right, he released his slip. I fell below him as he drifted across the top of my chute. Once again, we were in a bad position.

Just as I began to wonder if this would collapse his canopy, I heard it happening. He'd floated directly above me, falling into the vacuum my downward chute was making above it. As one chute scoops the air around it and pulls it down, there is no air above it to support another canopy. The wind is being forced downward, like an eddy in water currents. With the air pushing against my chute, the spiraling air above me was now pushing downward, instantly collapsing his chute as he began to streamer.

I heard his chute chattering as the canopy closed. He was below me a second later and then I heard a popping noise. His chute had reopened. When it did, he came to an abrupt stall as his current now collapsed my canopy. This is called leapfrog and the last one to the ground wins.

I tried to scream, realizing my sudden fear. Suddenly, death from a parachuting accident didn't seem the best way to go out, after all. I wouldn't have enough momentum to kill me, so I was looking at some broken bones, maybe a fucked up back ... not sudden and painless death.

I didn't have time to say anything before my chute popped back to life. I tried to pull a right slip, but he was already below me now. Pop.

He began to drift left, giving me a partial lift, until he broke the cycle. By then I was a hundred feet off the ground. Pop. My chute reopened completely, just in time to smash the ground—hard.

I rolled over, taking a mental inventory of any damage I'd done to myself. I was OK. I smiled.

Martinez had landed somewhere behind me. By the time I popped my chute loose and started to stand up, I heard feet getting close, moving quickly, and then I heard, "Arrrghggg."

Instinctively, I ducked my head, tucked my chin against my chest, and crouched a little. I didn't even know what was happening, but as I began to crouch, I saw a flash of movement. Legs and boots came into view, running toward me, then a crash and suddenly Martinez's balls were colliding with my hip. My Kevlar helmet had caught him under his chin, hitting him like an uppercut, slamming him backward. His forward momentum carried him forward, while his head rotated backward toward the ground, landing first.

He just lay there motionless.

I didn't even fully understand what had happened. It took me a second to realize that he was attacking me, even after the collision.

I didn't bother to tell anyone about the Martinez thing. I packed my chute, got my stuff together, and headed toward the rally point. If the dumbass wanted to try and fight me, he could just lay there until he gained consciousness or died ... whatever. I had little concern for the guy, living or otherwise. But I did know this: if he came back looking for more revenge later, I'd be willing to give him a run for his money.

We waited for him, and another guy who'd hiked the wrong direction off the drop zone, for about an hour. The entire company was standing around talking, smoking cigarettes, and occasionally yelling their names. Martinez showed up before Lester, saying very little about what had delayed him.

Back at the company area, I was given my blood wings. Everyone in my platoon took a shot with the bottom of their balled up fist, pounding the little needles into my collarbone. It wasn't as awful as I had imagined, but the couple of times I felt it sticking into my bone hurt me psychologically. A little blood, and a lot of bruising was worth the comradery I felt with my new platoon afterward. Some had heard about booting Martinez out of the bird, and many "attaboys" were whispered into my ear. Martinez wasn't that well liked after all, and even Alyssa, the princess, slapped me on the ass and said I'd done well.

The first sergeant and commander were the last to pound my wings, and the first sergeant hit like a hammer. I made a mental note to myself to stay on this man's good side, as he would mop the floor with me if I ever challenged him.

The next morning I woke up to take a leak at about ten o'clock. As I walked the hallway toward the bathroom, Martinez stepped out from it. I thought he was going to do something to me, but then I quickly noticed the neck brace around his neck. He'd been treated for whiplash sometime during the night. When he saw me, he said nothing, put his head down, and walked past me.

"Good morning, specialist," I said with a smile as I turned into the latrine.
Chapter 2

Butterfly

Tom Derrick was definitely a little odd, but threatening, he was not. All weekend long I was stressed out about him coming back and finding me just chilling in his room, watching his TV, lying on what used to be his spare bed, and utilizing one of his blankets as my sole source of protection from the funky mattress. With the exception of said blanket, I had been lying on the bare mattress that I had uncovered from beneath the pile of spank rags and dirty clothes, which might not have been so bad, but shit, the thing stunk of an onion-like body odor and deep rooted mildew from the countless months it'd been buried. I had no blankets of my own, and much thought had gone into whether or not I should borrow his. I debated walking the two miles to the PX in the rain and back, or simply using his for two days ... The problem with blankets that smell badly is that sooner or later, no matter how hard you try not to, you eventually find the blanket pulled up to your face in order to seal in the heat as well as possible. It wasn't even that cold outside, maybe seventy degrees, but inside the concrete building, the dampness turned to a chill.

The rain was relentless. I spent hours on that lonely Saturday looking out the window onto the parking lot, thinking about my life, where I had been, where I was going next ... It eventually became OK, being completely alone I mean. It got to be a rather peaceful feeling. I find sometimes that in absolute solitude, you realize exactly how fond of yourself you are. Generally speaking, I have always rather enjoyed my own company, but I suppose that when things are happening and you are moving through life with a sort of ignorance, momentum carrying you from one event to the next, one day to the next ... you lose touch with the person you are.

I spent the weekend listening to the Vitalogy album, playing a mental rock video, featuring yours truly, in my imagination. I took the highlights from the last year of life and placed them in a slide-show, featuring the happiest of times to the happiest of songs, and the sadder moments played to the softer songs. With Pearl Jam, I always found a sort of depth, even in the faster songs, which could be played in sad times or in happy ones.

After passing Martinez in the hallway that morning, I went to my room and called my mother collect. She was so thrilled to hear from me that I forgot for a moment how sad I had been in order to even make that call. Generally, I talked to my mother when one of two things was happening: either I was depressed, or I realized that it had been more than a month since I talked to her last. I'd been so mobile for the last year that she still had no definitive way to call me, making it my responsibility to always contact her.

Talking to her had cheered me up as I refused to send her any signs that I had been depressed. I never let on that I was having problems with people, I never sounded lonely, and I always avoided discussing my love life. I wanted my mother to be able to relax, which was something I know she struggled with that entire year while her son was in a constant state of motion. Now that I had a place to call home, an actual address, I wanted to let her know, but the next sentence would have to be something about JRTC and the fact that I wouldn't be at my new permanent address for the next month or so.

"Hello, this is Cheryl," she said pleasantly.

"Mother ... it is your only son calling you," I said in a robot-like way that was intended to be funny originally, but ended up just sounding strange.

"My son!" she screamed into the phone. "Dave ... Dave ... it's my son!" she yelled even louder without covering the microphone on the hand-held, sending painful reverberations into my eardrum.

"Mom ... sheesh ... take it easy; you're killing my ears."

"Son, my son, my son ... How are you? Where are you? Are you at Bragg?" she asked in rapid-fire.

"Yeah, I'm at Bragg. I got here yesterday. I would have called you, but I had a jump last night."

"A jump? Already? With whom? What unit?"

"I am officially in the 82nd Signal Battalion. I reported here yesterday at eight in the morning and had to jump last night at one in the morning."

"Oh my goodness. How was it? Dave, he did his first jump in the 82nd last night! Can you believe it? After he reported at 8 a.m., they told him he had to jump that night! Can you believe it, Dave?"

I wanted to ask her to talk to me now and give Dave the SitRep (situation report) after, but decided not to ruin this for my mother. I was annoyed, not with her talking to Dave really, just with myself and my place in the world. I didn't want to take it out on her. I wanted to be kind to her and excited with her, but I'd been through a hell of a week. I wanted to be comforted, not to pretend to be happy and at peace. I wanted to tell her the truth, but knew it was smarter to keep it from her, for her sake.

"Have you made any friends yet son?" she asked, always considering me gifted at the art of making people's acquaintances.

"Uh ... yeah. Last night I hung out with my new friend Jeremy. He jumped me out the door for my cherry blast ..." Oh shit, now she'd ask what that was ...

"Your what?" she asked.

"Uh ... it's called a cherry blast ... It's your first jump in division. It's sort of like an initiation, but it's pretty benign."

"Cherry blast?" asking again to be sure she heard it right. I knew where my mother was at that exact second; I could almost picture her there. My mother was a journal keeper, and it was so important to her that any important conversations she had on the phone meant that she had to be sitting at the kitchen table with her journal open so she could write down the highlights of the conversation. She did this routinely, writing down anything she thought would be important to tell people about later, or even more often, things she thought she would later pray about. As strange as it sometimes was to have to spell things out to her over the phone, once I did so, she would never forget it. When I called her, she would open up to the "Shelly" page in her phone record book, asking me questions about the things she had written down the last time we had talked. It made her the most attentive person I talked to on a routine basis, and she never forgot an acronym or the name of a piece of equipment, allowing me to talk to her like she was a soldier herself.

"Yeah, ma, cherry ... It's because we have to wear a red helmet on our first jump ... It sort of tells people that you are new and possibly dangerous."

She laughed, and then told Dave the story while I waited.

"So was it OK?" She wanted to know.

"Yeah, fine. No issues whatsoever," I lied.

We talked for a few more minutes before I told her about JRTC. When I did open that can of worms, I had to spell so many words for her that I thought I would never get through it. She wasn't happy about the JRTC thing, as if she had to go through it with me, but her real concern was simply that I would be out of contact for a while.

I told her I'd write to her and keep her up to speed on the comings and goings. I told her I'd be sure to spell everything correctly so she could journal it all, but on the flip side of that I explained that I'd expect her to know these acronyms when I got back.

She laughed and told me she loved me repeatedly. She told me that Dave loved me too, but I always wondered why he never wanted to talk to me on the phone. I didn't doubt his loving me, but I knew that out of sight, out of mind applied to everyone, no matter how well intentioned they were.

About an hour after that, I was unpacked and lying in my new smelly bed, contemplating beating one out, when there was a knock at my door. Startled, and also thrilled to have not begun touching myself yet, I got up somewhat nervously and walked across the cold tiles in my bare feet. When I opened the door, PFC Moses and another guy were standing in the hall wearing jeans and T-shirts, making them almost unrecognizable to me at first. When I opened the door, I wondered if maybe they were Martinez's lynch mob, but thought better of Moses who I'd begun to think was a good guy. He was.

"Hey, man, we're gonna go get some lunch at the DFAC; you wanna come with?" he asked.

I considered his proposition, trying to see any hidden agendas they might have, but nothing turned up. Maybe he was just reaching out to me. If that were the case, I needed to be as welcoming as I could possibly muster.

"Yeah ... uh ... definitely. Let me toss some pants on." I smiled nervously, trying to think of a justifiable reason to be in boxers and a T-shirt at twelve thirty in the afternoon.

A minute later, I had a pair of jeans on, unlaced brown leather boots, and my old Grateful Dead shirt, which was now my prize possession from a life before the Army. We walked to the DFAC, stopping to talk to all the people who knew and apparently liked Moses. The other guy, Specialist Luke Jayson, was a good-looking kid who I hadn't seen around before. I later learned that he had gotten a DUI on-post the day before I arrived at the Sig. I also learned that if you get a DUI on-post, it doesn't go on your civilian driving record, but the penalties are still pretty steep. Luke said he would lose three grades when he was finally Article 15'd in a couple of days. That meant that SPC E-4 Jayson would soon be a buck private just like me.

Luke also told me that he had forty-five days restriction and forty-five days extra duty, which would be suspended while we were at JRTC, then effective again when we returned.

"Long story short, I'll be around the barracks, a lot." He smiled.

Luke was the coolest guy I'd met since ... well, ever. He was handsome and funny, but he carried the lightness of Nic; that sort of care-free-shrug-my-shoulders lack of concern that I found so appealing. I learned that he was from Spokane, Washington, after I mentioned something about my love of Pearl Jam. He went crazy.

"I love Pearl Jam, bro ... All these queers around here are listening to Candlebox and Anthrax ... Who listens to Anthrax?"

I agreed. Watching Luke interacting with people was interesting to me. Even with my most analytical observation, I saw nothing false about him at all. I mean, he wasn't all things to all people, seeming somewhat on the outside of the group in the sense that he didn't struggle to interject into conversations. He didn't demand that people notice him, but he was so genuinely human that I couldn't find fault in his persona.

I am one who struggles to be seen and heard. It's always been an intricate part of the presentation I put forth. My struggle to be recognized for what I want to be recognized as requires constant effort and monitoring.

Luke didn't play the crowd; he didn't try and put his best foot forward, so he seemed to most people, cool and quiet. He was a little quiet perhaps, but I knew upon meeting him for the first time that he was a lady-killer; he was the all-American boy with his stunning good looks, his sensible style, and his being slightly removed from the spotlight.

Luke and I hit it off, and before we were finished with lunch that Saturday afternoon, I knew we were going to be good friends. I could sense it, and I was thankful that here on Ft. Bragg, not a living soul knew me well enough to know anything about my past. Ved Ludo could be whatever he said he was—no one could disprove a single thing, no one could recall a single story from my past that would embarrass me, and I could transform into the butterfly that had always eluded me.

Luke and Moses had to go run some errands after lunch. Everyone who'd been in the unit for a while, and had a life, needed to prepare for their departure to JRTC. All weekend long the cars in the parking lot were coming and going. People were carrying white shopping bags in their hands as they ran from the cars to the barracks, trying to remain as dry as possible. Women were showing up in the barracks and disappearing into the rooms as each trooper gave his woman a long goodbye. The people kept moving around me, and the motion created a buzz about the building—a buzz that I was not a part of. I sat quietly in my room, watching Derrick's TV, and looking out the window.

I kept hoping that Luke would come back down to my room and hang out with me. Every time I heard guys talking in the hallway, I would hope it was Luke on his way to my room. Sometimes I'd even walk out of my room and go to the bathroom, just hoping to see him in the hallway. Maybe if I engaged him there, he'd want me to hang out with him. He never came back to my room, and I never left the building for the entirety of the weekend.

When Sunday evening came around, I feared Derrick's return. I was uneasy about having to meet him like this—coming back to the barracks after a long weekend at his parent's house and unexpectedly finding me in his room. If he didn't know I was coming, and apparently he didn't judging by the condition of the room when I found it, he wouldn't be thrilled about finding me lying in the spare bed.

I knew that it didn't really matter what he thought about it. When push comes to shove, the barracks belong to the government and he's a guest there just as much as I am; but still, I didn't want anyone else hating me yet. I needed a little time to find my place, and to settle my equilibrium. Once I found my place and my people, I could care less about the way people thought of me, but for now, I really just wanted to get along. I wanted to sleep. Nerves and stress make me extremely tired, and to say that I was nervous would be an understatement. I had to be in formation Monday morning, standing out there with the entire company, trying to settle myself in as the entire battalion prepared to leave for the jungle. This wasn't the best time to be looking for a routine, a pattern I could adjust to.

At about 10 p.m., I heard keys rattling outside my door. I sat up in my bed with a start, trying to figure out what I should be doing when he came in. Cleaning? Relaxing?

As I struggled to decide what pose to be in, I heard the door handle turning. The door creaked open a few inches then stopped. Someone in the hallway was talking to Derrick and he stopped halfway into the room to respond. A second after that, he came in the door, looked at me as if I'd been living there for the last three years, and said, "Hey, what's up, man?"

"Good, bro, you?" I said, standing to shake his hand. I'd decided on lying in bed and acting like I hadn't heard him entering. Why? I'm not sure. He didn't seem to notice my odd response.

We shook hands, and I was relieved to notice that he didn't shake hands like a sissy. He was a little taller than me, skinny, and harmless looking with dopey ears and a monster of a nose. In fact, I was so taken aback by his nose that I stared at it a second too long, catching him noticing my gaze when I finally met his eyes again. Even after being caught looking at the thing, I still kept looking at it. Between his huge nose and his floppy ears, I decided immediately that short hair was not something that worked for everyone. I wondered if he had a girlfriend, and if he'd been overcoming these facial features his whole life. I was suddenly glad that my biggest issue had been my weight and that after losing a few pounds, I was a relatively attractive man. I suppose, until this very second, I had taken that for granted, thinking that I was sure Tom Derrick had never struggled with his weight, yet he'd struggled against his looks for the entirety of his life. His issues couldn't be resolved by dieting or wearing a good pair of jeans. His issues required a doctor, a chisel, and a twenty thousand dollar reconstruction.

I immediately felt sorry for the guy, even before I knew if he was an asshole or not. It seemed to me that he couldn't be, with his cartoonish facial attributes; it seemed impossible that he be anything other than genuinely kind and sincere. I was correct in my assumptions. He was both of those things, and by the time we'd talked for five minutes, I felt superior to him and somewhat protective of him. His kind nature made him seem vulnerable to me, and I wanted to hug the kid and tell him that I would watch out for him in the future. That fucking nose ... Holy shit!

After introducing ourselves and talking quickly about the weather, where we were from, and how long we'd been in, I apologized for using his TV and blanket. I explained that it had rained all weekend, and without a car, I didn't want to walk to the PX to buy a new blanket. I promised to wash it and return it to him in a day or two.

"Man, don't even worry about it. It's yours. I have plenty. And as far as the TV goes, you can watch whatever you want, whenever you want," he said warmly.

"Thanks, man, I really appreciate it."

"Hey, bro, I also have a ..." He turned and looked in his wall locker for something, finally turning and tossing me a white sheet. "Here, it's a mattress cover. You don't want to lie on that thing like that ... These mattresses are fucking nasty." He smiled.

I put the cover on my mattress while he unpacked his weekend bag. He didn't mention the large pile of his dirty laundry and cum rags that I'd heaped up on his bed, pretending to not even notice.

"Hey, did you have to jump with third platoon on Friday night?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure did," I said with a hint of something.

Catching it, he looked at me. "Was it OK? Everything go as planned?" he asked.

"Yeah, for the most part. My cherry blast, ya know?"

"Yeah, sucks huh?" he asked.

"Yeah ... well, it turned out OK." I smiled.

"Who jumped you?"

"Martinez," I replied evenly.

"Oh shit!" He looked at me as if I'd just cut my arm off. "And it was OK?"

"Yeah, he tried ... it uh ... didn't work out all that well for him."

"You gotta tell me the story." He laughed, incredulous.

I spent the next half an hour recounting the tale. When I was done, he was beside himself. He smiled the entire time, looking at me with envy, and waiting for me to spit out the next sentence. As I did, his facial gestures changed with each word, following me so closely that I thought he would fall forward onto his face. When I finished the story, which I had kept from becoming too extravagant, he was amazed.

"That is the fucking coolest thing I have ever heard. That guy is such a prick; I don't know why no one has ever killed him ... I bet he's pissed, bro ... Oh my God, I bet he's thinking up ways to kill you right now ... He's not used to being made an asshole out of, but he makes assholes out of everyone else, constantly."

"Wait, does he still fuck with people, even if they've been here for a while?"

"Oh my God, yeah! Every day he takes shots at me. He's like a tenth grade jock, man, constantly putting people down. Everyone hates the guy; some just go along with him because they're afraid not to."

By the time I fell asleep that night, I had a new mission. I was going to change the reputation of Jeremy Martinez. I was going to fuck his girlfriend, beat his ass until he spoke to me with deference, and protect my roommate from any more abuses.
Chapter 3

Holes

The barracks, which I hadn't gotten familiar with before JRTC, seemed like home sweet home upon our triumphant return from godforsaken Louisiana. Thirty days in that place had been enlightening and terrible, wonderful and beneficial, boring and exciting. I would tell you of all the great things I'd learned in my time there, but the truth is I sat in a foxhole for eight hours at a time, looking out on an empty field from behind an M-60 machine gun that I never once got to fire.

I'd learned the names of everyone in my platoon, the damage that a brown recluse bite causes, how to smoke a cigarette like a fucking truck driver, and finally, that scorpions make a wonderful crunching sound followed by a distinct squish when you step on them in the dark of night. It's truly an unmistakable feeling, the resistance that the exoskeleton provides at first, followed by a sudden collapse as the guts shoot out from under your boot in one direction or another. They are hideous little bastards in the daytime, let alone feeling something with sharp little feet crawling on your neck at night, only to investigate with your hands and discover what feels like a miniature lobster poking around under your shirt. Yes, Louisiana is a god-awful place to spend a month in the woods, especially when your month exists in eight-hour intervals underground. Eight on, eight off ...

The ten-hour flight from Bragg, around Colorado, and back to Ft. Polk was the stuff that nightmares are built upon. Ft. Bragg was a balmy ninety-three degrees when we loaded our C-130s, making the temperature inside the aircraft approximately one hundred degrees. Of course when we climbed to altitude, the temperature dropped a bit, but the last two hours of the flight were flown (NOE) nap-of-the-earth, which is Air Force talk for fucking-close-to-the-ground. In fact, the idea was to fly 200 feet above the ground, so when there were no trees, we flew 200 feet above the flat plains; and when trees came along, we pulled up high enough to stay 200 feet above the trees. This might not sound that daunting, but after two hours of riding the C-130 rollercoaster in the humid night air at 200 knots during a long flight where movement was restricted, I assure you, we were in rough shape.

To compound the discomfort, we made this incredible voyage sans water. Some butter-bar lieutenant had forgotten to bring water for the troops to drink, so before too long, the guys packed into the rear of the bird began to dehydrate. A couple hours later, we all began to dehydrate, including the jumpmaster and safety. Finally, when we were screaming for water and ready to mutiny, the Air Force staff began filling tiny Dixie cups with water and passing the cups back. Now, this too sounds all good and dandy, but let me explain this a little further.

Imagine two park benches placed two feet apart and facing each other. Now, instead of them being regular length park benches, stretch them to be a hundred-feet long. Soldiers sat in these benches facing each other, with monster rucksacks sitting on their laps. If my rucksack is resting directly on my lap, the guy across from me has his stacked on top of mine, making it impossible to even see him. This is how we sat on the birds. When the forgetful lieutenant began passing the Air Force water back, each soldier would take a sip of the water and pass the cup.

We were caked in waxy face camo, dispensed from tubes of green, brown, and black and then smeared onto our faces in stripes. The camo was thick and sticky going on, but as our faces began to sweat, the camo would liquefy, sometimes dripping off our chins. As the tiny Dixie cups were passed from one soldier to the next, making their way to the back of the plane, this nasty camo-sweat would drip into the cup. By the time I got my first cup, I was parched, that is, until I looked at the water. Whiskers and green wax floated on top of the cup, and I quickly decided that before I became desperate enough to drink that water, I would certainly drink my own urine. I wasn't the only one to come to that conclusion. We refused the water, thinking that if we got dehydrated enough to become immobile, we wouldn't have to jump. Looking back on it now, I can say with certainty that was a serious mistake.

When we finally crossed over Leesville, Louisiana, we were getting close to the DZ. Leesville is to Ft. Polk what Fayetteville is to Ft. Bragg, and in our briefing about the jump, they'd told us that after we crossed over Leesville, we were just a few minutes from the drop zone. They'd described the drop zone as sandy with some occasional trees and a few lines of barbed wire fencing (that they'd suggested we avoid, but in the dark we all knew that wasn't really a decision we could make). Also, the DZ was at the very most a forty-five second pass, meaning we had forty-five seconds to get forty-five troopers out the door. To go before or after that would guarantee landing in the trees that surrounded the cleared DZ.

Now, crossing over Leesville, the doors opened up and the air came rushing in. Most of the troopers who were farther back in the bird than I was were already suffering from heat stroke. We, the lucky ones, were simply suffering from heat exhaustion; the major difference was that we could actually stand up, while they could not.

I wanted off that fucking bird desperately. I would have gone without a chute altogether as long as I could get off the bird that smelled like vomit and feces, which were the two prevalent substances that were coming out (uncontrolled) of the troopers in worse condition than I.

When we were given the instruction, "First chalk, stand-up," we tried. My legs were asleep and my head pounded from a raging migraine that had started a few hours earlier, but as I struggled to get to my feet, my head felt like it was going to explode. I was jumper thirty-eight in a forty-five-man chalk, and more than anything else on earth, I wanted to be jumper number one.

When we got closer to the DZ, the jumpmaster began his series of safety checks. One of those checks is to literally hang outside the door, searching the ground for designated markers in order to report to us the timeframe before green light. I was far enough back that I hadn't been able to see the jumpmaster, but apparently he too had been complaining about heat exhaustion and when he went to do his check of the ground, he fell straight out of the door. Just like that, we were now without a jumpmaster.

The safety, who's like an assistant jumpmaster, marked his position and hung out the door to see if the jumpmaster's canopy had deployed. It had. He was hanging in the sky, somewhere above the small city of Leesville, on his way to an unknown DZ of his own.

Just like that, before we even knew what had happened, the lights turned green. The Air Force uses radar to determine when we are over the drop zone, but it isn't their job to figure in wind speed and direction. Without a jumpmaster to determine the drift of a trooper, it's a risky move to simply exit just because the light is green.

No one moved immediately when the light came on. The first jumpers were afraid to make that decision. There was no jumpmaster to control the dangerous static lines, no one to control our one-second intervals, and most importantly, no one to yell, "Go, go, go."

We started screaming it ourselves from the back of the chalk. Seconds had already passed, meaning that already numbers 41, 42, 43, 44 and 45 would be going out the door on a red light as the drop zone was already passing us by and no one had gone yet.

"Go motherfuckers, go goddamnit!" we were screaming, yet still, the first jumper waited.

A second later, we started to push. The troopers bumped into one another, and the second jumper finally reacted, grabbing the first jumper and carrying him out the door. By the time the first two fell away from the plane, we were more than ten seconds into the DZ. It was absolute chaos from then on.

We went out the door in gaps of less than a foot apart. By the time I was six men from the door, the lights went red, meaning we were slap out of the DZ. We pushed on.

When I finally got to the door, I saw the static lines flopping around wildly without the jumpmaster's arm to contain them. I jumped out the door in the most dangerous exit posture ever, but made sure to clear the static lines.

Before I landed in the trees, which looked like a cloud of black from above, I heard the other ten or so guys landing in them. These were the guys who'd jumped before me, meaning that we were way off the DZ. I heard the grunting and thumping as troopers crashed through the branches, screaming curses and expressions of pain. As I broke through the tops of the trees, the very first branch I crossed slapped me square in the balls, hard enough to break the branch in half. After I grunted, I pulled my legs together and assumed the tree-landing position, which involved covering your face with your forearms. I broke through branch after branch, trying to differentiate my landing from those coming in behind me. When my chute finally snagged on the top of the tree, I jolted to a stop, except the slight bouncing as the branches above me struggled to hold the weight. I was alive; in fact, besides my headache and my balls, I felt pretty good.

I could not tell how far above the ground I was suspended. It looked like a long way, but it was a moonless night and we were, after all, in the trees. Rather than gambling with the fall from the tree to the earth, I decided I was comfortable where I was. I stayed there for the rest of the night, talking to the guys hanging beside me. We smoked cigarettes and dreamed of Gatorade as the hours passed. At some point I drifted off to sleep, finally giving me some respite from my aching head.

When the light from the cloud-diminished sun stirred me in the morning, I realized I was only about six feet off the ground, which was surprising to me. I'd assumed it was twenty or so all night, in fact, collectively we'd come to that conclusion.

Even after I saw my proximity to the earth below me, I remained in my harness, swinging gently each time I moved. Cutting myself loose and impacting the ground would surely make my head throb, and there was still the good possibility that I would land directly on top of my rucksack that was resting on the ground beneath me, which would surely mean landing on my face or my back. After an hour of sunlight, we heard engines in the near distance. Civilian power-line trucks with cherry pickers were doing their best to navigate the dense forest, rescuing one trooper at a time. We laughed hysterically at the civilian drivers and boom operators as they tried to get to us, which made my head hurt even worse.

After our heroic rescue, we were taken to a medical tent that had been erected in the nighttime by nonparticipating soldiers from Ft. Polk. These weren't the soldiers that were supposed to be in the box playing war with us; instead, this was a real medical unit from Polk instructed to rescue the mighty 82nd airborne soldiers who'd suffered moderate to serious dehydration injuries while performing a simple airborne operation.

At the tent, we were immediately given IVs and asked to remain inactive for a minimum of twenty-four hours while we received fluids intravenously and were fed high-sugar foods. After complaining loudly and persistently for a couple of hours about my "fucking headache!" a good-looking medic came over to me and injected something into my IV line. Seconds later, I felt fantastic as I drifted off to sleep. I only awoke after I pissed myself sometime later.

"Private, I just uh ... well, I pissed myself," I said with a laugh.

"That's a good sign, soldier," she said without even coming over to look at me.

The second time I pissed myself wasn't as funny. My pants were cold and some of my urine had saturated my sheets, now making my lower back wet. After trying to get some attention from the inconvenienced medics, who were supposed to be at home with their families, I sat up.

The dizziness forced me back down immediately. It was evening now and whatever she'd given me for my headache was making me groggy. I made a mental note to write a letter to whatever medical battalion this was and express my displeasure, but first I needed another nap.

The third time I pissed myself, I was just plain angry. "Goddamnit! Take this fucking IV out; I'm hydrated! Jesus Christ!" But it was late in the night and no one was around, well, except the rest of the patients who I'd awoken.

"Shut the fuck up, cherry!" a couple of them yelled at me.

I did. I also took it upon myself to remove my IV, realizing as I did so just how long those fucking needles are. When I had it out, I tucked the needle back under the gauze wrapping, making it look like it was still in. I didn't know where to find my ruck, or if anyone had even grabbed it off the forest floor, so I sat there in my cold piss pants, angry.

The next morning, those of us who said they were fine were loaded into trucks and driven back to the drop zone. Every twenty feet or so they'd make us jump off the back of the truck, pretending that we'd just landed on the DZ. When I was on the ground, reunited with my rucksack, I stripped naked even before the truckload of troopers was a hundred feet away, and I put on fresh BDU pants. I didn't know how many bags of saline they'd pumped into me, but I still had to piss every five minutes for the next hour.

I felt fantastic, better than I'd ever felt in my whole life maybe, as I watched the truck disappear into the hazy morning.

What followed were four weeks of digging and manning foxholes under humid one-hundred-degree skies. I was given three showers in total, each seemingly more and more necessary. The smells that came from under my armpits after eight or nine days of sweating and festering in an airless foxhole were pungent enough to make my eyes water. I'd been bitten by hundreds of nameless bugs, which I was sure would prove fatal eventually, but I felt fortunate when I'd seen what that brown recluse had done to Sergeant Foster's hand. The entire top of his hand turned black and the bite itself looked like a red volcano that festered puss and blood. He eventually reported it and was medevac'd to the local hospital. After that, we were given a class on poisonous bugs, naming brown recluse spiders, water moccasin snakes, and those little black scorpions as the three to watch out for.

So you could imagine that when I started finding the scorpions in my foxhole later that day, I was less than thrilled. Seeing them in the day was scary enough, but being in that hole in the dark of night was absolutely terrifying, though we'd learned that flu-like conditions were about the worst of their sting. Regardless, anytime an ant or centipede was crawling on me, I'd squeal like a woman, dance around the small enclosure slapping at the intruder, and shiver after crushing it beneath my boot.

After Sergeant Bender and I dug our fighting position, we shared the responsibility of manning it. We took turns pulling eight-hour shifts in what was called a forward outpost. This meant that we were removed from the rest of the TOC (tactical operations command), which was just the Army's way of saying base camp. While they had hot meals and each other's company, Bender and I had a machine gun and a dirt hole. We ate MREs and drank filtered water while the rest of the company enjoyed hot meals, cold showers, and chocolate milk. We weren't being punished; in fact, we'd both been commended for our red-light jump with some "attaboys" and "airbornes" from the officers in charge. We were simply two guys who didn't have any real jobs to do. Bender was a mechanic by trade, but we were attached to a mechanized infantry unit that required a different breed of mechanic. So, he and I got the pleasure of sitting in a fucking hole for a month.

Day in and day out we sat in the four-foot deep hole with only our head above ground, looking out onto a field that never produced an army to shoot at. Our sleeping quarters consisted of a five-man canvas tent that comfortably housed our two military cots and our rucksacks. After the first week, we'd constructed a table made from leftover wire reels, rotten plywood, and plenty of hundred-mile-an-hour tape, which is what you'd call duct tape. The military needs its own name for these things, and rumor had it that the name came from Vietnam era Huey Choppers using the tape to coat the props for when they had to set down in the wooded canopy of trees. The tape helped protect the spinning blades, but would only stay on if the chopper remained at speeds less than one hundred miles per hour.

I used the table to write letters to my mother as I'd promised. I wrote one a day, spending extra time crafting each letter in perfect penmanship. I only sent her a few of them after rereading them and deciding that I wasn't in the right state of mind during those weeks to address my sensitive mother.

Bender and I became good friends, obviously. I mean, we literally had the time to tell each other every single detail of our lives, but we never got to talk anywhere else, other than in the hole. When we were in the tent, we were alone as the other guy needed to be in the hole. The tent became my den of iniquity as I steadily masturbated to pass the hours.

Even though we only saw each other at shift changes, we'd hang out and talk for hours into the other's shift. He'd tell me stories about Ranger school, which he'd been booted out of for falling asleep on watch duty, and I'd tell him funny stories from the last year of my life. He'd smoke cigarettes non-stop while we chatted. I'd watch the smoke come out of his nose sometimes, his mouth others ... The nose thing intrigued me, so eventually I asked how he did that. He handed me a cigarette and taught me. From that day on, I was a smoker.

By the third week at Polk, I was literally going insane. Sometimes I'd undress completely while I sat in the hole, partially to cool off a little bit, partially to ... well, just to be fucking crazy, I guess. I began talking to myself in poorly articulated accents. I'd make up songs that touched on the monotony of my existence, and, yes, eventually I began jerking off in the foxhole too. Sometimes I'd put my dick into holes dug by insects or spiders ... whatever dug the holes in the walls of the pit, daring whatever residents existed in them to bite the top of my dick. This sounds odd, even to me now, but I distinctly remember it making perfect sense then.

Spiders, ants, and centipedes were always crawling on me, and at some point in the third week, I stopped shooing them off of me. I'd allow them to walk on me just so I could feel the tickling sensation of those tiny feet on some untouchable portion of my skin. Granted, allowing potentially venomous critters to tickle your ... back, let's say, proved to give me more bites than tickles, yet somehow stimulation became extremely important. When I'd capture a bug, I'd torture it for a while, sometimes even putting its little legs into my mouth to taste its acrid blood or whatever oozed from it.

I spent hours naked in that hole every day, which became a sort of celebration of absolute solitude, and only after I decided I could just as easily man my position from above ground, standing beside the hole rather than being in it, did Bender see me in my birthday suit.

He approached me with caution as I lay sprawled out in the grass, completely naked, feeling the bugs and blades of grass moving underneath me.

"Hey, bro ... You OK there?"

"Yeah, man, great. You?" I asked with concern for my new friend.

"Yeah, I'm fine. You're uh ... naked, Ludo," he said casually.

"Yeah, man, feels good too. You ought to try it," I said turning my attention to some ants crawling on my ass cheeks, hoping they'd crawl into my crack.

"You're gonna get some bug bites like that, Ved ... and they might be in some bad places," he said cautiously.

"I know." I giggled. "Right now there are a couple ants crawling just at the edge of my ass-crack ... really tickles." I laughed again.

Bender was appalled. "Ved, why don't you go back to the TOC and grab a hot lunch, man; I'll cover the hole."

I looked at him, trying to see if he was kidding. He wasn't. I jumped up. "That'd be awesome, sarge. You sure that's OK?" I asked, suddenly excited.

"Definitely, definitely." He nodded.

"I'll grab you something?" I asked, looking for my underpants.

"Yeah ... uh ..." He looked at my hands. "Nah, it's cool. I have a chicken and rice MRE."

By week four, talking to myself was habitual, yet I only did it when I was alone. Some internal switch inside my head would turn it on and off, but when I was alone, I talked to myself out loud and nonstop. I was also smoking compulsively, especially in the nighttime hours when the darkness was so overwhelming that the red tip of my cigarette glowed like the rising sun. I drew squiggly lines in the darkness with it, writing pages and pages of text in red cigarette-tip cursive.

In that last week, someone would come out to check on me every so often, or even occasionally bring me a hot meal. I suspected that Bender had notified someone of my odd behavior and now they were trying to keep me from going completely section eight. When someone would come out to bring me some eggs and grits, they'd announce themselves from a distance to avoid startling me. The first time Sergeant Heronna, the NCO in charge of the mess-tent, came out to bring me breakfast and scared me, I'd sworn at him for five minutes despite him being an NCO. He'd immediately apologized and never mentioned the infraction, which assured me that they were definitely worried about me.

From that point on, people handled me more carefully. I couldn't help but notice that this careful handling was similar to the way we'd all handled Dave's mother who'd suffered with Alzheimer's for thirteen years before it killed her. I was officially the crazy guy in the hole, and though some part of it was a show I was putting on, the rest was simply liberating freedom. I could excuse myself for any thought I had, no matter how disturbing, which, more often than not, was in reference to the innocent women I defiled while jerking off in order to fill the tiny bug holes with my semen, a new game I was playing.

When the operation in Polk was over, I experienced a weird re-socialization period. All the craziness I'd displayed in Polk stayed there, but the cigarette habit came home with me.

Luke and I began hanging out when we got back to Bragg, and even though he was on lockdown for his DUI, we had plenty of fun. He had more female friends off post than most soldiers had male friends on-post, so even though he couldn't go anywhere, we were buried in chicks.

Luke downplayed his skills with women, which was a complete reversal from anyone I'd ever known. I paid close attention to the way he handled himself around beautiful girls, noticing foremost that he didn't act any different with them around than he did when we were alone. He was unnaturally cool and collected, refrained from any form of showing off, and made women feel more relaxed in his presence than they did with other girlfriends. He made no moves on them; instead, he paced them out, and it always ended up being them to move in on him.

He was so polar opposite from everything I'd ever known; I think I thought he was retarded at first. It didn't take long to morph my strategy with his, creating a superpower of mind-fucking and patiently waiting on timing, a combination I soon perfected. I had to re-teach myself not to be too jovial and not to appear like a giggling idiot when these women were close enough to touch. I learned from him quickly; I watched him like a hawk, seeing how he reacted to different situations, and noted the skill of the master.

By the time Luke was set free, relieved of his punishment, I'd fucked three of his "friends" and had earned his respect as an equal when it came to the art of picking up women. I'd been so close on my own; I'd followed the right scent somehow, stumbling blindly in the right direction, but it was Luke who polished off my skills.

Luke had a friend named Ryan Wilkie who he'd hung around with a lot before I came into the picture. Ryan and I had been slowly developing a friendship, but I think Ryan was more jealous of the time Luke spent with me than anything else. Ryan was the toughest motherfucker I have ever known, having grown up in foster homes and state run facilities. He was six three and one hundred and seventy pounds, making a long and lanky frame with monster hands that, when balled into fists, looked like cinder blocks. He'd been coming around more and more, usually only when Luke was in my room, but a week before Luke was set free, Ryan started showing up in my room alone.

I liked the kid, and I was certainly glad to have the ally, but he was dangerous in many ways. He was quick tempered and loved to get fall-down drunk. When he did, he was always looking to fight. I'd become more of a pacifist over the last couple of months, something about my loony-bin behavior at Ft. Polk had residual effects, and I feared slipping back into that crazy mentality by becoming enraged or being hit on the head too hard by someone.

Ryan believed in the code of friendship, an unwritten rule pertaining to the dos and don'ts of male companionship. Things like never sleeping with the same girl as your buddies, which in the civilian world is easily accomplished, but in the mostly all-male world of Army life, is definitely more difficult. He was a man of ethics, defending his friends no matter how wrong they'd been and dealing with the consequences of such actions in a respectable manner. Before long, I'd learned plenty from Ryan Wilkie as well, and I embraced him as my newest friend.

As things progressed between us, Ryan fed off of the women who Luke and I brought around, making our relationship co-dependent. He was the protection; no one would fuck with him, and I mean no one. Luke and I were the providers of the one thing that was always in demand—women.

One night, Luke and Ryan talked me into going to a strip club; and believe it or not, that was a place I'd never been. I'd seen a few chicks naked, but never seen anything like what the Paradise Club had to offer. Just walking through the door, I couldn't believe my eyes. Women were hanging upside down from poles while dressed like slutty police officers. There were gothy bitches wearing black makeup, their legs spread apart, just inches from fat men who sat at countertops, piles of bills in their hands, nodding at the sight before them as if they approved of her gaping hole ... It was exactly what I'd pictured in my head the whole way there; it looked like the strip clubs I'd seen on shows like Miami Vice but with far more skin and, well ... holes.

When the three of us entered, I was out of my element. I found that I wasn't really attracted to the vulgarity of the dancers, yet I was in awe of the people who sat there stuffing money into lacy garter belts. There were fucking soldiers everywhere, an ocean of shaved heads and bad jeans; some were drunk, while others were completely absorbed in the sights before them. I felt bad for these dudes, spending their hard earned, tiny paychecks on some slutty dancer who pretended to be interested in them, only to take the money and disappear.

Ryan took a seat at the bar, which doubled as the main stage, without any delay or any concern with whether or not we were coming with him and pulled his own wad of cash from his pocket. There was something funny about that; Ryan didn't feel to me like the rest of these guys. He was direct, he didn't beat around the bush when it came to women, and the sight of him sitting there completely comfortable with what was going on and smiling and talking to the girls as they danced for him, in turn, made me smile.

"You gonna go up there with him?" I asked Luke.

"Nah, I'm just gonna get a drink and watch from the tables," he answered.

A minute later, Luke and I sat at a table, removed from the bar and all the soldiers surrounding it. The girls who weren't dancing to this particular song were circulating close to the bar, asking the guys with the money in their hands if they wanted lap dances. A steady flow of soldiers and women kept coming and going from the back room where lap dances were apparently given.

"Unbelievable," I said to Luke.

"Yeah, it's fuckin' crazy, huh?"

"Look at em', Luke, stuffing dollar after dollar into her panties like it's gonna get them something ..."

"These bitches are pros, Ved. Watch the sincerity in their eyes when they talk to these lonely bastards."

Just then a black girl (wearing panties and obviously having forgotten to put a top on at all) walked up to Ryan, wrapped her arm around him, and smiled. She began talking to him, but we couldn't hear her, only see her mouth moving, as the music was deafening. Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" was playing: a song that seemed to awaken all the girls working, and they were all coming out in force. Even the girls already dancing seemed to take it up a notch when the song began. Ryan shook his head at the black girl who then put on a pouty face and slowly walked away. Luke and I laughed out loud at our funny friend at the bar who was smiling; a guy we knew was capable of taking on the toughest ten dudes in here. He saw us looking at him and laughing; he shook his head again at us, laughing himself before turning around to continue watching the show before him.

"These guys need a lesson in the art of this," Luke said, without taking his eyes off a pretty brunette who'd just taken the stage.

"I don't know, Luke. Some of these guys are helpless."

"They're all helpless, Ved ..."

"Hi there." I heard a voice. I turned to see a beautiful girl, wearing the apparently mandatory skimpy bikini, walking up to us.

"Hello yourself," Luke said, looking confidently at her.

"What are you guys doing sitting all the way back here?" she asked with a smile.

"Avoiding sales pitches," I said with a not-so-inviting tone.

"Oh ... that's too bad. I was going to ask if you wanted a lap dance," she said, looking at us closely.

I knew this was a routine. I also knew that this girl was a master of human behavior. She could look at guys' faces and know who they were, what it would take to get them to fork over the forty bucks for a lap dance, or whatever they charged, and what she'd have to promise to get them to come back tomorrow night and do it all over again. I knew she fed off of guys with short cropped hair—exploiting their weaknesses and loneliness, and promising the world—without a hint of shame for her lying or stealing.

I smiled. "Uh, no. We're not interested," I said, thinking that Luke was going to actually reach for his wallet.

"Really? That's too bad. What are you drinking?" she asked me.

"Crown and Coke."

"Can I have a sip?"

"Can't you pull some of those fucking dollars out of your ass and buy yourself one?" I replied.

Luke shot me a "take it easy" look.

She looked at me, offended at first, then softened. "I suppose I could, but I want yours." She smiled.

"I backwash."

"Good, so do I," she retorted, grabbing my glass. She put the glass to her lips, tilted it back, and drank the entire contents, including one of the five ice cubes. When she set it down, she said, "Aahhh," and took the seat between us.

Luke smiled at me, stood, and said, "Want another?"

"Please," I said

That was Luke for you, perfectly played. "You want a drink too?" he asked our new friend.

"No, I'm going to drink his when you bring it back." She regarded me.

I regarded her too.

She was probably thirty, tiny frame, with long, curly, brown hair. Her eyes looked green, but in the room that was decorated with black lights, it was hard to determine for certain. She was pretty, and if it hadn't been for the setting we were in, I would have thought her to look innocent. She was small chested, a stark comparison to the monster globs of silicone bouncing on every stage in the building, and looked as if she hadn't done anything at all to enhance her stage presence. I was attracted to her, despite the warnings I kept giving myself.

"OK, so what's your deal?" she asked me, slight smile hidden beneath an otherwise straight face.

"My deal? I don't have a deal."

"Oh, you have a deal all right. What, do you hate dancers?"

"I don't know any."

"You know me." She stuck out her hand to shake mine. "I'm Genie."

"Ved," I said, reluctantly shaking.

"Ved? Is that short for something?"

"No. Just Ved."

"Is that what it says on your driver's license?" she asked, with eyes that motioned downward to where my wallet might be kept.

"Somehow, I doubt your license says Genie."

She smiled again. "Touché. Ved, I want to give you a lap dance."

"Huh ... That's awfully generous of you, Genie, but I think there are bigger suckers around here. Give one to them."

"I don't want to give one to them. I want to give one to you."

"And what exactly do you get from giving me a lap dance?"

"Typically, twenty bucks." She laughed. "I'm kidding. It's free, but only if you say yes right now."

"Genie, that's a swell offer," I said sarcastically, "but I'm not interested. I'm here to people watch, hang with my buddies, and have a few drinks. I like women with two names: a first and a last. Don't get me wrong, I like the names of the stars too, but not necessarily in my women."

"Your women? Wow. How many do you have?"

"Enough to keep me from spending twenty bucks just to have you pretend to like me."

"I do like you. You're kind of an asshole, but I like that in a man."

"You're kind of a stripper. I don't really like that in a woman."

"Dancer, not stripper."

"Whatever."

"My name isn't the name of a star; it's the name of something that can give you three wishes. What would you wish for?" she asked.

I thought she was taking my tough guy act pretty well, actually. She was rolling with the punches, and it dawned on me that if she were just here to solicit some money for a lap dance, she'd have left a few minutes ago rather than dealing with my shit.

"I'd wish that your name was Brenda, or Amy, or something else ... that we were at a Starbucks rather than this shit-hole, and that you didn't have two kids at home, probably by different fathers, who are wondering right this second, where is Mommy?"

She slapped me across the face, stood up to leave, and bumped into Luke who'd just returned with the drinks.

"Whoa ... what the—" Luke was about to ask.

She grabbed the Crown and Coke out of his hand, tossed it back, and swallowed it with a single gulp. She looked at me and said, "Thanks."

"Isn't there a rule about strippers drinking on the job?" I asked.

"Isn't there a rule about assholes—"

"Doesn't it impair your judgment when deciding who to fuck afterward?" I cut her off.

She looked at Luke. "Your friend is a real asshole. Cute, but an asshole." She walked off.

Luke stood there for a second watching her walk away. We were both staring at her ass as she walked toward a group of badly dressed soldiers. "Hate to see you go, but love to watch you leave," Luke said with a smile as he sat back down at our table.

"Wow. She's a feisty one," I said.

"What did you say to her to get her all pissed off?" he asked.

"Something about illegitimate children with multiple partners."

"Yup, that'll do it. A little too close to home, I guess."

A few minutes later, a cocktail waitress approached. She was dressed a little scantily, but nothing compared to the working girls in the room. She was pretty, really pretty, and wore black shorts and a black tank top. She was shoeless, which I have to say was slightly repulsive given the condition of the carpet. "You guys need drinks?" she asked.

"I need a Crown and Coke. Someone drank mine," I said.

"Who did, hun?"

"Genie, the wish maker." I smiled.

"Oh, that's a good sign."

"A good sign is when a woman brings you a drink, not guns yours."

"Then I'll bring you a good sign, hun."

Something about being called "hun" really bothers me. If the woman calling me that is eighty years old, I'm cool with it; but if she's younger than that, it bothers me. The cocktail waitress meant well though, and after talking to Luke for a few minutes, she announced that she'd get me a drink and come back to chat with us.

I turned my attention to Ryan who was chatting up the naughty cop, and just as I thought he might be playing this one straight, he reached into his pocket. Poor bastard. A minute later, he stood and walked out of the room with her, looking at Luke and I and shrugging with a helpless smile as he went.

The cocktail waitress returned, took a seat, and turned to me. "Genie said you were rude to her. Is that true?"

"Yes."

"She bought your drink for you."

"That was sweet of her."

The waitress didn't hand me my drink; she just looked at Luke and started talking.

"Can I have it?" I asked, interrupting.

"Yeah," she said, then turned back to Luke again and picked up where they left off. I reached for the drink sitting on her tray; she turned to me immediately as if she knew it was coming. "That's not yours. You have to get yours from Genie. She has it."

"Fuck, OK, I'll just go get another one."

"No ... You have to go get yours from her, please. Stop being such a dick. Just go talk to Genie and get yours. She wanted to talk to you."

"Hey, stop being a dick," Luke chimed in and then laughed.

"Fucking kidding me?" I murmured.

"See, that's just the attitude we are talking about," Luke said, looking at his new friend for effect.

"Fuck you," I said, turning to go find the stripper with my drink.

I walked uncomfortably through the sea of soldiers, reminding myself that my sense of style was far superior to theirs, or so I wanted to believe. There were too many pairs of black military boots being worn with bleached blue jeans and far too many white T-shirts. I, on the other hand, was wearing Levi's 501s, dark in color, with a pair of brown shit kickers with a light tan sole, making them look absolutely fantastic under the tacky black lights. I had a button down flannel shirt on, and a black baseball cap absent of any team logo. Being someone who didn't know anything about sports, I'd learned that wearing a team hat brought on conversations from the die-hards who made me feel both ignorant and uncomfortable. The fatal flaw of my getup may have been a wallet chain that went well beyond a standard wallet chain. It was similar to swing set chains, bigger and bolder, also it was longer than the average wallet chain, but hey, this was the nineties, it was forgivable.

Walking out of the main stage room and into the darker, smaller lap dance room, I passed through a beaded doorway that I thought was ridiculous and scanned the room. There were two bouncers beside me, and they immediately turned their attention to me. "Hey, this room's for lap dances only," the bigger, blacker guy said sternly.

"Cool, how much you fellas charge?" I said wryly.

The other guy turned to me, taking his hands out of his pockets. "Hey, asshole, you want to get bounced the fuck outta here?" he asked.

"No. I want my drink back."

"What are you—"

"It's OK, Devon. He's with me," Genie said, coming out of the shadows.

"Guy's got a fuckin' mouth on him," Devon said.

"I know. That's what I said," Genie replied.

She grabbed my hand and went to pull me into the shadows. I resisted at first, so she turned to me and said, "Come on, don't be a dick."

"Since I got here, I've been called an asshole and a dick more times than in my entire life." I turned to look at Devon. "Next time someone calls me a dick, I might go fucking crazy." I locked eyes with him.

"Maybe you better do what the lady says; you don't want to do this the hard way, bud," Devon told me.

"You don't want to get Ryan'd, Devon."

"I don't want to what?"

Genie pulled me away, leaving my conversation with Devon right there. I went with her into the dark, walking past countless guys all seated on a bench while dancers dry-humped them, moaning and rubbing their breasts with their hands. The guys looked at them wide-eyed, not knowing what to do with their hands. There was a sign lit with neon tubing that said No Hands on the Dancers on each wall, and apparently that's what Devon and his friend were here watching for.

She pulled me into a corner where only one other dancer and sucker were sitting. He was reaching into his pocket, apparently wanting to start the fun all over again.

"Hey, man, try a different one ... live a little," I said.

"Ved, shut the hell up," Genie said, sitting me down.

She went to climb onto my lap in the same manner as all the others. I stopped her, reaching out my hand and placing it on her shoulder.

"Don't put your hands on me. They'll bounce you."

"OK, then don't get on top of me. I already told you, I don't want a lap dance."

"It's free. I don't want your money; I just want to dance for you."

"I'd rather just talk to you," I said.

"I'm not allowed to just sit here and talk, Ved. I have to dance for you or get out of here."

"OK, let's get out of here," I agreed.

"No. OK, how about this; let me sit on your lap and we can just talk. I won't go through the whole routine."

I let her crawl onto my lap. In the light from the sign, the only light in the area, she was beautiful. I didn't know what it was with this girl; she seemed to really want to connect with me, but I didn't know why. I was afraid to spend time talking to her. I could feel myself weakening, and my resolve dissipating the longer I spent in that bar. The sexual tension that was in the air in that place was striking; sex seemed to hang from every ... well, every pole in the place. The women pretended to lust after the men, while the men did their best to pretend not to lust after the women. It was false, the whole thing was a charade, a ploy to make men sexually excited, counting on their inability to both carry a hard-on and think clearly.

My idea of sex and sexual encounters varied so severely from this atmosphere. I wasn't about the act of sex; in fact, most of the time I didn't want to close the deal at all. What I wanted was access. I wanted permission to do as I pleased; that was the game. Fucking women seemed so immoral to me, so personal in theory, yet when I was with these women, it was anything but personal. I couldn't believe as I entered them that they were willing to let me do this, and if they let me do this, how many others had they allowed?

I wanted the access without the expectation to actually perform. I'd been with six women by now, and my skills in bed were developing, but I was still learning my way through the experiences as I went. I asked questions about what felt good, what didn't. I wanted to be able to fuck women as a man while thinking about their pleasure like a woman. Sex was the same with them all, no difference except maybe breast size or perfume differences ... minute details that in the scheme of things mattered little. I wanted women to want me, to beg me to touch them, and when I did, I wanted them to orgasm without taking our pants off. I wanted them to long for me to speak to them, to hold them, and understand them; I wanted to be different from the others they'd fucked, unpredictable and unexpected. I didn't want to fuck Genie as she straddled me, grinding lightly on my left leg. I wanted to fuck her head up, make her crazy for me, make her beg me to touch her, only to refuse her, denying her the one thing she thought I'd surrender with ease.

I wouldn't do it. She wasn't my lost love, she wasn't there to stay, and she was in constant motion, moving from one predictable mule to another; all the while wishing she'd be challenged by someone, always finding disappointment in their toppling over, beaten and defeated. If I wanted to fuck Genie, I had to not fuck Genie. I had to deny her, insult her confidence, and make her lie awake at night trying to understand why I wouldn't do to her the act of which she sold to predictable men every day.

"I have a son. He's five. His name is Aiden," she said out of nowhere.

"I figured."

"You're right. His father was a one-night stand. He's never met Aiden. I live with my mother and stepfather, and they help me raise him. It's not easy, you know ..."

"No, I imagine it isn't," I agreed.

"So, why are you such a dick to me? I was just trying to be nice to you. I liked you."

"I'm sure you did. Every night, I'm sure you 'like' someone." I used air quotes to drive the sarcasm.

"I'm not like that, really. It's hard to make you believe that when I'm giving you a lap dance, I know."

"You're not giving me a lap dance, remember? I think you're trying to give yourself an orgasm." I nodded at her hips.

She stopped moving. "You're one of those guys who thinks he knows people so well, huh?"

"You mean, I think I have a gift or something?"

"Yeah, you think you're clairvoyant or psychic or something."

"Maybe. Maybe I am."

"Maybe you're just an egomaniac?"

"No, I'm definitely an egomaniac," I said evenly.

"What's your real name?" she asked me, a serious look on her face.

"Why?"

"I just want to know."

I considered it for a second. "Shell."

"S-H-E-L-L?" she asked, checking the spelling.

"That is correct."

"It's awesome, beautiful really. You make a good Shell. Can I call you that?"

"No. You may not."

She frowned, making her best pouty face that has probably broken hundreds of guys in the past. "Will you take me to dinner?"

"It's a little late, don't you think?"

"Not tonight, silly. How about ..." She looked at the ceiling as if there was a calendar hanging from the black tiles. "How about tomorrow?"

"Hmm ... I'll tell you what; I'm here with two dudes. You find them dates for tomorrow night too, and I'll take you out. Fair?" I asked, smiling despite myself.

She smiled. "That's all? You want to get them laid, or just to hang out?" she asked as if she was trying to whittle down the thousands of candidates she had in mind.

"No, not laid. I want them to have to work for it."

"OK." She gave me a suspicious look. "You think you're gonna get laid though, huh?"

"Nope. In fact, I know I'm not going to get laid."

"Oh really? You think you can resist me if I turn it on?"

I looked at her very seriously. "You have no idea what I am capable of resisting, Genie."

"Don't you want to know my real name?" she asked

"Not in the least."

"Why not? I know yours."

"Because tonight when I go back to the barracks, I'm going to tell all my friends that a stripper at the Paradise asked me out for tomorrow night."

"I see ... tryin' to get some street cred, huh? Want to be Mr. Bigdick at the barracks?"

"No, I'm not going to tell them we fucked, because we won't. Actually, I'm going to tell them we didn't fuck."

"What if you can't resist me?"

Again, I looked at her intensely. "We won't."

"We'll see," she said, looking at me sideways.

"I guess so. I can tell you right now, I won't even consider trying to sleep with you until after ..." I paused, wondering if that was going too far.

"Until after what? Memorial Day?"

"Until after you beg me."

It took her a second for that to sink in. I saw her contemplating me, trying to decide if I was serious or not. She was about to say something, then stopped herself. She thought about it again, her eyes shifting from left to right and back again.

She reached behind her and pulled at the strings to her bikini. They gave easily, and I knew she'd done it a million times before. She shrugged her shoulders, dropping the straps slowly before removing it completely.

I looked at her breasts. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? They were beautiful, small, and probably firm, just the way I liked them. She clenched her legs around mine and lay back, like she was doing a sit up. I saw the contour of her chest and abdomen under the lights of the neon signs; it was quite a sight to behold. She sat up and stared at me without the slightest hint of self-consciousness.

"That's my professional posturing. My personal one is much better."

"It's impressive," I agreed.

"I like you, Ved. I really do. There is something about you. I don't know if it's a good something or a bad one, but there is definitely something ..." She leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. Her breath smelled like Crown Royal and her lips were pleasant and soft. I closed my eyes unintentionally, trying to remain stoic. "If that's what it comes to, I will beg you. I will beg your friends to tell you to please, please ... pretty please fuck me."

"Well then, you might just get what you are looking for." I smiled.

"That'd be a first, ya know? Me begging a guy to sleep with me ..."

"That's exactly the point. Difference. That's all that every guy who walks through these doors can hope for, more than sex, more than a blowjob ... difference. They don't understand it, but they long for it."

"If that's true, I haven't seen any before this."

She kissed me again, a long, deep kiss. She put her tongue into my mouth, and I sucked on it, trying to taste the Crown. I wrapped my hands around her rib cage, feeling the warmth of her tiny frame. I focused on what I wanted her to feel, trying to send telepathic thoughts to her. I wanted her to long for me, to stay awake all night thinking about me. I wanted her to wake up tomorrow morning nervous about our date and eager to see me, to touch me, to kiss me.

"Hey!" Devon screamed from across the room. "Hey, asshole, keep your hands off the dancer!"

"It's OK, Devon. It was my fault," she said.

"That goes for you too, Genie. You know the rules," he replied.

We went back into the main room and found Luke in the same seat, still talking to the cocktail waitress. She was writing something on a napkin and slid it across the table to him.

"What was that?" Genie asked.

"Nothing." The girl smiled.

"Was that your number? Marissa, you naughty girl."

Marissa smiled. "Yeah, I know. It's a little cheesy, but he's soooo cute."

"You working tomorrow night?" Genie asked her friend.

"Nope, but I have to work the Sunday morning shift. God, I fucking hate Sunday mornings," she said.

"Me too," Genie agreed.

"You want to go out with us tomorrow?" I asked Luke and Marissa.

"Where?" she shot back.

"I don't know, dinner?"

"Definitely." She looked at Luke. "Is that OK?"

Luke looked at me curiously. "He's the boss."

I was flattered. I was the boss? I've never been given a promotion that felt so good in my life. Beyond just Luke and me, Genie and Marissa were there. He'd just said I was the boss, the leader, and the decision maker. I would do the job justice, make the right decisions, and be everything that "the boss" is supposed to be.

I was overwhelmed with happiness. I had my man-crush right there beside me; a hot stripper who'd said she would beg my friends to get me to fuck her; my potential bodyguard still sitting in the same place as he had been all night, but his pile of one dollar bills was noticeably diminished; and three more years to spend right here, with these people.

Life is indeed good.
Chapter 4

Actors Without an Audience

I'm not going to lie; I liked her. She was a cool girl, but since the death of Hailey, I wasn't about to get involved in anything that I couldn't control. I wasn't going to be hurt, no matter what. She'd been coming around, and, at times, I actually thought there was hope for the two of us, but other times I was reminded of what I already knew. Genie was a stripper, or dancer ... depending on whom you were talking to.

There are some occupations that transform people from who they are into what they do. I don't necessarily hold that against them, as some would argue that the Army is one of those gigs, and I disagree with that being true of all soldiers; so in fairness, I have to recognize that this is indeed a generalization. I was certainly not gung-ho-Joe; in fact, I clung to my Grateful Dead roots more desperately in those years than at any other point in my life; and, yet, I did see plenty of the guys who are always depicted in Army commercials on TV. They are a strange breed, indeed, those who cling to the occupation so tightly that their actual identity begins to bleed.

I've known a few cops in my life, and, to again generalize, I think that they are all somewhat the same. It's hard to put a finger on the exact nature of the differences between them and normal civilian folk, but it has something to do with a seriousness they cannot seem to shake. Whether on duty or off, cops are cops, and they cannot seem to walk away from it when the shift ends. Personally, I believe that is similar to churchgoers, devout churchgoers, I mean; they cling to the ritual of it and cling to the warmth of the circle that it provides them. Too many things give people that feeling of inclusion, and in doing so, I think it diminishes the world's adaptability and need to perform creatively. Once removed, the ability to stand apart and be in a state of improvement is gone forever. Comfort is always the end game. Groups of anything are dangerous, in my opinion. Individualism and survival of the fittest are the keys to loving one's self. Being lost in the eternal hug of an environment detracts from one's own personality, allowing uneducated "philosophers" like myself to generalize about otherwise independent souls.

Cops, politicians, and strippers all seem to have this inclusion in common. These jobs require twenty-four hour a day attention, and letting your guard down, even for a moment, is potentially devastating; particularly politicians and strippers need to prepare for tomorrow—so in love with what they are they cannot think about who they are. A mistake of character today, a slip up or flaw in the performance, can shed light on the true nature of the being, something we don't want to see, even if we think we do.

We like to be lied to, assuming that the lie will never be revealed. As long as we can continue believing in the lie, no harm, no foul. If tomorrow the Pope were to be given undisputable evidence that God is a myth, do you think he'd do the right thing and tell the masses? If not, does he withhold the truth honorably? Does telling people that they are completely alone in the universe help with maintaining social order, even if it is, in fact, the truth? Or is it better to sell the unbreakable lie and give people hope?

Genie, like all strippers, loved her work. The misconception that strippers, or dancers (if you please), do what they do in order to feed their children, in order to put themselves through college, to move out of their mother's house, or things like this, is inexcusable. They love what they do, they feed off of it, and if I am being honest, it's understandable. Few people have occupations that bring personal, primitive desires into their world every day. Stripping provides much sought after attention, and attention is a far more addictive drug than heroin. Attention in a setting like the Paradise Club is infinite. The audience you are performing for can be anyone, so desperate for what you are selling that whatever they have to offer, in return for desirable provisions, is readily laid at your feet. Strippers can have anything they want, and when the morals that separate them from street walking prostitutes collapse, all that is left to determine is how far they will go to get these desires of theirs is their own morality. Will they cross the socially unacceptable line of prostitution, stepping out of the gray and into the black, in order to taste the sweetness of anything desired?

For myself, I was tempted. How much of what I desire in this world can be attributed to expectation? How much do we all want our dreamy expectations to be met with a very real life answer? The truth may be disappointing to us; the truth may very well be a cup of coffee. When we walk into a coffee shop, we expect the coffee to exceed that of the burger joint, recognizing that these people dressed in designer aprons have been trained in the art of coffee. We want to be as well versed as they—we want to be able to smell a bean and identify the region where it was grown by simply identifying the "nutty" or "floral" scents embedded deep within its aroma. To not be equipped with this gift leaves us lesser than them and makes us feel ignorant and bland. The truth of the matter is, the burger joint might sell a far more appetizing joe for a lesser price, but it's being sold by foreigners who have been trained to flip burgers, not brew exotic coffee, which means it "can't" be better.

The sex industry has the same allure. Standing alone in the Paradise looking at the costumed dancers taunting us with their shameless sexual magnetism makes us crave it deep inside of ourselves, even though the girl who lives three doors down from your apartment has the same body parts to offer at a far lesser price. Standing in the club and seeing the adoring faces on the helpless men who gawk, spellbound at the dancers, provides you with competition; now it's not simply about fucking that tattooed girl with the Indian getup, it's about fucking her before those guys do, or better yet, in lieu of those guys.

Expectations rise up in your brain, which is now depleted of blood, as you begin to ponder the joys of fucking this sexual professional, but deep inside of you, somehow, the understanding that there is no substance to such fantasies occurs. You can push that back, all you have to do is stare a little closer, inspect her a little more liberally, deciding on what part of her you wish to cum first ... yes, friends, by the time you are standing there, you are already beaten.

I'd like to tell you that I knew Genie to be the stripper with a heart of gold, but another one of my unfortunate and pessimistic theories is that you cannot really know anyone. I mean, with a theory like this, you can only be pleasantly surprised; any let down would simply prove your theorem true.

She was a beautiful girl, and I am not immune to the powers of beauty, but I like to believe that despite the magnetic nature of beauty, I can remain in control of my feelings should I set my mind to it specifically. Was she any more beautiful than the girls I passed at the mall last weekend? Probably not, but the girls at the mall last weekend didn't come wrapped in the mystery of sexual professionals. They were just regular girls, who probably wanted me to mount them missionary style, which had always seemed appropriate before, but now ... with a stripper in mind, that was absurd, that was so ... uh ... well, it was just before this new opportunity to think outside of the box.

If, and eventually when, I start thinking with my heart, rather than my sometimes cold and calculated brain, I could slip just as foolishly into pain and heartbreak as any other sucker. Indeed, playing with strippers is playing with fire, and knowing that stripping is a psychological occupation, which encompasses the woman's entire world, means that in order to stay protected, one must concentrate on avoiding the pitfalls as diligently as she performs her role. She is relentless in her role; she has almost totally become her role, making it very difficult to step into her world and be as cautious as you need to be. Sure, she'd recognized the sport of it that first night in the club. I was a "player" trying to play it cool; she was a professional, capable of weakening the strongest of men—if not immediately, over time. I was no match for her; she'd learned to play the aggressor who puts just about ... enough out there, as bait, then snatches it back as soon as she sees me eyeing it. I should have known that to take a step toward her, no matter how reluctantly, would be fatal. But I was "the mighty Ved." How could I fail when all of mankind was beneath me?

Even if I thought myself so skilled at driving people where I wanted them, shouldn't I have then realized that beating someone unaccustomed to losing is dangerous? Like I said before, sanity is definitely something we assume lies within the people we meet, taking for granted the frailty of such a word. Sanity is a state of being, something that ebbs and flows throughout the day, making it a completely unreliable trait. Stripping defensive people of their outer layers is a dangerous game. I think of a turtle without a shell ... the soft flesh exposed, not even a calloused palm to defend it. Without the shell, a turtle is easily punctured, making his behavior extremely cautious. The shell-less turtle doesn't yell, "Fuck you" to the predators that couldn't defeat him last week, couldn't break his shell. Instead, he hides quietly, praying for something to come to his rescue. Life comes to a standstill when the outer layer is removed, when the shell is defeated.

"Hey, baby," she says as she walks into my room.

"Hey, how was work?" I ask because I like to listen to her answer this question. I ask her this often, well, as often as one can ask this question. I like to watch her, my gift sharpened to a razor point, observing everything from her rate of breathing to her fluttering, uncommitted eyes. I like to watch her pretend to dislike her job, to downplay the attention, to decide whether or not to forget to mention the breakfast she had at IHOP with her biggest spender of the shift, in order to be sure he comes back tomorrow, or after the next payday.

On my end, in order to defend myself from her beauty and lies, I occupied my time chasing other women. In fact, I was in the process of balancing two women, a technique that seemed to latch on to me rather than me to it. It just came so natural to me, balancing these two beauties. Effortlessly, I was able to resist Genie. I cared half as much for her as I might have otherwise, filling my off hours with both of them rather than leaning on one too hard. It was all about the pursuit of the other one, not necessarily the having. I was situated in a perfect triangle. Genie was mine, but whether or not I wanted her was too difficult to tell; I hadn't slept with her yet. Often this is blinding for a man, being able to see beyond the still un-had sex, but I'd become good at pacing it out. If I wanted her, however, I could have had her at any second. I could have called her at 11:43 a.m. on any given Tuesday morning and announced, "OK, I want to sleep with you now."

I would have heard tires squealing as they burned in my direction, which, I have to admit, is always a powerful feeling. That said, if Genie were all a front, if the whole charade was about sex, and if it was a façade easily torn down, then why would she want to leave the imaginary and enter the world of real life? Either she thought she was good enough and unique enough in bed that I would be eternally wowed by her, or she thought that I was lonely and pathetic enough to accept mediocrity and treat it as overwhelming. I was betting on the latter, but the former kept me with a half erection for a month or so.

I should state for the record that I am not a god in bed. I never have been, and even at the height of my sexual activity, I was still only marginal. I never read the Kama Sutra and wanted to try the more advanced techniques listed in those seductive pages. No, I was always happy with the more entry-level positions.

I never had the comfort with my own naked self to try and twist myself into interesting and satisfying positions in order to better suit her needs. I was rather disgusted with my form and wanted the path of least resistance. I never thought of myself as longwinded or even moderately so; twenty minutes of intercourse was always enough for me. Hell, if this text requires honesty, then I need to state that actually fifty-three seconds was enough for me in most cases. I learned to focus on orgasm-inhibiting images with ease, but their effects wore thin when approaching the twenty-minute mark.

No matter how bland or marginal I was, I enjoyed the efforts of my sexual partners to tell me stories of those worse, much worse, from their pasts. Goes to show you that no matter how run-of-the-mill you are, run-of-the-mill is still excellent in comparison to those who just flat out suck.

The idea of having to screw a stripper was, however, daunting. Most women owe it to you, or better yet, they owe it to themselves, to not trash you in a sexual performance evaluation. After all, they decided you were a suitable partner in the first place, putting some of the blame on themselves and their decision-making skills. Also, to rate someone as awful in bed means that you have a large platform of experience to base such accusations upon, and though a number of women I slept with in these years had such a platform, few thought themselves invincible enough to admit it.

Now I am not saying I was a bad lay all the time. The difference, you see, was in the set up. Before I slept with a woman, any woman, I made sure she had a mental connection to me. The truth of the matter is, evaluating a sexual partner is a process that takes place in the brain, and if the brain is already in favor of said partner, he has the benefit of some residual positive feelings while he's being evaluated. By mind-fucking my women before actually pleasuring them—with a minute or so of good sex followed by mediocre sex while I imagined my grandmother naked in the shower shaving her ... well, things I did just to prolong the act for a few minutes more—I was enjoyed more thoroughly than I would have been otherwise. I knew this was the key to sex with women. I knew that while women were in the act of fucking, they sought connection more than satisfaction. Most women gave up on the idea of satisfaction at an early age, clinging tightly to the connection part as a sort of consolation prize. As long as I could provide a decent amount of connection, I could be as poor as I wanted to be at the actual sex part.

Some women, however, were as selfish as men, and for those women, I was a dud. So, I did what anyone has to do when facing a worthy opponent, I learned to go down on them: perhaps my least favorite thing in the world. If and when I did find someone I liked, I was more tolerant of having to perform this service, but looking back I see a distinct pattern in shortly lived relationships when the women I was with demanded this activity. I, on the other hand, expected the same services of all the women I dated.

Approaching Genie, I was initially a little intimidated with having to sleep with her, but by the time we got to that point, that was no longer the case. I watched her closely enough to see what she was hiding, what she lacked, and who she really viewed herself as. The problem with discovering these things in a person is that it's only usable to your advantage if you never mention it. If you do, if you get weak and say something along the lines of, "I know what your father did to you," you either end up dead or alone. There is nowhere left for that person to hide and subconsciously they decide they have to escape you, making it one of the few times they actually can. In other circumstances, there is recourse, there is a solution to the problems between a man and woman; however, if you expose her, and if her inner being decides you are a liability, then she will leave you and never return.

"Oh, you know ... same old same old," she said with a shrug of her shoulders. Her eyes weren't on me as she spoke. She'd done the obligatory shrug, glancing through me as her eyes followed a path to the floor where they remained a second too long. The deception was blatant and not even capable of escaping a perceptive blind man. I found it insulting to be lied to, and to be lied to this obviously went well beyond simple insults.

"Right."

"What'd you do?" she asked.

"Last night?" I was playing ignorant. If we were going to be this obvious and elementary, I could play along. I could plant a seed of ... Well, I could make her wonder.

It dawned on me that we were actors. It also dawned on me that actors without an audience are just liars. I blamed her for the deception, I blamed her for the games we were playing, and I blamed her for not just going away like she should have three weeks ago ...

"Uh, yeah, last night," she said, eyeing me questioningly now.

"Oh ... we went to Marz," I replied.

"You went to Raleigh? You went to a club? And you couldn't have come to Paradise to see me?"

She wasn't mad that I hadn't gone to the Paradise really. She hated it when I was there. It complicated her job, or her acting skills, and by that I mean the ones she used to act like the stripper with the heart of gold when I was around. The acting required for entertaining men came naturally to her by now, five years into the business. When I was at the Paradise, she thought I was on patrol: watching every hand, biting my nails when she gave lap dances ... None of that was really the case, or at least that I can recall. She was mad because I went to Raleigh without her. While I was at the Paradise, I could keep an eye on her, but while I was in Raleigh she couldn't do the same of me.

Luke, Ryan, and I loved Marz. It was a great club and the first of its kind to offer three rooms for dancing. A techno room, a hip-hop room, and, of course, the seventies and eighties room where we spent most of our time. The girls in the retro room were far easier than in the rest of the rooms; well, the ones with the pacifiers and glow sticks in the techno room weren't so hard either, but pacifiers and glow sticks weren't really my thing. In fact, before I met Luke, I'd never thought it acceptable for men to dance. He was so carefree and fun that it suited him to get out there and cut some rug, moving easily to the varying beats. Beyond simply dancing and having more fun than me, his results were impressive. He'd literally make me pick out the hottest girl on the dance floor, point her out to him, and then give him an hour on the floor to work her over. Sure enough, sixty minutes later, Luke was bumping and grinding with her while her friends looked on jealously.

After a few hours of watching this go down, he'd made a believer out of me. I'd gone to the car, gunned a few ounces of Absolut, and headed back into the bar to do my best impression of John Travolta. Luke had guided me through the process of dancing, telling me things like, "Bro, don't make it look like you take yourself seriously. Stop with the tongue thing. Relax ..." and what do you know ... an hour later, I was in my groove, smiling and laughing at myself with my arms wrapped around another pair of hips every song.

"Nope, couldn't have done that. I mean, I could have, but wouldn't have, even if we hadn't gone anywhere else."

"You know, for a guy who hates strip clubs you sure hang out with a lot of strippers," she said, beginning to get upset ...

"Dancers, please. Strippers sounds so vulgar." I smiled.

"Fuck you, Ved ... If you put half the effort into our relationship as you do with your ... boyfriends, maybe we wouldn't fight every time we saw each other."

"My boyfriends don't take other boyfriends out to breakfast when the club closes. My boyfriends don't have five-year-old sons who don't get to see them enough ... Most importantly, my boyfriends have something you cannot understand: LOYALTY!" I was screaming. I didn't know why I was screaming ... Maybe something to do with the stripper getting mad at me for going out to a club.

"You need to make up your mind, Ved. Either you can handle what I do for a living, or you can't. Make up your mind, asshole. You have a serious god-complex with your little friends catering to your every demand, like you're King-fucking-Tut or something."

"I am King-fucking-Tut!"

"You're an insecure little man whose only passion is to fuck with people's heads!" She was turning toward the door, obviously about to leave.

"Gotta date at IHOP? Another winner knockin' down your door?" I asked with a smile.

"Fuck you."

"No thanks, Genie, but I'm sure some poor bastard would pay good money for the same offer."

"You're unbelievable. I can't believe you. I can't believe after three weeks together you still think of me like that. Haven't I proven myself to you? Haven't I sacrificed enough of my time to meet your demands? You're an insecure boy, Ved, but you've done a great job at convincing your little worshippers otherwise. Yeah, I know you ... I know what it's all about for you, always plotting and planning for the next move ... Always dictating your own future by making key moves here and there ... Even our first date was a ploy. I should have known about you right from the beginning."

So you see, this is what I had become. She was right in too many ways. She did understand me; she did see the weakness inside of me. I was stumbling my way through the world, plotting and planning my reputation just as she said. In fact, everything she said was true, even our first date was intentional; my motive wasn't about landing the girl, it was about impressing my friends. Making her bring dates for the boys ... designed to make me look like King-fucking-Tut; and guess what? It'd worked.

When Genie had shown up with three additional "dancers" in the barracks the night after meeting her, I'd looked like a god. People were coming to my room from all over the barracks, stopping in mysteriously to ask for this or that, suddenly realizing that I still had their Schindler's List tape that I'd forgotten to return. Suddenly, they needed it back now, and while they were asking for their VHS back, "Could I have a beer and hang out for a few?"

She'd made a point of telling people that she was my date in order to prevent embarrassing passes at her from the unsuspecting barracks population, and to notify people that even though I was drunk and staring at Venus's tits, I was really interested in her.

Yes, bringing strippers into the barracks was a hat trick. In a world where people paid money, lots of money, to be this close to these admittedly promiscuous women, I'd brought them within striking distance. Had I planned it? Was it all just a ploy to gain popularity? Goddamn right.

See, Genie was a tramp who had almost perfected the art of lying and portraying herself as a good girl with a bad job, and that whole routine hadn't been lost on me. I'd decided right off the bat that the possibility of us having anything remotely real was unfathomable; however, it'd dawned on me that I could still exploit the situation to my advantage by impressing my friends. In that key move, I would become irreplaceable to them; I'd solidify myself among them for the rest of my time on Ft. Bragg, while Genie wouldn't last a week. It wasn't a bad play, even now, knowing what she'd eventually do to me. I'd simply chosen my friends over her, using a temporary "extra" in order to solidify the cast of my barracks mates for the drama that would unfold over the next three years.

The problem was, she did last a week. I'd not softened my views on dancers or strippers ... whatever the fuck they were, at all. I'd been as frank with her as I would have been with anyone. I didn't pull punches. I gave it to her straight, so while she was now tearing me apart, you'll notice that the one thing she didn't call me was a liar. That ... is a compliment. Being called anything else is acceptable; it's OK to be those things ... but being a liar is unforgivable. There is respect in being well planned, even manipulative to a degree, but being a liar ... that's shameful.

Even Jeremy R. fucking Martinez had stopped in, greeting me like we were old friends. When he'd come in, I couldn't believe it. I heard the knock at the door, but I was talking to Venus, a fine little redhead with silicone implants that desperately wanted out of her print blouse. We were discussing something serious, sure, while Genie busied herself playing the sweet and innocent little dancer for my friends and ... well, whoever else was in my room at that particular moment.

Martinez was charming and warm; he even came up from behind me and clapped me on the shoulder. "Ved, what's going on?"

"You see it, Jeremy."

"Yes, I do. And who is this beautiful woman?" he asked, directing his attention to Venus.

"Why, Jeremy ... this is Venus, her god-given name I'm sure," I said with a smile.

"I wouldn't have assumed otherwise," he said, shaking her hand.

"Hi, Jeremy," Venus said, obviously liking his appearance and not being bashful about it.

"Venus ..." he said.

The guy was like Clark Gable, smooth and confident, unwavering in his over-the-top chivalry. I had to give it to him, when he wasn't being a cock-sucking-little-fuck, he was charming. There was something I liked about him, even. Until now, I only knew him as a nemesis, but now I realized that he was probably a cool kid, and maybe it was more than that. Maybe he was intellectual, well read, well versed, and maybe he'd make a fine wingman at the club in the future.

When I returned from the tiny little refrigerator that used to belong to Tom Derrick (but had since been hijacked by myself and my crew), Venus was asking him if he was involved with anyone, or if, perhaps, he'd like to take her out some night.

"No, I'm single. I'd love to," he said, then realized I was standing right behind him.

His eyes met mine, quickly. She should have caught it. She didn't. Jeremy and I both knew that Venus wasn't long-term material, but she would be a hot-burn while it lasted. He could potentially juggle Alyssa Sharpe and Venus without having to sacrifice one or the other.

Jeremy looked at me as Venus announced, "I'm sorry, Ved. Was I too easy?"

"Nah. Jeremy's a good guy; you'll like him." This time I clapped him on the back.

"I didn't steal the one you were after, did I, Ved?" he asked.

There was something about that question I didn't like, but I thought maybe he was being sincere. Maybe he wasn't being as snide as it sounded. I mean, after all, I'd just heard him agree to cheat on Alyssa, and surely he wouldn't want me to use that against him.

"No, Jeremy. Don't worry. That's never gonna happen."

"Ouch!" Venus said, blatantly stating what Jeremy was feeling.

"Nah, it's all good," Jeremy said to Venus. "Ved is a joker; he's a real ladies man. We've been buddies long enough to understand each other. Right, Ved?"

"Right, Jer. We're too good of friends to let something like this come between us," I said before walking off toward Genie, who was being cornered by Jacob Forsythe and his roommate, Zach Finley.

If Venus was looking seductive, Genie was looking sophisticatedly sultry. She wore her jeans, brown leather pumps, a low neckline blouse, and tattered cowboy hat with just a trace of makeup around the eyes. Too often women fuck up the makeup thing, thinking that being painted is the idea, whereas the masters of makeup understand that less is more; however, the eyes are the most important thing. A little eyeliner is important, mascara secondary, and the rest of the face, optional.

Genie was a perfect hostess, if that's what her role was. She was introducing herself to all of her admirers with grace, allowing me to be the king of the room by telling everyone she met that night that she'd asked me out, that she'd thought I was a catch, and had pursued me. This kept her from being ambushed like Venus, Dyre, and Lona, the three girls who had accompanied her.

This wasn't the first time in a military barracks for any of them. They knew too much about the layout of the buildings, like where the vending machines and the bathrooms were located. Genie had brought a bottle of Crown with her as a sort of joke, and also a sort of invitation to stay in and drink, rather than go out where she would probably be recognized by some of her fans. I think she wanted to avoid that if at all possible.

"Zach, Jacob ... I see you've met Genie," I said, touching her side above her belt in a masculine show of possession. She didn't resist me at all; in fact, she closed her eyes when I touched her, perhaps being a little too over-the-top. I felt like an idiot immediately for handling her like that in order to show Zach and Jacob what I had. Pathetic behavior, I admit, especially with such a non-threatening audience like the two of them. Maybe Jeremy Martinez was getting to me, or maybe I thought of him as an opponent I couldn't beat.

The night passed slowly as I met everyone in the barracks who I hadn't had the opportunity to before. I knew their names previous to this night, but now, I knew them.

By two in the morning, Ryan had disappeared into his room with Lona, Luke had "gone for a walk" with Dyre, and Genie and I had stayed with Martinez and Venus to entertain the crowd.

Genie asked me, "You want to go for a drive with me real quick?"

"Nah ... I'm good. Next time."

"You sure?" she asked, looking very obviously at my man-parts.

The implication was erotic, even in not knowing what she had in mind. In fact, like so many other things, sometimes the anticipation far exceeds the reality.

"Nah, I have to stay here and keep an eye on my buddy Jeremy," I said loudly enough for him to hear me.

"Can I talk to you for a second?" Jeremy interrupted.

"Sure."

"Genie, will you excuse us for a second?" he asked, again with the cordiality.

"Don't keep him too long, Jeremy." Genie smiled.

"Of course not."

We walked into the hallway, trying to find a place to talk, but there were crowds in the hallway even. We walked a little further, but by then we were close to his door, so we went into his room.

It was a nice room, far nicer than ours. He'd actually painted it a purplish-brown. It looked good, and I admired him for being that in touch with his feminine side. It also smelled of women's perfume, a lavender scent. I guessed that was the scent of Miss Sharpe. The windows had nice curtains, a solid color that fit well with the rest of the scheme. Over all, it was really a nice room. He had a beautiful stereo system, a big TV, and the beds were pushed together to accommodate his many sleepovers with Alyssa, or maybe to better accommodate Venus ... motherfucker.

"I want to apologize to you," he said.

I was a little tipsy; actually I was on the downward side of tipsy and headed toward drunkville. I was feeling sentimental; I was feeling like Jeremy might be an asset to my crew, someone else to help pull chicks into the circle.

"Save it, Jeremy. I get it. I think that shit is over between us. I think we both have come to an understanding," I said, raising my eyebrows in order to insinuate we were talking about Venus here, not him and me.

"Right. Uh ... so Alyssa is in Raleigh for three days; her sister is in town visiting some friends at Chapel Hill, so ..."

"I get it, man. No problem. Even if I didn't like you, and I still don't know if I do, I wouldn't give you up on that one, buddy. Man-code. Not that I wouldn't mind seeing Alyssa dump you on your ass and be on the market. I would, but not enough to rat you out, bro."

"Really?" he asked

"What? Want to see Alyssa on the market?"

"No, man, give me up? You wouldn't?"

"No. Never."

I turned toward the door wanting to get back to Genie to let her talk more about the "drive" we weren't going to take, allowing my imagination to run wild for a while. I knew this was what Jeremy wanted when he'd come over to Genie and I; it wasn't rocket science after all.

"Hey, Ved, you're a cool guy. I misjudged you initially."

"No you didn't, Jeremy. You were just an asshole like you are to everyone, and you didn't bother to even make a judgment call."

I walked out the door.

He came chasing after me into the hallway. "Hey, Ved, one more thing ... Alyssa, I really like her. We haven't been going out all that long. It just started before you got here. Anyway, I like her, a lot. It's just you know ... strippers. Doesn't every guy try and fuck a stripper when he gets the chance?" he chuckled, waiting for me to agree.

I looked at him, feeling like King-fucking-Tut for the first time. "No, Jeremy, not everyone."

I walked back to my room.

When I kissed Genie goodnight, after walking her and her now disheveled friends to her SUV, she said, "Looks like we're the only ones who behaved ourselves tonight."

"Ah, yes, my dear. That means we have a good morning to look forward to tomorrow, and your friends," I looked around, "and mine, don't."

"I might have traded a good night for a good morning." She squeezed the lump in my jeans.

"There are plenty of regretful mornings to look forward to in the future," I assured her.

"I might not be as regretful as you think," she said, turning toward her SUV where her friends were having difficulty loading into it.

"Who said I meant with me?" I joked.

She ran back over to me, grabbed my hands, and placed them on her breasts. "Be nice to me, Mr. Ludo, pretty please." She moved my hands in circles around her stiffening nipples, then she whispered in my ear, "Instead of jerking off tonight when you go back inside, I could have given you a much ..." she thought for a second, and I realized how drunk she was for the first time, "better time," she slurred.

I was disappointed with her choice of words. It could have been so much better. This assured me that I'd made the right decision; I'd played it smart. I hadn't resisted Hailey's first attempt like I wanted to, and look where that had gotten me.

"Will you call me tomorrow?" she asked.

"Maybe." I smiled, looking at her in the cool night air, her nipples protruding through her blouse.

"Bye, Ved Ludo ... or Shell Ludo." She smirked.

"Hey!" I raised my voice

She turned to face me, seated in the driver's seat, her door open.

"What's your real name?" I asked.

"Wouldn't you like to know? Call me tomorrow, Shell. Maybe I'll tell ya."

I smiled. "You cold bitch."

"Touché," she said and started the engine.

Tomorrow had turned into me hanging out with Genie and her friends at their favorite hair salon. Apparently, when strippers get haircuts—which seems to happen more than say, accountants get haircuts—they get them together. They bounced different ideas off of each other, each trying to be the boldest. Venus ended up with the title for that day, with some short, guy-style hair that was colored burgundy and black, while Genie looked exactly the same a hundred bucks later.

The salon was designed for this sort of crowd. It was called Neo Color and was painted red from floor to ceiling and accented with black. Beyond having three styling chairs, there was a black marble bar with plenty of bottles of booze placed on top, easily accessible to the waiting patrons. A sign hung above the receptionist desk that said $100. There were no descriptions defining the individual prices of a wash, highlights, coloring, cuts ... It was simply a hundred bucks per person, plus tip, for whatever you wanted done.

There were sixteen strippers and myself, the token dude. I was asked a lot of "What do you think about this, Ved?" while a magazine photo of Alyssa Milano on a red carpet somewhere was held up to my face. After Alyssa, Lauren Holly and Winona Ryder seemed to hold the most adoration by the dancers.

I did my best to give honest recommendations, but, honestly, I was so overwhelmed with the company I was keeping that I couldn't have cared less what Mystique or Cinnamon did with their hair. It bothered me a little that even off duty, these girls referred to each other by their stage name, which in turn reminded me to be sure and find out Genie's real name later.

After a few hours at Neo's, we left in Genie's red Ford Explorer. Before we did so, each girl made a point of hugging me breastilly, poking silicone and saline implants deep into my rib cage. They thanked me for my precious advice, which I thought was a joke, but they were trying to play it off as an honest thank you. They too, were all actors, all doing the same routine, and I wondered how different that time would have been for them if there hadn't been a guy in the salon that day. Would they have called each other Martha and Jenny, dropping the monikers they used to dance, or was this the nature of their relationship, held together by the place that employed them, not going beyond that, no matter what?

"Where we going?" I asked.

"Somewhere," she said.

I was imagining a "by the hour" motel, when we turned into a residential neighborhood. I was confused. A few minutes later, we were parked in front of a big house with natural brown wood siding and little boy's toys lying everywhere in the driveway.

"You asked about my son; thought maybe you'd want to meet him," she said, afraid to look at me and see how I reacted.

"Cool. Sounds good," I said.

"Really?" She turned to look at me.

"Yeah, better than where I thought you were gonna take me."

"Oh, really?" She laughed, looking at me. "And where was that?"

"I don't know. The lucky-u-motel?" I said smiling back at her.

A boy ran toward the car dressed in a fashionable pair of Levi's and a black tank top. He wore brown boots and had medium length almost-black hair. He looked like a regular man who had been shrunk down to just under four feet tall, dressed like he was in his twenties and did roofing for a living before he'd discovered a machine with a laser beam that reduced him to the size of a six year old.

"Momma!" he yelled.

"OK, honey, step back. Let Momma open her door."

She went to open her door, looked at me, and said, "I can't believe you thought I was going to seduce you. On a Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m.?" She smiled and shook her head, then stepped out the door.

I got out too, walking slowly around the Explorer to allow time for them to finish hugging each other.

"Momma, do you have to work tonight?" he asked.

"No, baby, Momma has tonight off."

"Can we go Go-karts?" he asked, noticing me for the first time.

"I don't know, honey. We'll have to see."

He walked up to me, giving me the eye as he did so. He stopped right in front of me, looking at me. I squatted down and looked him in the eyes. It had been a long time since I had been around a little kid like this, and even the sight of him was refreshing somehow.

He reached out a hand to shake. "Are you a Army man?" he asked.

I shook delicately. "Yup. Sure am."

"Are you a airborne?"

"Hoo-rah," I said.

The town was full of soldiers. I mean, full of soldiers. Ft. Bragg claimed to employ 80,000 military personnel on any given day, let alone training schools and visiting units. It wasn't odd that he knew I was a soldier, or even that I was airborne; it was only odd to me that he approached me so directly. He was defending his mom in a way, being the man of the house, the way a father interviews suitors there to take his daughter out. I immediately liked the kid, felt sorry for the guy, and wanted to hug him myself. Not that he looked malnourished or neglected; he didn't, but I knew his mom was a stripper, and he'd probably end up with a half-brother in the not-too-distant-future—hopefully without the last name Ludo. Wait, does the kid get the dad's last name no matter what, or is that a mother's choice? I didn't know for sure how that all worked.

He was no ordinary little dude; he was articulate, forward, and I thought impeccably dressed for a kid of his age. I don't know what I was expecting, maybe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles underwear with Kool-Aid stains across his bare torso, chocolate something stuck to his lips and cheeks ... something like this.

"Did you dress him?" I asked Genie later.

"Nope, he won't let me. He's six and already he won't let me pick out his clothes."

"Wow. I like his style. I could learn a few things from this kid," I said.

Genie went inside after telling me to wait out here until she talked to her mother, so I played with Aiden in the driveway. We shot Nerf guns at each other. I was the better shot of the two of us; in fact, I was so accurate that I had to constantly remind myself not to aim at his face. I don't know why it is that with Nerf guns, boys always have to aim for the eyes. Maybe it's that the foam dart-like bullets are so benign in nature, that the only way to get a reaction out of the person you are shooting at is to bean them in the eyeball. We shot a few baskets on the six foot basketball hoop for a while, again trying desperately to avoid dunking hard on it, and when we ran out of enthusiasm for my Globetrotters performance, I pushed him on his bike, pretending to fall down after each push.

"Can we make up a secret shake?" he asked me.

"Definitely, bud. Any ideas?"

He began showing me a series of moves involving the back of his hand, his knuckles, a few finger snaps, and a slap at the end. I had the distinct impression that this was newer to me than it was to him, and despite myself, I wondered how many other guys Genie had brought back here to learn Aiden's secret shake. Nevertheless, I was flattered by the gesture of having our own little shake.

After we'd gone over it a few times, he changed the subject and asked me, "Will you take me on a airplane someday?"

I knew that Aiden and I rolling out on a C-130 was impossible, so I had to decide whether to lie or be honest; I took the middle ground. "Yeah, buddy. I don't know about a C-130, but maybe a Cessna. Would that be cool?"

"Will you jump out of it?" he asked.

"You want me to?"

"Yeah. I like to see Airbornes."

"Then definitely." I smiled.

"I've seen Airbornes jump before on Fort Bragg. They jumped on Sicily."

I knew he meant Sicily drop zone, one of the larger DZs that had bleachers for spectators. The local paper listed the daytime jumps for interested civilians to come watch.

I thought about his request. There was a Ft. Bragg Skydiving Club that I was meaning to look into, a place where I could get my A License for about five hundred bucks, which is about fifteen hundred bucks cheaper than anywhere in the civilian world. If I did that, I could get him up in the air for ten bucks, and he could see me jump. It seemed like a long shot, his mom being Genie and all, but why not at least entertain the idea.

Genie came back out. "You wanna go go-karting?" she asked.

"Yeah!" Aiden yelled and began jumping.

"No, honey, I'm just asking Ved if he—"

"Definitely, let's go!" I exclaimed. I thought that this might really mean that her mom wasn't too happy with the trooper in the driveway hanging out for lunch and chitchat.

"Can I ride with him, Momma?" he asked.

"You'll have to ask Ved that, hon—"

"Absolutely, little man," I chimed in.

"Really?" Genie asked me.

"Hell yes," I said.

I was excited, really excited, probably more excited than Aiden. I needed this; I needed a break from my plotting and planning, my sex-capades, and the nonstop routine of life on Bragg. This little dude in the back seat was not only devilishly handsome, he was cool as ice, and I immediately fell for the little guy.

"Aiden, if you're gonna roll with me, I need to tell you now that I drive go-karts really fast," I warned with a smile.

"Yesssss," he hissed and did a fist pump.

I turned around and did the secret shake with him, proud of myself for remembering it, and having Genie see it done for the first time.

"Wow. Looks like I missed a lot while I was inside," she said, and something about her tone told me I was right in my assumption that this was, in fact, an old shake, dusty and tattered, yet presented to me as if created on the fly.

"Yeah, you missed the delicate art of man-bonding." I smiled.

"Hmmm, your boyfriends would be jealous."

"Are you kidding me? They'd want me to take this kid out. He's totally lady-killer material ... I'd do the 'widowed father and motherless son' routine."

"You're fucking sick, dude," she said, then covered her mouth.

"Mommy owes me a dollar!" Aiden announced in a singsong tone.

I got it immediately; I didn't need any more hints than that.

"Buddy, can you break a twenty?" I asked.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Never mind. But I'm gonna make you rich off the swear jar," I said.

"Cuss cup," he corrected.

"Aaah." I nodded.

That night Genie dropped me off at the barracks. Aiden was out cold in the back seat after a long day of karting, mini-golf, and even some kiddie water slides.

"I had fun," I said.

"Me too, but I think he had the most fun. He loved you," she said.

"Ah, he just likes the attention."

"No, really, you were great with him. Unbelievable."

"Thanks, Genie."

"Amanda," she corrected me.

"Amanda, huh?" I asked.

"Yeah, Amanda Michelle TuPoint."

"It's beautiful." I kissed her quickly and opened my door.

"Ved?" she asked

"Yep."

"That was incredibly cool of you to ... be so cool to Aiden."

"Don't fuck me around, Genie. That kid's the coolest little dude I've ever met. I think he's gonna break my heart one day."

"Only if you break mine," she replied.

"Yeah, that's what I mean." I closed the door, and in a strange gesture for me, I blew her a kiss, secretly hoping that it would miss her entirely and find Aiden sleeping peacefully in the backseat.

The next morning I was in my room, after PT, getting dressed for duty. I'd forgotten to get my uniforms pressed over the weekend, so I was expecting some, "Hey, Ludo, you pull them BDUs out the bottom of your duffle bag?" which was so cliché it made my head hurt to think about it.

Derrick was shaving with an electric razor, which made this awful high pitched buzzing noise and made squiggly lines dance across the TV screen. After five minutes of listening to the noise, I looked at him. "What the hell, bro? You're not even that hairy."

He turned it off, looked at me, and said, "You're just pissed because I have facial hair." Then he turned it back on.

There was a little truth to that statement, but, Jesus, how long does a guy without a beard need to spend shaving? The truth was, he just liked the razor, and I think it made him feel manlier. His new girlfriend, whom I hadn't met, had bought it for him for his birthday, making the goddamned thing even more special.

The phone rang. Derrick walked over to it and picked it up, muttering with his usual lack of enthusiam, "Hello?"

He turned off the razor. A silence fell on the room, wildlife again able to hear and communicate with each other. "Huh? Who?"

I assumed that meant it was for me. After all, how many other people lived in our room? I reached my hand out for the phone, and he gave it to me with a shrug of the shoulders.

"Hello," I said, intentionally more vivaciously than my socially challenged roommate.

"Ved?" a little boy's voice asked.

"What's up, little dude?" I asked, glad to hear him on the other end. I couldn't think of anyone I'd rather talk to at that exact moment.

"Hi, Ved. It's Aiden."

"Yeah, I know who it is, buddy. I don't get too many calls from little dudes, ya know?"

He laughed. "Yeah."

"What's going on, Aiden? You all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Thank you." That was intended to be two separate statements, but I didn't get it immediately.

"Oh, that's good. What's going on?" I asked, smiling at Derrick who was very confused.

"That's all."

Now I was confused. "What's all?" I asked him.

"Thank you."

"Oh, you're calling to say thank you?"

"Yup."

"You're welcome, buddy. I have to go to work now, Aiden. But, hey, you can call me any time you want to, OK?"

"Yup."

"OK, buddy. You have fun today, OK?"

"Yup."

"Is your mom there?"

"Nope. She in the bathroom," he said.

I laughed. "Oh, yeah? She been in there a long time?"

"Yup. She putting her face on," he said.

"Ah ... OK, well, tell her I said hi, buddy, OK?"

"Yup."

"Bye, Aiden."

"Ved?"

"Yeah, buddy?"

"Don't forget to take me on a airplane."

I smiled a sad smile. "I won't forget, Aiden. Promise. Bye, buddy."

"Ved?"

"Yeah, Aiden?" I was laughing out loud at this conversation.

"Make sure we do it fast, before you go away, OK?"

Maybe that was the first time I thought about my relationship with Genie as potentially harmful. It wasn't the last. I thought about Aiden all that day, having guys come into his life then disappear, over and over again. I was just the next guy in line to let him down ... to pull a Houdini on him. Genie and I would come to an end, and then Aiden would disappear, never to be seen again. A week later, she'd pull into the driveway with some other guy in the passenger seat. Aiden would ask him the same couple of questions and he'd answer the same as I did.

"Yes, I'm airborne." ... "Yes, I'll take you on a plane ride." ... "Yes, I'll do whatever I have to do in order to fuck your mother, you fatherless bastard."

That'd been the beginning of the downward spiral for Genie and me. Though we would continue to see each other for the next fifty-three days, our relationship was headed to the shitter, fast. By the time Genie had showed up at my room on the last night of our "relationship," I'd had enough of her breakfast dates and her consuming job. Besides all of that, Alyssa Sharpe was visiting my room frequently—ever since she had broken up with Jeremy Martinez who, of course, assumed it was me who'd mentioned Venus to her.

I hadn't said a word. Ryan had.

Alyssa and I were just friends, but I'm not gonna say I was pure of heart. We'd been getting closer with each visit, and with her recent promotion to Sergeant, the risks were getting higher—for her anyway. For me, her promotion was an aphrodisiac, but I was not too vocal about that. She seemed worried about getting caught sleeping with a PFC.

Oh yes, that's right, I'd been promoted twice since arriving at the Sig. Once was, I'm sure of it, simply a way of apologizing for sticking me in the hole for a month and having me come that close to being permanently section eight. The other was simply after my one year anniversary of being in the Army.

By the time Genie showed up and began her rant about me going to Marz, it was all but over. Yes, I'd begun to sleep with her, and yes, it was pretty interesting sex, but as stated before, reality rarely competes with imagination.

"Yeah, Genie, you should have known about me from the beginning. I didn't want any of this, remember? I didn't want to meet you, I certainly didn't want to fuck you, 'cause I knew you'd be a fucking problem child ... and as far as children, I didn't want to know yours either." I couldn't believe I'd said it. That was so out of character for me. I never said things I didn't mean, and I was always so careful to phrase things just right.

She stared at me, tears in her eyes, saying nothing. Her lower lip began to tremble, and I saw her eyes turn from sadness to rage. She attacked me, swinging violently. I caught her arms and restrained her, trying to get her to calm down.

"You motherfucker! He loves you, and you don't even care?" she screamed.

I looked at the door to my room, open a crack. Goddamnit.

"You are disgusting!" she screamed again, even louder. She had seen me look at the door, and she knew the louder she got, the more people would hear her.

"I'm going to let go of your arms, Genie. Do not fucking swing at me, understand?" I asked, giving her a dead serious look that implied violence.

"Don't fucking touch me," she said as I loosened my grip on her, jerking her arms out of my hands.

I walked to the door and opened it, standing beside it as if to show her out.

She stared at me from where she stood. "You know, I can handle you breaking up with me, Ved. I'm used to that. Once I give it up, I know the end is near." She laughed a weird little laugh. "But Aiden? You didn't want to know him? All the time you spent with him, all the times he called you, the times you watched him while I was working? All that time, you didn't want to be with him?" she asked in a whisper-like tone.

"Don't twist my words. I love that kid. I have since the first day."

"You just walk away from us now? Is that it? You find another girlfriend and just start the process over? Hmm? Being Mister Intuitive and all knowing? Hmm? Is that it? Who is she?"

"Genie, it's time to go," I said, nodding her out the door with my head.

"No, who is she?" she asked again.

There were muted voices in the hallway. Everyone, I was sure, was out there doing their best impression of generic hallway conversation while listening in on Ved Ludo and the stripper Genie. I'm sure they were celebrating then end of my affair with a stripper, as no one other than Luke and Ryan could ever handle it. No matter how many times she came around, the performances always began when she entered the building.

Actors without an audience ...

"Take care, Genie," I said again, feeling desperately sad for her now.

"Fine." She turned and grabbed her purse. "Good luck with the next one, Ved. I hope she rips your cold-fucking-heart out, scumbag!"

"I'll miss you too," I said calmly, allowing that one.

She walked out the door and looked at the crowd of six standing by the bathroom door. Ryan was among them. "Come see me at the Paradise, guys. I'll give you each something special in the lap dance room," she said without looking at me.

I smiled. I wanted to kill her. "Get the fuck out of here, Genie," I said calmly.

She was standing close to them now. Ryan moved slowly away and toward me. He was a good friend, once again, following the man-code to a tee. She put her hand on Jon's shoulder. "Jon, come see me," she said as she walked around him seductively.

"I will," he said.

"The fuck you will," Ryan announced. "Get out of here, whore," he snarled at Genie.

She didn't mouth off to him; she knew him well enough to know that was a bad idea. She left.

I guess I thought that was the last I'd ever see of Genie. I guess I thought that I could walk away from what I was supposed to cherish without having to pay for the insult of doing so. I was wrong. Though Genie was gone now, she was still out there, and she wasn't about to let me off without payment. Everything has a price tag; everything comes with a cost. If you find yourself holding goods that you can't recall paying for, that simply means that the bill collector hasn't come for you yet.
Chapter 5

Traffic

"Knock-knock, asshole." I heard Jeremy Martinez's voice from the hallway.

This fucking guy ... "Who is it?" I asked, being the asshole he'd just called me.

"Open the fucking door, Ved. I need to talk to you."

"Yes, dear, coming." I walked to the door. Jeremy hadn't been down to visit me in a long time, well, since the night he cheated on his girlfriend, my girlfriend ... whatever she was.

I started to open the door, but before I could even get it open the whole way, a hairy knuckled fist slammed into my nose, right on the tip of it, forever distorting its perfect poise. The pain was intense as I fell backward, skidding on my back across the tile floor. I reached for it to pinch it off and to control any bleeding that there might be, all the while thinking how much I hated being punched in the nose. It brought a pain that you can never get used to, and I wondered why no one ever hit me in the jaw or the eye. Yup, sure enough, the geyser had been opened as streams of blood began to flow from both sides of it.

People began pouring into my room, four ... five of them, Martinez, of course, being the smallest of them, and I realized that was the very point of his crew. They were his mob, his hit men, and while wincing in pain and trying to control the bleeding, I was trying desperately to see who was with that little weasel. Sergeant Bender was the first one I recognized, and at first I thought maybe I was imagining him in the group, refusing to believe that he would be any part of this attack. After looking at the order in which they'd come through the door, it dawned on me that Bender was the owner of the hairy knuckles I'd seen so closely, just a few seconds before. I couldn't believe it.

Bender had hit me so fast, and they pushed through the door before I even hit the floor, entering like a swat team in what they assumed was my peaceful abode. They'd planned on coming in undetected, closing the door behind them, and doing god-knows-what to me behind the locked door; but I think when I suddenly laughed out loud, I'd signaled to them that something was up, and that something wasn't as they thought it should be.

Bender, being the first guy in, was the first to scan my room, and when he saw Ryan, Zach, Luke, Derrick, and Jacob sitting on my sofa, drinking beer, and watching a movie, panic struck his bland face. Even through teary eyes I could see it there, red and all eyeballs as he realized he'd just entered the lion's den.

Before he could even tell the guys still pushing into the room that they needed to do an about-face, Ryan was up and crossing the distance from the sofa to where he stood. When he reached striking distance, Ryan threw a punch that landed on Bender's Adam's apple. Bender silently fell to the floor, clutching his throat and gasping for air. Silently, he suffered unspeakable pain while Ryan grabbed the next in line.

This wasn't going to play out quite the way they imagined it.

Twenty seconds later the fight was over, and three of the five would-be attackers were lying face up in the hallway, moaning and sobbing. The other two, Martinez and Bender, remained in our room. Martinez was given the worst of it, beaten from head to toe with a special emphasis being put on his balls and face. Bender looked like he was asphyxiating on my floor. He was trying so hard to breathe that when I approached him to give him a broken nose of his own, he simply closed his eyes and waited for it. I delivered it with pleasure, trying to swing straight even though I was completely off kilter myself. When I did connect, on the second try, he just continued to clutch his throat. That's an impressive amount of pain. I mean, my broken nose seemed to be the most radiant pain imaginable, so I considered him holding his throat a testament to how excruciating having your Adam's apple punched must feel.

Again, I felt no mercy for these fucks. We dragged them into the hallway to join their friends; dropped them there, allowing their heads to bounce off of the concrete floor; and went back into our room and restarted Cliffhanger, disappointed that we'd missed the best part. Everyone knows that the first ten minutes of that movie are the best ... The nerve of these assholes, huh?

"Your nose OK?" Luke asked.

"Yeah ... but it fucking hurts," I complained.

Derrick handed me a beer. "Here, this will help."

I placed the bottle against my nose, instantly feeling that it was of far better value to me this way than in my stomach.

"Guess he knows about Alyssa," Zach said.

We laughed, and that hurt my nose. I had a headache.

"Yeah, that wasn't too hard to figure out though," Ryan said.

"What do you mean? We've been so discreet." I smiled.

"She worth it?" Derrick asked.

I looked at him. Poor Derrick. He never seemed to understand what a good lover is worth in this world. He was always asking me if it was worth it. Every time I had a hangover or went to bed at five in the morning, waking up zombie-like an hour later for PT, he'd just have to ask the same redundant question, over and over.

"Next time she comes down here, you can watch and tell me what you think. How's that?"

"No thanks, I have a girlfriend," he said.

"Yeah, right," Ryan said.

"Yeah, I do ... I told you already. You guys can come down and see for yourself," Derrick defended himself.

"And stay at your mommy's house?" Zach asked.

"Whoa, take it easy, Derrick ... Me thinks you protesteth too much." Luke laughed.

"Imaginary women don't count, Derrick," Ryan said.

"Fu—" Derrick stopped before saying it. See, unless your name was Luke or Ludo, it just wasn't safe to say "Fuck you" to Ryan Wilkie. Not that he couldn't take a joke; he could. It was just that if you didn't say it just right, if it had an edge of seriousness to it and he heard it, he'd react poorly. Luke, who was no slouch in a scrap either, and I could mouth off to Ryan all we wanted; he would never swing on us. He was loyal, he was really loyal, and he wouldn't risk being ostracized from the gang by swinging on us. He liked the rest of these guys well enough too, but they weren't valuable to him. They knew that and remained very cautious when they spoke to him.

"You think he'll be back?" Zach asked.

"Not today," Luke said, watching the movie start again.

"Nope," Ryan said with confidence.

I opened my beer and watched as Sylvester Stallone dropped that poor girl into the hideous gorge below.

When Alyssa showed up an hour later, she tried to come barging into the room the way she always did, but the door was now locked, and she smacked her head against the door. We heard the thump and immediately thought that the boys just might be coming back for round two. "Jesus ... is the door locked?" We heard her voice from in the hallway.

I got up, nursing a headache and what were rapidly becoming two black eyes, noticing that Zach and Jacob were straightening themselves up, simply because they knew Alyssa was out there. Luke, Ryan, and I were laughing at the thump we'd heard when I opened the door. As I did so, I held the handle tightly, suddenly dizzy.

When she came in, she was rubbing her head where a red spot was developing from her bump against the door. Ryan and Luke were laughing out loud, and I simply smiled. Zach and Jacob Forsythe didn't dare laugh at the beautiful sergeant with a red spot on her head. They played the cordial routine, asking her if she was OK.

"I'm fine, assholes."

I laughed out loud.

"You think it's funny?" she asked, smiling. "You should see your eyes. You look like a fucking raccoon. Jeremy did that to you?" she asked.

"Yeah, right," Ryan said, defending such an insulting question.

"Bender hit me."

"Bender? I thought you two were buddies."

Just then Jon walked into the room, seeing the door open.

"Yeah, he did too," Luke told her.

"They hit him before he could do anything about it. Fuckers just knocked and when Ved opened the door, Bender was already winding up," Zach said.

"Wait, what happened?" Jon asked, obviously late.

"Holy shit!" she exclaimed. "You want me to file a complaint?" she asked.

We all laughed. "What would happen if you did and they claimed that we beat them unconscious?" Ryan asked her.

"No. You didn't?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah. We did," I said smugly.

"He's an E-5, Ved. You know what that means?"

"Yeah, it means that he shouldn't be punching his way into an E-3's room," I said, watching the end of the Stallone film.

"You fucking guys are lucky. You'd better hope he admits he hit you first, Ved, or you'll be in some serious shit."

"When he comes out of the coma that Ryan put him in, we'll have to ask him," Zach said.

We all laughed, even Alyssa Sharpe.

"Shit, I missed it?" Jon asked.

"You always miss it, dude. It's the story of your life, or the life you don't have," Jacob chided.

"Fuck! Why didn't you guys come get me?"

We all just looked at him, wondering why in the hell we would go get him.

Alyssa was blonde, about five foot seven, a hundred and fifty pounds, not a tiny girl. She was thick and curvy, and unlike Genie, the anorexic midget, Sharpe looked like a lady. She didn't have much fat on her at all; she was strong like bull, but carried a feminine disposition that seemed to radiate from her. She was sultry and sexy, but in a good-girl kind of way.

She was from Washington State, a potato farmer's daughter, and everything about her let you know that she'd worked plenty of days in the fields growing up. In the Army, she was a medic, and because of that, she felt it was her duty to inspect my wounds and make her prognosis known to us all.

"Were you dizzy? Are you dizzy?" she asked me, sitting down on my lap and looking into my blood red eyes. Apparently a few capillaries had burst upon impact, making my eyes fill with loose blood.

"Yeah, I'm dizzy," I said.

"He's had six beers," Ryan informed her.

"Four," I corrected.

"Oh, that's great, Ved ... Drinking with a concussion. Don't be surprised if you have a hemorrhage or an aneurysm."

"I'm fine." I smiled. "Besides, I have to defend the honor of my lady."

"Yeah, some defender ... Knocked out with the first punch." She pinched me.

"Someone had to take the first blow. Couldn't have Ryan knocked out. Needed him."

"Yeah, fuckin' right," he said. "That motherfucker'll never knock me out; I can promise you that," he said.

"What a freak. I can't believe he'd try and take you all on," she said.

"Oh, no, that's not what happened. They were expecting to find Ved and Derrick alone. They didn't know we were in here til they came busting through the door," Luke explained.

"Oh, that makes more sense. Martinez is a pussy. I'm pretty sure I could take him," she said.

Alyssa Sharpe was a perfect combination of affectionate and not, depending on our surroundings. When the guys were around, she was all the things that a good girlfriend should be—funny, light, and beautiful. When we were alone, she was affectionate, nurturing, and giving.

By this point, my number had crept up a bit. Between Genie and Alyssa, there had been a few one-nighters and a couple that hung around for a week or so. That wouldn't have been the way it played out, but sometime after we realized that we were into each other, she got promoted to E-5, and that really screwed things up for a while. She decided she needed time to think about whether a relationship with yours truly was worth potentially losing her stripes. Fraternization was fine, assuming that no one involved was an NCO, but now that she'd crossed over, it was a bigger deal. Honestly, she wasn't in my platoon, she was a medic and I was NBC, so there was no real chain of command conflict. Nonetheless, it was frowned upon, and we both knew that Martinez would blow the whistle, if no one else did.

When she'd told me that she needed time, I obliged her. The last thing on earth a man should do when told that the woman he is with needs time to sort things out, is pursue her. That, my friends, is a clear sign of weakness that seems to radiate into a woman's psyche, immediately identifying you as a "clinger." I find that women respond better to strength than they do to sensitivity. What I mean is that deep down inside of them, they want a man, not another woman, so essentially they expect you to act like a man. Desperation is romantic in Rom-Coms, but (unless you are Matthew McConaughey or Gerard Butler) when you hear a statement like this, you need to disappear.

If she calls you back within a month, you're good. If you don't hear from her in that time, she's a goner, and you better deal with it accordingly.

When Alyssa eventually came back to me after "thinking about things," she'd done so on a special night. My gay friend Eli had stopped by that night, and also a friend of Genie's had visited. Actually, I'd met both Eli and Gemini through Genie, and the way that one had showed up unexpectedly after the other, with different intentions, is a story worth revisiting.

I was holding Derrick's Norelco and singing to the mirror on a Friday afternoon of a four day Memorial Day weekend when I heard the knock at the door. None of my friends ever knocked, but being that I was singing into a Norelco, I'd locked the door. I'd expected it could be any number of people coming to see me, but Eli had not crossed my mind.

When I saw him in the hallway, a flamboyantly gay man, I thought of chum swirling in shark-infested waters. The barracks was not a place for such a man, though I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that he was gay.

I'd met him through Janie, another dancer friend of Genie's, who'd known him since her years as a local model. Eli had been her photographer, once upon a time, and though he'd given that career up after patenting some fuel-valve used for Boeings, they'd stayed close over the years that followed.

When I met Eli, we'd just sort of hit it off. I hadn't had any blatantly gay friends before him, so I was enthralled with both his flaming homosexuality and the differences I found in him. My buddies Luke, Zach, Ryan, and even Jon and Jacob were cool guys, but Eli was different from all of them. His attention to detail in the smallest of matters mattered to me, like the matching of his belt to his shoes or his well-manicured hands ... I found these things masculine despite his obvious sexuality. The fact that he was gay didn't hinder me from befriending him; in fact, I rather liked it about him.

He didn't hit on me like a used car salesman, but he did occasionally make remarks about what it'd be like to fuck me, most of which I just laughed off. The concept of sex with another man was repugnant to me, and after watching a few seconds of gay porn at his house accidentally, I was certain of that. However, there was an attraction there to him, an attraction that I find difficult to explain now; an attraction that was not physical, but certainly emotional and psychological. He was liberating for me, he was a breath of fresh air, and someone I could be totally and completely honest with without ever feeling judged.

There were things I learned about myself through my relationship with him, things that I had always considered feminine qualities that he explained to me as natural. For instance, I liked classical music, I'd rather attend an art gallery than a baseball game, and I could look at a man and identify how attractive he was ... things like this.

Eli had stopped in to see me that afternoon because he'd heard about Genie and me. He was concerned for me, that I might be hurt, and I think he was concerned that because we didn't have that immediate link between us anymore that we would drift apart. My genuine excitement to see him was evidence enough that his fear was unfounded; in fact, I decided after seeing him in the hallway that this friend was genuine, and I needed to make a more conscious effort to visit him and his partner, Enrique.

"So ... it's definitely over with Genie?"

"Yeah, bro, it's over. Her world and mine don't mix."

"Really, ever see the Paradise on Army payday? It seems to mix pretty well." He laughed, covering his mouth in a very feminine gesture. I noticed these things. I liked them about him, and more so, I liked that he felt comfortable enough around me to release his real personality in my presence.

"Unfortunately, I have."

"What about Janie? I know she's liked you for a while."

"She's Genie's best friend, man ... besides, Genie-Janie ... a little too close for comfort."

"I'm not saying that you have to marry her, but you could give her some of that man-sauce."

"Fuck, Eli ... man-sauce? Really? You queer types are so ... manicured on the outside, but crass on the inside." I laughed.

"Everyone needs someone to love, Ved."

"Love? That what you kids call it these days? Besides, I've had too many people to love the last few weeks. I think I need a break."

"A strong young buck like you? No," he teased.

"So ... what's the deal, Eli. I know you didn't come here to push Janie on me."

"Maybe I did." He looked at me. "OK, no I didn't, but I promised her I would try while I was here."

"So she knew you were coming?"

"She's the reason I came, Ved. She really likes you, and ... she's looking out for you, like I am."

"So what's up?"

"Two things, really. One, Janie sent me here to tell you that Genie's out to get you. She doesn't know the details, but Genie's been talking crazy about you, like she can't let it go. No one knows if she's seriously going crazy and therefore dangerous, or if she's just talking shit."

"That's comforting. Like what?"

"I don't know, Ved. Janie just told me to tell you to be cool. Don't call her or anything like that."

"Yeah, well, I haven't called her since she left. I'm not going to now."

Was I a little nervous about this? Yes. Genie was a lot of things, and unfortunately crazy and unpredictable were on the list. I didn't think she'd do anything to hurt me, but as far as just getting even with me, yeah, she was definitely capable of doing something.

"Two," he said, "there is a bookstore opening in Fayetteville in two weeks. I applied for a job in the coffee shop; my friend is doing the hiring. I got the job and she really wants to hire some Army guys to work too, you know, it being an Army town and all. You can work nights, as little or much as you want, any hours you want."

"I'll take it." I was immediately sold. Coffee, books, and civilians ... sounded like just what I needed. I wanted to explore the world, and the Army was just that: the Army. There were real people out there whom I wanted to know, and I was tired of seeing the world through my barracks window. Working with Eli would be cool; talking to people over coffee was even better.

"Really?" He smiled.

"Yeah, for sure. I have to talk to the captain about it, but he won't care as long as the hours are flexible."

"It's an Army town, Ved, she knows."

"Cool."

"Excellent. I get to work with Ved? Am I the luckiest guy on earth or what? Enrique is going to shit himself! Oh, he gets so jealous when I talk about you."

"That's funny."

"Oh, not to him. He can be such a little weenie ... Anyway, I promise to introduce you to the most magnificent women in town, Ved. They'll love you."

"Cool. Hey, let me know what you find out from the guy doing the hiring," I told him, standing.

"It's a she."

"Oh, right."

"I will. I'll call you tomorrow after I talk to Susana."

"Nice. I can come down and interview whenever," I told Eli.

"Nah, you don't even have to. You're already hired."

He hugged me, a good solid man-hug, and got ready to go.

"I'll call you tomorrow," he said, opening the door to leave.

"All right," I said, turning toward my fridge.

"Hey, Ved?"

"Yeah?" I turned back to him.

"Promise me that if you ever switch teams ... I can be your first."

"Eli, it ain't gonna happen, but I promise."

"That's all I needed to hear. You suck. TTFN," he said and closed the door.

I was sitting there, trying to picture Eli and myself cleaning up all the hotties in town who stumbled into the bookstore, when Luke walked in. "I just saw Eli in the hall. What's he up to?"

"He got me a job at some new bookstore in Fayetnam."

"Motherfucker ... You better get me a job," Luke said.

"Really? You want to work at a bookstore?"

"You don't think I know what Eli will be hooking you up with?"

"Reefer? Coke?" I asked, looking for the angle.

"Chicks! The guy's a fuckin' pimp, Ved. All gay guys are, but you know Eli ..."

"Yeah, he is. He's a cool mofo too."

Luke agreed. "But, I'll definitely take the coke and reefer too ..." He smiled.

"Goddamn right."

At about seven thirty that night, there was another knock on my door. I wasn't singing into the Norelco, so this time I wondered why anyone would knock. The door was unlocked. When I opened it a crack, I saw a woman's figure, her back turned toward me. She was wearing a long overcoat that I thought was too much gear for a warm summer day in North Carolina.

"Yeah?" I asked through the crack.

"Surprise!" Gemini turned around with a smile from ear to ear.

"Gem? What are you—"

"Let me in, freak!" she demanded happily.

"What's in the jacket?" I asked skeptically.

"Tits and ass, asshole. Let me in."

"What are you doing here?" I demanded in return.

"Ved? What? Do you think I'm here to kill you or something? Jesus man, relax and let me in."

I wanted to believe her, but what the hell would Gemini be doing at the Sig? Surely, she wasn't here to just see me; there had to be more to it than that. Was I being paranoid? Perhaps, but I didn't even really know this girl that well. We'd talked a few times, but never anything deep or personal.

I opened the door cautiously, stepped aside, and let her in. She walked into the room like she'd been there a thousand times; in honesty, she'd only been to the room once and the building twice.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked, standing very close to me.

"I'm wondering what you have in the jacket. A little warm for a trench coat, yeah?"

"Wait, what do you think I have in my jacket?"

"Not sure."

"Obviously you think something is in there."

"OK ... A knife? A gun?"

She eyed me for a long second, her smile fading away like the setting sun. "You're fucking serious, aren't you?"

Feeling a little embarrassed, I said, "No ... I'm sure you aren't here to kill me." A second passed, and I asked, "Right?"

"Open it."

"Open what? Your coat?" I asked.

"Yeah, open it."

I looked at it, somewhat aroused. If it wasn't a murder mission, what was this?

"Open it, Ved." She articulated each syllable. She stepped up to me, close, really close. She smelled like patchouli and cigarette smoke.

She had short hair, blond with some unnatural red. I recognized the handiwork of the Neo. She was tiny, especially when she stood so close to me. I could feel her breath on my throat as she waited to be strip searched.

I reached down, full boner, and grabbed the waist belt, pulling it out of the loops it was run through. She jerked toward me when I pulled on the belt, each time rubbing her breasts against my chest. When the belt was loose, I pulled the right side of the jacket off to the side. Underneath it was a bikini, purple and black, and a whole lot of skin. I was relieved. If she had a gun or knife in there it was well hidden, and it would take a flashlight and a pair of pliers to get it out.

"Satisfied?" she whispered.

"Sort of. Why are you here?" I asked breathlessly, as if we were about to fuck on the floor.

"Because I was swimming, silly!" she said boisterously, pushing me back from her and resuming the enthusiastic tone she'd used in the hallway.

"Oh, thank God," I said.

"What's the deal, freak?" She smiled.

"Eli was here a while ago, said Genie was planning to do something to get even with me, but he didn't know what, exactly."

"So you thought I was her assassin?"

"Well ... the thought might have crossed my mind."

"Oh my God, Ved! I've been called a lot of things, but not that."

"Yeah, sorry about that. Wanna beer?"

"Sure," she said, removing the jacket and standing in my room in heels and a purple bikini.

Luke walked into the room saying, "Yo, tomorrow night we gotta go to Marz. Michelle wants me to fuck the dogshi— Oh shit. Hi, Gem." He smiled.

"Well, well, if it isn't my little hottie, Luke Jayson!" She jumped into his arms. "God, I love you boys!" she exclaimed. "I miss you guys sooooooo much!"

Luke looked at me, his hand resting on her lower back just above her ass. I looked at her ass too, then to Luke and gave him a "who the fuck knows" shrug. He smiled at me, obviously thinking he'd interrupted something. I would have corrected him, but did he? Was this something? A few seconds ago when I was searching her, I considered it to, indeed, be something, but now I don't know.

"What are you doin', Gem?" he asked her.

"I was with a client who wanted me to go swimming with him at the 2nd Brigade pool. I think he wanted to show me off a little. Poor bastard ... Spent five hundred bucks on lap dances with me last night."

"No shit?" I asked.

"No shit. Just kept me in there for four hours, twenty after twenty ... offered me a hundred to jerk him off. Can you believe it? I almost did it. I felt sorry for the poor bastard."

"Wow, poor bastard is right," Luke agreed.

"So, I was driving by and remembered Ved lived here and stopped in to see him. Sheesh, the guy gave me a pat down, thinking I was Genie's assassin or something." She laughed.

Luke looked at me and laughed out loud. "No, you didn't!"

"Yeah, I did." I smiled back.

"Eli just came by, like a few hours ago, warning Ved that Genie was planning on killing him or something ... who knows. I think Ved is just afraid of women," Luke told her

"Yeah, that's what he said. Afraid of women? I don't know about that." She walked back to me.

I gave Luke a "ha-ha fucker" smirk.

"Did you hear me about tomorrow night?" he asked me again.

"Uh, yeah, I think we both did. Something about dogshit on planet Mars?"

"Yeah ... exactly."

"Man, you boys don't lack in women, do ya?" Gemini asked.

"Ved doesn't. Every time I come in here, someone is here with him ... yeah, sure, sometimes they are gay dudes, but he doesn't seem to care; it all plays with Ved." He laughed.

"Whatever, dogshit," I said.

"Oh, and you do so poorly with chicks, Luke?" she scoffed.

"I'm all right; I used to be the king ... until Vedder Ludo ran for office."

"I didn't run for shit."

"Whatever. I gotta bounce. I'll be by later on ... going with Ryan and Finley to the Icebox."

Luke went to leave, stopped at the door, regarded Gemini, and said, "Goddamn, strutting around here in that bikini and those fucking heels ... lookin' good, girl."

"Love you, Luke," she said with a singsong voice and a smile.

When Luke was gone, she said, "I love that guy. He's your besty, huh?"

"Ah ... him or Ryan ... or both ..."

"Yeah, you're lucky. They're good guys. They love you, ya know?"

"Yeah, I know. I love them too."

"Ooooh, you boys are so cute. It's so much easier for guys. I hate bitches, all catty and shit."

"I won't argue with you on that," I said handing her a beer.

She sipped it and looked at me, just as I was looking at her chest. God, she looked so good. I love short hair on the right woman. Remember when I was trying to describe sexy before? This is the definition I was looking for.

"Whatcha lookin' at?" She smiled.

"Sorry ... It's not every day that I have a dancer in my room in a bikini and heels."

"Really? I thought it was sort of par for the course for you lately."

"Yeah, nah ..."

"Are you over dating strippers, Ved? Had enough of that?"

"Yeah, I think so. The breakfast thing ... It's just too gay for me to tolerate."

"Some of these guys need it, Ved. They spend their entire paycheck in one night, going the next two weeks broke just to see some ass. The least we can do is buy them breakfast."

"I've already heard the arguments, Gem."

"Yeah, I suppose you have."

"Yeah."

"You want to smoke a joint?" she asked.

"You got one?"

"Hell, yeah, I have one in my jacket pocket ... Grab it, huh?"

I did so. Inside an ornate cigarette case were three Marlboro Reds, a well-proportioned joint, and two rubbers. I didn't know if these were her standard day-on-the-town materials, or if this had been intentionally carried for this visit. I wondered if she'd asked me to get the joint in order to see the rubbers, and, if so, was I supposed to take the hint? Chances were that she didn't mean for me to think she always traveled with condoms ... That would present a negative image. I guessed that she wanted me to see them and understand her visit more clearly.

As far as smoking pot in the Army, yes, it is a bit risky. However, two hundred people live on each floor of the barracks and plenty of them are not pot smokers. So, I got Zach Finley to piss into tiny travel shampoo bottles for me in case of a random. I used MRE heater packs to warm the urine to body temp, and whamo ... you have clean, hot urine.

"Can I light it?" I asked.

"Please," she said.

I inhaled the smoke, holding it in for a long time, and then took a second pull before passing it to her. My heart rate increased immediately, which is normal for smoking pot, but this was different, my heart tripled its pace.

"What's it laced with?" I asked casually. I wasn't unfamiliar with this technique, and if I had to guess, I'd venture coke. It had to be either coke or crack, and what kind of person smokes crack? Not strippers who can make five grand a week. I'd never smoked crack, but I knew it was a close relative of coke. Like the movie Twins ... Arnold Schwarzenegger would be the cocaine, and Danny DeVito would be crack—the same family, the same bloodline, but different beings.

"Coke. Sorry."

"No need to apologize milady ... It's old hat for me."

"I like you, Ved. You're fuckin' cool as hell, man. I've met too many Army guys, and you, my friend, are the one I think fucked up the worst when you joined."

I laughed hard, coughing on the weed. "Nah ... the Army is fun. Shootin' guns and jumpin' from planes ... I like it."

"Yeah, but you are definitely not Army material."

I stood and put a towel on the floor, covering the gap between the tiles and the door so the smell of pot wouldn't flood the hall.

"No, I'm not what they were looking for, but I do it pretty well."

"Set yourself free someday, Ved. Don't stay in. A guy like you needs to be out in the world, living."

"Thank you, Gem. I take that as a compliment."

"As you should."

She handed me the joint again. I took one last pull and decided I was good. "You want some more?"

"Later," she said.

Oh, she was planning on staying?

Cocaine and sex are like coffee and cigarettes ... Actually coffee and cigarettes and cocaine and sex are all perfectly matched up in the same venture. The weed has a tendency to pull me toward deep thought, and the cocaine in the weed prevents it from giving me the munchies or making me tired. What you end up with is the perfect high, able to think deeply and powerfully, yet have the ambition to perform any number of physical challenges.

I sat on the couch, leaning back, wishing instantly that I were still standing. My heart was racing out of control, and before I'd taken a full breath, I was staring at her body. God forgive me. I couldn't stop myself. If she'd looked good a few minutes ago, she looked synthetic now. Nothing could be made to look that enticing; it had to be fake. Her short hair and distinctive collarbones made the frame of her beauty. Her curvy bosom and ass made the otherwise skinny frame look voluptuous.

There wasn't anything left to talk about, so she slid over and laid her head on my rock hard lap. She pretended to be attempting a nap, but I think she realized that stillness wasn't what we needed right now.

"Will your roommate be back?" she asked, this time there was no playful giggling in her voice.

"No, he leaves for the weekend. Has a girlfriend in Myrtle ... or so he says."

"Can I stay for a while?"

"I have no plans, my dear, well, other than doing bad things to you." Bold of me, I know. There was no doubt now that this is where we were headed, and I was on my way to number twenty, not that I was keeping track.

"Hmm, you think so, huh?"

"Yeah."

I'll be a gentleman and not go into graphic detail about what followed, but I will say these few things:

She performed her dancing routine for me, which looked far better in the setting of my barracks cell.

She was incredibly limber.

Either the coke or just my lusting for her kept me on my knees, buried in her lap, for well over an hour.

Twice, I came due to her hands.

It was ten thirty when she got dressed.

I think I actually fell in love with her somewhere in the chaos.

She later tattooed a ladybug on her inner thigh.

There weren't enough promises made between us when she left, and a half-hour later I wished there had been more. I reprimanded myself for allowing feelings for her, but she'd been so incredibly good. It wasn't just what she was in bed; it was what she made me feel like. I can only speculate about other people, but I'd say that the best sex we have has little to do with duration, position, or even connection; it's about what we become while doing that. If we feel loved, admired, desired, and trusted, we walk away from it changed. If not, it's just another number to either be proud or ashamed of.

When Gemini left at ten forty-five, I sat on my couch, reeling. I was coming down from the weed and the coke and, more importantly, the endorphins. I was just about asleep when there was a knock at the door. I looked at the clock, eleven fifteen, before I stood and walked cautiously to the door. I hoped it wasn't Gemini back for more, because I was done, beaten.

When I opened the door, I recognized Alyssa Sharpe.

"What are you doing? What's that smell?"

"Sex, mostly," I didn't say. "Pot, I think," I actually said.

"Oh my God, you smoked in the barracks. With who?"

"Can't tell you that, sarge." I smiled, or tried, deciding that vague was the best way to play it.

"Yeah, probably better that I don't know, but I think I could probably guess." She smiled and stepped sideways around me, entering my room.

"Yeah, you'd probably be right," I said, thinking if you'd guess it was a stripper friend of Genie's who came over here in a trench coat and bikini carrying joints laced with coke, a couple of rubbers, and a lot more energy than can be had while sober ...

"So anyway ... I had enough time to think." She eyed the room curiously, as if not satisfied with pot as the only odor, but she didn't mention it.

"Uh huh ..." I said, looking at the clock. It felt like three in the morning, two days from now. I almost hoped she was going to end it with me permanently, but her being here suggested otherwise. I didn't have the strength or emotional capacity to understand anything; if I'd learned I had herpes in those moments, I would have shrugged it off without a single thought.

Not that I didn't have feelings for her, I just had too many feelings for everyone else. It was partially her fault, as far as I was concerned. I'd really begun to think about her, a lot; that is, until her promotion. I knew as I pounded the blood-rank into her shoulder that afternoon that she'd been waiting for this for a long time, and in that, I knew this debate was beginning. She'd cared so much about the respect issue, and I think she'd just assumed that being a sergeant would solidify that for her. They'd have to respect her with a few stripes, right?

The sad thing was I knew that rank didn't change anything. Sure, people had to address her a little differently, but deep inside of people, does rank change their opinions? Respect is not something that can be pinned on. It is always earned. It comes from character; it comes from within the person, eventually making its way to the surface. If people were to respect Alyssa Sharpe, it would only be through knowing her better, not seeing her rank insignia.

The very notion that she thought she needed a break to "think it over" with me was repulsive. In my eyes, decisions like this are easy once you identify what sort of decision maker you are. There are those who make analytical decisions and those who choose from the heart. I was a hybrid, using both but in a spontaneous way. I always knew which way to lean the instant a decision crossed my path. Her telling me that she needed time to think it over suggested an internal battle, and there could only be one real issue for her, simply by saying that there was a question.

What's more important to me, happiness or my career?

Maybe it was just that I considered myself so superior to the redundancy of the Army, but to me, the Army was simply what I had to do to stay here in my little bubble of buddies. It wasn't something that I even really thought about. It was a job. I wasn't fulfilled by it. It didn't quench the thirst I had for life and for living. It was simply a job, and I thought about it as much as any other job. Once I was off duty, the Army was behind me.

She'd straddled the two sides for as long as she could. Now she needed to decide who she was. Frankly, when she's asked me to lay off for a while so she could contemplate her existence, I had put her out of my mind. I'm not going to stand off in the shadows for an infinite amount of time waiting breathlessly for her to either choose me or leave me. As soon as she'd started the discussion that day, I'd told her to go.

"Ved, I think you're a great guy," she'd said so earnestly, looking me in the eye as if she were about to put my dog down or something.

"Save it, Alyssa. Just go."

"Wait, you don't even understand what I'm saying. I want to be with you, Ved. I really do, it's just that now that I'm an—"

"Yeah, I get it all right. Go."

"Let me finish ... Don't be such an asshole—"

"Let me finish for you. Ved, I need time to think about where we are headed. I don't want to get in too deep with you, and have people talking about us, especially the guy I was fucking before you got here. I'm not saying it's over; I just need a break ... some time to think it all over. How's that, Alyssa? Close?"

She didn't say anything; she just sat on the edge of my bed staring at me.

"Get out. If you thought I was going to pine for you, or fucking weep or something, you seriously misjudged me. If you want time, you got it."

"Ved, I—"

"Go, Alyssa, now! I'm fine. We can still be buddies when we see each other. Oh wait, now that you're Sergeant Sharpe, we can't ... You're pathetic."

She stood, walked to the door, and left without saying another word.

I went to Raleigh that very night, a Thursday night even, and had a fine time with the gang.

So now, with her back and announcing that she'd come to a conclusion, I was pissed more than anything. I didn't care what her conclusion was. In the time she'd been gone, I'd been fine. I'd been having fun, lots of fun really, and I didn't need her to take me back now.

"Fuck being a sergeant. I want you, Ved. There is something about you that I haven't felt before. I don't want to give you a big head or anything, but you ... turn me on ... that sort of macho-tenderness you have. I'm here because I couldn't hold myself back anymore. I was an idiot for ending it, or pausing it ... whatever."

"Yeah? Well, things aren't as they were, Alyssa. That's what happens when you press pause on your world, but the rest of us don't."

"So you don't want me anymore? After all that, you just decided it was over? The whole time I think we're just taking a break, and you were thinking it was over? That's nice."

"I decided that you're a company man, too concerned with the politics of this place ... I believe that we're simply sacrifices, for Harvard educated officers to use to satisfy the gods of war. There's a major difference in our philosophies."

"I'm not a company man, thank you. So I care about my career, is that a big deal?"

"The principle is, yes."

"Oh stop with your bullshit philosophy ... Jesus, you are so full of yourself."

"Maybe I am, but see, the respect I get comes from me, not my fucking shoulder."

"The respect you get is from being a tyrant and a pimp."

"Well, regardless, it's not for being an E-5. Funny thing is, no one has changed the way they feel about you around here; you're still just the girl who everyone wants to fuck, sarge."

"Stop it, Ved. I don't believe you. I don't believe that you're over me." She began to unbutton her shirt, revealing the bra that restrained some very large breasts that I'd only had glimpses of before our hiatus.

I looked away with a sigh. "I just don't feel really good right now."

"I'll do all the heavy lifting." She smiled. "Unless you want my legs behind my head. You're going to do this, right now. You can decide whether you want more of me later, but right now you don't have the choice."

And so it went that I, Ved Ludo, formerly Shell Ludo, had first-time-sex with two women on that particular night. I'd like to send a thank you out to cocaine, whom I couldn't have done it without. Thank you, cocaine, for always giving me the strength to do the things I later regret.

Alyssa Sharpe was a bit of a firecracker, also. Not that it rivaled the things Gem and I had done, but it was pleasant, good-people sex, not too messy, a little sentimental in parts, and with a good healthy conclusion that, as you can imagine, I was surprised to see. I hadn't predicted a definitive ending, remembering squirt guns from when I was a kid ... When they were out of water, they just spit out mist and droplets.

Alyssa, who knew that Derrick wasn't going to be back, pushed the beds together after we'd finished. It wasn't lost on me that my room was set up just like Martinez's had been that night we'd talked in his purplish-brown room.

She had lain down completely naked on our new king-size bed and asked me to do it again. I refused.

I went back to bed, having weird dreams about Blythe, Mia Gateway, and strangely enough, the rescue squad. At noon, Luke came into my room, and I was so glad to see him that I almost wept. I told him the story of my night, to which he responded with incredulity.

"Unfuckingbelievable," he said.

"Oh, it's believable ... Look at me, bro. I feel like death warmed over."

"You have seven hours to get over it. I've got some Percocet. Want some?"

Does a wino want a bottle of Boone's Farm White Zinfandel? "Yeah, five of them."

"Three of them," he corrected.

"Five. Three for now, two for six o'clock. If you want me to go, give me the killers."

He agreed.

Sergeant Sharpe came down to my room later, about two in the afternoon. I noticed that she hurried into my room, hoping to not be spotted by people in the hallway. I was disappointed, but I didn't have the strength to start the fight all over again. Later, I would.

"Thought you were sure." I stated as she closed the door quickly and quietly behind her.

"I am, totally."

"Really? Looked like you were trying to sneak in here."

"I just don't want to see Jeremy ... The rest of them don't matter. I couldn't care less about them."

"And Jeremy matters?"

"Ved, I feel like a tramp, OK? Is that what you want to hear?"

"Forget it, Alyssa. I don't have the strength to fight right now."

She looked at me. "I really wore you out, huh?"

I smiled.

"Is one more out of the question?" She climbed in bed with me.

At four thirty, she left. I told her about Raleigh tonight, and that I'd promised Luke. Eventually she accepted the news, but not without guilting me about my ever-strengthening reputation as a man-whore. I'd promised to be well behaved, and I meant it. My body hurt, especially the muscles that hold an erection in place.

When she got out of bed, she dressed, looking around the room. "Ever think about painting in here?"

Too often, things are exactly as you suspect.
Chapter 6

Unanswered Phones

I found Books-A-Trillion to be comfortable and well stocked, without being stuffy or even too quiet, for that matter. Am I the only one who finds absolute silence in a bookstore to be pretentious? I shop for books as much as any other person, yet I've never felt the need to "shhhhhhhh" people for talking. I think a bookstore should be a place where people ask each other, "What have you read that was great, lately?"

The place was as large as any of the other big book carriers, but the layout was a little more "mom and pop." For instance, books were sometimes stacked up in piles, rather than being stuffed into tight shelving, making the removal of books easier; but more importantly, for those of us who were responsible for cleaning up after the animals, it drastically improved our job. Why dedicate a shelf to best sellers when they are going to sell the fastest, leaving a void every time someone buys a book?

Anyway, I liked the job even though I wasn't put in the coffee shop immediately. I started on the bookstore floor, stocking shelves and helping customers who, by the way, responded to our grand opening with vigor. On the first day of operation, we were flooded with customers. Since it happened to be on a Saturday, I worked an eight-hour shift. Seeing a place like that open, with customers standing outside the glass doors an hour before we unlocked them, was eye opening. I guess I always knew that people read books, but really? Standing outside on a hazy morning, pawing at the glass, and even more annoyingly, cupping their hands around their heads and resting them against the glass in order to see in beyond the glare, was a ridiculous sight. Dirty, greasy prints stood out on otherwise clean glass in the early morning sunlight as I controlled my breathing, refraining from calling them what I would under normal circumstances. I'd spent last evening on both sides of the glass, cleaning each pane over and over again, until, even with the fading sunlight beaming through them, there were no streaks or smudges. Now, an hour before we even unlocked the doors, these assholes had dirtied each and every pane that faced the front parking lot. I hate the public.

I didn't love stocking shelves, and seeing Eli in the coffee shop, cleverly named Joe Cupps, laughing and sipping espresso, made the monotony of it even worse. What is it with coffee shops always including java, grounds, beans, and joe somewhere in the moniker? Hasn't anyone besides Starbucks been strong enough to break away from the repertoire and be creative with their name?

The only salvation to the entire job was, as you might guess I'd say, good-looking women. Most of the women employees at Books-A-Trillion and Joe Muggs were the wives of GIs. Even Mrs. Monica Dillinger, the wife of the smiling Captain Dillinger, was soon employed by what we came to call BAT. Yes, I'd gotten the captain's wife the job, and no, I didn't have a choice in the matter.

When I'd approached Captain Dillinger about working a civilian job, he looked at me like I was from another planet, but once I announced that I had an inside man, he'd seen an opportunity that he wasn't too proud to seize.

"Tell you what, Ludo, or should I just call you Ved now that you're apparently half civilian?"

"No, sir, Ludo is fine."

"Goddamn right it is. You get my wife a job, and I'll allow you to work on nights and weekends. Tell anyone about this deal, and I'll deny it. Oh, and Ludo, you don't want me looking for reasons to ... you understand me, I'm sure."

The guy was still fucking smiling. "Yes, sir, I understand."

"What's the angle, Ludo? Why is it that you're the first guy in the company to ever try and work a second job? I don't understand."

"No reason, sir. Well, I guess there has to be a reason, right?" I laughed nervously.

"There always is."

"I need a break from the barracks, sir. I need something to do with my time."

"Oh, really? Fucking my NCO isn't good enough to keep you busy anymore?"

I looked at him, seeing if this was a formal charge or an attaboy between men. It was neither, as far as I could tell. He was, however, waiting for a reply, as if testing my integrity. He was still smiling, but now it wasn't his usual full-blown, ear-to-ear grin. It was more subtle. It looked like he was daring me to lie to him, so I was sure not to.

"No, sir, that's not the case."

"What's not the case?" He was ready to call me out for lying.

"I'm not tired of fucking her, sir." I looked him square in the eyes.

"Attaboy. I kind of think you're an asshole, but I appreciate the honesty, son."

"Touché, sir," I said, in what might have been a slightly inappropriate retort.

He smiled that stupid ear-to-ear grin again. "Monica."

"Sorry, sir?"

"My wife. Her name is Monica. I'll expect to hear something from you about her employment opportunity, ASAP."

"Oh, roger that, sir. Uh ... just tell her to be there on Friday night, 8 p.m. She can fill out the paperwork then. It officially opens for business on Saturday. I'll have her job waiting for her by Friday evening, sir."

He laughed out loud, staring at me. It was an obnoxious laugh, and I wondered what kind of disgusting woman might find a man like this attractive.

"Friday, 8 p.m.?" he asked me disbelievingly.

"Airborne, sir."

"And you know you can get her a job, Ludo?" he asked, still not quite believing me.

"Airborne, sir, all the way." (All the way was the 82nd motto and often times came after the use of the word Airborne. Being a soldier, you just learn when to use these little slogans; they just fit into these situations perfectly sometimes, as my "all the way" did at that particular moment.)

"Tell her to ask for me when she gets there. I'll show her around."

"I'll do that, Ludo." He nodded slowly.

"Excellent. Anything else, sir?" I was ready to leave his office and go do my insulting impersonation of him, somewhere else.

"Yeah. Keep an eye out for her, Ludo. She's a wonderful woman. She's just a little ..." He didn't finish. "Oh, just keep an eye out for her, please."

Please?

Something about the way he phrased that last statement made me very interested in meeting her. I thanked him and left his office, excited to have his permission to explore Fayetteville a little bit, from the inside. Being a GI meant that all businesses were aimed at dragging you in, and now I was going to be on the inside, looking out. That role reversal made me feel dynamic, included, and somehow divided. Working a civilian job would somehow break up the life I'd been living, and reduce the levity of being in one of the Army's most deployable units. I'd become quite excited in the seven days since I'd talked to Eli. I'd gone in for my official hiring and been part of the set-up team, unpacking boxes and moving the massive shelving into place. All the while, I'd worried that Captain Dillinger would turn me down. I was on the fence about asking for permission or begging for forgiveness, finally deciding that asking for permission was the best play.

I knew that I annoyed Captain Dillinger. I knew he didn't appreciate my sarcasm and barracks antics, especially after the fight with Martinez and Bender. That had certainly been talked about but nothing formal ever came of it.

Now I was intrigued to meet Mrs. Dillinger, and I planned on befriending her, even if that meant suffering a little bit. I thought that if the captain would get to know me, he'd like me; we just hadn't had the right opportunity for that yet. Maybe through being a helping hand to his wife, he'd hear good things about me, and change his attitude toward me.

I called Eli immediately upon my return to my room. After explaining the situation, he assured me that it would be a piece of cake to get her in and told me that Friday night for Mrs. Dillinger would be perfect.

"Hey, have you seen her yet?" he asked

"Nah. Don't expect too much though."

Friday night, I was busy working with the rest of the minimum wage slaves—unpacking boxes of books and putting them in their respective areas, preparing for tomorrow's opening—when Mrs. Dillinger showed up at BAT. I was called to the front of the store via the obnoxious overhead speakers. For some reason, calling me Ved over the speakers was out of the question. We all had code numbers attached to our names. For instance, I was 47, so anytime they needed me, they'd say something like, "47 is needed to sector 9," or, as time went by, even that was abbreviated, "47 to 9, please," which I never fully understood. These were the type of nuances that always bothered me—things being done just to do them without anyone being able to give me a clear reason for it. Unable to bear this silently, I took the opportunity to ask one afternoon.

"Why can't you call us by name?" I asked Chris, the store manager.

"It's easier just to refer to people by number. What if there were two Veds working ... or two Jennifers?"

"Are there two Jennifers?"

"No, Ved, that's not the point. The point is if there were, then we'd have to find a way to identify—"

"But you just said there weren't two Jennifers."

"There aren't. But if we hire another—"

"Ever adopt a puppy from a shelter, Chris?" I asked, seemingly changing the topic.

"What? No ... What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well ..." I said, preparing the Ved show, "if you had, you'd realize that people name their dogs the dumbest names ... If you adopt one of these poor animals, whose name is ... say ... Sparky, and you want to call him Angelo, you can't just start calling him Angelo ... He won't know who the hell you're talking to. They know their names ... It takes a while to relearn their identities."

"Ved—"

"Listen, man ... See, people are the same way. When they hear their names, a buzzer goes off in their head, telling them that someone is trying to contact them ... If you call a guy named Mike, Larry, he won't hear it 'cause he doesn't know you're talking to him."

He was getting annoyed. Chris was in his thirties, he'd been working for BAT for a long time, and this was his first real manager position within the company, so he was a little nervous about the whole process. He was overweight, lived alone, and seemed to have a serious Star Wars thing. I noticed, one day, on the back of his Ford Escort a sticker that read Jedi Academy, which translated to me as, Single Women, Beware.

He wasn't the kind of guy to hit on the better-looking female employees, but his gazes did hang a little too long, and his demeanor toward the women was dependent on their attractiveness. The better looking the employee, the more patient and less critical he became. With me, he was just, sort of, unconcerned. He didn't really like or dislike me, he just ignored me for the most part.

I liked the guy, simply because he wasn't military. He had no concept of rank, therefore I could complain directly to him rather than sending it up the chain of command. I didn't complain, but I did like to get him all riled up. I liked to watch him squirm, thinking to myself that the military should be mandatory for all males, even if only for a couple of years.

"I'm just saying that no one is going to understand the fucking intercom, Chris."

"Yeah, Ved, they will. I've seen it work."

"But isn't it more effective to just say—"

"Enough, Ved. Just ... just do your work. Jesus."

And with that, he'd stormed out, ending my fun.

Arriving at the customer service desk—otherwise known as sector 10, which made it sound like the aliens from Roswell were stored under the counter—I saw four women, picking Monica Dillinger out of the line up immediately. She was just what I expected, wearing fashionable hair, clothing, and shoes, well ... for the late 1980s. She was fortyish, a little chunky, had curly hair that just had to be a perm, and wore a red blouse that reminded me of the Christmas season. I walked up to her, emboldened by the fact that I'd gotten her this opportunity and stuck out my hand. "Mrs. Dillinger, I'm Ved. It's nice to finally meet you."

She eyeballed me for a long second, trying to find the right words, when someone behind me said, "Oh ... hey, Ved, I'm Monica Dillinger." I turned to see what appeared to be Demi Moore, right after the filming of GI Jane. She was tall, thin, ripped, busty, and had a shaved head. I was stunned by her.

She wore dark jeans, sandals, and a white Polo shirt unbuttoned down to the last button, creating an almost unacceptable V between her obviously medically enhanced boobs. A tattoo of some purple flowers crept about an inch below her right shirtsleeve and apparently began just at the base of her neck. In those days, this was uncommon for a woman, and between her flawless figure and her short cropped hair, I knew she'd never walked past a man without being noticed, ever.

"Hey, Mrs. Dillinger. Sorry about that ... I didn't know what to expect."

"Ah ... it's cool. I get it all the time." She looked around the place for a second, while I tried to think of my grandmothers ... "So, thanks for the job. I'm sorry Ricky had to dupe you into it."

"No, he didn't dupe me. He just sorta encouraged it." I smiled.

"Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry. I'm a reader ... so I think he just assumed ..."

"Hey, no problem, Mrs. Dillinger. No big deal at all."

"Ved, if you call me that one more time, I might kill myself."

"Sorry, it's just that ... well, you know, Captain Dillinger and all of that."

"I am Monica, my own person. Ricky is Captain Dillinger when he's on-post, otherwise he's just Ricky."

"Right. Got it," I said, not knowing if she was annoyed with me or with having to always be associated with him.

Monica and I became instant friends. It almost seemed like we'd been friends in a different lifetime and had just reunited there at the BAT store on that Friday night. We connected on many levels, and though she was only eight years older than I was, I felt like she, too, was an old soul. She had a sort of raspy voice, sultry and commanding, and her laugh was unmistakable. I got to hear it plenty over the next few hours, but first, I knew I had to introduce her to Chris.

We found him in the back stock room humming something unidentifiable—something that I hoped was originally performed with an actual melody, but there was no sign of one in what we heard when we entered through the big swinging doors. His back was facing us, and there was just something about his khakis and the short-sleeved oxford he wore with a tie that spoke of his past shift-leader years at Target.

Normally when Chris saw me coming, he tried to find a different path, wanting desperately to avoid all conversations with me, no matter how blatant he had to be to do so, but this time I thought it might be different.

He was humming and singing in some sort of torturous combination, loudly, obnoxiously, as if to declare, "I'm the boss here folks and don't you forget it!" and I considered making his acquaintance to Monica later, knowing that when he turned around and saw her standing there, he'd want to die for singing that song as loudly as he was. But ... on the other hand, if he wanted to be the big boss man, this would serve his ass right.

"Chris," I announced.

He turned slowly, anticipating my argumentative nature.

"Yes, Ved ..." he said in a dragging monotone.

Man, this guy really can't stand me ...

Just then, he saw her; his eyes opened all the way, and immediately his posture improved. His hands balled up and went to his chest in almost a protective stance as he cleared his throat and took a step forward.

"Hello," he said in his most charming tone.

"Hi, I'm Monica Dillinger. Ved got me the job here?" she said questioningly.

"Of course he did. Well, I did really, but yes, he did tell me to expect you."

"Oh ... OK," Monica said, sounding like she felt slightly awkward.

"Yes, well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Monica. When Ved said his boss's wife needed a job, I didn't know that she would turn out to be so—"

"Chris!" I tried to stop him.

"—striking."

"OK, well, I'm going to show Monica around, Chris. If you need me, just page me." I smiled, pointing up at the ceiling.

"OK. Welcome, Monica. We are glad to have ya. Hope you stay with us for a long—"

"OK, Chris, see ya," I said, grabbing her arm and turning to walk out of the stock room.

"Bye, Chris," she said, following me toward the exit.

Later that night, before Monica left, she asked Chris if she could only work the hours that I was working. She explained that her husband was my commanding officer, and that Captain Dillinger wanted me around to keep an eye on her, and that was only going to work if I was there with her, all the time. Poor Chris had to decide whether or not having this beauty close to him was worth enduring my obnoxiousness, but like all pathetic little men, of course he agreed to her terms. He'd agreed, but not before offering his own protective services, to which she said, "I just think my husband knows Ved and would prefer it that way." Chris was crushed.

The truth of it was Monica was anything but under the control of Captain Ricky Dillinger. She did as she pleased, and he never questioned her in anything she chose to do. She was the superior in that relationship, and one look at the two of them together would clear that up in anyone's eyes.

I guessed that she was the reason the guy smiled all the time. Hell, even when I was with her, I smiled all the time. She was beautiful, quirky, quick witted, and gifted at making you feel like only you existed when she spoke to you. Her penetrating blue eyes would lock onto mine when we spoke, refusing to look elsewhere as if there was only me left in the world.

We worked every shift together, laughing and joking the entire time. She drove me to work every day and brought me home, usually after a few beers at Eli's house or smoking a joint in the park. We talked about everything, and I mean everything, during the course of the next two months, eventually knowing each other well enough to predict the other's actions well in advance of them. We had the same circle of friends, listened to the same bands, smoked cigarettes and joints with equal passion, and most importantly, shared a very similar sense of humor.

Monica's influence on Ricky was enough that after a week or so of working with her, he stopped being a dick to me altogether. After another week, he'd showed up at my room after duty, sitting on my futon, and drinking one of my beers, which was especially impressive since he knew I was only twenty and not allowed to have beer in my room. Before long, he'd come to my room a couple of times a week, bumming cigarettes off of me, and talking openly about the people in my company—things he shouldn't have been telling me, but he did without the slightest hesitation.

He'd ask me about things with Alyssa, and I'd always give him full, honest, if not blunt, answers, thinking that my talking about Sergeant Sharpe would keep him from thinking I had a thing for Monica. I told Ricky about everything—the fights, the joints with Monica ... everything. The more he knew, the more he seemed to like me, and the more he liked me, the better insurance I had for my future. That's not to say that I expected him to defend me publicly. I'd never have put him in that position. Understanding people means knowing not to ever, ever ask them to take a hit for you. Putting Ricky in a position where his superiors would question his friendship with a lower enlisted was absolutely out of the question. I knew my place, and I knew his. Though I considered myself an intellectual rival of Ricky's, at work he was the captain and I was a slave. I always called him sir, used exact military protocol when addressing him or responding to him, and if you didn't know that we were buddies, you wouldn't know at all.

Asking people to help you with the wounds you received in battle is honorable. Asking people to fight your battles for you, in order to avoid these wounds, is not. There were plenty of times I could have run to Ricky's office and asked him for help, but I never did, and Ricky appreciated my discretion.

There is no doubt in my mind that I loved Monica. I mean, sincerely loved her. I would have died for her in a second, but it wasn't sexual in nature. She was like a hot sister who needed my protection and needed me to be there to keep things from getting uncomfortable. There were countless times during business hours at BAT when customers would get inappropriate with her, and I'd be there to jump in, usually explaining that we could discuss the issue further in the parking lot, if needed. I didn't hesitate to put myself between her and the perceived offender, gripping the brass knuckles in my pocket, begging the asshole to give me a reason. Her warm manner and good nature prevented her from responding to these come-ons, and she always seemed to think that the person approaching her was harmless, as if she didn't realize her own sex appeal, but surely she'd been dealing with this her whole life.

I protected her from everything and from everyone—customers, employees, sexually frustrated store managers ... Anyone who crossed the line with her, heard from me, and unlike my otherwise peaceful demeanor, if you were being rude to Monica, I was preparing to bash your fucking face in with my metallic knuckles.

Ricky soon became a buddy of mine, too. We'd all gone to dinners together, parties at their house, drunken bar runs ... the works. Alyssa got along well with Monica, but she was always a little intimidated by our relationship, wondering why I didn't jump in for her the same way I did for Monica. I tried to explain that Monica was more vulnerable, that she needed protection, and that I thought Alyssa was stronger than that, but that excuse never really worked. Honestly, it was a hard question to answer. My protective love of Monica was its own entity; it came from within me somewhere, a deep love and desire to provide a service to her. Alyssa was a soldier; she was strong willed and not needy in any real sense of the word. Alyssa begged for attention and was not ashamed to use her sexuality in order to get it, while Monica just sort of demanded it without having to sacrifice her pride.

I told Ricky the stories of my sexual promiscuity, which he ate up like candy. He'd laugh and sigh, enthralled with each detail I gave him, and I always made a point to be far more graphic with him than I was with anyone else. I knew that he and Monica had a different sort of relationship; it was a strong relationship but without the sex and physicality of most marriages. They were like buddies who shared a life together, but didn't share themselves physically anymore. Of course, I knew all of this from my explicit talks with Monica, but never referenced the issue with Ricky.

I appreciated the bravery that he had in order to be married to a woman like her. She was strong, independent, and did her own things, so I could appreciate the strength he must have in order to survive the days without her being close by. Besides all of that, I knew what it was like to be seen with her, to be on the defensive, watching the people as they passed by us, waiting for them to be predictably forward while she remained oblivious to the situation. Ricky didn't lack balls, that I knew for sure.

Behind his permanent smile was a man willing to scrap it out. He was a man who did the Army thing because for him, like me, it came easy. I knew that he was a survivor, a guy who could do anything, and I never doubted his willingness to throw his career away in order to get even with a foe. He was a nice guy, genuinely cool, but inside of him was a lion, a lion that I liked knowing was on the Army's thick chain.

Monica let me drive her Porsche 944 on most rides to and from work. She began changing into and out of her work uniform while I was driving, displaying brown skin and beautiful breasts without a second thought. As attractive as she was, I simply didn't respond to her the same way I would have otherwise, had she been anyone other than whom she was. Occasionally, however, when I was screwing Alyssa, I'd imagine Monica as I came into her, but I couldn't imagine her while I was in the act of thrusting in and out. It wasn't until the very last second that I'd picture Monica instead, a trend that baffled me in my sexual prime. She just wasn't meant to be for me. She was my friend, a woman I could tell anything to, and I did. Every gory detail of my life was hers to see, and in return I heard things like this from her. What we shared went beyond just sex talk and antics; it went deep, to the core of who we were. We discussed the feelings associated with the actions rather than just the actions alone. It made us appreciative of the inner nature of each other's person, and in discussing the roots of issues, rather than the branches, we learned to anticipate each other.

Eli and Enrique loved her, of course. They were attracted to anything beautiful, regardless of sex. Gay men can appreciate beauty in women as much as hetero men; better, in fact, as they are not distracted by the lusting that intensifies the visual stimulation. With hetero men, larger women are difficult to see for their beauty simply because, without the lusting, these women don't give us the high we get from what we consider to be perfect bodies. Whereas for a gay man, he can look at a plus-size woman and appreciate her facial structure, her beautiful skin or hair, identifying beauty as it should be identified. While we straight guys simply say, "Ah, she's too big," a gay man can make note of her attributes. Therefore, gay men make a far more informed judgment of beauty.

As such, Enrique and Eli just adored Monica and Ricky, deciding that they were the "cutest couple ever," but Ricky never lost his awkwardness around them. God bless him, he tried, but he was incapable of relaxing in the presence of these gay men, and I think he was a little bitter at me for being able to be comfortable with them. He never said anything about it directly, just hinted at his disappointment in my easiness with Enrique and Eli.

In July of that year, some discussion began about my upcoming birthday. I would be turning twenty-one on August 12th, and Luke, Alyssa, Monica, Ricky, Eli, Enrique, Ryan and the newcomer to our friendly group, Gemini, decided we needed to have a party to celebrate the occasion. Though Monica and I were the only ones who actually worked at BAT, the others stopped by almost nightly, spending an hour or so talking to whoever was sitting at our reserved table. The manager of the coffee shop, James Harding, a dude in his early twenties, was also a good friend of ours. His girlfriend, and employee, Emily Rice also hung around with us quite a bit, but she never really connected with us. She was a civilian in her first year of college, so she usually had better things to do, but James was definitely one of the characters in our soap opera.

There were about twenty of us who formed a circle of friends. Jon, Zach, Jacob, and Shane were a part of it, plus a few gay men from Eli and Enrique's ring. Between the twenty or so of us, half were civilian and the other half were military, with Monica being the perfect balance of both worlds. Universally, everyone loved Monica. Even the women who could be so catty had a hard time disliking her. She was so beautiful, and with her shaved head, some female threat was eliminated from her. It was as if, because of her hair, Monica wasn't challenging these women to anything and they treated her almost like she was a lesbian. The fights that went on between the women never involved Monica, except to get her approval of their side of the story.

Everyone agreed that we needed to have a party for my 21st, except for me. I just didn't think it was warranted, and with the extravagance and cost that they were discussing, I felt unworthy. No one listened to me in my protesting; I guess they assumed I was being humble, but that wasn't the case. If it had been a surprise party, I would have been thrilled, but with my knowing about the planning and cost involved, I felt like it was too much. I also felt like they wanted to have a party, and I was being slapped onto the title in order to justify it, not solely the honoree.

Regardless, they decided the party would proceed; naturally, it'd have to take place at Eli and Enrique's, and I should just accept that I was so important to them. I wasn't privy to the details of the party, only that there was going to be one. Beyond that, I didn't need to know anything, which was another factor about the event that made me angry.

When I would walk up to my friends, sitting at our table at the coffee shop, they'd halt their enthusiastic talking and begin a new conversation. This was the worst part of the whole thing, and before the party was even officially planned, I was tired of being excluded.

Some immature part of me was hurt by the exclusion. All this time I had felt like the glue that held these people together, the object that the rest of them sort of gravitated to, and now they were mingling and planning, laughing and joking, and running errands without me, all the while under the umbrella of "it's all for you, Ved."

If I said anything about feeling left out, they'd laugh and tell me that the surprise would be worth it, and though I told them that I didn't want a surprise, they'd just shrug me off, convinced that they were doing the right thing by me.

My protests got louder, and so did their retorts. They shoved me off so they could decide on who was going to pick up the cake, hire the dancers, etc ... Yes, it was to be that sort of party, extravagant in even the most vulgar ways; similar, I suppose, to the way they viewed me.

I was, apparently, a man who lived in excess. Vulgar and refined, quiet and demanding, controlling and passive—it was a blatant view of myself, and looking into the mirror had never produced a reflection of who I was that rivaled watching as the twenty people closest to me argued about what I would like. That was awakening.

Formal invitations were made and sent out to four hundred guests, as if I knew four hundred people in my entire lifetime, but as I said before, I was simply the excuse. Since August twelfth is in the middle to late summer, it was a perfect time to have a party that brought all partygoers together. Eli and Enrique were not simply throwing a birthday bash; they were throwing an all out bash, a ten thousand dollar party that they wanted recognition for. Entertainers including strippers, musicians, jugglers, and even a one-legged magician were summoned; wait-staff and valet parking services were hired; cake decorators and caterers, a barkeep and uncountable amounts of liquor were brought in. This wasn't simply a party; it was the celebration of a lifetime for most people, but I think Eli and Enrique did this every couple of years.

Alyssa and I were doing pretty well as a couple during this time period. I enjoyed her company, and I enjoyed the nude woman that lay in my bed nightly, reminding me that even though I always felt alone, I wasn't. Luke and Ryan were now brothers to me, friends who had endured countless trials of friendship, and our relationship was closer than ever.

Luke loved Eli and Enrique as much as I did, and we all sort of gravitated to their one story, brick home on the weekends, doing lines of cocaine and smoking plenty of pot, even though my girlfriend hated that about me. What was it about cocaine that had me so attached to it? Maybe it was simply that, like all drugs, it came with a bad stigma. My whole life, people were always preaching to me about hard drugs: how bad they were, how they will ruin your life, how they can make an otherwise sane person lose control ... All of which I found to be absolute bullshit.

The coke was nothing more than guaranteed conversation, intense conversation, as just seconds after inhaling into my nose, all I wanted to do was talk. I preached my philosophy on religion, politics, love, and the connection that comes from sex ... All of my regular bullshit, but with unmatched charisma. We grew closer through the use of these drugs, and despite the effects that they did have, it was all well worth it. Acid, mushrooms, Vicodin, Valium, cocaine, Mescaline, hash, ketamine and opium became part of the ritual of hanging out at Eli's place, and in the months that we used these drugs harmlessly, they were enlightening and awakening. I learned more about myself through deep contemplation while under the spell of each drug than I had in the twenty years before them. I discovered that each drug was used for a different purpose, for a different outcome, and after I'd mastered understanding the effects of each drug, I began to choose them the way a surgeon might choose his surgical instruments.

Monica, who was never a disappointment to me, took the same dosages as I did, again, not winning me any points with Alyssa. When we were high, Monica and I clicked in a different way than when we were sober. We gravitated toward each other physically with massages and gentle rubbing. Erotic? Yes, but we never crossed any moral lines.

One night while we were at Eli's, Gemini had stopped in after work. She'd given us the abbreviated version of life at the Paradise, making a couple of quick references to Genie, before sitting down at the table. We rolled an opium laced joint, lit it, passed it around, and talked about stories from the past.

Alyssa wasn't there that night, so eventually in her well noticed, and I dare say appreciated, absence, the conversation turned toward my sexual past. It wasn't that people didn't like Alyssa, they did, but they just thought I was more fun when she wasn't around.

Eli asked me whom I had slept with from the Paradise besides Genie, and maybe it was the influence of the opium that made me sloppy, but I looked at Gemini before I even realized I'd done so.

It had been some unbelievable sex, and I told the story accurately and without pulling a single punch. Gemini, who laughed hysterically at my storytelling skills, verified the connection we'd made that night, agreeing that it was, for her, one of the best experiences she'd ever had also.

After I'd finished with the bit about Alyssa having shown up later that night, Monica excused herself from the table to have a smoke on the porch. There was something about the way she did so that signaled to me that something was wrong with her.

"You never told me that story," she said, holding the cigarette to her lips.

"I know. I uh ... I never really told anyone that story, well ..."

"Except for Luke and Ryan, right?" she asked, her eyebrows raised.

"Yeah, I told them. Luke was there the next morning. I told him right away. Ryan, that was later."

"And you never thought I might like to know this one?"

"I never thought it was important."

"Really, Ved? After all the conversations we've had about all the women you've been with, you decide this one isn't worth retelling? My friend fucked you, and I didn't know about it? How do you think that feels?"

"What do you mean? How this makes you feel? Why does it matter, Monica?"

"I've been friends with Gem since I met her, and now I find out that you fucked her, and neither one of you two told me?"

"What difference does it make if I did or not? It's not like I'm still doing her."

"Did you ever think about what I might have said to her? Maybe I said some things to her that I wouldn't have, if I'd known."

I pondered that one for a second, taking three puffs on my cigarette in a row without answering. What could she have said to Gemini that would be affected by my leaving that story out?

"What did you say to Gemini, Monica?"

"Just shit that I wouldn't have if I'd known." She looked away.

I moved in order to stand where she was now looking. "Like what?"

"Fuck off, Ved. Jesus, you fuck everything that walks."

"Yeah, I know. I think that's my line actually. I was the one who said that in the first place."

"Yeah ... almost everything. Haven't fucked me yet though," she said as if she'd refused my passes over and over again.

"Monica, aren't we better than that? Aren't we on a different plane than fucking, just to fuck?"

"Stop calling it that! You can't even deal with sex like an adult, Ved. It's all the same to you and always has been. Well, ever since you came in ten seconds with Mia."

Oh, so she was gonna take shots at me now? She was taking the gloves off, looking to really fight this one out.

I laughed disbelievingly. "Wow, that's what this is now?"

She dropped her cigarette in the can and started walking inside, talking to me as she went with her back turned to me. "Mister Larger-than-life-himself can't see the fucking forest for the trees," she said and walked into the house.

I stood still, looking out into Eli's well-manicured yard and tried to make sense of what just happened, unable to put the pieces together.

I didn't see Monica for the week leading up to the party; in fact, I didn't see hardly anyone. Ricky told me that I needed to get a ride to BAT because Monica had party planning stuff to do before and after work with Enrique and Luke, so I did. Ryan dropped me off on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—the three shifts I had that week before Saturday's party. Two of those days, Monica didn't even work, but on Friday I saw her in the coffee shop talking to Gemini and Oscar, one of Eli's friends who drove me crazy.

Not all gay men are classy; some are just crass, perverted men. Oscar was one of these. He was in his forties, worked in the gay-porn business, and for some reason that made him a popular guy. He knew everyone in the gay community and was somewhat of a ringleader himself. He was blond, with multiple chins, and dressed like he lived in a trailer park, but he was supposedly worth a few million bucks. I didn't like him from the get-go, after he'd grabbed my ass and asked me if I'd let him suck my dick. I'd been less than hospitable to him in return, and I complained about him to Eli. When I did, I noticed that Eli seemed afraid of Oscar; he was unwilling to talk to him for me and to tell him to fuck off.

"That's just the way he is, Ved. Nothing anyone can do about it."

Oscar, who found most of his "movie stars" on Ft. Bragg, was always surrounded with GIs. These bisexual soldiers flew off to California for the weekend, fucked a few dudes, and came back with five grand in their pockets. For that reason, Oscar always had plenty of protection through his "friends" that he got the work for. It was sickening to me, the gay porn thing. The soldiers who made these films were an embarrassment to the Army, but they didn't seem embarrassed by it at all.

Seeing Oscar at the table with Gemini and Monica was nauseating. I wanted to talk to Monica, apologize for leaving the Gemini story out, and make our relationship right again, but I didn't want to do it while she was sitting with Oscar. Also, him being at the table meant that he was coming to the party, but I suppose I knew all along that he would be there. Eli wouldn't dare host a party without inviting Queen Oscar.

He hung out with the girls from the Paradise, so I figured that if he came, he would come with a few of his "movie stars" and a few of the girls, using them as bait for each other, ensuring that he was kept in high demand. The last time I'd spoken to Oscar, he'd asked me about why I broke it off with Genie. I'd just said that it hadn't worked out, to which he replied, "Huh ... that's too bad. Not many guys would risk breaking up with her."

I didn't know what that was supposed to mean, but the way he'd said it had almost sounded threatening. He'd never felt the need to be friendly to me, which I always assumed was some kind of challenge. I just pretended he didn't exist.

Friday night, I went back to the barracks after work and found it mostly empty. Jon had picked me up from work and dropped me off at the Sig before telling me he had to get to Eli's, where everyone was setting up for tomorrow's celebration. I knew that meant they'd be partying tonight also and that I wasn't allowed to be there. I thought it was ironic that a party that was supposed to make me feel included for the night had left me excluded for two weeks.

I was really hurt and angry, and in my rage I was tempted to go visit Derrick and his girlfriend in Myrtle Beach, disappearing without a trace for the weekend, leaving those fuckers to wonder where the guest of honor had gone. I might have really done it, but I remembered that Derrick was bringing his girlfriend back to Bragg tomorrow so she could accompany him to the party.

I paced around my room, thinking about what my friends were doing at that particular second, deciding that no matter their intentions, they'd fucked me here. There would be a price for this; I would see to it. Someone, any one of them, must have said something along the lines of "We should have invited, Ved," but yet, no one had invited me.

I sat on the couch, turned on Pearl Jam "Footsteps," and sang along, stoking the fires of my rage.

There was a faint knock at the door, and I yelled, "It's fucking open," in my best you're-disturbing-me voice.

Jeremy Martinez walked in. Alone. "Hey, Ved, whatcha doin?"

"You're looking at it, Jeremy. You?

"Ah ... just hanging out. Can I sit?" He motioned to the futon.

I saw him look around my room, recognizing the beds pushed together for the weekend. He didn't mention it.

"Yeah, get comfortable. Well, that's not gonna happen on that thing, but give 'er your best shot."

He smiled and sat.

"Want a drink, Jeremy?" I asked.

"Yeah, sure. Anything."

I opened the fridge and found two bottles of Boone's Farm wine. "Looks like a Boone's night, bud."

"Perfect."

I handed him the bottle and took the other one for myself.

"Ved, Genie is gonna be at the party tomorrow night," he informed me with earnest eyes.

"Oh, yeah? Kinda figured."

"Yeah. I still see Venus occasionally. She told me to let you know."

"Oh. Thanks." I slugged my wine.

"She's crazy, Ved. Fucking nuts, man. You really fucked her up."

"I didn't do anything, Jeremy. Just didn't work out, that's all."

"She still wants you back."

"It'll be a cold day in Hell—" Another knock at my door.

I stood up and walked to the door, opened it, and found Monica Dillinger standing in the hall.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey."

"Can I come in?"

"Uh ..."

"Someone in there?" she asked, craning her neck to see beyond me.

"Just Jeremy."

"Oh."

"Who were you expecting?" I asked.

She laughed and looked down the hallway. "Never know with this room."

"Shut up. Come on." I opened the door all the way, inviting her in.

"Mrs. Dillinger," Jeremy said.

"Hi, Jeremy," she said.

"I'd offer you a drink, but me and Jeremy here are already drinking the last of the good stuff." I smiled.

She did too.

"Yeah, peach wine." Jeremy raised the bottle in a salute.

"Jeremy, could you give me a minute with Ved? I'm sorry. I just really need to talk to him for a sec."

"Oh. Sure. No prob." He stood.

"I'm sorry. It'll just be a second. If you come back ..."

"Nah, I'll see y'all tomorrow night." He looked at me. "Just remember, bro ... fuckin' crazy."

"Got it. Thanks, man."

"Goodnight, Mrs. Dillinger."

"Goodnight, Jeremy."

The door closed and we were alone.

"Gimme that bottle," she demanded, taking it from me and putting it to her lips for a long pull.

"Please ... by all means." I smiled.

"Ved, you're an asshole. I hope you know that."

"I've heard that a few times." I smiled again.

"Everyone's over at Eli's setting up for a party that costs ... well, more than you make in a year, wondering if you'll be mad that they're there without you. It just keeps coming up in conversation, over and over again. Luke and Ryan are feeling the worst, even though they're just setting up for your party; they still feel like they've wronged you somehow."

I thought it was interesting that they felt like that, yet there they were. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah, and ... of course, I knew they were right. I knew you'd be here pissed off at all of us for doing this, and even though it is for you, I knew you'd be mad. So here I am."

"Monica, don't try and tell me that it's all for me, OK? This is Eli and Enrique's big fuckin' look-at-me event."

"Bullshit. It's for you."

"Whatever. Look, don't do me any favors. I'm fine."

"Right," she said in a long and slow way, "drinking Boone's with Jeremy Martinez ... I'm sure that means you're fine."

"Anything else, Mrs. Dillinger?"

She glared at me for a second. "No. That's all."

"Well, thanks for stopping by."

She picked up her purse and walked toward me. She stopped just short of bumping into me with her hand dangling close enough to my right hand that I could feel the heat from hers. "You don't understand women, Ved. You think you do, but you only get the dumb ones; you don't understand the real women of this world. They make you feel small."

I said nothing; I was trembling a little from her proximity to me. She'd never stood this close to me before. Her face was right in front of mine, and her lips were moist and beautiful. I imagined them against mine for a second.

"Maybe," I said in just a whisper.

"I've been standing like this in front of you for a long time, and you never even noticed. Everyone else has, but not you, Mr. Perceptive."

I didn't say anything.

She whispered, "I'm a real woman, and I scare you because of it."

"A little," I agreed.

"A lot," she said and kissed me on the lips, a long passionate kiss.

I reached for her waist, but she turned and moved out of my grip.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Shell Ludo, for your birthday party." She thought for a second. "I have something for you."

And with that, she was gone.

Alyssa came home from Eli's at about one thirty, drunk. She stumbled into bed with me and began doing her best sweet talk, but she was sloshed and nothing she was saying made any sense. She grabbed my dick and tried jerking me off for a minute, but I wasn't having it. I was thinking about Monica, trying to figure out the whole thing. "I have something for you," she'd said.

The party was supposed to start at four in the afternoon, but I'd told Eli not to expect me until six or so. Nic, I knew, would be proud of me. I thought about him on that dark Friday night, wondering what he was up to, wondering why I'd never called him and never written to him. I'd just left him, and he probably thought I'd simply forgotten him. I promised myself that I'd write him a letter sometime soon.

Nic reminded me of the past, my shame at who I used to be, so maybe that was the reason I'd not contacted him. He'd be proud of me now, mister-big-dick ... but was I really all that bad before? I was innocent back then, harmless and uncomplicated. Maybe my shame was misplaced, and maybe I should be proud of whom I used to be and ashamed of whom I now was.

Those depressing thoughts lead to feeling guilty about the son I'd become to my mother. She'd spent every day of her life praying for me to become a pastor when I grew up, praying that I'd be a man of God, and now, I was a man of many indulgences, God not among them. I was self-serving and focused on my sexual pleasure and my power over people. I used to be so concerned for the feelings of others, which I knew had always made me appear weak. I'd not been contacted by anyone from high school, no one talked about me at parties in Blythe nowadays, and no one told any stories about things I'd done in high school. I was simply forgotten by everyone who knew me as a kid, and somehow I faulted them for missing out on the awkward kid with the big heart, the boy named Shell who spent his life alone.

Now I was Ved, all the things I'd never been in those days, yet the inner peace that had always been mine was now missing. What good is it to become the things you always wanted to be, when deep inside of you the truth remains as it was? What I'd wanted to be was exactly this, and now ... I wanted desperately to be Shell. I wanted to have the world ahead of me again, the future full of possibilities, the pages of a book just waiting to be turned.

I wanted to sit beside my mother at church on Sunday, looking around at all the happily misled sheep, singing songs that they believed were echoing on the streets of Heaven, their prayers being closely listened to by God. I'd always imagined prayers like a phone ringing in Heaven, thousands of them, millions of them ringing all day and all night, while God tried to field as many of them as he could. He'd never gotten to mine before I hung up and decided I needed to go it alone.

Pompous Christians believing that God himself was listening to their prayers ... God cared about their rent payment, their dog's bout with leukemia, their cousin's drinking problem ... Why is it so hard for people to accept the fact that God isn't in Heaven looking down on us? If God exists, He shakes His head at us wondering who's worse, the believers who make up His rules as they go along, or the people who refuse to give credit to the creator? Either way, we're all fucked.

I thought about Aiden, my biggest sin so far. I thought about his black hair nestled on his pillow as he dreamt of a trustworthy mother and a solid father. I remembered us walking through the barracks, headed to the vending machine for some late night candy bars, his hand in mine. I'd whisper, "That guy's an asshole," as we passed Jeremy Martinez watching wrestling on the rec-room TV, and I'd squeeze his little hand tighter as if preparing to defend my cub.

I remembered Aiden drawing pictures of me, dressed in green, hanging from a paper white sky by a tiny parachute and carrying a monster machine gun that shot bullets like little lines at the bad guys below. Below me, the words "Army Airbornes" written in red crayon and signed Aiden TuPoint, in barely legible print.

He clung to my right hand everywhere we went, gripping me so tightly that it almost seemed like he thought he could stop my inevitable departure. He'd never let go, always choosing my hand over his mother's. She was solid, if rarely around. She'd been there throughout the years, coming and going as her shifts at the Paradise allowed, yet she'd always come back. I was the one to worry about; I was the one who would disappear without fulfilling my promises to him ... just poof ... gone. How had I done that to this innocent little boy who wore his heart on his sleeve and had given me clean, pure love right from the beginning?

I was disgusted with myself. I tried to push him away, out of my head, as I listened to my drunken girlfriend snoring in the quiet night. He wouldn't leave that easily. In my head, he used my own strength against me, refusing to just silently disappear like he had when I'd gotten rid of his mother. This time he was staying, and he was forcing me to stay and look at him, splashing down a blue waterslide, black hair stuck to the side of his face.

He'd clung to me, a fantasy. He knew I was a ghost. He knew I was temporary, and yet he still put it out there for me to walk on. After Hailey, I'd sworn that I'd had enough, and that I would retract my heart from these situations, not allowing it to be trampled over and over again, yet this six-year-old little boy laid it out there, time and time again.

I went through the motions of our handshake in my head, wanting desperately to kick Alyssa the fuck out of my bed. The innocent boy on one side, and the drunken sergeant on the other. It's not good to weigh the pure against the rest of the world. The innocent make everyone else look filthy. Alyssa stunk of drunkenness and indulgence, while this helpless boy smelled like summer air and windblown linens.

I allowed his face to step into my mind, looking deeply into his eyes as he cried for a father. He was inches away from me, his tears falling, one after the other, as I sat there watching; my cold heart refusing, still, to take responsibility for those droplets on his cheek. I wanted to feel his little arms wrapped around me again, and I wanted to hold him and lie to him if I had to, anything to stop the pain for a few minutes.

I wanted him to feel my arms around him. I wanted to cup his head in my hands and tell him I loved him. I wanted to tell him that life is suffering, and that I was so calloused from my pathetic existence that I could no longer really feel. I wanted to hold him and to take it from him, but he wasn't there.

Wherever Aiden was, he was alone.

"I'm so sorry, Aiden," I whispered, tears filling my eyes.

Alyssa stopped snoring for a second and then resumed.

"Forgive me, God."

In Heaven, the phone rang without answer.
Chapter 7

Standing on My Knees

The boys were all gathered together when they came to get me at about five that Saturday afternoon. Zach had been coming in every fifteen minutes to ask my opinion about wearing this shirt with those pants, or these shoes with this hat ... Shit that most heterosexual men wouldn't care about. I thought it ironic that these guys often chose me for this sort of advice as my daily fashion consisted of jeans, boots, and a T-shirt. Though I was somewhat amused by Zach's persistent worry.

"Yeah, bro, that looks good," I'd say to him while he gawked at himself in my full-length mirror.

"You sure, man? I don't know about these shoes," he'd say and then head back to his room to find something else.

Finally, at about four thirty, Zach had an outfit on that he considered presentable. He came down to show me his final decision proudly, and again I told him, "Yeah, bro, looks good, for sure."

He left to go meet up with Ryan and Luke, and they all returned together to take me to the party.

"You ready, birthday boy?" Ryan asked.

In all of their faces I saw the same concern for their outfits. It was as if all my friends had been abducted by aliens, or gay men, and then returned to me looking the same, but infinitely more self-conscious. The smell of cologne and toothpaste overwhelmed my tiny room, and the way they kept looking down at themselves, wiping creases out of their shirts, and fixing their pant legs to fall over their boots just right, was beginning to make me self-conscious.

As usual, I'd not put too much thought into my attire, and I'd assumed that the boys would do the same. God knows I didn't want to be the one dressed to impress if everyone else was going casual, so I'd initially decided on jeans, boots, and a Pearl Jam "No Code" T-shirt that was an unfortunate shade of orange. I'm not really a bright colors kind of guy, always sticking closely to black, brown, olive green, or gray, with the occasional navy blue thrown in; but now, with them all standing in my room, opening a birthday bottle of Patrón, I decided I'd made a critical error in this orange shirt.

I traded it out for an "Alive" T-shirt, keeping the Pearl Jam theme but without looking like a flagman for the highway department. This T-shirt was well worn in, softened by countless washes, with just the beginnings of a few holes, mostly around the seams where the sleeves and faded black shirt come together. With that, I placed my blank, black, fitted ball cap on my head and stood, ready to go, and readied myself for a shot of tequila with the boys. Whether or not this party was really for me, I was just going to pretend that it was.

I started drinking water early in the afternoon to prepare for the massive amounts of alcohol I expected to be drinking that evening. I'd taken a few Advils, a hearty amount of multi-vitamins, and made sure to pocket a few of those, as well, to take before I went to sleep, or passed out ...

Luke had stopped in at about three and given me a few Percocets, most of which I'd tossed into the ol' tank early, in an effort to prepare me for the song and dance routine that tonight would surely bring. I'd be meeting people, talking to people who I already knew and didn't like, and occasionally talking to people who I did know and like, all of which would be benefited by my pain killer high.

I was feeling pretty good and glad to see my friends back in my room where they hadn't been in some time now. The party planning had been like a full-time job for them, so I'd only seen glimpses of them here and there for the last week or so.

"Here's to Ved."

"Happy birthday!"

"Airborne," I said, clinking little shot glasses together and swallowing the tequila.

"We ready to go?" Ryan asked, eyeing the group who were still fidgeting with their clothing like a bunch of prom queens.

"Fuck, enough with the mirror and the clothes," I said, laughing at Zach who was making strange faces at himself in my mirror. "You look like fucking Knight Rider when you do that face, idiot."

"Let's go," Luke announced and led the procession out the door.

We crawled into Jacob's 1983 child-molester van—a windowless, black, eyesore sporting three inch shag carpet from floor to ceiling—and waited as he looked under the hood, banging on things with an adjustable wrench that he left Velcro'd to the block somewhere.

"Don't worry. She'll start," he said while we continuously made fun of his ride.

Jacob had been in a band at some distant point in his life, and relentlessly bragged to us about scoring the "band van for a grand," which we in turn called the "child-molester with serious insect infestor." It was, indeed, a hideous machine that had been painted and repainted by the three hundred and thirty-six owners it'd had since it rolled off the factory line in the early eighties. Mismatched chairs and panels, cracked cup holders rendering them unusable, broken windows on both doors, broken windshield, and a fucking stench from the carpet that clumped together in most places—were just the beginning of the pleasantries. It was, however, the only vehicle that could carry all six of us in one shot, and since Jacob didn't really drink, he made the perfect DD.

"Wanna stop at the LQ?" I asked.

"No. There's plenty of booze there, bro," Luke told me.

"Yeah, but I wanted to get a bottle of Crown."

"There are twenty-three bottles of it there, Ved. I carried them all in last night," Luke said.

"Holy shit! Are you serious?"

"Yeah. Eli spent like four grand at the lick."

"OK then, onward."

When we pulled into Eli's normally quiet street, it looked like the Grateful Dead had come to town. Cars were lined up everywhere, and the valet booth was frantically trying to keep up with the traffic.

"Shit, I gotta wait in line?" Jacob asked.

"Pull up there, dude. We ain't waitin'," Luke yelled.

"I'm not just gonna cut in front of every—"

"Pull up there, asshole. We have the guest of honor!" Ryan joined in.

When Jacob pulled up, I saw a look of concern in the valet's eyes as if he feared having to drive this ugly beast. I guessed that he feared finding tiny body parts in the back of the van, somewhere near a bowl of candy.

"Hey. We have the birthday boy!" Luke informed him.

"No problem, sir. Leave it right there. I'll take care of it," he replied politely.

We exited the van, laughing. I looked at the valet and said, "Park 'er in the shade, boss."

"Right, sir," he said seriously, missing the joke.

"And hey! No joyriding!" I said with a serious look.

That time, he laughed.

The first thing I can recall seeing, other than general chaos, was a black dress. It looked both familiar and unfamiliar to me as I studied it closer. I'd never seen her like this before.

Monica looked like Hollywood royalty standing on the green grass, smiling politely at the conversation she was engaged in. She stood sideways, showing me her left side. A long slit in her dress went from the hem all the way to where it wrapped around her chest. Just below her armpit, the slit connected to a tiny strand of fabric that kept the dress from being disconnected entirely. It was so tight on her skin that it didn't move as the wind blew gently against it. I remember wondering what kept it connected and why the gap didn't widen and shrink as she moved.

It was as if someone had opened my eyes for the first time, and the glare that radiated from her beauty was almost too much to look upon. She hadn't seen me yet, and I swear, I could have only seen her, even if the world exploded in a massive fireball at that second. I studied her, her facial expressions, to see if she was real, and sure enough, her distinct smile and laugh were both present as she worked the guests over flawlessly.

"Oooh ssshit," I said quietly, knowing that the women who had never been intimidated by Monica before were about to become ravenous dogs.

I stared at her for a long minute, not realizing that people were greeting me. People had walked up to me and were talking, but all I heard was her voice.

"Is he OK?" Becky, a cashier at BAT, asked Luke.

Luke followed my stare, locating the source of the distraction. "Holy fuck. That's not going to be a good thing, bro," he said, shaking his head slowly and smiling.

"No, sir," I concurred.

Monica had a black choker around her neck that was simply black ribbon, no metallic medallion of any sort, just a tight black band that came together seamlessly somewhere. She wore heels that had to be four inches tall, making her tower over every other female in the area. She wasn't going to go unnoticed tonight.

"Goddamn, lady. When you do it, you really do it," I whispered to myself.

"He's a little buzzed, that's all," Luke told Becky in my defense.

She looked where I was looking. "Oh, yeah ... You see that? She comes to a party looking like that?" she said snottily.

"Becky, go get fucked," I said without looking at her

"You're an asshole, Ved," she said, looking at me to see if I was serious.

I didn't have to look at Becky, or "Breasty" as we called her. I knew that her main pair of attributes would be hanging out of her pit-stained tank top, begging people to look at them. Even though I'd never seen them, and I had been offered a few peeks, I knew that these were not low-mileage tits. Think ... softball in a sock.

I refused to even break my gaze on Monica when I said, "Seriously, get the fuck outta here. Thanks for coming."

"I didn't come for you, asshole. Besides, Captain Dillinger is here anyways, dick."

"Anyway. No S."

"Huh?" she asked.

"Captain Dillinger is here anyway, not anyways."

She looked at Ryan and Luke. "What the hell is he talking about?"

Luke smiled. "Thanks for stopping by."

Becky left without further comment, presumably with a look of bewilderment on her not-so-pretty face.

It dawned on me that I wasn't staring at my old buddy, Monica; I was staring at her as if she were mine. The thought crossed my mind that she was married and that Breasty had just mentioned Captain Dillinger's presence here at the party, giving me a horrible feeling that washed over me instantly. It was sickening, the jealousy and rage I felt by simply staring at her. It felt like she was mine in so many ways. I mean, she'd kissed me not twenty-four hours ago. Now Ricky was here with her, preventing me from the one thing I wanted on my birthday: time alone with her.

I swallowed, telling myself to look away. Before I could, she saw me. Her eyes flashed with something beautiful and warm as she smiled at me, immediately leaving the company of that man, whoever the fuck he was, and headed my way. Luke and Ryan walked away a few steps allowing me two feet of space, two feet to fill with me and the only thing that mattered to me.

"Hi." She kissed me on the cheek, a long and promising kiss.

I tried to talk, but ended up just shaking my head, staring at her.

"You finally made it, fashionably late, as always."

I realized that I'd grabbed her above the waist, an attempt at a hug or a rubdown ... I wasn't sure. "Yeah ... you know." I smiled.

"Happy birthday, Shell," she said, mentioning the name that only she was allowed to use.

"You're ..."

"What?"

"Everythi—" I stopped short.

She stared at me.

"Ved." She shook her head just enough for me to see it.

"Fuck, Monica ... I've never seen you so ..."

"So what?" she asked in a seductive whisper.

I raised my hands on her waist, the thin fabric allowing me to feel the sides of her breasts beneath it. "You were supposed to be mine."

"I am."

"You are," I stated, the jealousy fading away.

"I always have been. I knew the first time I saw you," she said, and tears filled my eyes.

A hand slapped me on the back, startling me. Ricky Dillinger was smiling behind me. He had just returned from the Beer Park, a section of the backyard dedicated to supplying the countless partygoers with twenty-three different kinds of beer. The keg tents were broken up into region with the majority of people drinking in Germany, whose beer was being poured by men in lederhosen.

"Ved!" he yelled, obviously a few beers in by now.

Helplessly, and without any real choice in the matter, I hugged the man, thinking goddamn he's tall, as he rubbed my back in awkward drunkenness.

"Captain Dillinger, I'm so glad you came."

"I wouldn't miss this for the world, Ved!"

"Good, sir. How's the beer?"

"Cold and plenty."

He stood around awkwardly for a few seconds and then wandered off, all without saying a word to his wife.

Monica walked us through the masses of people, and I saw for the first time the effort they'd put into the fiesta. There were signs and pictures of me in different poses and different places, most of which had my eyes either partially or fully closed, but the gesture was nice. People who I'd never seen before were telling me happy birthday, and it took me a few minutes to realize that they'd simply recognized me from my likenesses that were hanging everywhere.

Monica, my official guide, reintroduced me to all the people we'd met over the last six months, whose names I'd surely forgotten, by saying things like, "Ved, you remember Michel and Yvonne ..." as I stuck my hand out to meet them, wondering which one is which?

As soon as Eli saw me from his position in the kitchen where he'd been ordering some chick in a black suit around, he waved his hand and screamed for everyone's attention.

"Quiet! Quiet!" he yelled above the crowd.

It took a minute, but eventually the room was quiet. He wrapped his arms around me and said, "This is my friend, my good friend, my eternal partner of the mind! Also, the guy I want to fuck the most in the world!" Everyone laughed hysterically. Catcalls ensued.

I grabbed Monica's hand.

"I'd like to raise a toast, to a man who is respected by everyone who knows him, a man of principle, a man of character and charm, a man who's fucked more women than I've fucked men!" Again, everyone whistled, laughed, and applauded. "This is to Vedder Shell Ludo on his very special birthday celebration!"

"Hear, hear," Enrique said as the noise of clinking glasses became deafening.

Monica kissed me on the cheek as I drank, a long kiss that went well beyond a celebratory peck. Her lips were warm against my skin, and I shivered with desire for her. I couldn't figure out what had happened to me. How had I transformed from her friend, whom she could strip naked in front of, to feeling queasy and jealous every time I looked at her? I longed for her so badly that when Alyssa came charging across the crowd to claim me as her own, I almost shoved her away.

"Ved!" she screamed. "Are you surprised? Happy birthday, baby!" She kissed me on the lips.

I looked at Monica as I kissed Alyssa. She looked at me. I told her with my eyes that I would do anything, anything at all, to have her for the rest of my life.

Monica, being the perfect hostess, clapped as Alyssa kissed me. Captain Dillinger came up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder. Poor Captain Dillinger, he was only two or three beers away from a bad place, a place where unconsciousness would claim him. He needed to cool it with the booze, and I would have told him if I was a good person, but, as stated previously, I am not. It was only six thirty, and this party had events and shows planned until three in the morning. If Captain Dillinger didn't start drinking some water, he'd be out cold by seven, and that would be unfortunate for him, but you know, one man's loss is another man's ...

I walked around the house hugging gay men and making small talk for an hour. Alyssa came and went, but there was plenty of female drama that needed her attention and she certainly kept herself entertained with it all. On Ft. Bragg, Alyssa was a big deal. She was hot, friendly, and known to get around, so you see, she had all the attributes of an in-demand Army woman. She wasn't petty or jealous, but she did seem entitled at times; and, as I saw her on and off throughout the evening, it almost seemed to me that her dramatic affairs were the most important aspect of her night. Maybe that would have been disturbing to me, but under the circumstances, I couldn't have made it any better if I'd designed it myself. Or had I?

When Oscar arrived with Genie, however, Alyssa acted weird.

Oscar wore a purple suit, the kind you never see on white men, with a lavender pocket square and bright white wing tips. He looked like he just came from a Pimp-of-the-Year competition, but it was still a rather pleasant transition from the stained wife-beaters he usually wore.

I made eye contact with Genie, looking for malicious intent in her eyes, but there was none. She was smiling at the people she was talking to, looked at me and smiled, and then turned her attention back to the couple. Maybe all was forgiven?

Oscar came directly up to me, gave me a hug, and said, "Ved, happy birthday," while slipping a hundred dollar bill into my hand.

"Thank you, Oscar. I'm flattered that you came, and that you got all dressed up for me!" I laughed with him, touching his impressive-but-gaudy suit.

He laughed with me. "It's ugly as fuck, I know! But, Ved, sometimes the gay community expects better of me than a tank and flips," which I think meant flip-flops.

I felt like maybe I'd had Oscar all wrong. Maybe he was just a nice guy who wasn't so gay that he could still be masculine and territorial when need be. Maybe we'd gotten off on the wrong foot, and now, it was behind us. His entourage of fifteen people was divided into ten strippers from the Paradise, three "movie stars," and two other men who were obviously his love interests. They were handsome men, warm and pleasant as I introduced myself.

"You have to do me a favor, pleeeeease, Ved," Oscar said.

"OK."

"Pleeeeease go talk to Genie. Just say hello. She was terribly nervous about coming. I assured her that you were a gentleman and would, of course, be polite and welcoming to her. Please make me right, Ved. Is that too much to ask of you on your special night?"

"No ... of course not, Oscar. I will."

"Oooooh, thank you, you handsome little heterosexual," he said, pinching my triceps.

I looked around the crowded front yard for Monica, but only caught a glimpse of her as she carried an empty food tray back through the front door. I wanted desperately to tell her about Oscar, telling her that she was right, he wasn't such a bad guy, after all. I also wanted to review the promise I'd just made him, with her, to see what she thought about it. Monica didn't know Genie personally, but she knew of her through me and, also, through her friendship with Gemini and Eli.

Instead of finding Monica, I found Alyssa, or rather, Alyssa found me. She, too, was dressed nicely, but I thought her boobs could have been tucked into her halter top a little better. Her blond hair was brushed out straight, a way that I rarely saw it, and she wore tight fitting jeans that showed off her great ass. She was a beauty, and she was pretty good at being Miss Sunshine at events like this, but now at thirty, I could see the signs of her aging. Monica, on the other hand, who was twenty-eight, looked like she had a lifetime of perfection ahead of her.

Alyssa walked toward me slowly, staring at me. When she got close to me, she said, "Will you come with me, please?" I followed her into the backyard where Jeremy Martinez, Sergeant Bender, and David Moses were drinking beers.

"Ved!" Bender yelled, obviously a little tipsy. He hugged me, picking me up completely off the ground and spinning me around. "Happybirthdaymotherfucker!" he said as if all three words were one.

"Thanks, sarge," I said, laughing at his enthusiasm.

"You're a crazy motherfucker, Ludo. You know I know that, right?" he said, referring to the month in the hole.

"Yeah. I know, sarge. I'm better now, but you never really know for sure." I winked.

"Youbrokemyfuckingnose. Don'tthinkI'mgonnaforgetthat!" he said with incredible speed. I thought he should have been an auctioneer. He was laughing at his threat.

"You broke mine too, asshole!" I replied, laughing with him.

"That was his fault!" He pointed to Martinez.

"Yeah ... yeah ... It was my fault," Martinez said.

"I'm glad you guys came," I said, patting them all on the shoulders. "Hey, Oscar just showed up with like ten girls from the Paradise," I notified them, looking for my out.

"No shit! Is Venus with him?" Martinez asked.

"No, she's workin' til nine. She's coming with Gem when they get done."

Bender slapped Martinez on the ass and hooted. This was getting a little too masculine for me, so I excused myself.

I walked in through the back door, finding Monica and Eli in the kitchen pulling trays of things out of the oven.

"I thought you guys hired a caterer. What kind of cheapskate party is this?" I smiled.

Eli looked at me with his oh-no-you-didn't face and said, "Chicken Cordon Bleu will be served at 9 p.m., Mr. Ludo."

"Can I have my lady back now?" I asked him, pointing at Monica.

"Your lady? I believe your lady is running around here with her tits hanging out, not this fine woman in this extraordinary dress." He held her beside him as if she were the model and he the designer.

"I don't want the other one. I want this one," I said, more seriously than I meant.

"Uh-oh ... sounds like trouble to me," Eli said, raising his eyebrows to show seriousness.

"It won't be any trouble, Eli," Monica said, stepping toward me. "Ved doesn't know anything about real women. He's harmless," she said, looking at Eli.

"You're right, darling, he doesn't know anything about real women, but I wouldn't call him harmless." Eli smiled.

"We'll see how harmless ... Captain Dillinger!" I said, seeing him stumbling into the back door beside the kitchen.

"Ludo? Where's the pisser?" he asked, not even recognizing his own wife.

"I got this," she said, walking briskly toward her husband.

"Wow, he's uh ..." Eli looked for the right words.

"Fucked up," I answered.

Monica disappeared out the door with her stumbling husband when suddenly Eli said, "Uh-oh ..."

I turned to look for the source of the problem when I was tapped on the back. I turned to find Genie standing behind me, smiling pleasantly as if we were long lost friends.

"Hello, Ved. Happy birthday."

"Hi, Genie. Thank you," I said somewhat stiffly.

"How've you been?"

"Oh, you know, the same."

"Still man-whoring around?" she asked.

I laughed, not answering. Jesus, she was direct if nothing else.

"Oh, it's OK. I heard all about you and Alyssa and you and Monica ..."

"Monica and I are friends, Genie. I'm together with Alyssa."

"You did always want to fuck her. So glad you got your way."

So, this wasn't going to be friendly, after all. I should have known that from the beginning; in fact, I think I did. I'd promised Oscar to try and be courteous, so here I was, not telling her to fuck off. That was my best courtesy.

"Yup, I sure did." I smiled a false smile.

"You usually do ... get your way. I wonder, does she know about you and Monica?"

I'd already had enough of this bitch, so I decided to be dismissive. Often times I find being arrogantly dismissive is better than lashing out. "Genie, it was great to see you. Tell Aiden I think about him all the time."

She slapped me, hard. I stumbled back, trying not to fall down. My face was hot where her hand had hit me, and I could feel the finger marks swelling up instantly. Everyone turned to look at me, but this time it wasn't the same party-going fun-time eyes. It was a look of terror as they wondered what I could have done that was so horrific that it deserved this sort of answer.

"Don't talk about my son. You broke his fucking heart, you bastard!"

I said nothing. I deserved that one. It was Aiden hitting me, or so I told myself.

She walked off, into the crowd, as people resumed their party antics, and the noise of chatter started up again. I stood against the kitchen wall, stunned.

Monica came rushing in and placed her hand against the mark Genie's hand had left. She looked into my eyes, again piercing me with the stunning beauty of her entire being.

"You OK?" she asked.

"Fine."

"That bitch. You want me to—"

"No. I had that one coming."

"No, Ved, you didn't. You were polite enough to talk to her. She shouldn't have—"

I grabbed her hand and put my face inches from hers. "Monica, I did. That was for Aiden. I wish she'd done more."

"Come on." She pulled my hand toward the hallway. I followed her down the hallway and to the bathroom where she found the door locked. "I need the bathroom. Now!" There was a flush, and the door opened. An older man, too badly dressed to be a friend of Eli's, walked out. "Wash your hands in the kitchen," she said.

I laughed. She pulled me into the bathroom and sat me down on the toilet. I forgot to make sure there wasn't any urine on the seat, but I didn't feel anything wet creep through my pants. That was a relief.

She found a face cloth and ran the cold water for a minute before dipping it under. I watched her from the toilet, moving underneath that black dress. She came over to me, sat on my lap, and placed the cold cloth against the side of my face.

The door opened and one of the "movie stars" came barging in, yelling to someone, "Yeah right, that wasn't yesterday!" before he saw us seated on the toilet.

"Excuse me," Monica said.

"Sorry." He turned to go. "Wow, kinky." He closed the door.

Monica got up and locked the door. I held the cold towel on my face. This was all pointless, of course; it wasn't cold enough to stop the swelling, and the red mark was going to be the worst of it anyway, but I didn't object. She sat back down on my lap and looked at me.

"You're a good guy, Ved. You have to start believing that."

"I'm not a good guy, Monica."

"Yes, you are. You're trying to find your way, that's all."

"I want to marry you," I said.

I didn't know where that had come from. We were talking about me being a good guy, or a bad guy ... whatever, and it had just slipped out.

She looked at me. "No, you don't."

"I swear to God, I do. I love you. I always have."

She thought about that for a long second. I began to worry about her silence when she said, "I love you too, Ved. I've been in love with you from the first night I met you."

I kissed her.

She kissed me back.

I dropped the towel and my hands slid up her front, finally touching those magnificent breasts that I'd imagined against my bare chest for so long. They were firm and perfect, mounted to the perfect woman, which lent them even more credibility. She moaned as I touched her, a loud moaning from deep within her. She wasn't showing off for me; this was the most genuine response to my touch I'd ever heard. I kissed her neck, her ears, and her head. I put my face against her chest and she hugged me there, holding me like a baby.

I tried to stop myself, but I couldn't. I pulled the straps to her dress down, freeing her torso of the tight fabric. Her bare breasts swung gently as she moved to grab my belt. She was pulling on the belt buckle, and the muscles in her chest flexed as she did so.

"Be gentle with me; it's been over a year since anyone ..."

"I'll try."

She got my belt buckle loose and was tugging the belt free of the loops that held it in place when, suddenly, there was a hard knocking at the door.

"Ved? Ved!"

I couldn't identify the voice.

We scrambled to get dressed. Luckily, Monica's hair was so short that it couldn't get ruffled up, so in ten seconds she was dressed and standing at the door. I placed the towel back to my face.

Oscar stood at the door, looking curiously at the two of us while we tried to look innocent.

"You OK?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said from the toilet, "just putting some cold water on it."

"Jesus, I'm sorry, man. I had no idea."

"It's cool, Oscar. I deserved it. It was for Aiden."

"I heard. Anyway, I wanted to check on you. She left. I just ..." He looked at the floor. "Just wanted to check on you."

"It's all right. I'm fine."

When he left, Monica closed the door. "Let's get back out there. I don't need Alyssa showing up next."

"Don't worry about that. She's entertaining Jeremy and Bender."

She laughed. "I bet she is. That's quite a shirt she's wearing."

That was the first time I'd ever heard her say anything even remotely negative about Alyssa. I took that as a positive sign, realizing that no woman is capable of taking another woman's man away without being able to justify it in one way or another, at the very least, to herself. Not that Alyssa's boobie-shirt was really a legitimate reason for Monica to attack her man, or more honestly, allow Alyssa's man to attack her, but still, at least we were making progress.

We went back into the kitchen where Eli made sure to give us an uncertain look as he attended to the caterers, who were, in turn, attending to the food. Poor bastards, nothing they did would be good enough for Eli, no matter how well prepared and efficient they were.

I knew the minute I saw Eli that Oscar had told him about finding Monica and me in the bathroom together. Even though I felt we'd performed pretty spectacularly at portraying innocence, as simply a couple of buddies attending to a wound that may or may not have needed a cold water application, I knew that Eli was aware of what was really unfolding. Hundreds of times, I'd heard people's comments about believing Monica and I had been having a secret affair, but that had never been true, and, therefore, the comments had been easy to dismiss. Now that there was partial truth to these accusations, at least in our intentions to do just that, the comments seemed louder, more relevant somehow, and I wasn't looking forward to fielding the same questions I'd always gotten about the two of us. Isn't that funny how guilt and intention can change comments like that from simply annoyances to accusations that need a defense, simply by wanting to do something?

The looks that Eli was giving us from across the kitchen were even unnerving somehow, despite being made from a trustworthy source, but I doubt that anyone else picked up on them. It seemed to me that our lies needed to begin with him, the single person who understood our connection better than anyone else.

We were guilty of something, and we knew it. The funny thing was, during this entire process, I recall being concerned with Alyssa finding out, not Ricky, though, clearly, he was the less stable of the two, and the one most likely to bring repercussions forth.

Their relationship was like that of roommates. They didn't hold hands, whisper words of affection to each other, or even sleep in the same bed. Monica's permanent room was upstairs, a space they referred to as "the studio." It was really a loft with a sharply pitched ceiling, one triangular window, and it housed a small Murphy bed in the wall. Pictures of her life were plastered to the wall in large splotches that formed shapes of other objects like birds, butterflies, and even stars. I had earned my way into a large majority of the recent collages, holding onto Monica in this place or that, our eyes varying shades of red from God knows what drugs we'd taken at the time. In fact, the first time I saw the room and noticed the pictures of myself, I couldn't recall the camera ever having been produced, or even a single picture snapped. The ones of us at Eli's house could have come from any number of visits as we always sat in the same seats at the same table, and more often than not, we were always wearing a stripped down version of our BAT uniform.

Ricky couldn't have been oblivious to our budding relationship. Even though Monica preferred him to not go into the studio, she knew, and therefore I knew, that occasionally he did. He'd breathe in the smell of his wife, looking at her watercolor paintings and her band quotes written out in longhand and thumb tacked to the sheetrock walls, but he didn't touch things. He was careful to leave everything in the exact spot it lay and reveal no sign that he'd ever been there.

Ricky, despite what I guessed he thought was an affair between the two of us, never treated me suspiciously. Initially, when Monica told me that they were simply "married friends," I had my doubts, assuming that she wanted to seem more liberal than she really was, but, in time, I realized that she'd almost been more conservative than what the truth was. They were friends, and the pictures that contained the two of them were mostly things like them at baseball games—Ricky with one team jersey on, she with another—or shots of them in front of a Smithsonian museum, standing the way buddies stand, not the way couples pose for the people that will surely see the photographs.

Monica was nothing if not well thought out, and I believe that the pictures she took already had the wall in mind. Her photographs were never stuffed into envelopes during the holiday season and sent to family members. They were her way of collecting time. She reflected heavily on memories and ideas, and was certainly not one to lay her cards down and reveal her hand. Most people didn't understand Monica; her depth of thought was impressive, and Ricky was among the ones she confused when she sought philosophical answers.

I was like her own little Socrates to her Einstein-like mind. She always sought out the scientific answers to human issues, like life after death, while I always preferred the philosophical and self-created. That was, perhaps, what had initially drawn us to each other so intensely.

Sex is disruptive to the natural development of love. Abstaining from sexual behavior for a period of exploration between a man and a woman is the only real way to solidify long lasting feelings between human beings that are, by nature, fickle. I'd not experienced love before her as I'd always acted on my lusting, fulfilling my obligation to procreate, or practice procreation, which always left me feeling one of two ways: either that I'd like to do that again, or I'd rather never see her again. The expectation that I would eventually fall in love existed, even though the routine I used presented pretty solid evidence otherwise. No matter the extent of the attraction I experienced before Monica, I always came to the same conclusion eventually—I felt like I expected "love" to be more impressive than what I felt at the time.

Now, standing beside Monica, feeling this guilt for something that was purer than anything else I'd ever known, I was content. I was satisfied with knowing that I'd been right, that love was bigger and more overwhelming than the numerous encounters I'd had previously. She eclipsed simple desire, going deep within my being, quietly demanding that I worship her, and here I was, standing on my knees.

"I'm gonna go see if Ricky is still on two legs," she said, squeezing my hand twice before walking toward the door leading to the backyard.

"Yeah, cool," I said to no one. She was already gone.

From the other direction someone walked through the front door in that exact instant, causing a ruckus. People were yelling happy things as someone important had obviously made their appearance at my birthday party. Gemini, Venus, and Sphinx had all shown up an hour early.

Gem came directly toward me, smiling in her benevolent way, and her arms were open as if to hug me from the distance between us.

"Ved, my little man ... happy birthday," she said, hugging me.

"Don't say that little man shit too loudly." I smiled and returned her emphatic hug.

She was a sight to behold, as usual. Dressed in provocative garments that left little to the imagination, she reached down and squeezed my ass, whispering, "Does the birthday boy deserve a second round with the dancer?"

I smiled at her, squeezing her ass in return, despite myself. "You are a bad, bad woman."

She looked at me as if she felt sorry for me, speaking as if to a child, "Oh, baby ... I hate to see you go. You were so good. Such a shame to see it wasted on that nasty tramp." It was a reference to Alyssa, whom Gemini disliked fully.

If only she knew. Alyssa was the last person I had in mind for birthday sex. "You're a close number two."

"Honey, that's the problem. Number two isn't good enough for this girl." She kissed me on the cheek before turning away to talk to Eli and Enrique.

Venus hugged me next, then Sphinx, who we all referred to as "Spanks" because on stage she was accustomed to hurting herself, much to the pleasure of the man-folk watching. Spanks and I weren't really friends. Actually, I always thought she disliked me, but tonight she hugged me and said, "You are the man, Ved."

At eight o'clock, Eli made an announcement that the girls of the Paradise Club would be performing in the driveway. I'd told him before this that it wasn't necessary for the girls to be working tonight, but he insisted. "These girls are gonna make more in the next hour than they did all month," he informed me. And sure enough, at 8 p.m. sharp, Nine Inch Nails was broadcast through the entirety of the house as the girls of the Paradise did their thing.

I decided that while everyone was watching the Paradise show, I would go find Monica, who'd been missing for a while. When I found her, she was coming out of Eli's bedroom, closing the door as quietly as she could before seeing me at the other end of the hallway.

She gestured with a finger to her lips to be quiet, so I said nothing and just watched her and that black dress walk down the hallway to me. There weren't many people in the house at all, maybe five total, as apparently even the hundred or so gay men wanted to watch the show in the driveway.

She kissed me a long kiss and held my face to hers by way of the back of my head. I didn't fight her; I was trying to taste her mouth that was flavored with wine and cigarettes. I grabbed her by the waist and spun her against the wall, slamming her roughly up against a picture of Eli and Enrique at the Gay Pride March in New York City sometime in the eighties. She didn't flinch as she bounced off the wall, only kissed me harder. I began to pull her dress up, inching it from side to side against her thighs, but the goddamned thing was so tight it wasn't cooperating. She released my head in an effort to assist me, all without breaking the kiss. She pulled at her own dress, which was far more effective, and a second later the hem was raised to just below her buttocks. I reached under the dress, feeling for the first time her mound, decorated with just a few short hairs. I slipped my fingers into her, my index and middle finger turned sideways. She squeezed my head so hard I thought my brain would pop out like a pit through a cherry.

"Now," she moaned.

We were in broad sight of the living room, her sleeping husband behind the door not two feet away. All of that, all of them, disappeared in an instant as I grabbed my belt buckle and worked it loose in less than one second. She handled the button of my jeans and my fly as quickly, and one second after that, I slipped into her, pinning her against the wall.

I would go into the details of my lengthy performance, magnifying her reaction to such deft skills, but in trying to keep to a somewhat honest theme, it was over nine seconds later.

Monica didn't get the same satisfaction that I did from our exposed tryst; however, when I came inside of her, she scratched my back enough to make me bleed from my neck to my ass. I came and I came and I came into the woman I loved, experiencing for the first time the desire to hold her forever, even after I'd released all of that.

Her legs, which were wrapped completely around me, squeezed me tight enough to potentially dislocate my spine, and even after I'd finished my nasty business, she continued to writhe, wanting me to keep going. I released her with my arms as she clung to me with her legs, and I placed my hands on the sides of her head, staring into her longing eyes.

"Marry me."

"OK," she said, smiling a slight smile.

I don't know how long the whole encounter lasted, from when she finished putting Ricky to bed to when we were dressed and walking toward the kitchen, but it wasn't long enough. My craving for her had intensified, and now, only seconds after reentering the kitchen, I wanted her again. I knew that my semen would be dripping down her legs as we entered the empty kitchen, save the caterer I'd seen Eli bitching at before, but she never showed a sign of discomfort.

"I should have worn panties," she whispered.

"No. You called it right, as usual," I reassured her.

She looked at me for a long second, her face as serious and lusting as mine, grabbed my hand, and pulled me back into the hallway.

The Verve Pipe song "Freshmen" was playing on the connected stereo, signaling that the show was still going on as she pulled me down the hallway by the arm. She tried every door, other than the one Ricky was behind, only to find them all locked. When they failed, she put her finger to her lips again and opened his door. He was snoring loudly as we entered the room, curled up in a fetal position facing the far wall with blankets tossed around him to combat the severe air conditioning.

I looked at her, wondering what we were doing, wondering if she was going to announce our engagement to him, when she leaned against the closest edge of the bed, facing away from me and pulled her dress down from the straps that held it around her shoulders. It took her two seconds to be very naked, indeed, still facing away from me.

I stood behind her, looking at her naked back and ass, her strong legs, and elegant feet encased in heels as she bent over the bed, her face against the mattress, just inches from her unconscious husband.

Without delay, I was shirtless and my pants hung around my knees as I held her by the hips and made very quiet love to her. She moaned into the mattress for a long time as my stamina was now much improved after "releasing pressure on the tanks" in the hallway. I kissed her back and neck as we tried to be very quiet. If Ricky woke up, I would have to either knock him unconscious by a blow to the head or run for my life. This fact didn't escape me or inhibit the thrill, even in the slightest way.

I did her fast and hard, and slow and tender as my inner porn star came out of me. She turned around, barely sitting on the edge of the bed, and spread her legs for me. I looked at her body, naked and muscular, tan and lean, and stepped into her. She held me around the waist for a minute and then laid back, her head touching her husband's leg that was buried beneath the layers of blankets. This was making me slightly nervous. I went to work, wanting to end this before Ricky came to, but she shook her head mouthing, "No."

Minutes later, with her long legs on my shoulders, I came. She moaned again, loudly enough to wake the dead and Ricky stirred. I grabbed a pillow and stuffed it over her face, continuing to thrust into her. She wrapped her arms around the pillow, suffocating herself, but I could still hear her.

Ricky rolled over, facing our direction, but he still slumbered in his alcohol-induced sleep. Monica paid him no mind whatsoever; then again, hers wouldn't be the first face he would see.

I stepped back, still erect, and quietly bent to pull my pants up. She stood before me, completely naked, and kissed me.

"Would I be enough for you forever?" she whispered.

"No doubt. I love you. I'd do anything for you," I said, watching Ricky sleep.

"You might have to," she said, gesturing to him.

"Anything," I assured her.

An hour later, Monica left in her 944 with Ricky unconscious in the passenger seat. It'd taken Luke, Ryan, me, and a few door holders, to get him into the car, and if he had some swelling on his head Monday morning, that would be from Ryan dropping his end of the captain halfway down the hall. If I'd known that he was that unconscious an hour before, I could have been a little rougher in Eli's room.

It was about 11 p.m. when she pulled away, promising to come back if she could. I hadn't seen Alyssa in three hours, and suddenly that was a concern of mine. I was going to end it with her when I did see her, or at least I thought I was.

I started taking the obligatory shots of everything that was placed before me, and by midnight, I was tanked. I'd talked to everyone at the party by 1 a.m., missing the dancing midgets, or "The Little People Shakers" as they called themselves, at midnight.

By one fifteen, we were sitting in Eli's living room, talking incoherently while some really graphic gay porn played on the VHS. Every time I looked at it, I was shocked by what they were doing to each other, wondering why, in gay porn, the actors were always dressed in BDUs.

I was sitting on the couch, perhaps slumped over a bit, when Genie came prancing into the room wearing her usual stripper garb. She said hello to everyone, then sat beside me.

I tried to sit up and talk to her, but the words just weren't cooperating with me.

"Ved, I'm really sorry about before," she said loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

"It's OK, I deserved that one."

"No, you didn't. I was out of line. It's just that Aiden—"

"I underslammed," I muttered. Everyone laughed.

"No, you never did that," she joked. Again, everyone chuckled.

I looked at her, seeing if she was for real. She looked good. She was pretty, not too much makeup, and didn't stink of that perfume of hers.

"I'm sorry, Genie ... about Aiden. I do think of him all the time," I said, relatively coherently.

"It's OK, Ved. It wasn't your fault."

"Thank you."

"Welcome," she said and looked around. "You need to sober up a little, buddy. Party's not over yet."

"It's just about over for me," I said, smiling my most charming drunk smile.

"Let me get you some water. You need to sober up."

Before I could protest, she was up and gone.

I relaxed with her gone and began an interesting conversation with Luke about the physics of some of the disgusting things that were now on the television. It seemed to me that these dudes were enjoying themselves, all eight of them, standing in a circle around some poor bastard who had been selected to suck and jerk these guys until they began to produce ... and it would only end after he was dripping with white cream-like fluid.

I found myself almost terrified by it. My stomach turned. "Eli! Eli! You have to turn this shit off. I'm gonna be sick," I pleaded.

He was amused with my repulsion. "That's good shit,Ved!"

I began making gagging gestures, only half kidding.

Sure, it dawned on me that if it were a woman in the middle of the circle-jerk, it would have been less repulsive, but even yet, I wasn't into group sex, or God forbid, rape. I know that people have their own sexual animals that they keep tied up in the basement of their souls, and God knows, I'm far from saintly, but group sex or rape makes me sick.

I can pinpoint the exact reason for my terror of such things. When my father brought home a VCR for the first time in the late eighties, it was an occasion to celebrate. Imagine that, being able to watch a movie in our own house, without commercials!

It didn't take long for the VCR to take over our weekend time together. The problem with his being a pioneer of the VCR was that there were only a few VHS tapes available at the time. BETA and VHS were still in direct competition, trying to determine which would go on to rule the world, and which would end up in the electronics department at the local Goodwill. The local video store had a curtained off back room with a far larger selection of videos than the more family friendly front section, which only had movies I'd never heard of. Shit my father grew up with. There wasn't any Star Wars on VHS; instead, old Robert Redford films that I later learned to love, mostly through the repetition of renting and re-renting them, lined the few shelves.

Among the favorites of my father and I, who were the real die-hards of the VHS phenomenon, were: anything Clint Eastwood, though preferably a western or the Dirty Harry films; Charles Bronson and his Death Wish films; and finally, one of the new young guys who were making cool movies, Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis. Suddenly, with the advent of the VCR, I was allowed to watch R rated movies as long as I closed my eyes when my dad told me to. Man, in the eighties, sex scenes were a celebration of our first amendment rights, and film makers were not shy about putting fifteen minutes worth of boobs into a movie plot, leaving me peeking through my fingers as my father fast forwarded through the good parts. Even with the squiggly lines that gyrated across the screen, I could still see distorted nipples and moaning women, something my mother would have had a heart attack over had she known I was watching.

One weekend he brought home a movie called Billy Jack. I don't remember too much of the plot, but I do remember a traumatizing rape scene that gave me nightmares for years to come. From that point on, I have been unable to watch rape scenes on TV, no matter the genre.

Genie returned with a glass of water and took a seat beside me, wrapping her arm around me as if we were the same semi-happy couple we'd been six months ago.

I took the water from her hand and tried to slide away from her, not wanting to appear too friendly with her to the other people in the room. I suppose I could have been a little more discreet in my sliding over, but I was pretty loaded.

She noticed.

"Oh ... I know, I just thought I was cramping you," I lied.

She slid back to me and watched as I pulled the multi-vitamin and Advil out of my pocket, tossed them into my mouth, and drank half the glass of water to wash them down.

I exhaled sharply, feeling like I was drowning from the water. Drinking water when I am anything but thirsty has always been difficult for me.

At this point I saw a smile cross her face that seemed out of place. It was not the right smile for the room, for the atmosphere, for the company. It was a smile that she rarely ever used off the stage.

I considered this, wondering what she was up to, wondering why she'd been so nice to me all of a sudden. It was only then that I really began to wonder what she was up to, but by then it was too late.

Something terrible crossed my mind with a flash. It sparked a question, and I turned to ask it, but it was gone as quickly as it'd come. I tried to summon Luke and Ryan, who were hiding their faces as the men on TV began to ejaculate onto the idiot in the middle, who was writhing around in the tiny puddles. He looked like a pig in mud, kicking his feet and moaning with ecstasy as the gay soldiers continued to stroke their massive cocks.

The gag reflex triggered a dry heave. I retched, wanting desperately for someone to look at me. I needed to signal distress somehow, but the porn was so repulsive that it captivated the audience seated before it.

I couldn't speak. I tried again. Nothing.

An unnatural sleepiness seized me by the brain, killing the functionality of my limbs first. The only motion I was capable of was the worst possible action I could have taken; I collapsed against Genie. The room was getting darker, spinning slightly ... I looked at her, curiously.

She smiled at me again, the same devious smile.

Whatever she'd slipped into that glass of water was enough to paralyze an elephant. I lay immobile against her as she quietly adjusted me into a position that appeared as if I were being affectionate toward her. My face lay against the top of her breasts, turned toward the room, and my eyes locked on Luke, who I prayed would look over at me, just for a second.

He didn't.

Luke and Ryan, Eli and Oscar, Gemini and Venus all sat watching the queer in the middle clean everyone's dick off with his tongue. They were all making their funniest comments and laughing with each other in a secret competition to win the "wittiest person in the room" contest—a title that I knew should have been mine, but I was fading away right there beside them.

I heard Gemini say, "Look at this guy!"

Luke said, "Look at Ryan clean those dicks off ..."

There was a thump, and Luke yelled, "Ow ... fucker," before laughing again hysterically.

Then she said it, the last words I heard as the room went dark, "Ooooh. Poor Ved ... He passed out.
Chapter 8

Revenge is a Dish Best Served Intravenously

I awoke in a bedroom that was somewhat familiar, but I couldn't quite place it immediately. I looked the direction I lay, vaguely recognizing the ornate decorations on tiny shelves without being able to identify them. A terrible depression washed over me seconds after I awoke, a wave of awfulness that was thick and sticky, and clinging to me tightly; I was unable to step to a side and look beyond it. A small window was open a crack and the summer breeze that was blowing into the room rattled wooden blinds that had been intentionally closed by someone. I heard a lawnmower in the background, dogs barking, and the occasional whooshing of a car passing.

The air coming in the window was clean and smelled like air that has been warmed by the sunshine that was filtering through it. A noise came from the house, the sound of plates clinking together.

I stirred. Was I at Eli's? Was last night the party? What happened to me?

I couldn't remember the details of ending the night, playing through the memories I had of the event. I remembered entering the party, the time I spent with Monica ... and then, it sort of disappeared. The memories faded off into a white fog with only bits of things remaining, and making no sense as they flashed in my recollection out of sequence.

Gay porn ... Shots taken with strangers ... Blindfolds ... Blood droplets in a sink ...

Physically, I felt pretty good, but something was definitely wrong. Something was missing, something besides my "Alive" T-shirt. Time ... There was no accounting for time, a feeling that left me vulnerable and suspicious. The wave of depression washed over me again, and I almost began to cry ... What the fuck?

I still had my boots on. Just looking down and realizing they were still on my feet made me feel better, as if they'd protected me from something darker. Surely, if bad things had really happened, as my subconscious was trying to tell me had, my boots would not still be on my feet. My jeans were buttoned, my belt secured, but it only took a second to feel that the belt wasn't fastened in the same hole that I usually used. It was loose and my pants had slid sideways, twisting around me as I slept, something that wouldn't normally happen. I lay face down on the bed looking toward the window, without having moved, when I reached back and identified my wallet, still snugly secure in my back right pocket.

The sudden motion of my arm made me worry. It felt heavy, like it weighed a hundred pounds. My heart rate increased simply by reaching for my wallet?

I tried to push up. I wanted off the bed to take a better look around, hoping to see Luke or Ryan on the floor. Usually, when I awoke after a party, we were in the Raleigh/Durham area, sleeping in the bed of some random UNC student we'd met at Marz. Ryan and Luke were always close by, always keeping an eye out for each other, but now, I didn't see any of them on the floor beside me.

It's OK. We're at Eli's place. I remembered the room suddenly. Yes, we were at Eli's house, and I remembered the room now, the one he used to sleep in when he and Enrique fought. I'd only seen it a couple of times, and now that it dawned on me where I was, I remembered thinking when I'd seen this room the first time how barren it looked in comparison to the rest of the house.

The walls were a creamy tan, a black ceiling fan tapping as it swung off kilter, the generic particleboard furniture ... Yes, that's where I was. Relief swept over me.

My arm itched, and I reached into the crease that divided my forearm from the bicep/tricep area. I scratched hard. A tiny little bump, like a piece of sand, was stuck right in the center. It felt so good to scratch that I kept at it until suddenly, the piece of sand broke loose, and now I could feel a liquid under my fingernails.

I pulled my hand back, seeing the blood. What the fuck?

I looked at my itchy arm and saw where the blood was coming from. Right in the center of the largest vein that runs through that part of my arm, was a tiny pinhole. It looked like I was shooting something ... Like I was shooting something?

I turned, suddenly feeling the bed move beneath me. I wasn't alone. I tried to push up again, to at least lift my body high enough to turn my head the other way. My arms shook beneath me, like I was trying to lift a car off of a child, and I barely got myself high enough off the bed to get my head turned. Something was under the covers beside me.

I looked at the lump under the covers, trying to determine who it was.

"Monica?" I asked tentatively. My voice cracked and strained. I cleared my throat twice. "Monica?" I asked, laying a hand delicately on top of her.

No answer came. I reached up, above the pillow in order to grab the top of the blanket, and began drawing the bedspread down slowly.

I saw hair, too much hair, and I knew immediately that it wasn't Monica in the bed beside me. Shock struck me, my heartbeat increasing.

Genie was lying beside me, completely naked, staring at me.

It crossed my mind that maybe she was dead, but a second later, she blinked. She'd been awake the whole time? She'd been waiting for the moment I discovered her there, all along.

"What the—"

"Oh, were you expecting someone else?" she asked in an eerily happy tone.

"Genie? What the fuck?" I looked around the room, adrenaline suddenly freeing me of my paralysis.

"Monica, huh? I thought you'd expect Alyssa." She smiled.

"What are you—"

"What do you mean, Ved? You did most of it. I just let you." Her face portrayed incredulity.

"No? No! What the fuck, Genie? I can't remember—"

"Ever heard of rohypnol?"

I looked at her to see if she was serious. "What?"

"Oh, Ved ... I would have thought that you'd used it before ... with your reputation and all."

"You fuckin' roofied me?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"Yeah, of course, but let's get back to this Monica thing." She smiled.

"You fucking roofied me?" I grabbed her around the neck and began pushing her into the bed. "That's fucked, even for a crazy cunt like you!" I screamed at her.

"Let go ... of ..." She couldn't talk. I was holding her by the throat, pushing her deeper and deeper into the mattress.

The door burst open. Ryan scanned the room for a second, seeing me holding Genie by the throat, and he charged at me.

"Ved! Let her go, bro," he yelled while racing at me.

I could see that there was going to be an impact with Ryan, so I held Genie tightly, as if clinging to her. Together we'd outweigh the force of Ryan's collision. I spun in time to connect with Ryan, face to face. The impact was a thud, but I spun to deflect most of his body weight off to the side. He hit his stomach on the bedpost below Genie's feet. He grunted in a sickening way.

I'd let go of her, and now she was struggling to stand. I slid over and tried to step off the bed in time to catch her. Hearing additional footsteps in the hallway, I only had a few seconds to grab her and finish killing her, if that's what I was going to do.

It was.

My boots came down on the floor beside her while she tried to catch her breath on all fours. She stood, lunging for the door. I leapt at her, but she was faster and more coherent than I, and she dodged my grasp with a shrieking scream.

Her hand grabbed the threshold of the door, and she used it to pull herself outward. I was just a second too late and collided with Luke and Eli as they came dashing into the room.

"Oh, you have no idea what you did," she yelled from a safe spot a few feet down the hall.

I tried to get through Luke and Eli, but they were making a human wall, intent on keeping me from Genie.

"Don't, Ved!" Eli yelled.

I shoved at him, turning my back to Luke. Just that second there was a thud on the back of my head, sending a flash of light and a sudden pain to my cranium. I fell against the doorway, sliding down it, onto the floor.

"Fuck, Ved. I'm sorry, bro," he said.

My head hurt, aching above my eyes, though he'd hit me in the back of the head.

"Goddamn, Luke."

I saw his relief at my smile.

Ryan rolled off the bed, crashing to a seat beside me, holding his gut with his eyes closed.

"What the hell happened?" I asked them.

"Genie happened," Ryan said, still with sealed eyes.

Eli looked at us, still trying to absorb what was happening, shook his head silently, turned, and walked away.

"You wanted to," Luke said, looking at me.

"What?"

"Ved, you told us like eight times that you wanted to go to bed with her," he said, looking very serious. "We tried to stop you, every time, man, but you were serious! You got pissed at us when we tried to stop you!"

"Yeah, maybe because that bitch roofied me!" I exclaimed.

They smiled, looking at each other. "No, man, it was Valium. You said you took some Valium," Ryan said.

"I didn't take shit. She fucking roofied me, cocksucker! She just told me thirty seconds ago!"

"What?" Luke looked at me questioningly. It dawned on me that he didn't believe me.

"She just fucking told me, dude!" I held my arm up. "And look at this shit, bro." I pointed at the tiny needle mark in my arm that was scabbing over again.

"What the hell is that?" Ryan asked.

"How the fuck should I know? She fuckin' roofied me, right there on the couch, while that fucking video was on. You idiots were sitting five feet from me while that bitch was feeding me tainted water. I tried to get your attention, I remember ..."

They looked puzzled. "No, dude, you were hammered, and you passed out."

"How many times have you seen me hammered? Have I ever passed out?"

"Yeah, remember at that chick's apartment at UNC. Chelsea, I think ... We found you in the closet, asleep, after looking for you for like ... half an hour!"

"One fuckin' time, man, out of a hundred! And you think I'm just gonna pass out on my birthday? Jesus Christ, guys. I wasn't even that blitzed!"

"So she told you she roofied you? She just announced it?" Ryan asked.

Are you kidding me? He didn't believe me either? "Yeah, dickhead, that's what I just said."

"Roofies isn't injected, Ved," Luke told me, as if I didn't know that.

"I know! That's what I'm telling you. She fuckin' roofied me and then shot me up with something later, probably after my two best friends let her take me into this room and do ... whatever the hell she did with me!"

"Oh shit," Luke said, for the first time considering that maybe I was telling the truth.

"Are you sure?" Ryan asked.

"Ryan, are you fucking retarded? Hmm? Look at my arm. Look at it! That's a goddamn needle mark!" I stuck my arm against his face, rubbing it against his nose.

He elbowed me in the gut. "Quit it, asshole."

"Fuck you, Ryan! Dumbfuck! All this, right under your fucking noses!"

When I was dressed, I walked out into the kitchen to find Genie, Gemini, Eli, Oscar, and Venus sitting at the table, drinking coffee. They all stared at me as I walked into the room with mixed emotions on their faces.

"What?" I asked curtly

"Well?" Eli asked, as if he expected me to say something.

"Well what?"

"Did you want to tell Genie something?"

I looked at him and knew he was pissed, though he'd never been mad at me before. He was waiting for me to apologize to her? "Yeah ... I do." I put my head down, as if to collect my thoughts. Luke and Ryan were behind me in the hallway, not committing to entering the kitchen. "I uh ... well ... I guess maybe I lost control ... See, the thing is ... uh ..."

"It's OK, Ved. No one is mad," Oscar said.

"Thanks. I uh ... well you see, if I ever see you again, I'll fucking cut your throat, cunt!" I pounded the end of the table so hard that the coffee cups bounced three inches into the air before landing sideways and spilling the brown liquid all over. "If any of you motherfuckers have a problem with me, I'll kill you all, right fucking now!" I screamed as loudly as I could, the intensity of my tone and words drove the fear home. I looked at each of them, gauging where they stood on the events of last night. "You see this?" I held my arm up, waving it around, "What is this? What did you give me, besides the roofies?" I stared at her.

She looked to Eli and Oscar as if I'd gone crazy. "Ved, what are you talking about? You wanted to sleep with me. You told all of us. Then you wake up this morning and freak out on me? Get a grip."

Thoughtlessly, I stepped up to the table, raised my right leg, and placed the sole of my boot on the edge of the table. I extended my knee, thrusting the table backward, sliding it across the linoleum flooring with an awful screech. The table smashed against Oscar's big gut, potentially saving Genie from broken ribs.

The others, who had been sitting at the table, were now still seated, but the table was removed. They jumped to their feet in shock and turned to look at me.

Genie and Oscar were pinned by the table, which I now held with my hands, pushing it into them with all my strength.

"Stop, Ved!" Eli screamed.

"Admit it bitch!"

"Ved, stop it! I'm calling the cops!" Eli yelled again.

"Fuck you, faggot!" I said, not looking at him.

"Ved, what the fuck is wrong with you?" Gemini screamed, standing idly by, not knowing whether to try and pull me off or run away.

"She drugged me!" I yelled.

"Right ... Like anyone has to force you to ... take ... drugs ..." Oscar was gasping.

I looked at him. He still had those stupid purple pants on, but now he was back in his usual attire, a stained wife-beater. "You? You did this, huh?" I asked him.

And then Oscar smiled a quick smile at me, telling me alone that I was right, that he'd done this to me after all. An instant later, his devious smile was gone without anyone else having seen it.

I leapt across the table, landing on saucers and spoons with my belly, smashing his face with three fast, hard punches. His nose bled, and his lip split as he tried to turn his head away from me.

Eli grabbed me and began pulling me backward.

"You're a fucking dead man, Oscar. You hear me? I'm going to fucking kill you, queer!"

"Ved, get off the table! What the hell is wrong with you?" Eli was screaming.

Luke grabbed Eli, finally choosing a side in this battle and letting everyone know that no matter how insane I appeared at that time, he was with me on this.

"Get out," Eli said, pointing to the door. "Get out before I call the cops!"

"Fuck you, man," I said, turning toward the door.

Oscar slumped face down on the table, blood and drool dripping from his mouth.

"Ved, go home, now," Eli instructed again, his lip quivering.

I looked at him, still in disbelief at his defending her.

"No problem, cocksucker." I spit on the floor and looked them all in the eye one last time.

"Come on, bro. Let's get," Ryan said.

I slammed the front door open, stepped out into the peaceful morning, the sun shining down like always, but I felt like I was still in a dream. The lawnmower I'd heard was now silent, no dogs barked, no cars drove by. To the neighbors, it was just another Sunday morning.

I'd lost something precious, a friend, and the value of that wasn't lost on me. Eli had been a mentor to me, a confidant, and an ally. Now, we were strangers, enemies even, and all because of the antics of one jealous bitch.

Little did I know, the worst was still a few events away.

We walked toward the band van for a grand, where Jon and Zach were sleeping the booze off. Jacob ran ahead to open the hood and get his wrench ready for the beating the starter needed in order to fire up the rig. Luke, Ryan, and I, all in the same clothes we'd worn when we'd arrived, walked side by side, silently, toward the hideous van.

I heard the screen door open and footsteps behind us. We all turned, expecting an attack, but Genie stopped five feet away. She smiled, wearing only panties and a red T-shirt, and said, "Hey, Ved. I sure hope you don't have a heroin problem."

I looked at her, glad that finally Luke and Ryan were there to hear her. Now they'd understand I wasn't crazy. "You're as good as dead, bitch."

"Yeah? We'll see who comes out on top this time. Last night, I let you be on top, by Monday, I will be."

I heard her words and understood that my day wasn't over. The lost time had more secrets to reveal, and behind my calm demeanor, I was afraid of what she meant.

We loaded noisily into the van, intentionally waking Jon and Zach as we did so. Ryan cranked the engine for Jacob, who was under the hood hitting shit. Finally, with the bang of a howitzer and a plume of black smoke, that piece of shit started.

"Love you, girl!" Jacob yelled, dropping the hood hastily and running around to the driver seat.

Ryan crawled through the center of the van to the seat beside me. "Smoke?" He offered me a Marlboro Red.

"Definitely. Thanks."

"Wow, that was a night," Luke said, packing a Copenhagen.

Jacob put the van in drive, and the V8 engine easily smoked the tires as he punched it, announcing our departure for the entire neighborhood.

I turned and looked back at the house one last time through the teardrop shaped window and saw Gemini yelling at Genie on the front porch.

"You're the best, Gem," I said, quietly, as we spun the corner and headed home to Ft. Bragg.

Unintentionally, we all showered together. We were all wishing to wash the night off of us as quickly as possible. The barracks had a limitless supply of hot water, and standing in the large twenty-man shower stall, steam blew around from all directions. No one spoke; we simply absorbed the hot water, wanting desperately to go to bed.

I was alone with my thoughts standing under the hot water, and if there were a drug that could erase thinking altogether, I would have paid any price for it. Visions of the night, of Monica and Oscar, kept flashing through my head. I couldn't form a timeline; I simply observed random still shots of things around me starting after the glass of water.

Did I really fuck her again? Did I wear a condom? Did I really tell these guys I wanted to?

Thinking about the night was too much to handle. The depression was returning in heavy waves. I longed to talk to Monica, to explain this whole thing before she heard it from someone else, if she hadn't already.

Maybe I should wait until I understand more?

I remembered the smile that Genie had flashed as soon as I'd swallowed the water. The bitch was waiting all along. From the moment she got to the party, she was waiting for the opportunity. I knew that meant that Oscar had been a conspirator as well; all that friendly talk when he'd first arrived ... I couldn't believe that I'd missed it. I was so infatuated with Monica, I'd gotten sloppy, and now ... well, now it was done. She'd gotten me.

Luke stopped by my room every couple of hours while I sat on the futon staring at a Clint Eastwood marathon, one western after another. I couldn't hear a word of dialogue on the television. My mind was racing to process everything. I needed an AIDS test, a drug test, and to make some serious character changes, like yesterday.

My phone rang. I didn't bother to even look at it; I just sat completely still, trying to process my memories. I'd never been drugged before, not by a chick, not unknowingly ...

The whole thing was embarrassing and yeah, even unbelievable. No one would believe me; no one would think that she'd drugged me to take advantage of me. I considered her intentions ... Nothing came to mind. Initially, I thought maybe she'd say I raped her, but her confession about the sex being consensual on her part cleared that charge. So what then? What was she after?

Ryan came into my room silently and sat down beside me. "You all right?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"Some night, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Ved, I gotta tell you something." He looked at me, demanding I look back at him.

"OK," I said, meeting his eyes.

"I saw ... You know what, this can wait," he said, acting like he was going to stand up.

"Ryan, I'm too tired to play this shit. Spill it."

"Alyssa went home with Martinez."

I looked at him, surprised by the sting of his words. "What?"

"Yeah, I saw them leave last night, and I just saw Jeremy in the can. He's worried that you'll be pissed."

"What'd you say about it to him?" I asked.

"Ah ... not much. Sorry, bro, but you've needed to dump her for a while now."

I thought about it. It hurt a little, the betrayal, especially to be dumped for a weenie like Martinez, but I didn't have feelings for Alyssa. Still, there was a betrayal there, and technically, Martinez deserved an ass kicking for it, but I certainly didn't have the energy for it today.

"Fuck 'em," I said, turning back to Clint.

"Yeah," he said. He looked at the TV briefly, then turned back to me. "Will you tell him it's OK?" he asked.

"What?"

"Martinez. Will you tell him it's OK? He asked me ... I ... I just don't want the guy hiding ..."

"Seriously, bro? The guy fucks my girlfriend on my birthday, and now you want me to hug him and tell him it's OK?"

"Don't be a dick to me, Ved. I'm serious. Tell him."

"Fine. Fuck."

"Thanks, I'll tell him to come see you. Promise me you'll be cool."

"Yeah, Ryan, I'll be cool. Jesus, I don't even have the strength to stand right now."

"All right, I'll send him in."

Ryan left and a few minutes later Martinez came in. I stuck to the script, telling Jeremy it's all good, and that I didn't care. I even went so far as to say that I hated her always talking about painting my room ... That I thought she was recreating him with me, to which he ignorantly smiled like an idiot.

Eventually, after thanking me too many times, he left. I liked Martinez, though I knew that understanding the person he was is critical to being his friend.

I ached for Monica and deep in my stomach, I felt the chaos building. I knew this wasn't going to play out well. I knew that Ricky, Eli, Enrique, and Monica were all on the line now, and before long, I'd be without some of them, if not all of them.

Monica was probably at home with Ricky, thinking about our intimate affair last night, wondering how I was feeling about it tonight, twenty hours later. Too often, twenty hours later I was sitting there thinking I'd fucked up, and I didn't have the feelings I thought I did in the heat of the moment, but tonight, I loved her even more than I had last night. I wanted to hold her in my arms, rub her shoulders, and pretend we were immortal. I wanted to hear her forgive me for being duped; I needed to hear her voice tell me I was a good person, as she was now the only one I believed. I wanted to sleep beside her, not touching her intimately, just cuddling with her and loving her. I could say sweet things to her, break through to her, and make her know she was loved.

I replayed the affair we'd had last night, making my heart soar and ache simultaneously. It seemed so long ago, almost as if it happened in my youth while I was still innocent. Now, I felt violated, taken advantage of, a feeling I wasn't accustomed to. My feelings of loving Monica became clouded by my rage and my desire to literally kill Genie. Her face glared at me in my mind, the way she'd been pretending to sleep beneath the covers, waiting for me to discover her there.

My saying "Monica" as I tried to recall who I'd slept with must have been the icing on the cake for her as she smiled sinisterly under the bedspread.

I longed to choke the life out of her, to drink her blood, and watch, happily, as her soul left her body.

I would stay with Monica forever without cheating or even lusting for anyone else if we could just make it over this one hump that was now before us. I'd slept with someone else; on the same night I'd slept, for the first time, with her. This wasn't going to be an easy one, and God knows, if the roles were reversed, I couldn't handle it. The only difference was that if it had been her, I would believe in the roofies story; in my case, it was going to be a hard sell. Genie had committed the perfect crime while I was surrounded by the friends who everyone knew watched out for me vigilantly. They'd even become part of her alibi, hearing me claim to want her. Oh ... this was bad, this was really bad.

Genie snuck back into my mind ... I remembered a blindfold, silky and red, tied tightly behind my head ... something she'd put on me in that bedroom. It just came to me, and I strained to remember more as Clint gunned down another toothless cowboy. Goddamn he was handsome in '76.

It was gone, no other details, and the harder I tried to catch the fleeing thought, the faster and farther it ran from me.

"Fuck!"

I stood up for the first time in hours, realizing suddenly that Derrick wasn't back yet, and that he hadn't come to the party after all. Asshole. It's not that I wanted him there so badly; it was simply that a nerdy freak like him should have jumped at the opportunity to hang with the cool kids for a night. The nerve of that guy, huh?

I grabbed an orange prescription bottle, opened it, and tossed a handful of little yellow pills into my mouth. I washed them down with Gatorade and waited for the Valium to come for me. Valium, unlike my friends, never failed me. In a few moments, I would be asleep, dead asleep, free of my mind, of my memories, and guilt.

I looked at the bottle, wondering if I should take the rest of them. It was as if suddenly there was another exit, one I hadn't considered before this. There were probably thirty or so left in the bottle, enough to seriously fuck me up, if not kill me. Would it kill me?

I didn't know enough about Valium to know if it was lethal in large doses, but I thought if I took a few Percocets with it, it probably would lower my heart rate significantly. Then, I'd slip a plastic bag over my head and wrap a rubber band around my neck, surely asphyxiating me and ensuring my death.

This seemed like such a wonderful answer to me. Suddenly, just by contemplating suicide for real, my problems seemed insignificant. In comparison to death, sex with Genie seemed tolerable; unfortunately, while alive, it didn't.

I dumped them into my hand, trying to count them. I'd push them around, counting to fifteen or so before they'd tumble back into the pile, making me lose count. Fuck! How many are there? Thirty was the number I needed, based solely on my theory. Thirty would put me down and make me unable to remove the bag over my head. Time and lack of oxygen would do the rest.

I looked back at my door, hearing footsteps in the hallway. The footsteps disappeared without my door opening; it wasn't Monica here to rescue me.

Death, my old friend, was right there in the palm of my hand, calling to me. He didn't scare me, even in that moment of serious consideration. He was truly, like an old friend. Wherever Hailey was now, I could be there with her, forgetting all these earthly things. All I had to do was open my mouth and swallow.

I didn't want to care anymore; I didn't want to be me anymore. I wanted to sleep, and to be rid of these persistent thoughts that were making me breathless, simply by trying to contain them. I needed to decide between the nine hours of peaceful sleep the three Valiums I'd already taken would bring me, and an eternity.

Unable to dismiss the idea, I carried the pills back to the futon, laid them on the fake glass sofa table, and looked for some paper. I had to write a few words; Ved Ludo couldn't kill himself silently. Suicide, as noble as I'd always thought it to be, was weak if it wasn't definitive and conclusive. I needed to point the finger where it belonged, not let my friends suffer the rest of their lives wondering if they were the reason why.

I needed to explain a few things for the record. I needed to tell a few truths. I grabbed a pen and piece of paper from one of Derrick's binders and began to scribble what I thought would be my final words.

So, if you are reading this ... Well, on second thought, I won't be that cliché.

I'm just tired. Tired of my thoughts, and tired of my ways. These ways that are tattooed to my mind, inerasable patterns of thinking that have brought me nothing but restlessness for the last two years.

What have I become?

What did I do to Shell, that sweet kid, so fucked up from his father?

I miss that little bastard. I miss the uniqueness that was his, in a time when he just wanted regularity ... You should have known him guys. You should have seen how sweetly he loved his mother. Well, maybe not, you probably wouldn't have liked him.

Anyway, he sang. Did you know that? Even until he was sixteen, he was a tenor, a high tenor in fact.

Shelly Ludo was a singer, looking in the mirror and singing his heart out ... singing to the girls he loved, who never loved him back.

He was in choir in high school—the only thing that saved him from having to repeat the twelfth grade. A singer, imagine that, huh?

Death isn't so scary; for me, it never really has been. Ved needs to go ... He's immortal in the sense that I cannot kill him. He's stronger than me, always was meant to be, I suppose ...

Luke, I love you. You saved me, you believed me, and I swear to you now, I was telling you the truth. I searched my whole life for a friend like you, and now that I have you, I realize that the person I am isn't good enough for this world. That's the kind of luck I have. I get the luck I deserve.

Ryan, I love you too, but I have to tell you the truth now. While you were on vacation in Kentucky, Crystal was hanging around a lot, and one night, I fucked her. It was an accident, but I still did it. She regretted it almost immediately; well, if I'm being honest, she didn't regret it until I told her that I did, and that I didn't want to see her again. Only then, after I told her to forget the whole thing ever happened, did she get mad at me and regret cheating on you. I'd apologize to you, but there is nothing I can say.

I won't say I'm sorry. If I were sorry, I wouldn't have done it in the first place, so I'll say that I should have told you, instead. I suppose I was afraid that you'd kill me, but, hey, now you can't do that ...

Mom, I'll wait for you. I'm so sorry about what I turned

Sometime after that line, the Valium I'd already taken hit me and knocked me out cold.

I woke up Monday morning to Derrick and Ryan standing over me as I lay asleep on the futon. The note I'd begun was in Ryan's hand, and his eyes were noticeably full of rage.

"What the fuck is this?" he asked me, shaking the paper violently in front of my face.

I shot up, remembering my confession. "Uh ..."

He balled his massive cinder block fist and swung. I closed my eyes, waiting for it. It never came. Cautiously, I opened them to see it shaking, the veins pulsing just an inch from my eye.

"Fuck you, man," he said.

"Ryan, I ..."

He turned to me and screamed a deafening scream that shook me, "Fuck you, Ved! I should kill you!"

"I ... I was high ..."

"Surprise, surprise ... You're always high. I hate you, Ved."

"Ryan, she ..."

The door slammed, leaving Derrick and me alone in the room.

"Whew," he whistled.

"Fuck off, Tom," I said.

"Whatever, man ... You're a wreck. PT's in twenty minutes. Get yourself together," he said in a tone he'd never used with me before.

"Fuck off, loser," I said, walking into the hallway, heading to the bathroom.

The thoughts about that night came back—Genie in bed, naked, blindfolding me ... I hadn't remembered this yesterday. I wanted to vomit as I hated her in my head. I subconsciously rubbed my arm where the needle she'd given me had gone in and out.

Monica ... I didn't call Monica! By now, she must've heard something. She'd never talk to me again, and that would be it.

I walked into the bathroom where a couple of guys were brushing their teeth and applying hearty amounts of deodorant.

"Morning fellas," I said, walking to the urinal.

No one spoke to me; actually, they stopped talking altogether with my relaxed entrance.

I ignored their silence and stepped up to the urinal. My piss was coming out such an ugly color of orange that, initially, I thought it was blood.

"Ludo, the captain wants to see you in his office," Sergeant Davis said from the hallway. He was dressed in his PTs and here early this morning. He lived off post, was married with kids, and, therefore, disliked me because of my promiscuous reputation.

"Right," I said, my heart skipping a beat.

This couldn't be good. Did he know about Monica and me? Had she told him? Fuck! Why didn't I call her yesterday?

I shook it off and walked to the other end of the hallway where the offices were located. I told myself to be calm, that it was probably nothing, and, hell, maybe he wanted to thank me for inviting him to such a great party.

I didn't invite him, I argued with myself. Yeah, but I was born, so I had a birthdate, and that birthdate was the reason for the party, so even if not directly, he went because of me.

If Monica told him, for reasons I couldn't understand, I was doomed. She would have been hurt, if not enraged by what she'd found out. I knew she didn't hear the truth. All she could have heard was that I'd woken up with Genie and then started hitting people and things ... Oh fuck.

Maybe she hadn't heard anything at all. In that case, she was probably excited by the love we'd discovered, the proposal I'd laid before her, and the possibility of a new life together with someone who enjoyed her sexually. In that case, she would have told him in order to end it with him and to move toward me.

I had to see that one coming. I mean, that's what it was going to take, but I just wished she'd waited a little bit longer. Maybe they'd gotten into a fight because of his drunkenness, and somewhere in the argument, she'd gotten mad that because he got tanked, she didn't get to spend the rest of the night with me, so she let him have it ... Yeah, yeah, that's it!

Wait, what if that was how it started. She told him that she loved me, that we were going to be together, that he was out, and I was in ... then, an hour later, the phone rang. Eli called her to tell her about the antics of Ved, who ... he's very sorry to say, slept with Genie. He demanded it, in fact, and insisted that he was alert and consciously making the decision.

Oh God. That would be the worst possible scenario.

Terror, pure and simple, gripped me as I stood before the captain's door. I took a deep breath as I looked at his name, engraved on a cheap plastic strip and slid into the slot that held it. Captain R. Dillinger, Commanding. I knocked. A long time passed.

"Yeah," he said.

"Sir, it's Ludo." Another really long pause. I repeated, "Sir, it's—"

"Enter," he said.

I entered. He sat behind his desk with his feet up on it actively avoiding looking anywhere near me. He wasn't smiling. This is bad.

"Sit," he said without inflection.

I sat. "Yes, sir? You wanted to see me?"

"Did you enjoy yourself the other night, Private Ludo?" he asked me, without making eye contact.

"Uh ... the other night, sir?"

"Yes, Private Ludo, that's what I asked, is it not?"

This was not going to be a good talk, I was certain of it now. He refused to look at me, never smiled, and spoke to me as if I were a stranger to him—all of these being very, very bad signs. I knew he knew. He had to. I wondered how he knew. Had Monica told him? Why the hell would she have done that? Did she tell him that I proposed to her? Shit!

I tried to justify our affair in my head, but with the good captain sitting before me, it wasn't happening. All the reasons I'd had, all the things that had made me so sure that I was right in loving her, were now nowhere to be found. I watched him scanning the walls, the ceiling, the floor ... He looked everywhere but at me. Goddamnit! There were reasons you thought it was right, Ved. Think of them!

"So ... did you?" he asked.

"Uh ... yeah. I suppose so, sir."

"Oh ... good. What was your favorite part?" he asked, his eyes flickering across mine, just for a second.

I was tired of this game already, and I was deciding whether or not I should continue to play. Whatever he was going to do, I wanted him to do it. If the cat was out of the bag, I needed to know. All he could do is what he could do, and that wasn't going to change because I decided to be polite and play along. The consequences were going to be the same. In crimes against a man that were this serious, the punishment needed to be as severe as possible, and letting him fuck me around wasn't going to lessen them.

I wondered if I could take him, I wondered if he was tougher than me, and I wondered if he would press charges against me if we tangled it up. I remembered thinking, not too long ago, that he would throw his career away for a good enough reason, and I began to wonder if this was such a reason.

"Well?" he asked.

"I don't know, sir," I said.

"Answer me, goddamn you!" he screamed.

That angered me, and I decided, fuck this guy. "What do you want, sir?"

"Was it fucking my wife, while I slept?" he asked slowly and evenly, as if asking someone who spoke no English a question.

Saw that one coming. So the cat was officially out of the bag. I didn't know how much he knew, so I decided to tighten it up a little bit. "Sir, I—"

"Or was it shooting heroin?" He smiled. "I'm going to ask you one more time. What was your favorite part?"

"Monica was."

"Oh, that's cute."

"Yeah," I agreed, looking at his desk rather than his eyes.

"I think that's over, Ludo. She didn't know you were a junky. And cheating on her, on the first night like that ... Oh my, that didn't go over so well."

"What are you talking about?" I stepped toward his desk.

"I'm having you drug tested, immediately. Sergeant Davis will take you to the medic, and he'll stay with you while you piss to make sure you don't accidentally drop Zach's urine into the bottle."

"Airborne, sir!" I yelled, startling him.

"Then, I'm having you Article 15'd for committing adultery. That's a crime under UCMJ. You'll be busted down to private and, hopefully, tossed the fuck out of the Army. Any questions?"

"Hoorah."

"Good. I'm glad you're being such a sport about it. I mean, with these photographs and all." He tapped the top of his desk.

"What photos, Ricky?" I was baiting him.

"These," he said, tossing three 8x10s across the desk. "These are copies. You can have them ... to remember my wife by."

I looked at the pictures. The first was of Monica and me in the bathroom. Her top was pulled down and my face was buried in her breasts. The picture, in black and white, was taken from outside the window, across the yard somewhere. Her face was facing the ceiling, and her eyes were closed, obviously enjoying the company I was providing.

The second was a shot from outside the window of the room I'd awoken in. In the photograph, I was seated on the bed and holding a needle in my arm while Genie held a black strap above the injection site. I tried to think how they could have been doctored, but nothing came to me. I'd done it myself?

The third photograph was from the same vantage point, but in this one Genie was on all fours, naked in bed, while I fucked her from behind. There was no mistaking the likeness; it was me all right.

I almost fainted. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I wouldn't have believed myself if I'd tried to deny these images.

"Wow, that was quite a night, Private Ludo," he said, finally making eye contact with me and holding the stare.

I said nothing, looking at the pictures again and again.

"Now you see why I wondered what your favorite part was?"

"This is bull—"

"Save it, Ludo. Monica already saw them."

That's what I feared most. The very worst thing imaginable had just become my reality.

"I wouldn't bother calling her. I think she's done with you. I'm sure you understand."

"Yeah," I replied, giving into him. It was over. There was nothing to say, no defense to present. That cold bitch, Genie, had done what she'd set out to do, and goddamn, she'd done it good. "Who took them?" I asked, pointing to the pictures.

"That's the best part, Ved. You'll never guess."

"Oscar?"

"Alyssa. Imagine that, huh? Guess she had a hunch about the kind of scumbag you are. And whamo! You prove her right, over and over again, all in the same night! You're a real piece of work, Ludo."

The room began to spin. I steadied myself on the desk. "Is that all, sir?" I asked, needing to leave.

"Yeah, that's enough for today."

I turned to leave.

"Unless you'd rather just get it all over with right now?" he asked.

"What do you mean, get it all over with?"

"There is one more thing ..."

This scared me. Maybe my nerves were just shot, but there was something about his tone that really shook me. "What? Ricky ... please. Tell me," I asked him in a tone that was just short of begging.

"OK, Ved. Because we are such good buddies and all ..." He opened his desk drawer again. "Courtesy of Genie. This was Monica's favorite too. We got a chuckle out of this one, buddy. Woo-wee, did we ever." He smiled, tossing one last photograph across the desk.

I saw what it was from where I was standing. I didn't need to get any closer. This photograph was in full color. In the picture I was sitting, sort of slumping, sprawled out to suggest either unconsciousness or complete relaxation. My back was resting against the pillows. A dark red silk blindfold was wrapped around my eyes while a man in a purple suit sucked my cock.
Chapter 9

The Death of Jacob Forsythe

Though I had begun the process of digestion on Sunday after the party, I was nowhere near completion. At that point, I was simply trying to process the situations I was aware of then. After the talk with Ricky Dillinger, there was another whole shit-storm looming down on me.

I'd failed miserably at calculating and translating the damages incurred while I was conscious; the events that happened later in the night were a whole new universe of self-discovery. Unlike other times when I'd figured out how I'd fucked up, this series of events was complex, demanding that I actually write down, with pen and paper, each person and each offense, drawing lines from one to another, trying to understand whose roles were which. Eventually this paper moved to the white cinder block wall, taped ineffectively against the porous texture of the blocks, in order that I be able to add additional pages of blank paper.

Sometime in the first week, all the papers were taken off the wall and Sharpie pens were used on the wall itself, leaving a series of circled names and lines drawn ... It looked like I was a serial killer, planning my next massive attack. I was trying to understand it all, trying to figure out how each person played into the events.

I understand that may not seem like the natural progression to some. Even as I sat for hours alone in the room, looking at the names of the people who were players, I realized that perhaps I might seem insane. Derrick wasn't all that thrilled about the new graffiti on the wall, but he said little. I assured him that I would paint over the massive collage with white paint just as soon as I figured it all out.

"You don't have to figure it all out, Ved. You made a mistake, or lots of them ... There really isn't anything else to figure out, man."

"Yeah, I do ... Yeah, there is," I answered him distractedly, holding the red Sharpie in my mouth while I held the black in the hand that was rubbing my chin as I looked at the names and lines I'd already drawn.

"OK, man ... whatever. When they come to take you away in the straitjacket, don't say I didn't warn you," he said.

This process always takes me a while, and I was prepared to spend the foreseeable future doing nothing but this. It was a puzzle, and I was drawn to it, needing to understand what had happened and why. While I worked out the independent actions, I began to recall some of the things that happened later in the night, when things had become foggy.

There was never any conclusive movie, produced and directed by my brain, that played the time with Genie and Oscar from beginning to end. I never established a perfect timeline, just clips and pictures flashing through my dreams and during long periods of contemplation as I stared at the fucking wall, longing to draw a line that connected this thing to that ... I had to connect it; there had to be a reason to draw that fucking line ...

As I began to accept the events for what they were, my brain began to trust me with the recollections, allowing them out more freely and less clouded. They'd been hidden from my recollection by that wise brain of mine, knowing that if released too early, if allowed to flash through my unstable mind too soon, it might cause a meltdown. No, my brain acted like a parent keeping sugary candies away from youthful children who didn't need the additional rush of sugar. It knew better than to trust me, though I tried to trick my brain into telling me, into whispering those little secrets to me. "I can handle it, brain. I promise I can."

Before I discovered any sort of conspiracy looming in the darkness, I discovered my fault in the events. Once it became clear to me that I'd been the problem, the lines stopped connecting to each other so readily. The infidelity with Monica, the heroin, and the sex with Genie—all of those were my fault.

If somewhere in my subconscious I had any recollection of Oscar sucking my dick, my brain wasn't going to give me that one back. I waited, afraid that when I dreamt peacefully at night, I would be faced with having to own those images, once they appeared to me. I worried so intensely about dreaming of Oscar, bobbing up and down on my dick, that I began to fear my mind creating a memory just to fill the void. I am a creative person. I get that from somewhere in my brain, and if my brain was playing parent figure to my desire to know, I was certain that it was capable of concocting a reasonable answer to the lack of memory.

I'd gotten over the trauma of that incident without too much self-loathing. I mean, if I'd found out that I'd approached him and asked him for the service, I might have worried, or at least begun to consider myself bi-curious. That wasn't the case. He'd done his thing to me sometime in the space between being wonderfully high and crashing from too much stimulus. Regardless, I moved beyond it, despite the jokes I had to endure for the next year and a half.

Carefully, thoughtfully, I planned his murder. I wasn't irrational about committing murder. I wasn't red with rage. I was even keeled, planning the whens and hows of committing the perfect crime. I came up with ideas; I even bought a gun, planning his death while I waited to fall asleep at night. It was the action of planning a murder that eventually kept me from doing so. It felt good to plot these sick things, helping me heal by seeming proactive, even if I knew deep down that I was not capable of such things.

The worst and most destructive recollection that my brain gave back to me, in time, was the effect of the heroin. My God, there are no words to describe the euphoria that came with this stuff. I'd always been partial to pain killers, always pushing the dosage way higher than what was safe, but never had I experienced the wonderful numbness and pure happiness that came from that ugly needle.

I remembered the vein, and Genie laughing as she pulled tighter and tighter on the strap around my arm. I was so nervous, even after being fucking roofied, about getting the needle right. I am only left to guess that while I was doing this preparation for the injection, that my friend Alyssa was outside the window taking pictures of me. The photo had been taken just then; the smile was still on Genie's face. In the photograph, I was looking down at my arm, holding the needle like a professional, like a junkie.

I remembered with certain clarity, clarity that cannot be created fictitiously, the needle going in. The slight burn of the pinprick was the cleanest of these memories, the physicality of that sensation, and I remember asking Genie if it was in far enough to finally hit the throttle.

"Deeper, Ved. Straight back, not down."

"Like this?" I pushed, feeling the metal sliding into my vein.

"Oh God, Ved, just like that. Do it," she said, her voice wet with sex.

I pushed the white plunger, feeling the pressure of the liquid escaping the needle in some spot of my arm I couldn't identify. I felt the tingle, the drug sliding up my arm, giving me the feeling of pins and needles until ... it hit my heart. The explosion of color and warmth, the wide eyed experience that I saw through clamped lids ... unable to open them and see reality when what lay behind my lids was so much more vibrant and colorful. I slumped at once against the woman I hated, loving every inch of her, while I climaxed from the potency of the drug.

It was the drug I had been looking for my entire life—with every high, with every experimental dosage of something new—this was what I was trying to find.

She released the strap and took the needle from my arm.

She opened a new needle from a white plastic wrapper. I heard the "rrrriiiippp" as she peeled the paper back from the plastic. I couldn't see her, just hear her. She'd given me a clean needle, and she hadn't used it for herself.

Things were moving in the spaces around her, and it seemed like it could have been seconds or days later when she lay back in the bed beside me, finally equals in this extravagant warmth.

I didn't know, beyond myself, who else was a bad guy. I knew for certain that I had chosen to sleep with Genie. No one would have let it go down otherwise, and with the male genitals working the way they do, there was simply no other answer. It had been my decision, I had been wrong in blaming her, and now all that was left to do about that was live with it.

Eli, Gemini, Enrique, Genie, Oscar ... They were all going to remain question marks to me forever.

There was no simple solution to solving the mysteries that I had about them and their roles that night. I had to let it go, and blaming myself for my problems was the first step in doing so.

No one had ever argued with me. No one felt like I needed protection from life's decisions. I prided myself on being in control, even when I wasn't, and my own vanity was the real culprit that evening. All of these people had respected the one attribute they knew to be true about their friend Ved: his decision making. Time and time again, I'd proven that I knew the consequences for the things I did, taking the hits alone, without blaming anyone else. I had always been so proud, so quick to struggle through things silently without revealing a single clue. How were they to know? Now, facing myself, I realized that I'd done just the opposite that morning waking up at Eli's. I'd blamed everyone else. I was embarrassed by my behavior.

I remembered Numbers 32:23 "Be sure your sin will find you out," the verse my mother always reminded me of. All these years I'd assumed that sins would find me out, only if I acknowledged them as sins in the first place. Morality is relative, is it not? For the first time in my life, I knew I'd been wrong, morally wrong, and with that acknowledgement came the first signs of guilt that I can remember really touching me.

On the Thursday that followed my early morning talk with Captain Dillinger, I was summoned to his office. He was officially informing me that I was being charged with three counts: illegal drug usage, adultery, and lewd conduct involving homosexuality.

I stood at attention in his office while he read the charges, longing to rip his fucking head off. There was going to be a showdown with Ricky Dillinger eventually; we both wanted and needed it. Today, unfortunately, wasn't going to be it. I stood there, beside Staff Sergeant Miller and First Sergeant Morris, from Alpha Company, who were there to officially witness the charges being read to me.

When he finished reading the part about the two of us not being able to communicate until after the "informal panel" decided to continue on or drop the charges, Ricky asked if I had any questions.

Take this motherfucker. "Are you prepared to see this through? You ready for me, Ricky?"

"Captain Dillinger," he corrected without making too much of it.

"You ready for me to tell them what I know about you? You ready to see me defend myself? You think that's gonna play out well for you?"

"I'm sure the panel will be interested in anything you have to say, Private Ludo. Any other questions for me?"

"Yeah. Where were you that night?"

"Dismissed," he said.

The two sergeants looked at me, then at him. It was obviously news to them that Captain Dillinger was in attendance that particular night.

"Oh, no one knows?" I smiled. "No one knows you were there at the party?"

"Dismissed, sergeants," he said again, talking to them this time.

An awkward second passed before they gently ripped me out of the door, forcing me from his office.

The panel was going to meet on Monday morning, one week from when I'd seen the pictures for the first time. I was told to remain in the barracks over the weekend even though I hadn't been officially found guilty of anything.

I wasn't too worried about the hearing to be honest. I had done my homework, and discovering that they didn't know Ricky was there had made me optimistic, especially after I'd seen his face in the office. I bided my time thinking about that night, trying to drum up more angles without connecting another line or circling another name on my wall.

There was a knock on my door on Sunday morning before eight. That was early for people to come visiting, I thought as I got out of my bed to answer it.

You can imagine my surprise when none other than Captain Dillinger himself walked into my room wearing a matchy-matchy blue sweat suit—something that Tony Soprano's friends would wear to a local pizza joint. I was surprised to see him, not shocked or worried despite the official mumbo jumbo he'd read to us about not communicating. If he were to do the wrong thing now, he'd be finished. I assumed that if anyone even reported that he'd come and talked to me, the charges against me would be dropped, and some might be filed against him. Was he getting closer to finding that reason to throw it all away?

I closed the door behind him and looked into the hall to see if anyone had seen him enter. It was empty; the only sound was that of the dryer running in the laundry room. Something metallic accidentally washed and now drying "pinged" against the machine each time it tumbled around.

"Looking good, Ved," he said, nodding a little nod at me.

I was now seated on my futon in my underwear. "Thanks."

"Can I sit?" he asked.

"Sure."

He sat. "Wanna talk about tomorrow?"

"What's to talk about?"

"What you should say."

I laughed, looking at him disbelievingly. "You are going to tell me what I should say?"

"No. That would be against UCMJ for me to tell you what you should say. If you tell me what you are going to say, I can tell you whether or not I think that's a good idea."

"Bullshit, sir. You can't tell me anything. You're not even supposed to fucking be here. You're just here because you are worried about what I might say about you."

He looked down at the floor, then back at me. "What are you going to tell them?"

I didn't even hesitate. "I'm going to tell them that I was drugged. They'll know that already though because when I took my drug screen for you on Monday, I demanded a second test for rohypnol. With roofies in my system, I was drugged. Maybe even by a man who was jealous of me and his wife's friendship. Maybe he paid someone to take pictures. Maybe he is the person who drugged me. Maybe he talked to one of his wife's friends at the party and asked that friend to do him an even more special favor, something ... homosexual in nature."

He stared at me. This must have crossed his mind before because he didn't seem startled by my theory.

"You're going to fry too, Ricky. I'm done holding my tongue." I glared at him.

"I see. Of course, this is all lies, and you know it."

"I don't know shit. I was drugged."

"All right, Ludo. You take an Article 15 for ..." He thought a second. "Lying to an officer. That'll be the end of it. Forty-five days restriction and extra duty. It all ends there. Is that fair?"

"Fourteen days. No more."

"You even understand what they will do to you if these charges are found true?"

"Not as much as you think, hence the deal making."

"All right. Fourteen."

"OK."

"And you go back to E-1." He smiled vindictively.

"My pleasure."

He stood to leave. "Monica's leaving me."

I said nothing, feeling suddenly guilty.

"It's over. Can't be fixed."

I remained silent and didn't make eye contact with him.

"The woman I love, leaving me," he said quietly and walked out of my room.

She did leave him, but she didn't come running to me. She moved in with Eli, who was avoiding my phone calls. I tried to get him on the line three times before I caught on to being intentionally ignored. He didn't want an apology, I'd guessed, and I didn't really want to apologize, so it worked out OK. He was ditching my phone calls? I struggled with the idea of this. Eli had always been so ... into me. He'd befriended me one day while I was waiting for Genie to get off work, and hadn't stopped reaching out to me since then. For him to suddenly stop talking to me was one thing, but for him to no longer accept my phone calls was quite another.

Monica moved into the room where Genie and I had done our thing, or things ... and I didn't hear from her. At first I waited, naïvely thinking that she'd come by the barracks, but after a few days I knew that wasn't going to happen. I only gave up on the phone calls a few days after that, officially letting hope float away on the wind. If she wasn't coming by or calling, the timer had been set. If by a month from now I hadn't heard from her, I would have to accept her disappearance as final. Emotions drive us back into the arms of those we love. Emotions make us do things that we would never do if thought out logically. That being said, emotions die slowly and when they are gone, you are healed and no longer willing to take the steps you might have. I am no stranger to sitting emotions out, and I began to prepare myself for a lifetime without her.

Ryan and I didn't rectify our situation immediately. At first, I was surprised by the grudge he held against me, but when I reconsidered the circumstances, I guess I agreed with him. I hadn't put too much thought into what I'd done to him, well, with so many other pressing issues on my mind. I'd thought that I could smooth it over with him rather effortlessly, not giving him enough credit initially. I thought he'd feel out of the loop, so to speak, and that maybe those feelings of exclusion would lead to a quick forgiveness.

Finally, two days before I was done with my extra duty and restriction, we made up. My restriction would end on Thursday evening at 6 p.m., a time and date Ricky and I had negotiated. I could have beaten the charges against me, but decided that throwing Ricky under the bus wasn't the best move.

Once I established that he was at the party and proven that someone had given me rohypnol, the reasonable doubt I needed wouldn't be hard to find. If he knew that Monica and I were having an affair, wasn't he capable of revenge? Why were the pictures secretly delivered to him? Yeah, like I said, I could have beaten them.

It was Labor Day weekend, a four-day weekend, which meant that Thursday was the last workday before the weekend. Luke and the other guys wanted to go out with me, having told me that they missed me out there in the clubs and bars, and nothing had ever been a larger compliment. Ryan was forced to decide whether or not he wanted to go out with his friends, or hate me. I knew it wasn't really fair, but still, I refused to approach him first. If his then girlfriend hadn't shown up at my room late on a Tuesday night, already drunk, none of it would have even happened.

Ryan came into my room at about five o'clock on Thursday night without knocking, the way he used to do when we were still friends. It'd been almost three weeks since we'd had our falling out, which in Army time, was an eternity. He'd said that he wanted to talk to me about it, and I'd said that I didn't want to. He'd insisted we do, so we did. When it was over, all of the guys were in the room participating in the conversation; each telling me in his own words how it'd been an asshole thing of me to do.

I swallowed my retorts, letting go of the insults I was preparing to sling at all of them, and apologized. Fuck, it had to be done, it had to be over. Ryan was an important part of our circle, and I knew that leaving him out of the group would eventually lead to a division between us as a group.

When the hugging stopped, and no one was calling me an asshole any longer, we were immediately aware that it was six twenty-four; I was officially a free man.

"I want to go to the Paradise," I said from nowhere.

Eyes went from face to face as everyone tried to guess what I was up to. No one agreed or disagreed for a minute; they just looked surprised and confused.

No one had mentioned Monica's name to me in over a week. We didn't speak of it. The loss of her was far worse than losing Hailey. With Hailey there was some sort of closure, even if mortality was all I could find to close it. With Monica, there were other issues; issues I wanted cleared up, but not badly enough to chase her down. I wanted to tell her my side of the story, but only if she asked me for it. I hate talking when the person I am talking to doesn't listen to me. I hate defending things that I've done, if no defense is asked for. If she was willing to disappear, she was willing to walk away permanently, and we were getting dangerously close to the thirty-day mark—the point of no return. That being said, I was still unwilling to find her and force her to talk to me.

Being rejected or unwanted is potentially the worst thing a person can feel. Being hated requires energy, and being loved isn't so different from being hated. When you love someone, really love someone, there is such a fine line that keeps those feelings of love in check. Hatred is so close to love, so similar. The person you love gets to see you with your guard down. He or she knows about the things that no one else knows, making that person potentially the easiest person to hate. Love is dangerous because, between every two people, when it goes bad, there is the one walking away and the one being walked away from. Being walked away from, and not hating the person for doing it, is the impossible quest.

I'd been fired from BAT by none other than Chris, the weenie. I'd called him in order to quit politely, knowing that he wouldn't hold my job for me while I was on lockdown, but somehow I'd ended up getting fired. Of course, this was all done over the phone, where even Chris could be a tough-guy.

"Hey, Chris, it's Ved," I said cheerily, deciding that my usual tone of torment was a bad idea.

"What?" he asked flatly.

"Sorry, boss. I catch you at a bad time or something?"

"Every time you speak to me is a bad time, Ved."

I laughed. I just knew that he was standing beside Monica. He had to be; he'd never been so ballsy with me before.

"OK," I said, not knowing what to reply. "So ... I'm gonna have to put in my immediate—"

"No you don't, Ved. You're fired. I took you out of the system yesterday," he snapped.

"Really? Why'd you do that?"

"Because I am the manager, and I don't want you hassling my employees. Is that understood?"

"Who'd I hassle, Chris?"

"Any of them. All of them, Ved! Look, you're done, got it? Good. I have things to do." He went to hang up.

"Chris!" I yelled urgently.

"Yes?" he asked impatiently.

"Will you retire my number, into the rafters? Number 47, done forever? Never to be called over the loudspeaker agai—"

Click.

I smiled. I'd have to go in there and see that fat bastard sometime.

So, without a job in the evenings and my prison sentence about served, I was ready to get back out there and see what sort of trouble I could find. Putting Monica in the past, and leaving her there, was difficult. I longed for her, wanting the friendship back, but knowing that some lines, when crossed, can never be gone back upon. To be friends sounded so pleasant, but one look at her and I would long for her sexually, making the idea of being friends far more unbearable than being enemies.

There was a certain pleasure I got from the pain of loss. There is so much you can do with that aching, that hurting ... Songs took on new meanings, and food became impossible to swallow, allowing me to drop a few more pounds effortlessly. I wrote and sang words that mattered now; words that when you are happily in love, lose their emotion. Without her I had a muse; I had a goal. I wanted her so badly that anything else that I might have felt was dismissed to silently feel in some unopened closet of my brain. By hurting for her I had a shield that would protect me from everyone else, no matter how close I got to them. As long as I still loved and wanted Monica, I was immune to pain from anyone else.

Everyone had argued with me about not chasing Monica down. They'd tell me that I owed her an explanation; I'd argue that she should have asked for one. They'd say that I'd loved her and she'd loved me, and that we shouldn't throw that away so easily; I'd argue that I still do love her and she still loves me, but right now we are too busy hating each other to notice that. They'd say that I'd fucked Genie and blew it with Monica, and that I deserved to lose her because of it; only when we eventually got to that statement, would I agree.

What can you do to punish a man who is in the state of eternally punishing himself?

The looks I got from my friends after mentioning the Paradise were that of pure disbelief. I think they were afraid that I wanted to go there to beat Genie senseless or something, and it took me a few minutes to convince them that I didn't want any more trouble.

"Look, fellas, we don't have pub or a local Cheers where we can go and know people. All we have that's even remotely close to that is the Paradise. I don't want to fight with Genie, for fuck's sake; all I want to do is get out of the barracks and see some ass."

They all looked at each other trying to decide if I was being honest, a gesture that might have hurt me, except I was immune to hurt.

Like any other social circles, the Paradise had a few people we didn't love as much as the others, but for the most part, it'd become our bar. After I was sentenced, and word about my infamous blowjob had gotten out, I think everyone assumed that I would be forever done with that place. On the contrary, I was looking forward to it, to seeing Gemini, and, yes, even Genie.

What we had done that night, and I don't mean the sex, was something powerful. Heroin isn't one of those things that many people even try, and the ones who do usually end up outside the local 7-11, pretending to need a few bucks for gasoline, begging everyone who comes in or out. That hadn't been my case. I'd done it and survived it, and somehow I thought that Genie had helped me with the morning after. Had I awoken on pleasant terms with her, I might have asked for another round of H, and another round of H would have been the one that broke me.

Genie and I had done this together, and somehow I felt closer to her now. I didn't want to feel closer to her. I wanted to hate her. I wanted to want to rip her face off, but I just couldn't. With Monica emptying me of the desire to fuck someone, I was more clearheaded than I'd ever been. Genie was like a friend to me again, but I doubt that would have been her way of describing her feelings. I didn't want to talk to Genie; I just wanted to see her and say hi. I wanted her to wonder why I wasn't mad. I wanted her to let her guard down and relax. I knew I'd been horrible to her to some degree, but now I just wanted to have one less person hating me.

I was still somewhat intrigued by the heroin. I'd always been pro-drugs, always saying that experiences from drugs are enlightening if nothing else, and frankly, I still believed. It's easy to point a finger at a habitual drug user and see the crutch, but you cannot point that finger and know what he knows. Drugs are awakening, they are enlightening, and I still to this day do not regret a single one I've ever tried. Perhaps I can regret the surroundings, or the company I was in when I tried them, but the drugs themselves have become a part of my history, my identity.

Every drug you survive, without getting addicted to or raped while on, gives you a gift that only it can give you. Emotions that are human and human alone are tapped into by the inhalation, ingestion, or injection of these chemicals. Emotions that you can experience and remember help you to paint a brighter canvas of your life, and allow you to live more fully than the guy beside you on the train. Emotions and memories—that's all being human really has to offer us.

Devon, the black security guard, was working the door at the Paradise that night. He saw us standing in line, seconds after we got into it, and recognized us immediately. He pointed at the group of us and twisted his hand, indicating we were free to come in without waiting any further. There are few things better than being pulled from a line with the rest of the cattle and being sent in without further delay. It's hard to be the bigger man and not look at the poor bastards standing out there and say, "Fuckin' suckers," so I did.

"Thank God, brother. Those fuckin' GIs give me the creeps," I said to Devon as I approached him.

"No prob, Ved." He laughed. "Hey, you do know you're one of them, right?"

"Fuck you, Dev. I'm Ved."

He laughed. "I will say that you are definitely different than most," he said in his big black man voice.

"I'm a poet, bro, not a killa."

"You're a pimp, or a wannabee, not a poet." He slapped me on the back as I walked in to the club.

I'm not gonna lie, I was somewhat impressed with myself for my friendly relationship with Devon. I liked that he liked me, well, with our rough start on that first night with Genie and all. He'd become the guy I talked to when I'd been waiting for Genie to get done, back in the days when I actually did that.

He wasn't military and didn't have any formal self-defense training, but I'll tell you what, you did not want to mix it up with him. He was from New Orleans, one of the wards ... I don't remember which one, but wherever he came from in that city, it must have been bad.

I'd invited Devon to my party and he'd come. He brought his wife Shamanda, who was an attractive African-American woman who worked for a prominent lawyer in town as his personal paralegal, and we'd done a few shots together. I'm good like that, making sure to pay more attention to the ones who really matter. Devon didn't need to feel included; he knew a lot of people there. I made Shamanda feel welcome by bringing her with me through the house and knocking a few shots back with her. It was only when we'd started to get a little tipsy, and I'd had the first thought about sleeping with her, that I knew it was time to drop her back off with Devon.

Inside the club, things were as they always were. I looked to the stage to see if Genie was dancing, she wasn't. We walked to the tables in the back, our regular seats that were almost always vacant due to the bad view of the stage from there, and ordered a few drinks from the new cocktail waitress. She didn't know us, proof that it'd been a while since our days as regulars, but before long she realized that we were at least well known, if not regulars. Who the fuck is a regular at a strip club anyway?

Naturally, the girls we knew began stopping by, glad to see us out and about. Everyone asked about my sentence in the barracks, joking about which one of these lucky fellas blew me while I was "inside."

After word of my masculine blowjob had spread like wildfire, I knew I was in for a lifetime of gay jokes. Besides Oscar, the gay community had been nothing but ... perfect to me. I still had more gay friends in Fayetteville than I did straight ones, and even if Eli and I were no longer speaking, I still had the utmost respect and love for the man.

Gemini punched out, ending her shift early in order to drink with us. She came over to our table in jeans and a T-shirt that said something about the nutritional value of breast milk, lit a cigarette, and hung out like old times. She was still as beautiful as she'd always been, and while we laughed comfortably with each other, I noticed my friends competing for her attention. Something in that pained me, as if I was being asked to share her, but Gemini wasn't responding to their come-ons. I had no reason to be possessive of her, and even the idea that I was concerned me.

My usual cool and calm demeanor was suffering, and there was no doubt in my mind that I knew the reason why. We drank a few shots, played a few games of pool and darts, and before closing time at two, we were seated back in our seats. I asked her the question that had been on my mind for almost a month, a question I already had the answer for, but needed to hear.

"Gem, that morning we left Eli's ... What were you saying to Genie on the porch when we were leaving?"

"Right when you left?"

"Yeah."

"I told her that I knew what she did."

"I knew you did. You are a solid woman, Gem. I love you for that."

"I know you do, Mister Broken-hearted."

Gemini had become an old buddy of mine somehow. Like Genie, she'd been through a lot of things with me, my friend by default. Good friends are so rare in this world, and anyone who has stood beside you while you suffered, unable to help, earns a position in our hearts. Gem was no exception to that rule.

As I sat beside her, I watched her move, talk, and laugh. I watched her body, longing for it to belong to someone else, longing to hold it close to me, but not as it was. It wasn't Gem that I wanted; it was happiness.

Suddenly, there was another person standing beside our table. Genie TuPoint had made her way over to us after hours of being there. She'd been on the stage a number of times, and I knew that she'd seen us sitting so far in the back. I wondered if she was intimidated to come over to us; why else would she have waited so long?

"Crown and Coke?" she asked, handing me one.

"You wouldn't mind taking a sip first?" I asked with a smile.

She sipped it and pretended to be fainting after. We laughed.

"Thanks." I smiled. "You never know what's in your drink." Laughter from my friends followed.

There was a certain resilience in this girl. I mean, I kind of wanted to kill her, and I kind of wanted to hug her. In my month of "figuring shit out" about that night, I'd come to one astounding conclusion.

Genie knew I'd wake up and be pissed, even possibly psychotic; yet, she stayed in bed, looming under the covers and waiting for me to discover her. It was an incredibly brave move if she was just waiting for me to go crazy when I discovered her evil plan. If that wasn't the case, she must have been hoping that I would wake up and remember our night together, maybe even touching her and kissing her forehead. When I'd awoken, I had no memory. I'd felt set up; I'd felt like she'd done this to hurt me. Over the next month, however, I'd remembered hanging out with her and shooting heroin with her like she was my closest friend. If I'd recalled that when I'd awoken in that bed beside her, I might not have kissed her and tried to fuck her again, but I wouldn't have reacted the way I did. I would have regretted my decision, but I wouldn't have been so ... cruel.

Yeah, she had roofied me, and that probably led to all the things that had happened, but beyond that, I'd done with her as I pleased, and at the time I was pleased to be doing it. I'd hurt Genie again, and she'd once again offered herself to me to use for my pleasure, a gesture I didn't refuse. When I awoke and began my assault, it was genuine dismay and fear I saw in her.

"You OK?" she asked, letting my comment go.

"Yeah. I'm OK," I said sincerely, waiting to see if the drink was tainted.

We had a history together. It was like a relationship between the good sibling who did things right and the black sheep of the family who always fucked up. I, of course, was the good sibling in this analogy, and Genie was the bad. Looking at her standing there, I didn't feel anything at all. I wasn't glad to see her or mad about her assuming I'd be friendly; I just felt nothing. I felt like maybe I needed to offer her an apology for assuming she was evil and that everything she said and did was part of some ploy for revenge. I don't know. Maybe she really was evil, or maybe she was just in love with me; sometimes it's hard to differentiate those two things.

"Wanna sit?" I asked.

"Nah. Gotta go back on."

"Mmm, right."

She looked at Gemini. "You punch out?"

"Yup. Not that it's any of your business," Gem said.

"Just asking," Genie said, acting as if Gemini had overreacted.

"Well don't."

Genie turned back to me. "Taking Gem home tonight, I presume?"

"Hopefully." I smiled at Gem, only half serious.

"Ved's too fucked up over Monica to do anything with Gem," Jon said, joining the conversation.

He was right, but I wished he hadn't said that. Desperately wounded, I just needed the fantasy. I needed to be invisible emotionally, not letting Gem, or Genie, or anyone else, for that matter, know where I was in my head. I needed the disguise of strength if there was none to display honestly.

"You know, all you gotta do is ask." Gem smiled back.

I looked at Genie. "Yup. Sounds promising, right?"

"That's cute," Genie said, "Promising? You don't need promising. You need to feel the pain of rejection; that's what you need, Ved."

"Oh, I do ... Believe me, I do. Some of that is because of you ..." I raised my eyebrows, seeing what she'd say to this.

"Most of it's because of you, Ved. You can't just go bouncing from one to the next forever. Eventually, people will get tired of your shit."

I smiled at her. I stood up immediately, threateningly, but hugged her. Her arms remained limp at her sides while I wrapped mine around her. She was my friend, and apparently that meant that I had odd taste in friends.

"You're fucking nuts, man," she said to me, giving me a quick pat on the back while I still held her.

"I know. You are too. That's why I like you, Genie ... That's exactly why."

I released her, and she stared into my eyes, looking for the punch line. There was nothing sinister for her to discover in my face, only genuine honesty.

"I gotta go back. I'm up," she said, stepping back from me.

"Right ... Knock 'em dead." I smiled.

"Yeah, I'll try." And with that she was gone.

When the lights came on in the bar—the part of the night I always like to avoid as I find it ruins the atmosphere and allows you to see more clearly than you'd really like to—it was time to go. We were trying to decide on who was riding with whom, and if we were going to get breakfast or go straight back.

"Come with me?" Gem asked me quietly.

"Me or everyone?"

"God no, just you," she whispered into my ear.

"OK. Where we going?"

"My place. To swim."

I gave her the you-dirty-girl look, acting so offended at her forwardness, that she announced, "No, not for that. Just to hang out."

"Perfect," I said. I made the announcement that I was going with her, and Luke was the only one to not argue with me. Everyone else wanted to move the party to the Lake, which was really a pond, on the outskirts of Ft. Bragg. We declined, saying we were going to talk, which of course was met with sexual innuendo from all my friends.

A few minutes later, standing beside Gem's car getting ready to leave, I talked to Luke. "Hey, you guys want to come over there too?" I asked.

"Nah, man, it's all right. I got that cocktail waitress' number. Think she wants to hang later."

I looked at my watch. "Luke, you know it's like three thirty?"

"Yup." He smiled.

"All right, bud. Hey, hit me up tomorrow," I said.

"Yeah, of course I will." He hugged me, and said, "Goddamn, Ved, it's good to have you back."

"Thanks, Luke. You really are the best thing that's ever happened to me." I tapped his back.

He hugged Gem and walked off to meet the group of guys we'd come with, plus three women. I didn't know who all of them were, or who'd talked them into going to the Lake, but I was glad to be going to Gem's to get away.

"Have you talked to Monica?" Gemini asked me as she drove like a NASCAR driver through the dark streets.

"No. I don't want to talk about it either," I said, looking out the passenger window.

"I get it. I'm just gonna say for the record that I know where she lives ... if you wanna go by sometime." She looked at me.

I just stared out the window. "Nah."

"Ved, don't be an asshole. You need to call her. She's crushed. She knows what that bitch did. Believe me, everyone knows what she did."

"Doesn't matter anymore, Gem. I just wanna ... Hey, you got food at home?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Can I cook you breakfast? Or ... do you have a contract with IHOP to only eat eggs there?" I laughed at my own quick wit.

"Yes, asshole, you can cook me breakfast." She laughed too, though she tried not to.

"Thanks. I'll make you my famous potato, egg, and bacon dish."

"Famous, huh? We'll see about that."

"Well ... it was famous when my mom made it, back in Blythe."

"Blythe, what a funny name for a town. What's it mean?"

"It means joyous."

"Hmm ... Pennsylvania is nice, isn't it?"

"It's green and old and beautiful. Blythe, I mean ..."

"Wow, Ved Ludo's sentimental about the place he grew up? I bet you have some exes there that'd like to get their hands on you again." She smiled.

"Yes, I'm sentimental. No, there I was nobody. No one misses me there, but I miss it, passionately. Winter, autumn ... the Blythe craft fair in the summer, bands playing in the bandstand ... candy at Wicks and Stones ... Oh, Gem, it really was perfect."

"I'd love to see it sometime," she said to the steering wheel.

"Would you?" I looked at her, the lights from the dashboard lighting her face softly.

"Yeah, of course I would."

"I'll take you."

"You say that to all the girls." She tried to laugh, but the statement was too heavy.

"No. I don't."

I ended up staying with Gem until Monday afternoon. She'd called in to work on Sunday, telling them she didn't feel well. The rest of the days she'd had off anyway, so we had the entire long weekend together.

We swam in her pool for at least thirty hours in total. In between pool swims, we made food and cooked it on the grill, played cards and board games, watched a few movies, and never once made love.

On Saturday night, Luke and the cocktail waitress stopped over for dinner and drinks, which turned into an overnighter. We didn't mind, and the company was nice. Luke was well loved by Gem, and he was always a perfect guest. The kid just had a gift at being cool, even if his lady-friend didn't. On Sunday morning they split, and Gem and I were left again to our routine of doing little, and appreciating it.

Sunday night, we went swimming at two in the morning. The pool was closed and the lights that illuminated the water were off, so before long, we were skinny-dipping. There is something erotic about skinny-dipping, something that starts off innocently simply by the way the water moves against you. No matter how large or small the trunks are, taking them off to swim naked is freeing. The water is so clean, and the body feels so nimble without the drag of nylon trunks.

She swam up to me and hugged me, her naked body against mine. It was arousing and intimate, her wet hair shining in the half-moon light. I hugged her tightly, realizing that she hadn't had a single phone call or unexpected male visitor all weekend. She lived a quiet life when she wasn't nude under the lights. All the strippers I'd met at the Paradise had initially tried to tell me that they liked reading, spending nights at home cooking and watching movies on Lifetime ... pretending to have this simple existence, and all of that had been bullshit. They were coke seeking, blowjob giving, party bitches when out from under the lights of the Paradise. Gemini was the exception to this initial Miss Innocent routine. She never pretended to be a quiet stay-at-home kind of girl, but here we were, in the pool, on a Sunday night after a long weekend together, and I hadn't been interrupted by a single gentleman caller the entire time.

"Why hasn't your phone rung all weekend?" I asked her, holding her slippery and warm body against mine in the early morning hours.

"I'm not that wanted."

"Really, Gem, why not? Not a single guy ...?"

"No. That's not unusual for me," she said more quietly.

"But you're Gemini ... The one who stopped by for a bootie call one night ..."

"That wasn't a bootie call. I was going to see a friend," she said.

"You used me and you know it!" I joked, hoping we were joking. Her body was so close, my erect penis was just an inch from her ... We were close.

"I did not use you. If anything, you used me, Ved. Do you know how long I waited for you to—" She stopped.

"To what?" I asked.

"Nothing. It doesn't matter; it was a long time ago. We're closer than that now."

"Did you want me to call you?" I questioned her seriously and contritely.

"I waited a while ... It's OK. We never really discussed it. I don't usually do that though. That was a first for me."

I laughed again, not knowing if we were being serious now or not. "Never? Really?"

She grabbed both sides of my face, holding me still. "No, Ved, never."

It dawned on me that she was being serious. "Gem, I had no idea."

"Oh, so you can't say the same thing?"

She knew I couldn't, so I didn't. "Gem, if I had known that ... I mean, I thought I was just a ... cock for you. I didn't know you wanted me to call you, or I would have. Alyssa was still deciding on whether or not I was worth sleeping with ... I didn't even want her to come back. When you showed up, I was hopeful that it was something better than what Genie and I had. I wanted it to be real too. It was the best sex I have ever had, I swear."

"Don't shine me on, Ved. I'm a big girl; I can take it."

"I swear to God, I've never had anything even remotely close to that. You made me feel like a man ... I know, that sounds gay, but honestly, it changed the way I felt about myself. It was powerful."

"Why didn't you call me?"

"I thought you'd be annoyed. I thought you'd think I was clingy or something. I didn't want to let you go, nor did I want to chase you. But I longed to see you."

"I wish you had. You wouldn't have gotten your heart broken."

I said nothing to that, knowing she was right.

We sat like that in the water for a while, her legs wrapped around my waist, her arms around my neck. Her breasts were pressed against my chest and I wanted to see them again, so badly.

"Let's go in and cook something," she said, breaking the building tension.

"Yeah, definitely. I'm starving," I said, half truthfully.

After dinner, which consisted of chicken flavored Rice-a-Roni with ground beef mixed in, we played Trivial Pursuit, Hollywood Edition. Before we could finish the game, Gem told me, "I want to have a real relationship with you. I don't want to be your booty call ... I want you to love me, Ved."

"I want to love you too, Gem. I just need a little time to fix my—"

"I know. Take your time; just know that I'm waiting for you."

"OK," was all I could say. I wanted so badly to fall into Gem's arms and hold her, but I was stuck in a situation that I couldn't think my way out of. She was as gorgeous in the late of night as she was with the dawn.

We smoked cigarette after cigarette on her porch, listened to music, and cuddled in bed, but there was no sex to be had. Gem was just what I needed—female company—and I didn't want to ever leave. When I was with her, I felt good about myself, though my balls ached from wanting her constantly and never getting to have her. She was as close to me as Luke was, but obviously differently. I loved Gem like a sister, but I wanted her desperately. Not so much because of how I felt about her, just because I needed release somewhere. I was so petty.

On Monday afternoon, I decided it was time to go home to see the guys and catch up after a long four-day weekend. I called Luke and asked him to come get me. I knew there would be stories to hear, things I missed because of my unexpected getaway, and I knew it was time to let Gem be.

I could sense Gem's will was cracking on Monday when we awoke in her bed. There was a look that passed between us that suggested more was happening here than a simple weekend away together. She'd put her hand on my naked chest, touching the nevus, tracing her finger around it.

"It's so sexy," she whispered.

"I'll tell Mr. Becker; he'll be so pleased."

"Who?" she asked.

"Mr. Becker. It's called a Becker's nevus. A nevus is a mark or a spot ... I just lucked out with this sexy thing, I suppose."

"Does it make you self-conscious?"

"It used to. Not really anymore."

"Why not? Did you change, or did it?"

"I changed. I make it what it's seen as. People feel about it the way they feel about me."

"So everyone wants to fuck it?" She smiled, dangerously close to me in a bra and panties.

"Something like that ... Fuck it or kill it ... It's all pretty close." I tried to laugh.

"I want to fuck it. Not just today, but tomorrow, and the next day. I want to see it and know that you're home from work; know that you smell like a man who's been in the sun all day. I want to know your snore, know your body ... like I do my own. I want to call you my man. I want people to see me and think of you, or see you and think of me. I want us to be joined together in their minds as one thing ... Gem and Ved ..."

"Gem, it could be that way, just not yet. You are my dearest friend. I'd do anything for you and I love you, I do. I just don't know how yet. I can't feel like I used to; something is numb, dead. Give me a week; I'm getting over it. It's not even her; it's the way it happened. I can't figure it out yet. I think it's about me figuring it out, not getting her back. I don't want her back; I want the hurt." I stopped, not believing that I'd said that. I don't want her back. Maybe that was the truth of it; maybe I didn't want her back. Maybe that's why I hadn't gone to her, or talked to her ... If I could do one thing, I could talk to people, and I could influence people to see things my way. I could have connected with Monica. She'd been waiting for me to come to her, wanting, demanding that I come to her, to find her on Eli's hostile territory. They'd given me no signs that I was supposed to come, but I knew Monica, and knew that I was supposed to. I'd known it all along.

I don't want her back. What do I want? Do I want Gemini? Do I want nothing for a while? Am I tired of bouncing around like a fucking pinball, forward and back?

"Make love to me, Ved. Just do it, please."

"Gem, we decided it wouldn't be a good—"

"Please, Ved. I don't care about tomorrow. I need you today."

"I gotta go, Gem. I lo— You're my dearest friend, Gem. I can't chance that. Soon, I promise you, soon."

Back at the barracks, Derrick and I played with this new thing on his computer called the Internet. We talked to girls in other states, trying to see if any of them could be easily had, out from behind their computer screens and into our little world. Ultimately, we wanted them to travel to us, to ask us for sex, maybe stay a day or two, and then leave. Was this too much to demand out of this new thing called the Internet?

I'd already used it to meet a freaky Wiccan from the Fayetteville area, who may or may not have been eighteen, and had her over to the barracks for the selfish-treatment. (That's where I allowed her the opportunity to jerk me off before kicking her the fuck out). Now we wanted to think bigger than that. We were looking for some, of-legal-age, interstate sex trafficking.

We were doing this more than I like to admit, partially because Derrick and I had so little else in common, and partly because I wanted to impress him with my communication skills, which were really effective through Internet communications. I'd guessed that with the sudden invention of a system like this, people would be willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the person on the other end. I'd also guessed that as time went by, that philosophy would be reversed and people would assume everyone out there was a freaky pedophile until they proved themselves otherwise. I was exactly correct on both counts. The window of opportunity to seize this technological gift from Heaven was small, and I was on fire with these ventures.

It only took me a few minutes of watching the conversation unfold on the screen before me to make crucial judgment calls about them. I noted the slang they used, the spelling mistakes, the parts of the conversation that made them uncomfortable, and the topics they chose. All my life, when sitting in front of a beautiful woman, I'd clam up, distracting me from the more important angles. In this venue, I had none of that to worry about. The setting was comfortable—usually a couple of other guys besides Derrick watching me work, sipping on a few beers to keep me loose and witty, allowing me the maximum amount of confidence, strengthening my ability to translate the smaller details that matter—when playing "mindfuck" with complete strangers.

Before it became a phase that we'd moved beyond, I'd had unprecedented success with it. Not only had I enjoyed some company that I wouldn't have otherwise attained, so did anyone who would let me on the fucking thing pretending to be them. The gift was powerful here, and the psychology, simplified. For Jon, I'd use his actual picture, but I'd do the thinking and talking. He'd stand over my shoulder, biting his fingernails as I pretended to be him, answering questions and creating my own, leading them to me by the mind, by the mystery of who I was. The Internet created a desire in people to be loved. It was an alternate universe where they could be anything they wanted to be. It was like the transformation from Shell to Ved, without the complete change of venue. For Internet chat-room dwelling sexpots, I was the answer to what they wanted to believe.

By the time the encounter was actually happening and Jon had to go meet the girl in person, all he had to do was hold steady. He didn't need my philosophy and confidence. He didn't need to quote Steinbeck. All he had to do was not be an idiot.

When we were done with the online thing for the night, Derrick and I got ready for bed. I brought him up to speed on my weekend with Gemini, going into detail about her naked body in the pool, the talks we'd had, and the sex we didn't.

Derrick was becoming the person I told my darkest secrets too, and other than a few encounters I'd had with women in the Sig, he knew just about everything. I trusted him obviously, but part of trusting people and not being let down by them is knowing what they are, and are not, capable of controlling. With Derrick, girls elsewhere that I'd met could be discussed in the most honest terms imaginable, however, with girls who he knew and crushed on, I needed to be more discreet.

Discretion was always one of my most valuable assets. It came easy to me to remain silent about things, never needing public acclaim for my quests. What I did with my time, when I wasn't with my friends, was mine and mine alone. I'd actually begun taking my poetry, which had turned into something important to me, to open mic nights and poetry slams. There, in the unknown territory of those who called themselves writers, I stacked up well. My poetry was offensive and lewd, aggressive and darkly sensual.

Through that outlet, I encountered women who were accustomed to avoiding GIs. It was a new dimension for me, especially when the world collapsed that fateful morning. No one in the barracks knew about that part of my life, and I rather enjoyed dodging the questions that the guys would ask me about where I'd been the other night. I'd be elusive, intentionally, listening while they guessed aloud my whereabouts. After returning from Gem's house that Monday afternoon, I thought I might like to take her to a reading sometime. I knew she'd enjoy it, but I also knew that Monica would appreciate it more.

Derrick was the perfect roommate, at least for me. He was still gone every Friday night and Saturday, back in the afternoon or evening sometime on Sunday; and usually by then I was ready to see him, to fill him in on what I'd been doing. I always thought that if I died unexpectedly somehow, Derrick would be able to fill the world in on the pieces of myself that were missing from their perspectives. He knew a lot about me—the way I thought, the way I reacted, how I measured people's words—but he only knew half. Half open is a lot of exposure to me; the rest will always be mine alone.

We lay in our beds, across the room from each other, and spoke candidly into the darkness. I explained the confusion between wanting Gem and loving Monica. It sounded extremely female as I went into details about my emotional state of mind, but that was the benefit of talking to Derrick: no defensive posturing was needed. This is what I loved most about him; he could listen like this and not judge me, or if he did judge me, the pool of information about me that he used to find balance was so large that the individual weaknesses I sometimes exposed were just a drop in the bucket. He was always more concerned with the caliber of woman I was talking about than the actual problems I was dealing with. Though I knew his listening was only partially genuine, I chose to talk to him figuring the less he retained the better.

I was just getting into the good part, having built some wonderful momentum in my storytelling, the goodbye between Gem and I was just about at hand, when suddenly there was a horrific noise out in the hall. It sounded like a garbled scream. It didn't sound funny, but sounded too serious to be serious, so it had to be funny? Our unwritten law was that no one was allowed to be rowdy on Sunday nights, even when Sunday nights were really on Monday nights, due to four day weekends. Most of the noisemakers in the barracks were part of my crew anyway, and we were always exhausted from the weekend and depressed about the work week to come, especially this particular weekend, the weekend before JRTC round two.

We jumped out of our beds and ran for the door, without speaking a word. This screaming was too out of place to belong, and something about the timing and the sound of it was alarming. Anyone who had heard it would be on their way to check it out, all responding to a feeling that we got from the sound. I got to the door first and ripped it open to find Zach Finley standing in front of it. He looked confused—his red eyes that didn't focus on me, his slack jaw, and shock still showing in the features, or lack of features, he was presenting.

I was going to ask him what was wrong, but after one look at him I knew he wasn't going to be talking. He was in that weird place that trauma takes otherwise sane men, somewhere down within themselves where they're removed from their eyes and ears.

I grabbed his shoulders as Derrick moved around me, headed for Zach and Jacob's room. He was in the room before I could let go of Zach's shoulders and be sure that he would not fall over like a dead man. When Derrick entered, he flipped the light switch and yellow light flooded out of the room, across the hallway, splashing against the wall on the other side. It was just a second after that, that Derrick made a strange "aaahhh" sound that at first sounded like a generic Hollywood scream.

When he crashed back out the door, bearing a very similar expression to Zach, I knew what was waiting for me in that room. There is only one thing that can produce that sort of reaction from people, that same sort of starry-eyed shock that leaves men speechless. I knew that death was waiting for me in that room.

My old friend had come back to see me, so close. He's come all the way from Hell to remind me of something important: my mortality. Since that night when I'd contemplated the Valium overdose, I'd been summoning him. Now here he was, waiting for me in the room next door.

I walked tentatively toward Zach's door, knowing what, but not whom, I would find there. There was the mixed in aroma of shit (that had dried in the hot conditions of an air conditioner-less barracks cell) and piss; but the more foul smell was the beginnings of decomposition. Motherfucker, man, organic material sure smells bad when it's on its way back to ash and dust.

"Don't," Luke said, having joined us in the hallway and recognizing the signs of death as quickly as I did.

"I have to, man. I know it sounds fucked, but he was here for me to see, man."

"Who was? Jacob?"

"Death."

I walked into the room, scanning the floor first, expecting to find the body. Jacob? Luke had asked if I was expecting Jacob; it wasn't Jacob, he was one of us. It was somebody else, had to be, dragged into Jacob and Zach's room, dead already, or dying ...

While I was piecing this all together, I saw the first telltale sign of who was dead in that room. Universally, only one type of person wears Chuck Taylor sneakers, day in and day out. I saw the sneakers swinging gently and heard a squeaking noise every time they'd get to the side farthest away from me.

Back, squeak, forward, back, squeak, forward ...

I tried not to look up too quickly, wanting to prepare myself for the sight I was about to see. I knew that Jacob Forsythe was the body, the thing, hanging with his Chucks only three feet off the ground. The amplifier that he'd used as a stool to stand on lay on its side, just below his feet. He'd kicked it over as his last action on this planet.

I looked up, seeing his familiar bad jeans, soiled with dried urine. As I continued to raise my head, I heard Ryan gasping from the doorway. He'd just looked, no preparation, just heeding his animal instinct to know what it was.

Jacob's belt was fastened, his T-shirt untucked. Farther up, his chest was swollen but not in comparison to his face, which was a fucking awful color, something between blue, brown, and black. Most of the black parts were around his eyes and nose. His left eye was open a bit, but the pupil wasn't present. It must have rolled up into his head as he died. His right eye was closed, his tongue pointing off to a side, only sticking an inch out of his mouth that was blue and black. His neck was bent at an angle that no neck should ever be able to achieve.

Back, squeak, forward, back, squeak, forward ...

I looked at him for a long time, watching him rocking gently on an imaginary breeze. Looking into his open eye, I could see that he was gone. Not that I thought he'd survived, I knew that he'd died, but in his face was a vacancy that I'd never seen before. My buddy Jacob had ended his life, alone in his room, no more than five feet from where I lay in my bed talking to Derrick about the emotional trouble I'd found myself in, only separated by a cinder block wall.

Zach had tried to sneak into the room, in the darkness, hoping to slip into bed undetected. He'd bumped into something hanging from the large air conditioner, something wearing shoes and pants. He hadn't even seen the body in the light; he'd just known what it was.

It was later determined that Jacob had hanged himself on Thursday night, probably about the time we got to the Paradise. Zach, who'd gone with us, was tired of hanging out with Jacob, and had not invited him to come along. I honestly hadn't even noticed his absence, being so eager to get out there and see the world again. I was too caught up in my selfish ways, too caught up in my fight with Ryan and the talks of forgiveness, to even notice Jacob wasn't with us.

Sometime, in the loneliness of that night, Jacob had decided that he'd had enough. No note was written, no explanation ever received. He'd simply died, filling the room and our lives with the eternal questions about why a man dies silently on a Thursday night, without feeling the need to let his friends off the hook.

No one was around to find Jacob for four long, hot, summer days. The room was swelteringly hot without the air conditioner to battle the North Carolina heat and humidity, and the effect of these temperatures on his fragile twenty-two year-old body was offensive. The skin around his neck, where the noose had held its grip for the last one hundred hours, was pulling back, splitting, and tearing away. Underneath the skin, where the noose was cutting its way through his neck, were black muscles and blue veins, all looking very dead. It was a horrific scene, the kind that when you see it, your first thought is the realization that you must live the rest of your life with this image. There is no eraser to remove these sights. They stay with you forever.

The guy who was always funny and light, the guy who burned weird spices in celebration of being 1/1000th Native American, the guy who played his bass guitar in order to keep himself company ... was now dead, by his own design, at the age of twenty-two.

The service for PFC Jacob Forsythe was four days later at the closest chapel to the Sig. Forsythe wasn't a Christian man, so right from the beginning, I thought the Jesus flavored service was in poor taste. He'd always considered himself American Indian, and it was something we never got tired of fucking with him about. He thought of himself as Geronimo, always talking nonsense about worshipping the sun and his ancestors ... I think he'd seen Dances With Wolves too many times, but it gave him identity. As much as we fucked with him about that, I liked it about him.

I sat beside Gemini at the service. She was on my left, and Luke was on my right. Other than Hailey's funeral, it'd been a long time since I was seated in a church of any kind, and the familiarity of the interior of a church made me feel nostalgic for my childhood. I looked around, remembering the thousands of sanctuaries I'd sat in as a child—from summer camps to youth retreats, lock-ins where they'd serve soda and chips while we watched Christian movies about kids dealing with peer pressure or the final days on earth before the rapture. Yes, I'd been raised to appreciate the irony of a sanctuary, to respect the symbols, the silences, and the right to communicate with God.

No one who was there with me knew the feelings I had while I was seated and waiting for the service to begin. There were the hushed whispers of people finding their seats, the occasional sobs from the departed's family (seated in front of us and to the right), and the faint sound of dirges being played on the pipe organ. The windows were all stained glass, casting an eerie assortment of colors across the pews.

We, the members of the proud 82nd, wore our Class A's, our patent leather boots, and our red berets, while the civilians in attendance wore black. For a kid who didn't do too well socially, there sure was a fuck-ton of people there to celebrate his life. I asked myself what my own funeral would be like. How many people would come to mine, if Jacob Geronimo Forsythe's service called this many?

"Wow, that's a lot of people. Do you know all of these people?" Gem asked me in a whisper.

"No. I know that's his mom." I pointed to a thin woman who looked as though she was more Native American than Jacob. She was dark skinned, wore a black dress and a black hat with a veil that hung to her mouth. I found the veil tasteful, appropriate, and meaningful for some reason, deciding that veiling one's face is the most respectable symbol of loss. She wasn't crying; she was talking to a boy who must have been Jacob's brother James.

James kept looking back at us. His eyes were red around the rims as if he'd been crying yesterday, but today he looked at us with open and dry eyes. Before the service started, he stood and walked to us, eyeing me the whole way. He knelt beside Luke, talking to me. "Hey, you must be Ved, right?"

"Yeah," I said warily.

"Hey, I know a lot about you. My brother tells me," he corrected himself, "told me that you were quite a speaker. My mother and I were wondering if you would give a eulogy for him, in your own words, nothing official."

"Oh ... I don't know, man ... I'm uh ..."

"Please. He respected you. You made him feel included. He'd not experienced that too many times in his life before. Please."

"Yeah ... OK," I agreed, feeling Gem squeeze my hand. "OK, yeah, for Jacob, sure."

"Thank you. We thank you."

"Please, it's nothing, the least I can do ... Give your mother my condolences, please."

"I'll try, but she's going to want to talk to you. You were a name that we heard often in our house. You're like an old friend to her somehow ..."

"Ah, OK. I'll look forward to it."

"Thanks again, Ved. I hate to spring that on you like that."

"No, it's cool, man. I can handle that."

At some point during the tragic and quiet service, the chaplain mentioned something about Jacob needing forgiveness for his suicide. It wasn't determined whether the chaplain meant from us (the left behind), or from God. Regardless of his intention, something inside of me sparked when I heard it.

I was so tired of Christians having these mythological sins that were unforgivable. Suicide is one of those things that Christians, usually Catholics, considered to be unforgivable. Members of these churches always think suicide equals sin somehow, and long have I hated this belief.

Some Catholic priests have gone so far as to say that, undoubtedly, if you commit suicide, you go to Hell. I find this disgustingly untrue. I believe that this idea comes from the time when the Catholic Church was both a political force and a religious institution. It was in the days of two classes, the filthy rich and the dirt poor, that the idea that suicide was immoral came to be. It's hard to make a dead man work in the mines.

Nonetheless, this idea still haunts the house of God today. Every suicide has a memorial service; and if, during that service, the pastor makes no reference to the sinful nature of suicide, it's because he made a conscious effort not to. Here and now, at Jacob's service, the chaplain felt empowered to breach this topic, as the family wasn't paying for the memorial, nor did they know the military way of doing things. It was as if they were guests at their son's memorial—invited, but not mandatory.

I'd been waiting, hoping that Chaplain Levi wouldn't take this road. When he'd headed down the "Suicide is the hardest thing for us to understand" road, I knew we were going to sinville. I was hot with anger, not at the chaplain for what he believed, but for the audacity of him to make the family feel morally depressed beyond the unspeakable grief of outliving a child.

I tried to distance myself from the sermon, thinking instead about Jacob the living. He wasn't my best friend, but he was my friend. His Native American thing had been the real separation between us as I had never really respected his beliefs, always considering them as an attempt at an identity for him more than a true belief he held. There were things I could have done for him—things that I knew would have saved his life, or postponed his death. He was on the outside of everything, never releasing himself in order to step into the circle. He was with us often but he was always alone.

I did not feel guilty about his death. I know death. I know what it is, and I refuse to feel sorry for someone who is happier now in the afterlife than they were with the living. I refused to look deeply inside of me and point my own finger at me. I didn't kill him; he'd killed himself. He was to blame for being dead; the one person who no one was blaming.

When his mother spoke, we finally came apart. There is something deep in listening to a mourning mother speak. No one is impervious to those words. She looked directly at me when she said, "Jacob had some wonderful friends. Friends he spoke to us about all the time. Friends he said inspired him to be a better person, a braver person. Thank you, Ved. Thank you, Luke. Thank you, Ryan and Jon, and Shane and Tom ... I know you loved my sweet boy and did your best to make him feel loved and included. He loved you boys so much; he was so thrilled to have such 'cool' friends, as he put it. I know you boys are hurting, and I pray that God grants you peace from this. Jacob was depressed his whole life, since he was a boy. It's not your fault ... He loved you in ways I'd never heard him say before."

She scanned the room looking for Zach, but he wasn't in the building. "And Zach, wherever you are, I am so sorry. You were the closest to my son, the one who had been like a brother to him for all this time at Ft. Bragg ... To stumble into him the way you ... Oh my God, Zach. I am so sorry. I pray that the grace of God will heal your broken heart, allow you to sleep again, to eat again, to live and love again ... There are no words to say to you, but know that you will forever be as my son to me."

We cried unabashedly.

When Mrs. Forsythe was done, she asked me to come up to the podium and say a few words. I sniffed the snot back into my nose, wiped my face off, and stood, accepting for the first time in my life the role of using my gift publicly. I was to speak out for Jacob, to make them understand the kid, to realize that he was a man who made a decision, no matter how fucked up I considered it to be now.

I stood behind the podium, looking out on all the faces and ranks that were seated in the chapel. Everyone from the brigade commander to the dancers of the Paradise were there to hear this service, and to say goodbye to someone who few of us ever really considered while he was living. Beyond Ricky Dillinger, three rows back and to his right, were Monica Dillinger and Eli Rivers.

"I met Jacob on my second division jump, well, not on the jump but in the trees after the jump." There was laughter. "He and I ended up a few pine trees away from each other, and over the course of the night, we got to know each other pretty well." More laughter. "Ya know, the first thing we talked about was death. That might sound odd, but hey, we are paratroopers, tree-bound troopers at that ... It was sorta the natural way of conversation that night. A few other dudes were there too. I know Jon was in the trees, Ryan, and Sergeant Bender. We were all there, talking. You know what Jacob told us? That he wasn't afraid to die. He said that he'd been considering suicide most of his life." There were uncomfortable stirs from the audience, suggesting I was getting too close to home. Gutless fucks.

I continued, "Yeah, that's right. He'd been thinking about killing himself since he was a child. Guess what, so have I." Gasps again from the congregation. "For guys like Jacob and I, and statistically speaking, plenty of you, death isn't the fear that keeps us up at night. The inability to escape our lives when we really want to ... That's the shit that scares us, and that's what keeps us up at night. No, Chaplain Levi, I don't agree with your unfounded thoughts about suicide and death ... and if I were you, I'd be more careful when speaking for God. I have a feeling the accountability of that is pretty severe. Jacob was fucking Native American. Does anyone know how they felt about suicide? Did any of you even consider that?" People were looking at each other, eyebrows raised. Partially, I assumed, because I'd said my favorite word, and partially because no one had even considered that.

"Look, I'm not going to tell you that suicide is the answer. I'm just going to say that it's OK to speak the word. Everyone has been trying different ways of dealing with shit ... This is what he chose, so let's lose the embarrassment associated with his means of dealing. We owe him respect; that's still what these services are for, right? To appreciate the lost, to remember him as he was, not as he ended up. I saw him. I saw him there in his room, and I will not forget it. Sometimes people die as a lesson to others. I mean, if God has a plan for all of us, as we all want to believe He does, couldn't Jacob's death be to teach us all something? God isn't thrown off when we end our lives. He is bigger than that. What will you take away from Jacob Forsythe? What will his death matter to you over the course of your lives? I'll remember a friend. I'll remember a funny kid with an ugly-ass van that represented the good times we spent together. None of us are making it out of here alive. We all have death to look forward to. Let's accept that, for Jacob, the control of doing it himself mattered to him. That he did it for himself should matter to you. Rest quietly in the place where concerns for your well-being are easy, where peacefulness rests its head on each pillow. I wrote a poem for Jacob after I found him. I hope you'll bear with me for a second longer. I'd like to read it to you."

"Songs are in my head of things I cannot understand.

Lyrics and words mean little, as the world has, once again, misunderstood.

All my longings are no longer as they were, nothing will ever be.

I have lived and died, a thousand times before, yet you see only my absence.

Beneath the ground where I now lay cold, I close my eyes in ease.

Will you remember the pieces of me if they are taken out of context?

Will you remember the smiles, or will the darkness cloud your mind?

What will I become, when at last I come again?

Shall I rest assuredly in the final words of friends?

We take the night in doses, while in daylight we choose to smile.

Alone, we find ourselves, in the twilight of last miles.

Forgive me friends for where we find ourselves today,

But know that in the end, we all chose our own way.

The nighttime comes again and again, while together we try and hold,

To the souls of what we were, before the flesh had grown so old.

There is no other meaning, than that which you have felt,

For freedom I have suffered, and for forgiveness, I have knelt."

With that, I walked off the stage, up the aisle, and out the door, needing a cigarette or three. I looked at the faces of those seated in the chapel as I passed, trying not to hear their thoughts. None of them mattered. I walked past Monica and Eli without even glancing their way. I didn't need to see them any longer; I was changed by the perspective that Jacob had given me as his last earthly gift. She'd just disappeared from me, moving in with Eli, my friend, and together they'd decided not to talk to me? They decided that they could be friends without me, and keep hanging out in my absence? Fuck that.

Out the doors and into the hot afternoon, I paced around for a minute, searching all my pockets for my Marlboros. I wanted to get out of there before they came to talk to me, to pat me on the back and tell me that they enjoyed my poem, which was something I knew to be untrue. They wouldn't understand me; they never had. Jacob's death had profoundly shaped me, making me both more callous and more sensitive.

I lit my cigarette and inhaled the smoke. Again and again I did the same, without taking the time to breathe any pure air in between inhalations. How many times had a cigarette been there for me after an event? The highlight reel of my life would involve crazy things happening followed by a cigarette. They were the exclamation point after the sentence.

I realized I wasn't alone. Zach Finley sat swinging gently in a porch swing off to the side of the wrap-around deck surrounding the chapel. His back was to me, his face pointing out on the countless acreage of Ft. Bragg. He swung gently, the chains creaking with each swing.

Back, creak, forward, back, creak, forward ...

All of these things have long been connected.

I knew Zach wasn't doing so well, but talking people out of their guilt was not something even "the gift" was capable of. Guilt, like sin, latches onto the fibers that comprise us. There was nothing to say to him that would heal him; he needed the universal doctor, the timeless magician ... only time was capable of fixing him.

"Good shit, Ved," he said without turning to identify me. "As usual, you were great in there." There was no emotion in his voice.

"Thanks," I said, walking delicately toward him.

"You know you were. You don't need to be told, never have."

"OK," I agreed without making anything of it.

"So, what's next? Back to the Paradise, fuck you some more strippers?"

"What's that supposed to mean, Zach?"

"Oh, I just figured the mighty Ved, the wise, the all-knowing ... thought you'd be ready to move on, get all this piddly sad shit behind ya."

I gave him those insults, not wanting to stir the pot. I knew he was going through some dark shit and I owed him time. That didn't mean I had to listen to his weepy dampness, so I turned to leave, knowing that sometimes people need to be alone, usually not when they say they want to be, either. "OK, Zach. I'll leave you alone," I said, turning back toward the front door.

"Yeah, that's right. Don't get too close; you might get some blood on your hands," he sneered.

I spun back on him, refusing to swim through this self-pity horseshit that he seemed to think was all his and no one else's to share. "I saw him, motherfucker. You didn't even see him. You can cry for a while, blaming me and everyone else for all the pain you feel, but I had the balls to look at him! While I was looking at him, you were crying in the hallway! You pompous fuck! When you're done crying, you'll be able to sleep again without that ... image in your head. So cry, pussy! Cry because you don't know how to do anything else. But don't you fucking talk to me like I don't know your pains ... You don't know pain, motherfucker!"

He didn't immediately respond. He'd stopped swinging, putting his feet against the ground, listening to me without moving, without breathing, staring straight ahead into the field behind the church. After I was silent for a second, the swing began to rock gently again.

Back, creak, forward, back, creak, forward ...

"Don't give me your philosophy of shit, Ved. I don't need it."

I smiled, noting that I'd have to remember that, my philosophy of shit.

"I knew he was going to do it. He told me ... Not this weekend, but eventually. Motherfucker does it on a four-day? Fuck him too. He could have saved me from it all."

"Maybe he was relying on you. Maybe he trusted you to be strong enough," I suggested.

"Even if he did, fuck him. Thanks for the honor, asshole!" he yelled as if speaking to the field before him. He paused while I pulled on my cigarette. "You didn't find him in the dark. You weren't trying to sneak into the room, feeling guilty because you ignored him all weekend. You're not the one who wanted to go out without him for a change, to get away from him for a day or two ... You're not the one who ditched him! You never had to come back into that room after a Sunday of ditching him and listen to him moping around, feeling sorry for himself ... I was that guy, Ved! I did this to him!" He began sobbing.

I watched him, still thinking that leaving him alone was the best idea.

"You have a reason to dismiss everything from being your fault, Ved! Nothing is ever your fault! This is! You were the leader; the one who people were all trying to hang out with. This is your fault! You stand up there, like some sort of prophet of God, telling everyone that he was always suicidal ... that there was nothing that we could have done to prevent it, only because you don't want to have to carry it! You don't want people looking for the reasons, so they don't find you holding the bag!"

I shook my head, speaking softly but urgently, "Grow the fuck up, Zach. You can call it my philosophy of shit if you want to, but unlike you, I don't plan on living forever."

"I don't plan on living for ..."

I passed the front door and turned to walk down the stairs on my way to anywhere beyond this place. I didn't have the strength to deal with these weepy pussies anymore. I needed to go back to my room and smoke a bowl. I needed some emergency Pearl Jam. "Corduroy" or "Whipping." I needed something fast and strong.

"That's him," a familiar voice said.

I was walking down the steps, away from the church. I stopped, not turning around, knowing the voice. Pain in my heart, conflict in my head.

"I saw you back there," I said, refusing to turn around.

"That's the man I can't seem to replace," she said.

"Not for lack of trying." I stepped forward two steps, and paused. I was ready to continue to keep walking, back to the barracks, back to anywhere else.

"That was great in there, Ved. I don't think you'll be invited to do another eulogy anytime soon, but ... it was great. Classic Shell Ludo."

I spun, looking at her. "Don't you ever fucking call me that again. That's not your name to use."

"OK. Sorry. Things have really changed, huh?"

She wore a thin black dress that floated on the slightest of breezes. She looked so comfortable addressing me, as if she knew about all the nights I'd gone without sleeping, the days without eating, and the weeks without fucking anyone. She looked at me curiously, almost stunned at my surprise to see her. Maybe she thought I was performing for her with Zach, that I was giving him a speech just to wow her ...

"I don't have time for this, Mrs. Dillinger." I turned and began walking.

There was a flutter of footsteps, then a hand grabbing my shoulder. She spun me around with a "Hey! Hey!"

I turned to see her, as tears filled her eyes without spilling over. She looked the same as she always did. My heart grew heavy for her; I was weakening as I stood in her presence. I considered Monica, my once special friend. She'd been a friend like no other, awakening me to the closeness that people can attain. I'd never known anything like that before her; she was the first to look at me and see me as beautiful, all the way through. I'd always seen myself as so ugly, so hard to look at, so impossible to love.

All this time that she'd been gone had been a betrayal. She'd chosen Eli and that crew over me. This woman had joined the opposition during a critical deciding point. The first forty-eight hours was the time when she should have made up her mind, but instead of meeting me in the middle, or even allowing me an opportunity to explain, she'd laughed at me as Ricky showed her pictures of me.

For the next month, she'd continued on without me. I suffered her. I bled her out of my being, slowly and painfully. No matter the sins I'd committed at that party against her, nothing I'd done had been intentionally designed to hurt her. I'd taken no evasive steps to keep her from finding out; all I'd done was gone away.

She'd stayed away.

Her hands on my shoulder, her face red with something ... anger, sadness. "Don't you dare call me that. You stole that title from me the night you fucked me! Don't you dare try and give it back to me now!"

"I stole from you?" I asked, feeling her perspective.

"You stole everything from me!" She sobbed as she spoke.

"You turned your back on me. You chose them, over me!" I fired back at her.

"I didn't choose anything! I went where I was safe, away from Ricky, away from you!"

"Well, Monica, there's the bed you made. Fuckin' lie in it." I pointed to the porch of the church where Eli stood watching us.

She turned to see him, and I ran away. I ran the whole way back to the barracks without stopping. When I got to my room, I opened the door and threw my beret like a Frisbee across the room, knocking over Derrick's little league trophies that he insisted on displaying. I ran to the CD player and hit play; track eight came on as the black disc spun quickly beneath the glass cover.

I turned the stereo up as loud as that fucker would go, falling backward onto the futon, closing my eyes and letting the tears stream away from my eyes, taking opposite paths down the sides of my face. I sobbed, shaking violently as I lay on my back, as Eddie sang ...

I slept well that night, not seeing Jacob's mutilated face. That was the first night since it'd happened that he hadn't haunted me in my dreams. Instead of Jacob in his grizzly death pose, hanging limply while his fucking head worked its way off, I dreamt of Gemini and of flying.
Chapter 10

Somewhere Familiar

"Green light. Go motherfuckers. Go!"

I stepped up to the hole in the skin of the C-130 Hercules, looking out into the darkness, and tossed the fifty pound gun that Captain Dillinger had demanded I jump, into the night. I stepped and pivoted on my right foot and made a goddamned perfect departure, leaving the smell of sweaty bodies and vomit behind, trading them for the freshness of the dark summer sky. For just a second, I was floating 1250 feet above the state of Louisiana, and then my trusty chute snapped open.

Below me, I could see the earth lit by the full moon, or damn near full moon ... Regardless, it was nice to be able to see where I was drifting for a change. I looked to my right, straining to see the trees where I'd touched down the last time I'd dropped into this DZ, remembering, somewhat painfully, Jacob dangling in a tree not far from me as we passed the night with topical conversation. Poor bastard.

This trip to Ft. Polk was feeling better to me already, and having been in Division for a year and a half now, I was no longer a cherry by any stretch of the imagination. I was a seasoned jumper with thirty-six full combat ready drops behind me, plus sixteen fun jumps, or Hollywood jumps as they were sometimes called, which were jumps done on Saturdays in daylight and with no equipment. Not only had I done all of this, I was three jumps away from my A license at the Ft. Bragg Skydiving Club, which was a civilian operation not too far off post. All told, a year and a half after entering Ft. Bragg for the first time, I'd done over sixty safe aircraft exits without so much as a broken toenail. Air-fuckin'-borne.

After the sharp snap of my chute deploying and the ache in my balls from the harness flexing under the weight of inertia, I'd taken the time to look around, remembering Jacob and noticing the beauty of the night in comparison to the dark night that befell us last time.

Cherries look at the canopy, check their gear, and prepare for landing. Troopers don't resist death. If my main doesn't deploy, it's all over, regardless of the battle I put forth. That's how I knew I was seasoned, trained, and mentally over the fear of dying.

My chute had opened, and I was safe, even if I had "the pig" swinging wildly beneath me. Ricky, and his crusade to make my life as miserable as possible, had insisted to Sergeant Davis that I jump it, despite Davis warning him that with a full rucksack, I'd be close to the weight maximum. Ricky didn't care about any of that; he wanted me inconvenienced, and if that meant jumping the .50 caliber into Polk, he didn't want to hear anything about maximum weight loads.

I became slightly concerned with my oscillation. The pendulum effect of carrying a heavy load almost always promised a rough landing for the poor guy stuck in the middle between the canopy and the rucksack/gun combo dangling below. There were no slips I could pull to counteract the oscillation, so I didn't bother. I just rode the damn thing down and hoped for the best.

The ground came at me fast, and I braced myself for it, forcing my eyes closed to avoid the pitfalls of reaching with my feet. Extending your legs and locking your knees due to some sort of primal instinct was about the surest way to land yourself in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. Landing with your eyes closed sounds scary, but as long as you focus on keeping your legs together and knees slightly bent (as they'd harped on us over and over again at Ft. Benning), chances were good that you'd pull off the perfect landing. This technique needed practice, but by now I knew that the fundamentals of airborne operations were tested and true. They hadn't sat around thinking up the procedures; they'd been remembered after tragedies had happened.

A second later I crashed to the ground, missing the pig and my ruck, rolling once, and coming to a complete stop. I released my canopy to keep it from re-inflating and dragging me across the DZ and took a breath of air.

I covered my head to protect it from falling debris that might be raining down on the land from the planes above. Fifty-three C-130s were circling the DZ, dropping 120 troopers at a time, and each of those troopers were capable of dropping knives, lighters, keys ... or worse yet, Kevlar helmets, canteens, or boots. In the case of a falling canteen, my feeble arms were worthless, but still, the gesture felt better than just waiting to be crushed.

Once I was satisfied that I wasn't going to be inadvertently bludgeoned to death by earthbound paraphernalia, I rolled over, unbuttoned my top right breast pocket, fished my Marlboro Reds out, and lit one, simultaneously pissing out all the hot water I drank on the plane and smoking my cigarette. Smoking on the DZ was strictly forbidden, yet it remained the first order of business for any smoker, even before pissing, which was always the number two thing to do.

Captain Dillinger didn't see NBC as a full time field activity, so he ordered me back to the hole at the forward observation post, or FO as we called it. The truth was NBC is a full time field job because when we were in the field, we were pretending to be at war, and wartime is the only time you expect to get gassed.

I knew he was going to put me back in the hole well before I got the news, so by the time Sergeant Davis officially informed me of my station, I was prepared to be a smart ass.

I wasn't dreading it or looking forward to it, I just accepted it.

The last trip to Polk had been somewhat terrible, mostly because I wasn't prepared for the isolation—the deep, thick, sticky isolation that had made me crumble over time. I'd suffered the heat, tolerated multiple insect encounters (granted, some were more unintentional than others), and eventually crawled down somewhere inside of myself and experienced freedoms I'd never before known.

Things like talking to myself, which everyone does to a degree, had gone well beyond normal and into intriguing conversations with not just two participants, but at times four or so. The nudity and unabashed approach to it was completely foreign to me prior to those lonely weeks, and the freedom of accepting myself in the nude, under the exposing light of the sun, was honestly, life altering.

There were things involved with "going crazy" that were beneficial to me beyond any of the other lessons I had ever learned. Things that stuck with me and helped me handle the emotional crisis of being the person I was. I suppose everyone has their own way of understanding what to do when certain things happen, and I wondered what most of the population would do if their first love died tragically in an airborne event, only to fall in love again a year later and lose that one due to the use of heroin while in the company of a stripper who may or may not have been involved in the plotting of revenge against you by use of an aggressive homosexual performing sexual favors for you while you lay hopelessly unconscious due both to drugs you willingly took, and others you didn't.

Davis watched me carefully as he'd told me, "Ludo, sorry, man. You're back on the FO hole. There'll be a couple of events to break up the monotony this year, but it's still gonna suck." His eyes watched mine, undoubtedly wanting to report back to Ricky that I was pissed.

"Awesome! Thank you, God!" I yelled, falling to my knees, hands clasped and held at my heart while looking skyward.

"All right, Ludo ... You got the message," Davis said, turning and walking out of my office.

When the door closed, I spoke, "Fuck you, Davis. You fucking brown-nosing motherfucker ..."

The mind, which I suppose ultimately has the final say on how shit will be remembered, sometimes reviews information and comes up with a different take than what you might have expected. Despite the horrors of JRTC: Episode One, in my memory, I found it fondly filed away under "Things I survived and therefore enjoyed," though I knew I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't the exercise I enjoyed; it was the freedom of going crazy. In some sick way, I think I was looking forward to episode two and was relieved when I was told what to expect. I knew that I would want to tell this story again, in my over-the-top, somewhat-embellished manner, and when I did, I was going to do it either as a liar, or as an honest man.

If I wanted to own this story for the rest of my life, I needed to handle myself with dignity. I didn't have to like the time in the hole; I could hate it, but what I couldn't be was a sniffling little crybaby. I needed to suck it up, deal with it for what it was, and handle myself with pride.

I wanted the tale of Ricky's vindictiveness to be mine and mine alone for the rest of my life. He could order me into the hole, intentionally sending me the message, but his fun would only last for four weeks, and my ownership of the punishment would survive.

I bought an ounce of pot (which, if you don't know, is quite a bit for one man), some porn magazines, and a brand new Sony Discman. There is nothing so excruciating that can be forced upon a man that these three things cannot at least lessen his pain. There is nothing better for absolute isolation than Cannabis Sativa, and if my three items had needed to be whittled down to one item, the weed was coming with me. Fuck the porn, most of it made me sick, but putting my dick into dirt holes was definitely not a good idea.

The real issue with smuggling these things along wasn't getting caught with them in my possession, or worse yet, being interrupted while using them, it was simply a matter of having to jump them into Polk. Each ounce you add to your load is exponentially amplified over the course of the month. Anytime you go anywhere, you have that fucking bag on your back. There's ammo and food, clothing and toiletries ... everything you need to survive alone in the woods for a month. The porn and the CDs were the heaviest, weighing in at eight pounds between them, and like every other decision in life, if you have to make room for a stack of Hustlers, there are other things you cannot have room for. So after carefully prioritizing, I decided that the porn and the weed were far more important than a third pair of pants, a fourth T-shirt, and a third pair of underwear. Fuck it. I'll wash them with canteen water and a bar of soap.

I planned on getting high after I dug the hole, then staying that way for thirty days, which was something I'd never attempted before. Being high and staring out into that empty field seemed like blissful boredom rather than the hostile breed of boring that had harassed me last time. I needed the getaway. I needed the time to reevaluate and understand the changes that had taken place over the last year. A lot had changed, not only within me, but also in my life.

I never cried for my friend Jacob, and over the next few weeks I would discover that between the death of Hailey, Jacob, and essentially Monica, I'd not put the thought and consideration into them that they'd deserved. I'd simply put one foot in front of the other, looking only before me and never behind me. What that left me with was a sort of scab: a quick healing that stopped the bleeding, but without ever really fixing the inner issues.

I couldn't help but see myself as this hero, this larger than life person who struggled to make people misunderstand him. At this point in my life I wanted to be unpredictable, thinking that predictability was what made sheep, sheep. I didn't want people to understand me, I didn't want them to be comfortable with me, and I didn't want them to sympathize with me. I wanted to be a perpetual question mark in their heads. I was adapting to my environment the only way that my mind would allow me to, the only way that came naturally to me, and in doing that, I knew I would need to be willing to sacrifice many things. My friends, my family, and my superiors were the first to be held up to the gods as offerings, and then came my love life, my comfort, and my ambition. Monica was my enemy; someone I hated so deeply for no other reason than having the nerve to assume I could be replaced. She thought she could simply get rid of me and move on, experiencing the same feelings that I could give her? Fuck her.

As far as the good captain went, I was sure he wanted me chaptered out of the military altogether. He was over me, and I was over him. I could no longer look at the man without wanting to scream at him to grow some balls, and to fucking stand up for himself and kick me the fuck out, or simply kick my ass if that was what he wanted. All his pussyfooting around when I was in his proximity made me sick. He outranked me by twenty-five steps, and, yet, he chose to talk to me with a sullen, quieted voice. No more smiles, no more jokes, no more threats ... He just danced around me quietly, avoiding my eyes as if they would turn him to stone simply by looking into them.

My first day in the hole was pleasant. Sergeant Bender had been transferred to the 407th FSB (Forward Support Battalion) just a few days ago, so I wondered what douchebag would be assigned the opposite shift. I sat down on the big mound of dirt I'd pulled out of the earth with a fucking entrenching tool, something like a miniature shovel, and rolled a joint. As I sat on the mound of dirt, I realized why no one had been assigned the hole with me, yet. Last year, when Bender and I had shared this hole, we also shared the duty of digging the thing. These foxholes were huge, very similar to digging a grave, and all that with a five-inch shovel.

I rolled a joint that would have made Bob Marley proud, took off my BDU jacket, and looked across the hazy field. Wild flowers, prairie dogs, and unidentifiable bushes were all that I could see ... nothing else. I kicked my feet up onto the plywood cover of the hole and lit the monster joint. The heat was so encompassing that as I sat there smoking my joint, I felt like the water in my pores was trying to escape me, wanting to crawl into the earth where it was cooler. I took six massive pulls on the joint before I realized I hadn't eaten anything today, which worried me because with the water consumption and no food, getting too high would mean certain dizziness and that dreaded uh-oh feeling of spinning out of control.

I sat there in the field, considering death and its nemesis life, wondering what else there was for me out there. There had to be more than this "yes sir, no sir" bullshit: something bigger, something magical, and something meant for me. Fuck these Army guys whose sole ambition in life was to be a good enough grunt that they'd be allowed to remain in the system for twenty years. The people who surrounded me in the ranks were afraid to spread their wings and fly, but I was Ved, the transformed Shell with the beauty and grace of a Monarch butterfly, and with the newfound wings to match. While they cared so much about benefits and stability, I cared about living and dying, trying to experience something, to really feel something. The hole I was trusted with guarding was indicative of my career in the Army, a meaningless and pointless wasting of time, though my disposition remained steadily optimistic, regardless of monotony.

I could do the Army thing forever. I mean, it's the simplest job on the planet. Any time you have a job that flat out tells you that you are not supposed to think, just do—assuming you can handle turning your own brain off in order to use someone else's—is absolutely simple. I found that not thinking and not having to answer for the decisions I made to be taxing, exhausting even. I needed to think, and I needed to be creative, and if that meant smoking joints alone in a foxhole in order to combat the obedience they demanded of me, I had no moral objections.

"Private Ludo? I'm sorry, are you Private Ludo?" a woman's voice called out from somewhere in the trees just behind me.

I sat up, scrambling for my sunglasses in order to cover my must-be red eyes. "Yeah," I managed, looking for the goddamned things.

"Hi, I'm Private Threnau. I'm supposed to share this hole with you—"

"Who?" I asked, half trying to compute the words she was saying, half trying to find the glasses.

"Threnau, uh ...Venia Threnau. I just got assigned to the Sig, like a day before we jumped in. Lucky me, huh?"

I smiled at Private Venia Threnau, noticing her olive skin and somewhat pretty face. "Oh, yeah, right. I heard I was sharing this little slice of paradise with someone new. Guess I was figuring it would be a dude." She looked at me, trying to decide if I was unhappy or happy about her being of the opposite sex.

"Yeah, looks like I'm your girl," she said, then immediately made a face like she didn't like the the way that sounded. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

"Nah, it's cool," I assured her, remembering the warm welcome I'd gotten on my first few days. "Sorry they stuck you out here with me; you must have really fucked up." I smiled.

"Really? Is that why they put me out here?" she asked seriously.

"No. I'm kidding. Though, putting you with me out here is someone's idea of a joke."

"I don't get it. Why would putting me—"

"Yeah, it's complicated. Don't even think about it." I found my sunglasses, pinned underneath my rucksack. I put them on, instantly feeling disguised, successfully covering my obvious red eyes.

I looked at her more carefully now. She wasn't pretty, really, but she was cute. She had a great body, but, yeah, she'd just come from Benning. Everyone who comes from Benning is skinny and strong for six months until the doldrums of being an active duty trooper catch up with them. She was plain, but shit, she was wearing day old camo on her face, her helmet looked eight sizes too big, and her BDUs were way too dark, signifying their youth.

She looked Polynesian, like some sort of mix between white and Asian. Her eyes were the only sign of Asian blood; the rest of her appeared pretty Anglo ... except the tint of her skin, which was a different shade of tan.

"Where are you from, Threnau?" I asked.

"San Francisco area, you?"

"Pennsylvania."

"Oh." After a silent minute, she spoke again, "OK, so where's the tent?"

I turned, pointing into the trees. "About a hundred feet that way. There's a path, well, sort of."

"OK, I guess I'm going to go put my stuff away and settle in."

"Yeah, that's cool. Hey, uh ... wait, how do you say your last name again?"

"Threnau. Just call me Ven, short for Venia."

I laughed. "No, Venia or Threnau ... My name is Ved, too close."

"You could be Ludo, and I could be Ven."

"Negative, I'm Ved ... not Private ... not Ludo ... just Ved. I like to think of myself as a civilian in BDUs."

"Apparently." She smiled, turned, and walked off into the trees.

"Venia!" I yelled after her.

"Yep," she responded from a hidden locale in the trees.

"Hey, the tent is yours while I'm in the hole. I won't come busting in on you or anything."

"That's a comfort," she said.

Fuckin' cherries.

At about 1800 hours, I heard footsteps approaching from the rear. Venia Threnau was reporting for duty, seemingly unaware that her shift didn't begin until 2000 hours. As her steps got closer, I scrambled to put away all my paraphernalia, hoping my contraband would survive the month without detection.

When she poked her head into the hole, she smiled at first, then her nose crinkled and she began scanning the empty space.

"What? What's up?" I asked nervously.

"Smells like chiba in here."

"Chiba?"

"Yeah, you know, weed, reefer, grass ..." Her eyes locked on mine.

I could feel her eyes inside my head, scanning every little drawer and closet where I might hide my secrets.

"I don't know. Maybe there's some shit growing out there." I pointed to the field.

She dropped into the hole, shaking her head slowly. "No, it's not out there, it's in here."

"Look, Ven," I said, using her name to try and diffuse the situation, "even if it's in here—"

"It is in here, isn't it? You have it. Oh my God ... It's yours!"

"Prove it," I said, thinking that it sounded better in my head than when I actually spoke it.

"I don't want to prove it, I want to smoke it," she said, staring at me.

"You don't smoke," I said, obviously the marijuana smoking authority.

"Look, the way I see it, you can either give it to me to smoke, or continue to lie to me that you don't know what I'm talking about. On one hand, you'll have an accomplice; on the other hand, you'll have someone mad at you for smoking pot in the Army. Which is better, Ved?"

"Touché." I moved an ammo can off the top of the stack, needing to get into the one below it. I opened the lid and the smell that came out of the can was glorious.

"Holy fuck that smells good," she said, closing her eyes and breathing through her nose.

I stared at her trying to determine whether or not she was serious. She appeared serious, but hell, it's impossible to tell. I considered the idea that she was a plant, and that Ricky had placed her in here to spy on me, figuring I'd follow my dick without considering my actions. I should have thought of that sooner! Even if I had, the smell alone would have been enough for her to report to Ricky, if she'd even smelled anything at all! I'm such a dumb fuck! I needed her to smoke it now, to make her either in, or out, but if she was a plant, she had me in the first five minutes of her showing up to the hole.

"What's he giving you?" I asked, certain that I was right about her.

"Who?"

"Ricky. Come on ... it's cool, you got me already."

"How do I 'got you'?"

I set the smelly can down, putting off producing a bag of weed. Maybe I could deny ownership and say it was just in the can when I found it, which, of course, no one would believe. I didn't have to be believable; I needed to be sure, firm, strong ... I'd simply concoct a wild tale and then demand it to be the truth, no matter what they said or did.

"Look, Ven, in case he didn't tell you this already, I'll bring you up to speed on the last year and a half."

"Please do."

"OK ... at Benning, my girlfriend died on her first jump. I then—"

"Wait, your girlfriend? Hailey Johansen?"

I was shocked at her familiarity with my Hailey. "Yeah, how'd you know that?"

"They told us about her. They tell everyone about her, about what happened ... I'm so sorry, Ved."

"They tell people about her? What do they say?"

"That she was towed. That her exit was bad and she got caught on her canteen, hooked to her LBE."

"No shit? That's what happened? I never knew for sure. The investigation was nowhere near complete when I left, obviously ..."

"Yeah, they use it as a scare tactic sorta ... you know, to make people listen."

I imagined she was right; that they would use her as a scare tactic. Firemen will always tell you about the dangers of fire, cops will tell you about the unpredictability of criminals, and paratroopers will tell you that jumping from the sky is so dangerous ... It's human nature. When those jumpmasters are telling the crowds of trooper wannabes about my beautiful Hailey, my friend and lover who was ripped out of my life suddenly, all they can hear in it is how fucking brave they are for jumping despite the potential for injury or death. If anything, Hailey's death helps solidify the Billy-badassness that they portray when they go home to their families.

My poor Hailey, beaten to death, kicked to death, and then cut loose from the plane, falling, falling, falling to the earth, and landing with a bone-crushing thud, all so these dumb fucks can tell their mommies how brave they are. What a waste of a beautiful soul, a smart woman who could have done anything with her life. Anytime a life is wasted on becoming a lesson to others, it is wasted, end of story. People don't need lessons from other people. The only way people learn is through pain and failure.

"That's terribly saddening to me," was all I could say about that.

"I'm so sorry, Ved. I should have been more—"

"No, it's OK. It's been a while now."

"So, please, continue with the summary."

"OK, so after she died, I came to Bragg and fought a specialist for the affection of his girlfriend, who happened to be promoted to sergeant while I worked on her. That wasn't a great fit, so I dumped her, or she dumped me ... The details on that are still a little sketchy. Anyway, I met Captain Dillinger's wife, Monica, and fell madly in love with her. She broke up with me after finding out that I cheated on her, shot heroine, and got my dick sucked by a dude on the same night."

Venia laughed hysterically, moving past me in the hole.

"Then Jacob hung himself in the room next door, which I had the pleasure of seeing, before Monica tried to talk to me at his service. She'd left Ricky, sorry ... Captain Dillinger, and moved in with my gay friend Eli ... not the one who blew me, and I've heard nothing since then. I do know that Ricky wants me tossed out of the military, and since he couldn't do it last time he tried, I assumed he sent you to help him with it this time." I didn't look at her.

"Huh. So you got it all figured out?"

"Probably."

"Will this make you feel better?" She opened the can and pulled out my half smoked joint. She looked it over carefully, making a point of noticing the spots where my rolling hadn't been perfect. "Lighter?" she asked.

I tossed it to her and watched as she lit it, pulled in a couple of perfectly executed rips, and exhaled like a Deadhead.

"Better?" she asked.

I smiled and half-hugged her. "Venia Threnau, we might be wonderful friends after all," I said while reaching for the joint.

"I heard that."

"You heard what?" I asked, taking a few puffs of my own.

"I heard that you try to fuck everything that walks."

I coughed on my hit, pounding my chest for relief. "You heard what?"

"Oh, come on now, Ved ... I only told five people that I was in the hole with you, and four of them warned me about you."

"Venia, you can rest assured that I will not try and fuck you while we are in this hole together. We shit, eat, and sleep within a hundred feet of each other ... I might try and fuck you later on in your career, but not while you're in this hole with me."

"Ah ... that's comforting."

"Right." I was annoyed with her, but I knew I didn't have any real reason to be. Sure, she mentioned to a few people that she was in the hole with me, and if it were guys that she was talking to, they'd not want me to be the one to fuck the new girl first, so they'd try to keep her away from me, which I'd like to add is pointless. "You know, I've seen a few chicks come here from Benning, and from other posts too. They always come in here all innocent and sweet, and before too long, everyone in the barracks has fucked her. They start out so proper and nice, and after a few hundred guys fuck them, they all look the same to me. I don't fuck military women, so, please, sleep soundly." I stood to leave, surprised at my sensitivity to being talked about.

"I didn't mean to piss you off. Sorry, that was stupid of me. Who knows what they'd say about me to you."

"Yeah ... that's nice. Goodnight, Venia." I walked out of the hole and to my tent.

By the fourth day in the hole, we'd gotten to know each other pretty well; the same way Bender and I had done during the last visit. There is just so much time, and so little comfort when sitting out there, watching the grass grow. We talked about our lives, our plans for the future, and every other topic that came to mind.

I learned that Venia had been adopted by a wealthy and well-connected lesbian couple in San Francisco. They had heard about an eight year-old girl who'd been found tied to a bed in the home of a thirty-seven year-old sex offender. The girl was used as poker stakes, and the winner of the game got to spend an hour with her behind the closed doors of the bedroom. Only after one man had been invited to the poker game and realized what was going on with the child, were the police notified and the little girl rescued. They guessed that she'd been sold to the man by her crack-head mother twenty months earlier and had spent the entire time as his personal sex slave.

After her rescue, she was taken into the custody of Child Protective Services and spent the next six months in a facility for the extreme cases of sexual abuse, without uttering a single word. One of her mothers, Jane, a powerful lawyer in the Bay area, heard about her silence and wanted to help. Jane and her partner, Melissa, filed the adoption paperwork a week later, offering "donations" to the city and state, in order to speed the bureaucratic bullshit along, to the tune of two million dollars.

Six weeks later, Venia had a new name, a new family, and a new outlook on life. Rather than spending her days and nights tied spread-eagle to a filthy cum-stained mattress, she now lived in a six thousand square foot mansion in the Los Altos community of California with two loving and caring mothers.

Even sober, it's difficult to feel sorry for yourself because your daddy was mean and evasive, when you hear shit like this. I didn't bother to go into details about my family life, but I did tell her the Monica-Genie-Oscar tale in far greater detail, to which she laughed again and again as I painted the details with vivid clarity.

By the end of our first week together, we had no set shifts to work. Most of the time we were in the hole together, talking, smoking pot, and listening to the music that I demanded was "necessary" for the 1990s. Venia never got annoying, and we never fought, despite the close quarters and the massive allotment of time spent together.

She was fascinated by me, and I by her. She had good, healthy self-esteem, which I accredited to her mothers. Obviously, the sexual trauma of those months had created some serious issues—issues that people cannot always overcome, even with the use of drugs and therapy, and the fact that I considered her ego healthy, was mind blowing. She didn't get prettier as time went on, but in my mind she was developing into this beautiful soul. She was brilliant, creative, and seductive. She had little inhibitions, peeing on the ground just a few feet from the hole, changing her clothes in front of me, things like this, but it wasn't showy. She was genuinely a hippie chick; educated in private schools; fluent in French, Arabic, and Italian; well read; and contained more musical information than anyone I'd ever known.

On Tuesday of week two, we were sitting on top of the hole shirtless (Venia in her pit stained sports bra), bathing in the sun, passing a small joint back and forth, when suddenly I heard footsteps behind us. I spun on the hole, snapping around to see who was trespassing on our spot.

None other than Tom Derrick was walking out to meet us.

"Fuck, Derrick! You want to get shot?"

"With a blank?"

"Jesus, man!"

He looked at Venia, her brown skin glowing in the sun. This was the sort of thing that Derrick couldn't handle; the thing that made me nervous about him. Some people are bad drunks, others are compulsive liars. Derrick was sometimes scary around women; usually the more skin they showed, the weirder he became. He stared at her. Long after he should have dropped his gaze, he held it. I saw it register on her face that something was not right with him; she looked immediately to me, making sure I wasn't going to abandon her now.

"Derrick, you're staring at her like Charles Manson would."

"Oh ..." He looked at me. "No, I'm not."

"Yeah, freakiness, you are."

He looked at her again. "Was I staring at you?"

"You're doing it again, Tom. Cool it!"

"I am not!"

"Tom, what the fuck are you doing out here anyway?"

"What are you two doing out here?" He looked from me to her and back.

"Guarding the TOC, and our country, for that matter."

"Smokin' pot?"

"Always. Just me, not her."

"What if Captain Dillinger finds out about it?"

"If Captain Dillinger finds out about it, I'll know you told him. And if you tell him ... Well, it's just better if you don't."

"Ved, you're in the Army, not college. If you want to smoke and go by your first name, which isn't even your real first name, maybe you should go to college instead of being in the Army."

Derrick was performing for Venia; it was as clear to me as the haziness surrounding our little fort. "Tom, be careful what you say to me. Seriously, I want you to focus. What did you come here for?"

"There's a formation at 0800 tomorrow; they want you there. We're doing something, some sort of training. Big shots have been around all week. Whatever it is, it's a biggie."

"Thank you, Tom," I said carefully and slowly, warning him to keep it in check.

"Post commanders of both Bragg and Polk, like fuckin' three stars, walkin' around the TOC. You should see it there; everyone in perfect uniform all the time ... It's awful."

The Tom I knew and liked was returning. He wasn't looking at her anymore, making it possible for him to speak normally. He really needed to get this issue in check before he got out of the Army and went into the world where women who were scared pressed charges or pulled triggers.

"Yeah, here too, bro." I smiled at Venia, who smiled back at me.

"If Captain Dillinger—"

"Tom, you planning on giving me up?" I asked, feeling the fighting butterflies stirring in me.

"No. Not at all," he said, looking down.

"Good. Thanks for the invite. We'll see you tomorrow morning."

"K," he said, turning toward the trees and walking away.

As Tom walked away, Venia stared at me questioningly. "That's your roommate?"

"That would be him."

"Wow. Kinda creepy."

"Yeah, unfortunately it's only with chicks. Around dudes, he's just a dork, not a freak."

"He married?"

"Uh ... no. He's a virgin as far as we can tell. Had an imaginary girlfriend for about a year."

"No way!"

"Way. It's strange, I know, but he just doesn't know how to deal with people. He means well."

"If you say so."

We left the hole for our walk back to the TOC at 0700 hours, trying to guess what was going on that was so important that Ricky would actually allow me to leave the hole. It had to be something serious, otherwise there was just no way that he'd let me loose.

As we neared the TOC, Venia became a little nervous, fearing having to meet the entire company. It was the same way I had felt at that first jump with the Sig. The difference was that she was a female, and even though she wasn't overwhelmingly attractive, she was still a female with a nice body. The guys can be somewhat forward anyway, but when they were in the field, removed from their wives or their lotion, they got a little edgy on top of their being naturally horny. As a woman, you have to have thick skin when dealing with them, and I worried that Venia wasn't going to be firm enough to defend herself from their advances.

"Hey, if you have problems with anyone, anyone at all, you let me know. I'll take care of it for you."

"Thanks."

"Don't take no shit from them. If someone pisses you off, go fucking crazy. There are enough higher-ups around that freaking out will definitely get the problem solved. If you have a problem with someone higher-up, let me know, I'll take care of it for you."

The TOC was like a tiny town with supply points set up here and there. If you needed fuel, there was a mini gas station consisting of a fuel blivit and a camo net; if you needed food, there were pallets and pallets of MREs and chocolate milk cases.

The heat was unbearable. My friends looked like dirty replicas of themselves. Their BDUs were stretched out and filthy from days of working in them without washing them, while mine looked pretty good. Venia and I washed our clothes every couple of days, hanging them on our makeshift clothesline overnight to dry.

I wandered around, trying to find out what was going on, but no one knew. All we did know for certain was that whatever it was, it was going to be a big one.

At 0800, Captain Dillinger (and an entourage of officers) exited the admin tent and stood, prepared to make his announcement. I stood in first platoon with Luke and Ryan, while Venia and Zach, Derrick and Jon all stood in the second platoon.

"Company, Attention!" the first sergeant yelled, startling everyone into the position of attention.

Captain Dillinger walked to the front of the formation, saluted the first sergeant, thanked him for forming up the troops, and then turned to face us. He was almost like a different man, for his posture was so correct, and his manner was so professional. I knew that he was being watched by a few of those three and four star generals we'd been talking about earlier.

"Today, we are going to do some training, some real training. Airborne?"

We answered with the obligatory, "Airborne!"

"Today, we are going to do live-fire convoy training. You're going to be issued real ammo, loaded into vehicles, and convoy. At some point, your convoy will be attacked. You will have to locate the enemy, engage and suppress them, destroy their bunker, and finish the convoy—all with real ammo and no casualties. Is that clear?"

"Airborne!"

"We are in the presence of commanding generals, of both Bragg and Polk, here to watch the mighty 82nd Airborne do their thing. We will not disappoint them. Airborne?"

"Airborne!"

I was beginning to feel like I was at a Tony Robbins motivational convention.

"Ammo issue and a safety briefing will begin in half an hour. Until then relax, drink water, and get ready to have some fun, paratroopers. Airborne?"

"Airborne, sir!" we all screamed.

In times of peace, Army soldiers are treated like nursery school kids. Live bullets are kept away from them as officers seem to fear that if the grunts had real bullets, they'd shoot the officers first and kill each other shortly thereafter. Each time you are given a bullet, you are also given countless hours of safety talks, procedural instructions, and babysitters are put in place to watch each soldier carefully. It was rare that they gave us ammo, and when they did, all the fun of having real ammo was taken away by the hours of bullshit that came with it.

I didn't disagree with their policy of "don't feed the bears," and often thought how good it was that we didn't have spare bullets lying around. There were times that I'd lie awake in bed, wishing I could shoot someone point blank in the face for saying this or that. I knew that if I dreamed of killing others occasionally, then they certainly dreamed of killing me more often than that.

Because we were at Polk, in the woods and suffering from boredom, the bullets and the surprise convoy training were greeted with more enthusiasm than they would have been had the exercise been on Bragg. I wasn't all gung-ho about the exercise, really. To me, I would have almost rather spent the afternoon in my lonely hole. I liked shooting guns as much as the next guy, but in this fucking awful heat, just having to be in the sunlight was a punishment.

I was glad to see Ryan and Luke again. I brought them up to speed on my weed intake, my new hole-mate, my freaky roommate, and the boredom of guarding the FO. We laughed and smoked cigarettes, waiting for the exercise to begin.

Two fucking hours later, Ricky reappeared outside his tent, obviously stressed out by the eyes that were watching him, and began to get things rolling.

We got to our vehicles, and Ryan volunteered to be the gunner on my truck. PFC Reed, a small young dude from San Diego who'd been in the Sig for the last six months, was also inclined to ride with me, so I took him along. With the three of us ready to go, we made sure to be the vehicle in front of Luke, who was driving a deuce and a half.

Luke had Derrick, Venia, and fifteen other troopers under the canopy attached to the back of the truck. I pulled into the line in front of them, and Luke reved his engine in a pretend threat to smash into me.

We laughed and flicked our cigarettes at them while Reed began asking a million questions about the operation.

"I don't know, homie. We haven't been briefed yet," I kept telling him.

We drove from the TOC to the range where our exercise was to begin. Once we got there, we waited for another hour and a half while the cadre prepared for whatever we were to do. At 1415 hours, Staff Sergeant Davis gave us the rundown on what was happening.

He'd drawn a map showing a road that ran straight north. To the east and west was an open expanse of "kill-zone" which pretty much meant that if the bad guys wanted us dead, they could certainly do it in this area. He explained that we were to drive north on the road while maintaining proper distance between vehicles and watching out for enemy snipers as we went.

The snipers would be Ivans. Ivans are rubberized targets in the shape of WWII era Russian infantrymen. They are nothing more than a torso and a head on an aluminum post that raises them from the ground to upright. They have electronic sensors on them, and when shot by a bullet, the target returns to the ground, essentially resting Ivan on his back. After a predetermined allotment of time, Ivan pops back up until he is shot again. The Ivans were scattered all over the range, and we had no idea what direction they would be attacking from. Once they popped up, we had only three seconds to kill them, otherwise they would kill us. They were painted solid green, like the toy army men that children play with. Their expressions were sinister; the angry Russians had no eyes, just lumps painted the same color as the rest of them.

The Ivans would begin popping up after the initial attack was underway. Red smoke would identify the enemy bunker, but only one grenade would be used to mark it. If we missed the smoke, we'd have to play hide-and-seek all fucking day until we found it and neutralized it.

"As you drive north on road 166, you will be attacked. Don't worry; you'll know when you're attacked. Once you are attacked, form up in Alpha team and Bravo team, hit the perimeter, and begin the assault on the bunker. Kill Ivan on the way; he has three seconds before he goes down, and the computer will tell us how many Ivans got shots off, understood?"

We understood, and I must say that now I was excited. I loved shooting Ivans, I loved shooting guns, and more than those two things, I loved playing Army! I was good at it—I was a hell of a shot, I understood the way an attack played out, how to flank, when a martyr is needed—all of it.

I was concerned that there wasn't a huge safety briefing about using live rounds. Not that I thought anyone needed another lesson in military safety, but here we were, ready to roll out, and no one had given us the run down about when to engage and when not to. I knew that wasn't because of the trust they had in us; instead, it was an oversight, probably brought on by all the brownnosing going on in the administration tent.

The Army did things so low budget that a sign painted to read under attack and hung from a tree branch wasn't out of the question. Sure, the guy in the front who can see the sign might get it, but the rest of us wouldn't. This sort of thing was always the problem with military training; it's hard to practice killing people without being given the ammo and bodies to shoot at.

The cadre came around and issued out ammo, saying things like "Shoot safe" and "Watch your lane." Since I was wearing a 9mm on my side, I got 9mm bullets and was not given M-16 ammo, which sucked because the Ivans were going to be far enough out that my 9mm would be worthless. Sure, I'd fire the damn thing just to fire it, but I wasn't going to get any kills.

When we started driving down the dusty roads, which served as firebreaks more than real roads, it was hot. The humidity was so thick, I kept thinking maybe I should chew, rather than simply try to swallow, the air. Bugs made noises that sounded like alarm clocks going off, different brands and buzzers, all uniting to make one deafening high pitched howl. None of us were in a good mood. The excitement of the drill had long worn off in the countless hours that we sat and waited. Now that we were in full gear, sitting in trucks under the hot sun, the temperature right at 100 degrees with equal humidity, we wanted to be anywhere else.

Reed asked, "Wouldn't it be nice if the Army would at least put fucking air conditioners in the trucks? Would that be too much to ask?"

Ryan and I didn't answer, finding the question rhetorical.

"Don't you think?" he continued.

Apparently it wasn't rhetorical. "Yeah, that'd be nice," Ryan said.

We were driving along, maybe fifteen miles an hour, which I thought ridiculous. If you are driving through a kill zone, and you want to live, you drive fast! Sixty, seventy miles per hour makes it harder to fire an RPG and hit the target; so why now, knowing we were going to be attacked, were we driving fifteen? Because the Army was in charge.

I kept scanning my mirrors, looking to see if the trucks behind me stopped. I was so terrified that we would miss the signal that the attack had begun, that most of my defensive posturing was in order to know when we were being attacked, not trying to deter attack.

I stared at the dust hanging in the air, kicked up by massive tires and loud motors sucking in air and blowing out hot exhaust. The majority of the dust was subdued by the humidity, but the dirt that did make it into the air seemed to hang there on the moist air. I considered the texture of dust, lightweight, dry ... It seemed to me that the air was thick enough and wet enough that the dirt could potentially dry the air it was suspended from, turning the dry dirt to mud, then falling back to the earth. That was a grand theory, but it never happened. I wondered why.

"Ryan, look at that!" I yelled, seeing what looked like ninjas running across the road into the bushes on the other side.

"Holy shit, here we go," he said, spinning on the tripod to point his gun down range.

"What are they doing out here? It seems to me that with live ammo, no one should be—"

Three enormous blasts exploded from the ground a hundred feet in front of the truck. Dirt and rock was hurled into the air. The shock wave of the explosives used rocked the truck.

"Holy fuck!" Reed yelled.

"What the hell are they doing?" Ryan screamed.

His M-60 roared to life, making popping noises that are usually only heard in Vietnam movies. Ryan spun the gun from side to side, laying down suppressive fire while the vehicles behind and in front of us went into defensive mode.

Three more blasts came from somewhere behind us, followed by people screaming and, of course, laughing, and mostly saying things like "Holy shit!" We were all surprised by the Army's spending on this exercise; the explosions alone must have cost some real money.

"Guess they ran out of signs that say boom." I smiled.

"Fuckin' post commanders being here ... That's why they're putting on the show," Ryan said between belts of ammo.

"All right, Reed, hit the dirt. Ryan, you're on the east side, Bravo team ... Reed and I will be Alpha. Wait for Sergeant Morris before you push. Reed, get on the fucking ground and stop talking. People are watching us today. Don't make yourself look any more retarded than you already have, at least not while you're on my team."

"Roger that, Ved," he said without rebuttal, diving into the bushes on the side of the road.

I lay down beside him, wondering immediately how many fucking poisonous bugs were in these overgrown grass clumps, waiting to suckle on my white skin.

"Ryan, can you make them?"

I couldn't hear his reply as M-16 fire lit up. I couldn't see any Ivans out there, but I wanted to kill a few myself, so I raised my head and looked across the road to where Bravo team was responding.

"Five hundred yards, eleven o'clock," Ryan was yelling to his team.

"Set it up, bound and cover!" I screamed, imagining myself as General Patton.

We'd been driving north on the road when the first blasts had erupted. Reed and I were on the west side of the road; Ryan and the rest of Bravo team were on the east, the direction the Ivans were popping up from. Reed and I were facing an empty field while Ryan and his team got to have all the fun.

I feared leaving the west side uncovered. If we turned our backs on the field, a sniper would lay us all down, one shot at a time. I kept Reed on the west side; Venia assisted him from Luke's truck while everyone else went to work on the easterly Ivans.

When we got ready to bound and cover, Alpha Team, my team, moved to the north end of the convoy while Bravo stayed to the south. We needed to be able to fire toward the enemy without shooting our own guys. With them to our right and Ivan straight ahead, we had the perfect bound and cover set up. Lots of firepower, no friendly fire kills.

The enemy was almost directly in front of Ryan's position, five hundred yards out, which is a long fucking way when nothing but briar bushes, swampy mud land, and a pretty hefty incline lie between you and them. Red smoke poured out from behind a small hill, making the bunker impossible to see, but the location was noted.

Bravo team was the first to bound toward the enemy, running a hundred feet at a time before dropping to take cover. While they bounded, Alpha team put down suppressive fire, trying to keep the Ivans from gaining three seconds on us. If the Ivans had been Commie Reds, three seconds would be plenty to aim and fire. Once Bravo hit the dirt, we'd bound while they suppressed fire, and like this, we'd move across the field, a hundred feet at a time, until eventually we were beside the bad guys, and then we'd blow the fuckers apart with hand grenades.

Bravo bounded while we came across the road to suppress, giving up on the west side and focusing on the east where all the enemy fire was apparently coming from. Off to our right, Bravo was bounding with enthusiasm, and then they dropped into the brush, which was really a swamp. Splashes and moaning ensued. I laughed.

The forty or so Bravo team members plopped down into the muck and mud, locked and loaded, and began firing in order to cover us. At first, though I assumed the water would be nasty, the idea of being wet seemed heavenly; that is, until I ran through it.

Bravo signaled us via hand waves, and we bounded. We ran with enthusiasm, our equipment bouncing and twisting as we ran. I thought of Vietnam and those grunts going months at a time with one pair of boots and countless pounds of equipment, and I immediately had a new respect for the Vietnam Vets who had always looked like old hippies at the VFW rallies in Blythe.

I tried to keep an eye on Reed as I ran, but he was behind me somewhere, the one direction I couldn't look. I didn't want him to do anything stupid, and for some reason, I felt responsible for his actions. He was a skater, almost pro, but had fucked up his ankle when he was sixteen, ending his days as a skateboarder. He wasn't military material, similar to myself I suppose, but without the philosophical side. I liked Reed, always had, but didn't want to ever have to depend on him to save my life.

I bounded, jumping bushes too big to run through and listening to the bugs stop their cacophony as I got close, while the ones I'd just passed started again. Just as I was about to drop, no more than a hundred feet in front of me, two Ivans popped out of the bushes. I saw their green bodies on an aluminum post spring forward at me, and I looked directly into their muted green eyes. Even at a hundred feet, my 9mm was worthless, so I did the only thing I could do, I began to drop.

They were bigger and more human looking than I thought they were. Hell, I'd never seen one from this close. Usually we saw Ivans at the M-16 range, three hundred yards out, popping up to be shot and then disappearing. The focus was always on qualification with your weapon, not really looking at the thing you are killing.

In the real world, one second after popping up, they'd be ready to shoot and kill me. It's somewhat awakening to realize that dying in battle is really nothing more than being the wrong guy in the wrong place, nothing else. So as I registered seeing them bounce to a stop, I knew in the real world I'd have less than a second until the first 7.62mm bullet ripped through my body. A second and third, and probably a fourth, would soon follow.

Midstride, as I saw this all happening, I began to fall down to get out of the crosshairs. As I fell to brush level, two bullets exploded on the right hand side of Ivan's face, making a green powder explosion just below his left eye. Less than a half a second later, the same pattern hit the Ivan on the left in almost the exact same spot. The Ivans immediately returned to the ground, dead.

"Woohoo, Ved! We just saved your ass, mofo!" Luke was yelling from across the field.

I turned to look at them and smile, seeing Ryan and Luke high-fiving. Their tag-team assault, in order to save my life, had been effective—so effective that I doubted Ivan could have gotten a shot off at me. "That was incredible!" I yelled back to them.

"That was me on the right!" Luke yelled, claiming the first kill.

Bravo team bounded again, and I watched as Luke and Ryan ran wildly through the thick swamp. I was eager to save one of their lives, just to avoid owing them the debt for the rest of eternity, but with my fuckin' 9mm, I knew it was a long shot. I scanned that godless field for an Ivan somewhere out in front of them, but, of course, none popped up. I lay still, the sight of my 9mm trained two hundred yards in front of the bounding Bravo team. When they hit the dirt, I stood in a crouch, anxious for the next bound.

I looked behind me, still trying to find Reed, but he was nowhere to be seen. The only time I would have been able to see him was when we were actually bounding, but that was the one time I wasn't looking for anyone; I couldn't look for anyone.

I bounded with Alpha team, this time finding the swamp water and muck for myself. When my boot sunk into my first muddy step, I fell face-first into the swamp. As I did so, I instinctively let go of my 9mm, and the last thing I saw as I planted my face into the green muck was my nine flying through the air about six feet in front of me. Splat!

My boot had stuck in the mud and came completely off, which, of course, I didn't notice until I stood up, wiping mud from my front. I was covered like the Swamp Thing—thick, sticky, green mud everywhere. The only reason I found my nine was because it had disturbed the smoothness of the thick mud. I reached into the hole the gun had made on its way in, feeling around for it. I grabbed it and pulled it free of the mud while desperately kicking at my absent boot with my other foot. When I pulled the gun free, I realized I had it by the barrel and my index finger was less than a centimeter from pulling the trigger. I would have shot myself in the chest had I pushed any harder.

Holstering the muddy gun, I grabbed my stuck boot with two hands and yanked it out of the muck. I was sinking deeper into the swamp, making it very difficult to re-boot. Just as I got the boot to my foot, Alpha team, my team, bounded by me.

"Fuck!" I yelled, hobbling after them with one boot on one foot and one in my hand, where my 9 was supposed to be.

This time, rather than being at the front of my team, I dropped in behind them. I sat on my ass, on dry earth, covered from head to toe in green swamp-shit. I laced my boot good enough to get me through the mission, feeling eight pounds of mud and grass inside my boot. Five more minutes and it'll all be over.

Bravo was down, back in the swamp for the fifth time. I heard them hit the mud with a "whock" as they sunk in. I laughed to myself, thinking if I had to wear this smelly shit all over me, so should they. We rose to bound. I saw Reed in the front of Alpha Team, his tiny stature giving him away. I wanted to catch up to him, so when we booked it across the next expanse, I tried to go extra fast in order to catch him. The little dude was way faster than me, and when the rest of the team fell to take cover, he continued for another fifty feet.

This was the problem with Reed: he needed direction all the time. Having Reed in the front of the squad was a bad idea. He needed to follow by example; he needed to see the rest of us fall down in order to know he was supposed to. When we dropped, he continued to run for another five seconds. He was way out in front of us, making it impossible for us to aim and fire straight ahead. Bravo team was already bounding when Reed finally dropped below the bushes. And then I saw it happen, as if it were in slow motion.

Reed popped up in a squat, training his gun on an Ivan too far south for him to engage safely. He was shooting across the range at a diagonal, not forward. Bravo team was running straight forward, into the path of Reed's weapon.

I was right there, watching it, unable to move fast enough to stop it.

Pop, pop! His gun tossed out fire from the muzzle, the bullets loose.

It was as if I closed my eyes and watched it from the inside out. The tallest guy in Bravo team fell forward without so much as a sound, landing face-first in the green, sticky mud.

The bugs screamed louder.

By the time I realized who and where I was, I was running full speed across the range, waving my hands. I ran as the bullets continued to fly, and as I ran following the trajectory of Reed's gun, the bullets were getting closer. I heard them whistling through the air around me; I heard people screaming at me to get down, but I continued my run. I knew what I would find there on the ground; I knew who I would find there, and all I could do is pray that he wasn't seriously hurt.

Finally the gunfire stopped, so people could scream at me to hit the dirt. I didn't even slow down; I was running faster now than I was when I started.

"You're getting Article 15'd, Ludo!" someone screamed at me as my heart kept pace with the relentless screech of the bugs.

All I could hear were noises coming from people, not syllables or tones, just a generic noise that sounded human. I ran relentlessly, knowing what I'd seen. Apparently, no one else had.

I charged the rest of the way, and people were chasing me now. They wanted to beat me for being so careless, and they wanted to crucify me for disregarding safety so blatantly, especially while two post commanders were watching from somewhere in the vicinity.

I only stopped running when I got to where I needed to be. I stopped, slowing to a walk with my hands on my hips, trying to breathe.

When I saw Luke, tears were dripping from his cheeks, and his eyes were red. He was sitting on the dirt, holding his knees, rocking gently. He stared at me, but didn't speak.

I looked to the ground, to the wounded soldier. He was moving a little, but even his movements were muted by something terrible. Ryan Wilkie had been shot through the back of his head.

The angry mob was approaching me from behind, screaming things at me that didn't matter.

I fell to my knees and vomited. When there was nothing left to vomit, I collapsed into the puddle of stomach contents and rolled onto my back, trying to catch my breath. Suddenly the exhaustion from my sprint caught up to me, making me choke and gag on the remnants of vomit still in my mouth. I began to wail, a terrifying and heartbreaking wail.

The angry mob that was so hell-bent on murdering me just seconds ago was now just the muted sounds of medics chattering and sobbing soldiers. The men who were strong enough to endure the sight before them helped me to my feet, telling me to walk around and get some air. As soon as they released their grip on my arms, I stumbled forward and fell to my knees beside my friend Ryan, who was still alive, but too far gone to ever survive. His face was white and sweaty, and he had a little blood on his chin that might have been coughed out. He lay on his back. His Kevlar was like a flipped over turtle acting as a pillow and a bowl—a bowl to catch the blood draining from his head. There was no exit wound; the bullet was lodged in his head somewhere.

Someone tried to pull me away from him, so I unsheathed my bayonet and swung it wildly at whoever it was. It was then that people began to understand that I was not to be touched.

The three medics did their best to make Ryan comfortable.

When the colonel made it to the circle, which had formed around Ryan, he vomited as well. He began hyperventilating and gasping, finally taking his helmet off and slamming it in the dirt.

"Goddamnit! How is he?"

"Sorry, sir. I don't think he's gonna ma—" one medic replied.

"You shut your goddamned mouth!" the colonel snapped, kneeling beside me.

I was kneeling on Ryan's right side, watching his face closely. I leaned over him, listening and watching him as he struggled to speak. He was mumbling; nothing made any sense. It sounded like he was speaking a foreign language. His eyes darted around, looking from me to someone else, and back to me. He was trying to say something, but I couldn't understand him. I was in a full out meltdown, trying to control myself for his sake, but there was no question, he was leaving us.

My tears were rolling off my cheeks and landing on his BDUs, quickly soaking in, or evaporating, right before my eyes.

He looked at me again, mouthing words and wanting me to understand him, but it was useless. His eyes were staring through me, almost as if I wasn't standing before him. A glaze came over them; it danced with the far off stare, making for a preview of what his death face would look like. He thought he was making sense; he thought he was perfectly articulate; his frustration was with me for not understanding at first. And then, worry, sadness, and fear all took hold of him as the implication that I couldn't understand him struck home.

"Yeah, it's bad, man. It's completely fucked, bro," I cried.

He looked at me, and I knew I was there with him again, and him with me.

"Ryan, you're dying," I whispered.

He closed his eyes and a tear fell. It was the first time I'd ever seen him produce a single tear.

I knew his time was getting short. "Buddy ... listen to me. Fuckin' listen to me! I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You are my friend. From the first time I met you, you have been my friend! You've bled for me goddamnit! I want you to be brave. I want you to relax and not to be afraid. You are Ryan Wilkie. You are strong. You've always been! Don't cry, Ryan. Please don't cry ..." Luke was closer now, but still not beside us. "Luke, get over here and say goodbye to your friend!" I said with tears running down my face and spittle spraying from my mouth.

"No. I can't," he wept.

"Luke, get the fuck over here! He's fucking dying. Do you understand that?"

"Fuck you, Ved!" he screamed so loudly that his voice cracked.

Ryan grabbed my hand tighter and whispered something to me.

"What, Ryan? What?" I said frantically.

He tried again, but it was no better.

"Ryan, I love you. I'm so sorry, my friend, that this happened to you ... I'm sorry that you didn't get a fair chance. I'm sorry that I wasn't a better friend to you. Oh my God, Ryan. Oh my God!"

The helmet that sat like a bowl beneath Ryan's head was spilling over with blood and something else ... tiny, white particles that floated on the surface. Pieces of the Kevlar also floated on the blood, pieces that had been shot into his head as the bullet crashed through the surface. He'd lost that much blood from a hole in the back of his head no bigger than a nickel. Every time Ryan shook, either something that looked epileptic or shivers that seemed to be coming more frequently, the blood would splash over the side, floating on the murky, wet earth below him. It swirled on top of the mud puddle, like cold creamer poured into hot coffee. The resulting color, something between brown and red, was hideous on our pant legs and hands.

"You're going to go away now, buddy. We can't stop ... it. Be brave, be brave for the rest of us," I whispered.

He looked at me, his cloudy blue eyes growing distant again.

"Today you saved my life. It's just another day to you, man, but you saved my fucking life today! I'll tell everyone you died like a fuckin' soldier. I'll tell them that at the end, Ryan Wilkie was the toughest motherfucker I've ever known. I promise you."

He smiled; he could hear me.

Somewhere close, a helicopter was circling. I didn't look up; I never took my eyes off of him. His hands that I held in mine were cold and damp. I felt him squeeze, the slightest of squeezes, and his eyes were fixed on the chopper hovering above us.

Chopper medics began to push in to prepare him for transport. I held his hand, but stood aside, out of the way, as they put my friend Ryan onto a crude looking stretcher.

He'd had this worried, frantic look since I arrived on the scene, but now it was different. I stared at him, wanting him to know that he wasn't alone, and that I was there for him now, at the end.

It was then that he began the process of accepting his fate. I watched as the seconds passed so gingerly, and the transformation from fighting to accepting was breathtaking.

A slight smile formed on his lips, and he began to babble something again. This time it was so soft and quiet, no one could have heard it. His eyes moved for a second, my way, but never made it to my eyes. The smile came back, and though I couldn't hear the word he was saying as he released my hand, I saw him mouth it to me: "Mom."

He looked relaxed for a second, right before I had to let him go. I watched him as the chopper began to raise him on a frighteningly thin cable. He looked skyward and left me for the last time with just an expression to cling to.

He was dead before he made it into the chopper. He died on a stretcher, floating high above the Box, at the age of twenty-one.

Two things dawned on me after the chopper had disappeared over the treetops: before he died, the expression on his face was that of being somewhere familiar; and he probably died assuming I was his killer.
Chapter 11

Parting Ways

Clint Eastwood doesn't die in movies. He demands millions of dollars to make a film, most of which are made by his self-owned company, so killing him off in the movie would be an irresponsible use of money. Clint always survives in order to be victorious at the end of the film, righting all the wrongs, avenging all those he lost on his way to this defining moment in his character's life.

The rookie cop who ended up as his partner, or the rancher who was kind enough to shelter him while the bad guy posse was hunting for him ... These are the people who die during the story. They are the people who Clint may not have always been kind to, but they lead him to do whatever awesome thing he does at the end. In the wake of Ryan's death, these are the ones I can relate to.

When the "second fiddle" dies, it's portrayed dramatically. It's put into the tale to draw you in, to make you cry, and to make the character Clint portrays seem more important. He needs to get revenge, and for all of our sakes, he has to succeed.

It's usually during an otherwise happy time that the beloved number two actor bites the bullet. The character is usually smiling and happy when it gets him. He might be waving to his girlfriend or drinking merrily in a saloon ... when out of nowhere, BANG! A shot is fired.

We look at number two, who (other than a surprised look on his face) appears to be fine. We're relieved. But then he stops moving. What's this? Maybe he was shot. Oh no! He stumbles a bit, but lo and behold, he's still talking, still defying the bad guys.

"Go, number two!" we scream.

BANG! A second shot is fired, and this time our man winces. The pain is visible now, and his death is rather likely. His attitude changes; he's no longer mouthing off to the cowboy in the black cowboy hat, and now he's looking around, afraid. He senses his mortality. Maybe for the first time in his life ... he considers that this might be his last moment!

He begins to ask himself whether or not he will survive it, wanting to believe himself capable of a full recovery, but now it seems so far away. Now he wonders whether the pursuit of honor was worth it—if whatever he hoped to achieve was worth the price he's paid for it.

BANG! The third shot hits him.

We scream and cry into our television sets, begging the gods of Hollywood to let him live.

He falls facedown, immobile. Death is certain.

Jacob's death was the first shot. When it hit me, I stopped, confused, but before long I was moving again, still defiantly. I could look beyond it. I could justify it to myself by thinking it was self-created, he wanted it ...

When Ryan died, I began to question things about my life. His death was so much more vivid, so much more explosive. There was no immediate rebound; it haunts me still, nearly fifteen years later.

Nothing was ever the same for us after Ryan died; in fact, for a while there I was concerned that I, personally, might never be the same. So much began to happen around me, so fast, and with no sense of restraint. Whatever is normally used to combat the evil and sadness that seems to surround this world, moving in and out without detection, was no longer available to us. One event seemed to spiral across the road, smashing into another one, and leaving wreckage to clean up there as well. I had a backlog of emotions I needed to deal with, and no time to do it. I kept telling myself that I would get to it, but before I could, another event would happen.

Things just went badly for a while, for all of us, especially for my closest remaining friends, the ones who still lived. We were the victims of the deaths, not the ones who'd died.

Death was not my friend any longer. It felt to me like a neighbor's dog, notorious for biting, but because I fed it, he didn't bite me. If I brought him around my friends, he'd bite them, but never me. Eventually I realized that even though I had a strange relationship with him, he was isolating me. I was, seemingly, the only one he didn't attack. No one around me was safe, and they couldn't cling to me and be protected. The dog, with its appetite for blood, would move around me and through me in order to sink his teeth into the prey.

We never saw Ryan again. He was medevac'd to Leesville, and then his body was flown to Ft. Bragg where some of his distant relatives came and picked him up in order to bury him in Kentucky. He didn't want to spend eternity in a military cemetery; he wanted to be home on farmland, on Kentucky land. Ryan never had much of a family; he only had a place, a state, soil, earth ... That's what he considered his home. Kentucky.

We, the living, came home from Polk early. Such a big deal had been made about this "training accident" that we'd actually begun the teardown of the TOC the following day. Ryan died on a Tuesday, and by Thursday we were in airplanes, headed for Ft. Bragg.

There wasn't a lot of talking on that plane. There wasn't the usual amount of horseplay and celebratory promises to drink this much of that, or smoke that much of this ... It was just muted, quiet, and introspective.

We didn't have to jump back into Bragg; we landed like regular people, debarking with our heads hung low, and our voices lost somewhere inside of ourselves.

Thursday night, in the rec-room of the barracks, we were told that there would be no service for Ryan, that his family was picking him up tomorrow, and that they'd requested to secure the body and leave. We took that news a little harder than I thought we would, mostly because in the case of Ryan's death, we all felt like we had things to say to him, things left unresolved. Unexpected instant tragedy is probably the best way to die, but certainly not the best way to survive the death of a friend.

"Look, I know what he meant to you. I know that Ryan was a well-loved, well-respected guy, and for some of you ..." Captain Dillinger looked at me as I stared at the wall somewhere behind him, not even trying to stop the tears running down my cheeks. When he spoke again, he had tears in his own eyes. "I don't know what to tell you guys. Honestly, I'm as broken over this as you are. Ved, Luke ... Zach, Shane, Jon ... I'm so sorry for your loss."

I looked at Ricky, who looked at me, and I smiled the slightest of smiles, though it was barely manageable.

He held my gaze and nodded slightly.

After the impromptu grief-meeting, we were dismissed until Monday morning when we would be expected to be over it, be ready to run PT, and put all the shit away from "the box."

I walked to my room, not looking for Luke, whom I was still mad at for not saying goodbye to Ryan. I knew that Luke was hurting; I knew he was barely standing, ready to collapse from the exhaustion of sleepless nights and constant tears. I knew that death was a hole.

I wrote a letter to my friends that night in my journal. I often write letters to people with the intention that they never read it.

Death leaves a void, something deep and empty, a missing presence. With the announcement of death, we all begin to fill in the hole, immediately and in our own way. The hole is deep and consuming, and it blocks your path, not allowing you to move beyond it. We fill it with our tears, our memories, and our wishes. Countless hours, you'll spend shoveling emotions into it, and at first, you will not see the progress. You will not see the dirt rising from the bottom, climbing steadily to rescue you, to allow you passage.

You get stuck here on one side of the hole, the death. You spend time, trying to move beyond it, but it's useless. Frustration and anger begin to build, and you begin to shovel them into the hole with the rest of it. Now you are making progress. Someday, the hole will be full, scabbed over, and you'll be able to cross it, but you will never forget it.

Only time can help us now.

By Friday, I still had not spoken to Luke. Zach, who was doing better about Jacob's death but now stumbling over Ryan's, came into my room every few hours to talk about some new revelation he'd had.

I listened to him for a minute or so each time, refusing to answer any questions pertaining to the afterlife, religion, or mortician practices. Regardless of my not playing along with his hysteria, he continued to come back, over and over again. The more he did so, the more I missed Ryan and Luke and the way things used to be.

Nearly everyone was home in the barracks that day, but no one was socializing. The sounds of TVs playing deep within each room, behind the closed, over-painted doors, escaped into the hallway. No one walked the hall smoking cigarettes and hanging out. It was oddly personal, the grief. Even when I'd gone to the bathroom, seeing people I knew and liked was like seeing complete strangers.

Everyone, everywhere, had the same disoriented look. We wanted to blame Reed, to hate him, but the devastation this had brought his way was punishment enough.

I was drinking my way to drunkenness when there was a slight tapping on my door.

"It's open."

The door opened a crack, and I saw a slightly Asian, green eye peering in at me. "Hey," she said, partly soothing, partly question.

"Venia. Hey, come on in."

She entered, wearing white shorts and a bright pink tank top. She was barefoot, and I immediately noticed her yellow toenail polish. She looked better, but still not quite pretty. I will admit, however, that I admired her for looking as good in the field as she did in the real world. The beauty she possessed was an inner light. It emanated from inside of her. She walked cautiously into my room, looking around at the décor, watching me from the corner of her eyes as if she were trying to observe my mood before suggesting one.

"Want a beer?" I asked.

"Sure." She accepted one, and I held onto the bottle for a second too long, her hand on the neck, mine on the base. The moment passed, but not without both of us feeling it.

"How you doing?" She sat beside me on the futon.

"I'm all right, ya know ..."

"Yeah. You want to go do something, Ved? You want to get out of here?"

"Where?" I asked, surprised at how much I wanted to go.

"How about ..." She made a production of placing her index finger to her temple. "Myrtle Beach?"

"I hate Myrtle Beach. All the college assholes go down there ... It's too much for me. Something quieter."

"OK," she said, locking her eyes on me. "How about a hotel somewhere?"

I looked at her, trying to understand what we were talking about. "A hotel?"

"Yeah, with a big hot tub."

"That sounds awesome, Ven."

"Cool, let's go. I'm gonna pack. Be ready in ten minutes?"

I looked around my room, briefly considering what I needed to bring. "Wait, what should I bring?" I asked.

"Your bathing suit and your pot."

I smiled.

"Oh ... and booze. You got more?"

I considered for a second. "Yeah."

She smiled and blew me a kiss. "OK, ten minutes. You drive."

"Your car?"

"I don't think we'll both fit on your motorcycle," she said and then left.

A minute later, my door opened, and I guessed it was Venia. "It hasn't been ten—" I saw Zach's face.

He looked at me for a long second. "What are you doing? You going somewhere?"

"Fuck yeah, anywhere."

"Where? With who?" he asked rapid-fire.

"A hotel, with Venia."

"Who?"

"Threnau. The new chick. Remember?"

"You are? Where? What hotel?"

"Zach, what's the deal, bro? Why all the questions?"

"I want to come. Can I come?"

I looked at him for a second, wanting to tell him no. "Sure. Leavin' in ten minutes. Pack light."

"Thank you, thank you," he said, hurrying out of my room.

A minute after he left, Jon and Shane came to my room. "Heard you're going to a hotel with Venia." Jon said.

"Yeah, and Zach." I smiled.

"Zach? He's going? And you're not going to ask us?"

"You guys want to come?" I asked, eyebrows raised.

"Fuck yeah!" Shane returned.

"Yeah," Jon said.

"Well, you got like eight minutes to get ready."

When Venia Threnau returned to my room, eleven people were preparing to go to "the hotel." No one cared where it was or what it was like; they just wanted the fuck off of Ft. Bragg. Among our party—Alyssa and Jeremy, David, Zach, Jon, Shane, Melissa, Tammie, Sara ... all of Charlie company. The last person to join our trip was SPC Luke Jayson.

"Ved?" Venia asked with a smile.

"Yes, ma'am?" I smiled, knowing she was concerned with the number of travelers.

"Are we having a party?"

"Don't you think we need one?" I asked, seriously.

"Definitely," she said.

I drove Venia's brand new Jeep Wrangler while she rode shotgun. Luke and Sara were riding in the back. Alyssa and Jeremy drove her new Nissan Altima with Jon and Shane. The rest rode in Dave's Volkswagen bus, which made me pretty jealous. I had an itch to smoke some chiba in that thing as it would transport me through time, back to the year 1966, when I wished I'd lived.

We stopped at the liquor store and bought ungodly amounts of booze. Cigarettes burned as we drove through the coolness of an early October evening. We laughed for the first time in what felt like years, partially from the alcohol we were consuming as we drove, and partially from simply being alive and free. No one spoke Ryan's name as we drove; we all, as sad as it sounds, wanted to forget about him, just for a few hours.

The pain of his death, and the unending number of people who'd approached me to say "I'm so sorry, Ved," had become too much to tolerate. Because I'd been there with him, I'd become the authority on how he died. Countless people, in order to deal with their own feelings, had been approaching me to ask me questions about Ryan's final moments.

Private Reed was dealing with a depression that few thought he'd ever recover from. He'd been transferred from the Sig to a desk job in an artillery unit, allowing him time to process. He hadn't been charged with anything, but he'd earned a stigma, one that would eventually cost him his life.

We went to Columbia, South Carolina, to rent our hotel. We didn't skimp; we stayed at the Hampton Inn. We rented five rooms, all side by side, and began to party at about nine Friday night. We rented the rooms for two nights, assured the hotel management that we were military personnel, and therefore we were responsible, telling them to not worry themselves about our partying.

The hotel clerk made the mistake of asking what the occasion was; Shane answered, "Celebrating the death of our two buddies, Jacob and Ryan, and celebrating our survival."

The clerk wanted to die from embarrassment.

I'd brought the pot along for the trip, but I never mentioned having it. People kept commenting that they were so surprised to see me out and about without smoking pot all throughout the day.

We were in Alyssa and Jeremy's room, mostly because they happened to get the one that was right in the middle of the five. We'd all come in and unpacked, and showered and dressed before making our way down the hall that eventually led to Jeremy and Alyssa's spot.

I was crashing with Luke and Venia in the farthest room to the east. We'd decided to figure out the sleeping arrangements later as nothing between Venia and I had been decided.

"You gonna roll one up, Ved, or what?" Martinez asked me.

"I know ... What's going on? You've been sober all day," Alyssa backed him.

"Yeah, you have! What the hell? I hadn't even noticed, but now that you mention it ..." Jon added.

"You guys seriously think I am a stoner, huh?" I laughed.

"Bro, you've never gone that long without toking before, ever!" Luke said, taking their side.

"That's absolute bullshit," I declared.

"So? What's up? Where is it?" Martinez asked.

"I didn't bring it."

"What?" Venia spun on me.

"Nope, didn't bring it." Of course, that was a lie. I had it, and I'd been hitting it every thirty minutes or so. I just didn't hit it in front of people. I needed them to think that they didn't have any options for what came next. "I brought this." I pulled something small out of my pocket and held it in the air for them to see.

"What is that? Visine?" Alyssa asked.

"Well ... it's in a Visine bottle.

"It's acid," Venia said, knowingly.

I looked at her and smiled, never prouder.

"What?" "Oh my God!" "No way! I'm not doing it!" These were the things that followed Venia's diagnosis.

"Dose me," Venia said, walking up to me and tilting her head back, opening her mouth.

I dropped two drops onto her tongue, wanting to kiss her, wanting to put my tongue down her throat as far as it would reach.

"Me too," Luke said.

"You see that guys? That's my boy!" I kissed Luke on the mouth.

He punched me in the gut. "Whoa, I don't know what's up with you and the fellas lately ... but I don't want to wake up with your dick in my mouth." Hysterics ensued.

"Fuck you, fag." I laughed and dosed him.

"All right, fuck it," Jon said.

Five minutes later, I'd dosed everyone in the room. The womenfolk had demanded that I only give them a half, but how do you do half of a droplet? I gave them one big one instead.

Venia dosed me.

Forty-five minutes later, we were all different people. The acid was strong, and before long, we needed to get out of the hotel. We all went for a walk. We hit bars, doing shots but unable to get drunk because the acid was too strong. Hootie and the Blowfish was playing at one of the bars. I remember seeing them in the back of an old, brick pub, but I didn't catch the name of the place. Nothing mattered, not the temporary distraction, the intense body high that sometimes made your limbs light and other times heavy, not the sexual tension between Venia and I ... nothing.

The acid had set me free of all my problems, like tearing a hole in time, pausing us in place, and allowing us to walk around behind the scenes, uninterrupted. We communicated both perfectly and with much trouble, we were both alone and accompanied, both happy and overwhelmingly sad. It was a different trip than any I'd experienced before; the journey inside yourself is only as good as what you find in there. I've never been afraid of myself, so I've never experienced a "bad trip," which is more Hollywood than real life. I know not to fight the drug; I take the drug and follow it, never pushing or pulling at it.

At about four, we came back to the hotel. Some of us were crashing, and others were not. Of course, with my ridiculous dosage, I was anything but sleepy, and for her size, Venia's dosage had been almost equal to mine. We were awake and antsy as one by one our group fizzled out.

Luke ended up staying with Sara and the other two chicks from Charlie Company. Shane and Jon had also disappeared at the same time as they did, leading Venia and I to believe that they too were in good company and not alone for the night.

In our room, we sat on the bed. Venia looked at me and asked me very cautiously, "Ved, how did you know that Reed had done it? Could you see it happening?"

With the acid in my mind, pictures were so much sharper, so much clearer. "Yeah, I watched it happen."

"Describe it to me?" she asked, sliding over, her hip bumping into mine.

I thought about it. I knew I needed to clear it, to release it before it poisoned me and gave me fucking cancer, so I just began retelling the story. This time, I didn't skip over anything, I didn't whitewash it, and I watched it happen again in HD, each grain of sand and each drop of mud, vividly exact.

I talked to her for forty-five minutes without stopping. She didn't ask questions; she just listened to me. Her eyes teared up when I described him, lying on his back, struggling to say something else to me ... one more thing.

When I was finished, I slumped over, laying my head on her fragile shoulder. Like flexing her bicep, she wrapped her arm around my head, holding it as she lay back, taking me with her.

On our backs we watched the fan spin, the acid playing tricks on our eyes as the blades became one and then a hundred and then one again.

"What will you do when your enlistment is up?" she asked me.

"Get out, try to be free, I guess."

"How? How will you try to be free?"

"I don't know, Ven. I'll find a way."

"Will you go back to Blythe?"

"No."

"Where will you live?"

"I have no idea; I don't even know where I want to live."

"You could come to California and stay with me."

I looked at her, her pink tank-top disheveled and sagging, revealing the tops of her breasts. "Maybe."

She followed my eyes, looking at her own breasts. "They're swollen."

I smiled, not knowing what that means.

"Do you like them?"

"Who?" I said, not knowing what we were discussing.

"Them." She nodded and looked at her breasts.

"I suppose. I don't know. I've only seen them twice."

"When did you see them twice?" She laughed, looking at me incredulously.

"Obviously, while you were changing in the Box. Remember?"

"Ooooh, yeah. That's right, almost forgot," she agreed.

She rolled onto her belly and turned so her face was pointing toward me. "Why did those people tell me that you'd try and fuck me? Like, why did they single you out like that?"

"Because I like women."

"No, people don't warn people about guys simply because they like women."

"Well, it was probably a combo between my reputation for sleeping with women, and no one wanting you to make the mistake with me, first."

"Mistake?"

"Oh, yeah. It's almost always a mistake, the next day anyway. They wake up and realize that I might not be Ward fucking Cleaver and decide the whole thing was a mistake."

She smiled, her fists on her chin, holding her chest off the mattress. "How many of them do you consider mistakes?"

"None."

"None? Really?"

"I don't think of sex as something that can be mistaken. I don't consider sex to be glue, the agent tasked with holding two people together. I think men have an appendage, and women have a hole ... It feels good when one fills the other, it makes people close, and if only for a moment, they are close. They share their secret passions, their naked bodies as close as possible, and they climax, spilling fluids into each other. Afterward they are left with an experience, a memory that cannot be fabricated. You have to fuck someone to know what they are like to fuck; you can't guess, and you can't write the romance, it has to be had. Once I have it, I always have it. A mistake would mean that after the sex happened, I didn't have the experience."

"I see. Does that explanation get you laid a lot?"

I smiled at her. "Yes."

"I bet it does."

"Venia, any time you make people think of something differently, they accredit you with the change. If they like the change, you're a prophet. If they hate it, you're a thief."

"What do you love about women?" she asked, walking closer to me on her elbows.

"Diversity. It's not that their being so diverse thrills me; it's the diversity I experience within myself because of what they present to me."

"Like what?"

"Well, let's use you as an example. That OK?"

She giggled. "Of course, but be gentle."

"I can imagine you naked; I can imagine your face as I slide into you, somewhat forcefully."

"Why would you want to be ... forceful with me?" she said in just above a whisper, stopping to breathe halfway through the question.

"You'd want me to be. You'd want to know that I was taking you, not that you were giving yourself to me."

"Oh, you think so, huh?" She giggled again.

"Yeah, I'm fairly certain."

"And what would I look like naked?"

"Brown and petite, well groomed, comfortable with your nakedness."

"Right about that ..." She granted me.

"You'd probably scratch at me as I worked you. You'd say things you might mean, but would later try and deny."

She chuckled a breathy chuckle, her heart rate increasing with each word I spoke. "Probably."

"I'd have to come inside of you; you'd want to feel it."

"Yeah, I do."

"Would." I laughed.

"Huh?"

"You would ..."

"Oh, right, we're talking hypotheticals here."

"Right."

"Ved, do you think I am pretty?"

"Yes."

"Really? No one thinks I'm pretty. I'm always described as cute, never pretty."

"Cute is a way of saying that you have a hot body and less attractive face or vice versa ..." I said, mostly because the acid was working as a fucking truth serum.

"Do you think I have a hot body? Since you can picture it naked, you should know."

"Yeah, you have a rockin' body."

"And a pretty face?"

I looked at her face, trying to figure out what was keeping it from being beautiful. It was her Asian eyes—they were big and bright green, making them not unattractive, but alarming. Once you looked at them long enough, the oddness of them disappeared and only the beauty remained, making her beautiful.

"Gorgeous."

"Do it," she said firmly.

"What?"

"Forcibly please."

"No. Not today."

"What? Why?" she asked, kneeling upright above me.

"It's better if we wait, Venia. Believe me."

"No! Why? Why wait?" She was getting excited.

"I don't want you to be another one. I don't want it to be like that. I've been through too much, too fucking much."

"I don't want to wait. I want you now." She removed her pink tank, revealing a black strapless bra underneath.

"No, seriously ... it'll be better if we—"

"Undress me," she said firmly.

"Venia ... you don't understand."

"I'm not going to undress for you, Ved Ludo. I want you to unwrap me." She pulled at my arms, trying to get me to sit upright.

I sat up, my back against the headboard and my legs spread and out straight. She lay down on her back, her face away from me, and slid her way toward me with her legs raised. When her butt bumped into my lap, she stopped. I held her legs with both hands, in front of me, spreading them and closing them. Her legs were hot and smooth. I spread them and looked down her shorts to a pair of black panties covering her naughty bits.

Her knees bent over my shoulders with her feet against my shoulder blades. She used her legs to pull me toward her, literally hanging on my shoulders as she pulled herself toward me, and me, toward her. Her ass was in my lap now, not even touching it, but so close. Her stomach and breasts were right there, between my outstretched legs. I could reach down and fondle her if I wanted to, or I could unsnap her shorts and pull them off effortlessly.

"Venia ..."

"Please?" she asked.

"Let me go down on you," I said quietly, half question, half statement.

"Please!"

She unsnapped her pants and did the zipper all in one smooth flawless motion. With her legs still wrapped around my shoulders, she thrust her hips up, putting her mound right in front of my face. I looked into her shorts, seeing the black panties again and wanting them, to eat them, to swallow them whole.

I slid my hands, palm up, under the back of her legs, cupping her ass in my hands. Once they were there, I slid them over the tops of her legs, my fingers on her pelvis, my thumb on the hot, wet spot below. I pushed them against her, pushing her underwear inside her.

She moaned a very descriptive and sensual moan. "Take them off of me."

"Shhhh. I got this. You're on my time now."

"OK." She resigned.

I dragged my thumb up, finding the little button I needed. I ran circles around it, lightly brushing the top of it while my other thumb plunged in, hooking around and up; her pelvic bone was between my buried thumb and my fingers on top. She bucked and pushed against me. If the noise were muted, and her movements were taken out of context, it would look like she was having a seizure; though in reference to what I was doing to her, she was moving in perfect rhythm.

I stopped what I was doing, pulling my wet thumb free of her. She looked at me helplessly, as if I might leave her in this state of fully aroused and not nearly satisfied. I tugged on the right side of her shorts and they came down six inches, revealing the black panties wrapping around her waist. Then I pulled the left side, and they came way down, and now the right side, and then they were free. I pulled them down her legs. She put weight on her back and lifted both legs off of my shoulders, wrapping one leg around the other and holding them straight up. When I slid them to her calves, she spread her legs for me, allowing the shorts to just come off and giving me a spectacular view of those black panties. I put her legs lower, her knees resting on my thighs and her calves and feet around my lower back. Her black bra contrasted the brown skin as she leaned to a side and unclasped it from behind.

Her hands moved to her sides, palms against the mattress, as I placed my hands against her panties; my thumbs were in the creases of her legs between her groin and her thighs. I pressed on those muscles with my thumbs sliding toward that spot. She ached for me to touch her again, to slide my thumb back inside of her again. She tried to force me, pushing against my fingers, but I'd simply pull them back, not giving her what she wanted.

I ran my hands over her belly button, over her hip flexors, and across the waistband of her panties. Without any warning, I tore the panties in half, freeing the hot flesh beneath them.

I lifted her legs back up, hooking her calves over my back. I slid my hands under the small of her back and began to curl her. Her legs flexed as she pulled herself up. She was now sitting completely upright on my shoulders, and my face was buried in her. I stood up beside the bed with Venia sitting on my shoulders and her hands were on the back of my head, pulling my face into her. She screamed bloody murder as I did that special thing; when she came, she squeezed my head with unmatched force, leaning back at a perpendicular angle, and her legs stretched out straight behind me. She was pushing and thrusting against my face.

When it was over, I held her, completely nude, in my arms. I lay her on the bed like a princess and licked her from her instep to her breasts.

"You can do anything you want to me, anything," said the once-abused little girl.

I kissed her on the lips, opening her mouth and feeling her tongue on mine.

When we woke up, at about 2:15 p.m., we made love. When we finished, we made love again. Then we ate lunch, went back to our room, and did it again. The entire time, I knew I was making a mistake, and that this shouldn't have happened; but, hell, here I was and it had already happened.

Other than the Genie fiasco, she'd been the only sex since Monica, and as I sat alone, staring into the hotel bathroom mirror, I missed Monica all over again. It was more painful now than ever, so I pushed her out of my mind using Venia as the plow.

That night, the group was all formed up again, so I produced the pot. We all smoked and watched movies, still burned out from the night before. No one wanted to get drunk, but getting high was just what the doctor ordered. I sat on the floor, legs spread while Venia sat between them, leaning back against me.

She reached into my pants and began to touch me in ways that make sitting in that position uncomfortable, so I slid my hand down her pants and did the same. After twenty minutes of this we left Alyssa's room, went to ours, and had wild animal-like sex again and again.

We dosed each other with acid, but only half as much as the night before. Tripping on acid again and locked away in our little room, we bathed together, shaved each other, massaged each other, and masturbated each other. Every time I came, she would gasp and climax. The power that she had to make me come so many times was incredible, and by the time Sunday afternoon came and we had to prepare to go back to Bragg, I was terrified to try and drive all the way back without needing to fuck her on the way.

Once back at the barracks, she went upstairs and I went to my room, all without owing her a single kiss. She was extremely cool, almost an identical match to my own sense of humor, and in my eyes, beautiful. I missed her instantly, and after lying in bed for an hour without her, I ran up to her room and got her, bringing her back to mine to sleep with me.

At 0330 hours, there was a faint knock at my door.

Venia woke up first, tapping me on the shoulder and pointing at the door. "Someone's out there."

I tossed the sheets off of me and saw Venia's naked body lying in my bed. She truly was beautiful to me now. It was the first time in my life that I wasn't superficial about a woman's looks; the first time I'd even cared enough to look inside. Now, I couldn't see her like everyone else did.

I opened the door to find Zach Finley standing there, looking frantic, as usual.

"It's late," I said.

"Yeah."

"What's up, Zach?"

"I'm leaving."

"Leaving what?"

"The Army."

"Wait. What?"

"I can't stay here anymore, man. I gotta go."

"Zach, you can't just go. You know what that would mean."

"You think I give a shit what it means? Every time I close my eyes, I have nightmares ... dead friends talking to me, man ... I'm fucked up, Ved. I gotta go."

"OK, just wait a second. I'll go with you in the morning and we can talk to Ricky—"

"Ricky fuckin' hates you, man. Don't you get it?"

"Nah. It's better now."

"No, you fucked his wife. He hates you."

"OK, anyway ..."

He leaned in and hugged me. "I'll be back, sooner or later."

"Zach ... it'll get better, bro. Don't fuck this up, man."

"Take care, Ved. I know you will."

Zach Finley walked down the hallway and disappeared out the door.

Zach left on Monday morning at 0400 hours. At 0615 hours, Private First Class Kenneth D. Reed was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in his car in the barracks parking lot at his new unit. His death was ruled a suicide quickly due to a note he'd written and left beside him in his car. It read: How could I kill Ryan and still deserve to live?

Three days after Reed's suicide, Luke came to see me. Things had been weird between us since Ryan's death, but I thought they were getting back to normal, that is until he showed up at my door on that Thursday afternoon.

"Hey, man," he said, coming in and closing the door carefully.

"What's up, man?"

"I just wanted to tell you, I need to tell you, I'm getting out."

"Of what?" I asked, nervous suddenly.

"Of the Army. My enlistment's over on the fifteenth."

"Of November?" I asked, feeling my heart speed up.

"Yeah, I was gonna re-up, but, you know, the Ryan thing ..."

"Of course, man. Of course, I get it," I said, getting it.

"I meant to tell you in Columbia, but just things got crazy ... ya know?"

"Yeah, no ... I mean, I understand, Luke."

"I hate to leave you here, Ved; things around here are fucked, man. Jacob, Ryan and now fuckin' Reed? Makes you wonder who's next."

"I don't give a fuck who's next. As long as it ain't you, bro. Get out of here, man. Go home, talk to Danielle, and work that shit out."

"Yeah, I'm gonna try." He looked away, noticing Venia in my bed for the first time. "Anyway, I have ten days, so we'll talk. Just wanted to let you know. I should have, a lot sooner than this, it's just ... things have been ..."

"No, you're right." I hugged him, a real man-hug, the kind that said things without having to. I was losing the second half of the only two real friends I'd ever had.

The next night, Luke and I went out, alone. We talked about all the funny shit that had happened and didn't discuss the bad things. Luke wasn't handling it well, though he was a hard case. By all appearances, he was perfectly normal, but to know Luke means knowing that what you see is not necessarily what you get.

It dawned on me that without Luke, I would have no one left. Jacob, Ryan, Zach, and now Luke were all gone, or going. I could still imagine going on after Ryan died, but with Luke's announcement, there was no more road stretched out in front of me. It looked like his leaving was the end.

We went driving, talking, and drinking beer, reliving the last two years together. Looking at him became painful and the loss was unbearable.

I knew that I would make new friends; Jon and Shane were still around, and it's not like I didn't have other friends, but imagining things with no Luke ... no sense of reality, no voice of reason.

Venia would have to do it; she'd have to become the one.

The night before Luke left for Spokane, we went out and got shitfaced. Arriving back at the barracks via cab, we stumbled into the barracks. Venia was standing in front of my bedroom door, watching us come down the hallway.

She wasn't happy, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why.

"Have fun?" she asked sympathetically.

"Yeah. Enough for the night." I tried to push past her to get to my door.

"It's not over."

"What's not over?"

"Goodnight!" Luke announced, obviously having repeated it a couple of times.

"Night," I replied absently.

"The fun. It's not over yet." She smiled.

"Oh ... Ven, I'm beat ..."

"Not me."

"Huh?" I asked, obviously lost.

"Monica Dillinger. She's waiting for you in your room."

I looked at Venia, trying to understand the cruelty of her joke, and then, it hit me. "Seriously?" My heart began to race.

"Yes. She's been waiting for an hour now. I found her in the hallway on my way to the dryers."

"Wait. Why?"

"I don't know, Ved. Maybe you should ask her. Call me when she leaves," she said matter-of-factly. It was as if Venia was proving to me that she was too proud to be jealous. She wasn't mad, or at least not that I could tell, but surely she couldn't be that understanding.

I opened my door after taking three long breaths, trying to control my emotions. I already felt like crying, even before I saw her again. Three months, it had been, since the last time I had touched her.

Monica Dillinger sat at my desk reading my poems, the one's I left on the top of my desk in order to edit them later. She wore a tight black V-neck T-shirt; of course, the perfect jeans; and flip-flops. Her hair had grown out a little, but not enough to suggest that she'd stopped shaving it when I left. It had to have been cut since then, but it was longer than I'd ever seen it.

She was stunning and terrifying. Her face tightened when I came in, and then she smiled. I knew the smile, and I knew it wasn't her real smile; it was her on-call smile, the one kept within arm's reach should she need it.

"Hi, Ved." Her voice was like cold water on a hot throat.

"Hey," I said and looked at her flip-flops. They were the ones I bought her, the time she stepped on a still-living jellyfish on the beach, when we'd gone to Kitty Hawk.

"Yeah, still got them. They're my favorites," she said, obviously catching my glances.

"Yeah. I see that," I said, feeling awkward. In all my dreams about reuniting with Monica, I never once saw it this way. We were awkward, uncomfortable with each other, and generally out of our element.

"Ved, what happened?"

"To what? Oh, Ryan?"

"Us."

I looked at her, searching for the joke; there had to be a joke. Now she wanted to know what happened? "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Us? Huh? You don't remember us?" she asked.

The emotion was back, the passion. She was like my old Monica again, passionate and passive-aggressive, and always believing the world is a friendly place. With her talking and acting like her real self again, I could see all the things about her that I'd longed for all these weeks. All the things about her that were always so alluring were now back, and I immediately wanted her back in my arms.

Venia? What about Venia? Where does she fit into this?

In order to prove how mature I was, I decided on, "How many guys did you fuck since me?" for my first question. That went over like a lead balloon.

"Just as many as I've fucked in the last three years. I wonder though, if I asked you that, would you be able to tell me the same thing? No, you couldn't. Right? Tell me I'm right."

"Right."

How many, Ved. Seven?" she guessed.

"Jesus, no! One, two ... one." I tried to look as convincingly confused as I could muster.

"Two ... right?"

"Why are you here?" I asked.

She wasn't ready to move on. "That girl, Venia ... she's one of them, huh?"

"Yes."

"I knew it. I fuckin' knew it. Lying girls ... They all lie to me ..." she said to no one. "I knew the minute I met her. She's your type."

"Maybe," I said, completely undecided on any emotion.

"I moved out of Eli's. I think they were ready to get back to normal. My drama wasn't helping their relationship."

"Drama, huh?"

"Yeah. You know, getting cheated on ..."

"Don't! Don't even fuckin' start," I said, stepping back from her.

"Oh? Mr. Honesty?" she chided me.

"I'm not defending myself; I'm not saying anything to you about that ... but I don't want to fuckin' hear it."

"Well, that must be nice."

"OK, what did you come here for again?" I'd had enough of this. I could feel myself falling again; the nightmares and dreams about her falling in love with someone else, returning. I didn't want complications. I didn't want anything. I wanted to be happy with Venia, and to find her beautiful, but Monica, she was my original beauty ... indefinable beauty, sexiness and sensuality, intellect and compassion ... Monica had been handmade by the gods, designed to fit me perfectly.

"I left Ricky; our divorce will be final in seventeen days."

"I'm sorry?" I asked, intentionally letting her know that I didn't know how I was supposed to respond to that news.

"Oh God, Ved. Save it. He hates you; he always will."

"That's not true. I think he forgives me—"

"Yeah right. I'm sure. He's like a little boy; he doesn't forgive."

"We had a moment, after Ryan ..." I realized we hadn't discussed Ryan yet.

"Poor Ryan. I'm so sorry, Ved. I heard about you ... staying with him."

I looked somewhere else.

Monica pulled a cigarette out of her purse. "You mind?"

"Not at all. Gotta spare?"

She handed me one and waited for me to light hers for her, just as she always had. I snapped my lighter out of my pocket and fired them up, the light of the flame accenting her immaculate beauty.

"Ved, I'm single. I don't care what happened that night. I know ... or ... I think I know what happened ... I remember what happened between us. I remember feeling things that I had never felt before ... I can't give it up. I need you, Ved, the way you used to need me. We were inseparable."

"You disappeared, Monica! You had fat-fuckin'-Chris fire me!"

"No, he did it before he even knew about you and me—"

"Bullshit, you were right there beside him when he fired me!"

"He'd already fired you by then!"

"So you were there?" I asked, thinking I'd heard an admission.

"Yeah, when you called him, I was, but he'd already done it!"

"Do you still work there?" I asked her.

"No. Why?"

"Because the first thing I'd want you to do is quit. I've had enough of that place."

"I quit like a week after you did ... or Chris fired you ... whatever. A week later, I was done."

"Monica ..."

"What, Ved?" she asked, turning to look at me. She was soft and nurturing again ... the way she used to be when I fell so hard for her.

"You have to go. We can talk later."

"I want to stay."

"No. You have to go. Please."

"OK, can we talk tomorrow?"

"Yeah, tomorrow's fine."

"Ved?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you love me? You asked me to marry you; does that offer still stand?" she asked evenly, her eyes locked on mine, looking for deceit.

"Yes, I love you. No, my offer expired."

She stepped toward me, testing the waters. I stepped back, and showed her the door, politely. "Oh, OK. Goodnight, Ved." She held the doorframe, curtseyed, and left.

Curtseys are so awesome. What a terrible thing to have done away with. There is something elegant and swan-like in a curtsey; the grace it can be made to have is unmatched by any other social gesture.

Damn, I love that girl.

Venia was at my door thirty seconds later. "So, what was that?"

"Drama."

"Good drama?"

"No."

"Wanna talk about it?"

I laughed. "No."

"Wanna do a line of coke off my ass?"

"Yes."

I woke up at one in the afternoon, terrified that Luke had left and I'd missed it. I jumped out of bed, noticing that Venia had disappeared somewhere, sometime while I was sleeping.

I put my hand to the bridge of my nose, feeling the stuffed appendage. My head hurt from dehydration due to being drunk, doing cocaine, and having wild sex. Only then did I remember that Monica had stopped by.

My heart ached for her and for Venia too. I liked them both so much. They were very similar personalities—both were givers, drug users, sexual women ... Both had brown hair, had muscular physiques, and loved me dearly. The difference between them was that Venia was not a threat to me; she would never leave me, while Monica had already proven that she could go on without me. Monica scared me, but, all in all, she was the one whom I was more attracted to. She was tall, older, more confident, and more nurturing. Venia was smart, sexy, and witty. She and I had never really fought, no matter how much time we spent together.

I walked to Luke's room where Jon and Shane were sitting on the bed watching him stuff shit into bags. "Thanks for waking me up, assholes," I said.

"Oh, I would have," Luke said, stopping his packing to give me a one handed hug.

"Fuck, man, this is really happening?"

"Afraid so. I'm a fuckin' civilian!" he hooted.

"You're a fuckin' Vet."

After he was packed, I told Jon and Shane to give us just a minute. I sat on his bed with him and produced a joint.

"One last time, brother." I tried to smile.

"Definitely." He took a deep breath, preparing for the emotions. "Hey, I know what song we should listen to." He stood and went to his roommate's CD player. He fucked around with it for a minute and then sat down as "Smile" by Pearl Jam played.

We smoked the joint and said all the preliminary stuff. We stood to actually say the words for the last time.

"Luke, he was OK. I saw his face. He went to someone he knew. He mouthed Mom."

His eyes flooded over. This was the first time we'd spoken of that day at the range. "Are you sure, Ved?"

"I swear, man. I saw him. He was OK. I told him to be brave, for the rest of us, and he let go."

"I tried to go over there, to get to you guys ..." Luke began to break down.

"Ah, it's OK, man. He knew. He could hear you; he knew what was up."

"Fuck, I was such a pussy, man. I don't know what happened; something turned off and I couldn't move."

"He was OK, Luke."

He looked at me for a long time, nodded once, and said, "OK."

We stood up, hugged one last time, and then I left. I walked out of his room and into mine, where I called Monica Dillinger using the phone number she'd left for me, sealed with a red kiss around the numbers.
Chapter 12

The Blood and The Wind

I awoke with chest pains, serious chest pains. I'd never experienced the pain of a heart attack prior to this, and let me just say, after that night, I took dying from a massive heart attack off of my list of acceptable ways to leave this earth.

It came on while I slept peacefully, dreaming of my friends Luke and Ryan, seeing them out on the dance floor at Marz, laughing as Ryan grinded himself against unsuspecting ladies. As they noticed him, they gave him that get-the-fuck-away-from-me look, making Luke laugh hysterically and Ryan shrug while he picked out his next dance partner. They were happy dreams; compensation my brain felt like it owed me for all I had suffered since Luke had left.

The dreams I was having, before the heart attack, were happily-sad dreams. Despite the joy of being back with those guys in the days before Jacob died, the sudden reality that I would have to leave them again made them tragic. I enjoyed watching them play out before me for as long as I could, even when I'd felt the first of the chest pains.

I shoved the pains back, initially, as they disturbed the internal feelings I was experiencing. Watching Luke and Ryan dancing was unlike the countless times I'd done it in real life. There were no other issues to balance, to tend with. Normally when I was sitting there watching them, I was employing the gift to understand what they were thinking, watching for signs from the bystanders in order to get a read on what was really happening.

Now I watched them without having to notice anything else. I saw the system that they used. Luke's smile worked as a shield rather than a sword. He was the reason that they didn't flip out when they found Ryan dry humping their asses. Luke was like a magnetic bar, spinning perpetually in the center of the floor, and everyone else were like finishing nails, slowly moving toward him. Unfortunately, before they could get to Luke, they had to dance through Ryan, and believe me when I tell you that they didn't want to have to dance through him.

I was laughing, relaxing, and watching when I noticed the pains. They started out mildly, enough that choosing to continue the dream was feasible, but within seconds of the first jolting pain, the severity of them had risen, sending Ryan and Luke into the past and myself into immediate concern.

It's only in those seconds that you really know where you stand with death. It is so easy to move through life, believing that you accept the inevitable, honestly thinking that you would be OK with your own death. When those seconds are your reality, they are sobering, indeed.

Light fades away in a predictable manner, allowing you the realization that you are going; you can anticipate the end and see it coming, making you extremely aware that you are leaving, and when. All your life you'd hoped for the time to prepare; the time to say you loved someone one last time before you go, but when you actually find yourself alone with those seconds, it's all pictures and no words.

I looked to my right, shooting up in the bed, clutching at my chest. I saw her outline under the thin sheets. I scanned the room, searching frantically for Tom Derrick, but he wasn't there. He was in Florida with his, as it turns out, real girlfriend, whom I finally met the day Luke left. I won't expand too much, but after I met her, I did understand why he always creeped good-looking chicks out.

I turned back to Monica, trying to calmly say her name, not wanting to scare her immediately, but to gently alert her to my plight. It was better to remain calm when issuing this sort of news for her future recollection of the events, in case I died in the bed beside her. I didn't want her memory of my last few seconds on earth to involve my screaming and crying in vain as I gasped for air ... I was strangely detached from the emotionality of it all as I tried to say it calmly.

"Monica?" Nothing happened. I couldn't breathe, so I couldn't talk. I panicked, trying to scream bloody murder this time. Fuck her and her recollections, I need help! "Monica!" Only a garbled, breathy moan escaped. I intentionally fell onto her, trying to wake her. It worked.

"Goddammit, Ved!"

She looked at me, and I was flashing the international sign of choking.

"Are you choking?" She sat up, panicking.

I pointed to my heart.

"Oh my God! Is it a heart attack?" she asked, looking frantically around the room as if there might be a defibrillator lying about.

I continued to motion that I was choking, but now she understood. She jumped from the bed and dialed 911. I heard her screaming frantically into the phone, leaving the poor operator with more questions than answers. It was like holding my breath for an eternity; every time I got to the point where I felt like I would die, there was suddenly a little more breath in me.

She hung up the phone, tossing the cordless across the room in frustration. She jumped back into my bed and screamed, "I'm gonna get help!"

I grabbed her arm and held it tightly. I wanted her to know what I knew, that I had seconds left, not minutes. I didn't want her to be running into the men's latrine, rounding up helpers, when I left this world behind.

"Ved, I gotta get Alyssa!" She tried to pull away, but I clamped down on her.

I shook my head slightly from one side to the other. At first she didn't catch the gesture, but the second time I did it, she did.

"What, Ved? You want me to lie here with you while you go unconscious?" she asked in a scream of terror.

She might not have liked it, but she stayed with me. My door was open and people were coming into my room from all over. There was a lot of motion, movement, and confusion. No one believed that I could possibly be having a heart attack at the age of twenty-one.

She slid me onto her lap somehow, holding me like she'd just pulled me from the water. It was touching, I thought, as the tunnel vision began to tighten.

I didn't have the time to get too heartfelt; the other side was closing in on me fast. The pain that had radiated from my chest into other extremities began to intensify. I imagined riding a roller coaster up the first hill, climbing steadily toward absolute agony, knowing that when I reached the maximum I could withstand and remain conscious, I would roll over the hill, gaining speed as I sped toward the afterlife.

Right before I died, the pain disappeared.

I could hear whispers more loudly than I could the people in my room, screaming. Somewhere near me, someone kept whispering that word ..."Congratulations."

The whispers were so loud; I could no longer hear Monica, but I could still see her crying and yelling at me. Tears were falling from her cheeks, landing on my face, but I couldn't feel the wetness of them; I could just hear them as they hit the skin of my cheek and jaw.

"Welcome, Shell," a voice said, replacing the whispers. It was a familiar voice, someone I knew ... I couldn't place it.

"Welcome to what? Hell? Am I going to Hell?" I asked, my voice seeming to work fine now.

As soon as I spoke to the voice, I saw Monica go into hysterics. She thinks I'm talking to her ... Ryan wasn't talking to me ...

"Hell?" the voice that still was sexless asked with a laugh. "No."

"So ... where?" I asked.

I was above Monica now, standing on my bed and looking down on the two of us. I was seeing the space differently than I'd ever seen it, as if it had extra dimensions that I couldn't see before this. I could hear her, screaming my name and wailing. I felt terribly sorry for her, but unemotionally. I knew on some level what she was experiencing—the sadness and void, the overwhelming take-your-breath-away kind of pain; not only the immediate pain, but the realization that what comes in the weeks and months to follow is far worse.

I wanted to tell her something, whisper it in her ear, but when I tried to, something restrained me.

"They are the blood; you are the wind," the voice told me.

I floated out of my room, just leaving them all there ... I walked down the hallway, past Ricky's office and out the door, leading to the Company Area. The ground I was standing on was perfectly proportionate to the way the area looked on Ft. Bragg, but it was different. There was nothing man-made anywhere on the property, nothing to identify it as the Sig training area. I looked behind me, and the building was gone completely, but the slight hill the barracks had sat upon remained.

"Ved, you made it through," Ryan said.

I turned around to see him, terrified. He'd startled the shit out of me.

He didn't look dead, which I must admit was the reason he'd startled me so badly. I didn't want to turn around and see a skull talking to me with fleshy morsels dangling off of the otherwise well-picked bones ... besides my dead friend being right behind me, and the shock that comes from simply that, I noticed he was wearing blue jeans that were pressed, leaving a crease line that went from his hip to the well kempt boots he was wearing.

"You iron your jeans?" I asked.

"No. Yes ... OK, not the way you think of it. You'll understand soon enough."

I looked at him, pressed jeans, Dr. Martens, and a blue Polo shirt. He looked nice; he actually looked really nice, healthy looking. Those last couple minutes of his life, when I'd been struggling to talk to him, he'd given me the impression that death was an ugly face, but apparently here, wherever here was, was a place where beauty returns.

"Ryan, where the fuck are we?" I asked, disappointed in death for being so confusing.

"We're nowhere, Ved. We're just."

"OK ... Socrates. What's next?"

"The choice."

"What? What choice?"

"You'll see, Ved. Be patient. Oh, and don't say fuck." He looked around as if to see who'd heard me.

"Don't say fuck? Are you kidding me? I thought you said we weren't in Hell?"

"And don't say Hell either." He looked at me seriously.

"I'm supposed to just stop saying words, cold turkey?"

"No, Ved, just decide you won't say it anymore, and you won't. It's different here."

"OK ..."

He laughed this time. "No, you certainly don't get it, but thanks for trying."

I said somewhat frustrated, "So what next? You gonna teach me which side of my plate the tiny spoon goes on?"

He didn't laugh.

I missed his old sense of humor. This new, pretty Ryan looked good, but felt empty in comparison.

"It depends. Do you want to choose now or see a few people first?"

"You mean choose whether to choose now or see people first?" I smiled, so impressed with my wit.

"Huh?" he asked.

"You asked if I wanted to choose or see people. That's a choice."

"Right, a choice to either see people you might have missed or go straight to the choice."

"So if I choose to ... Oh fuck it, let's go down memory lane."

He shook his head, disappointedly. "Ved, please. Enough of that word. It's a blood word, not a wind word. We'll go see someone, but I need you to control your language."

I nodded absently. "Fine."

We walked deeper into the field before us, the field that used to be a training area with chin-up bars and flagpoles; now it looked like farmland from the 1600s. As we walked across the lush field, it felt like the earth beneath my feet had never been walked on before. I felt the sunshine on my eyelids, but there was no heat that came from it. It was light, without heat.

I'd never loved the sunshine as a living being. I like when the sun is out and the day is sunny, but I've never enjoyed lying in the sun, or even worse, eating dinner in the sun on the patio of some restaurant. I don't like the sensation of being hot. I can handle the cold ... I like the cold, but the heat ... it's just not for me. The sunlight was clean; it was almost bluish in color. It was brighter than light I'd ever seen before, making it easier to see the way taking off scratched sunglasses does.

We'd only walked a few steps, when suddenly we were standing beside two women. They wore light colored dresses that looked like they'd been made out of hemp. I noticed the likeness, thinking where there is smoke, there is fire, happily anticipating my first heavenly blunt.

The shorter woman was wrapped in a cloudiness, which I know doesn't make much sense, but she sort of wore the cloud like a boa. Her hair was dark as I approached with Pretty Ryan, but when we stopped to chat for a second, her hair became the color of Hailey's, and her face was unmistakable.

She turned to me, looking at me more maternally than I felt necessary, and I missed the way she looked at me long ago, when her eyes were made of promises. I was crushed under the weight of my emotions for her; the first real emotions I'd experienced as a dead man. Too much time had gone by, or so it seemed. Her feelings for me, the way I remembered them, were gone, and now, she stood looking at me somewhat objectively.

"No, Ved, don't be silly. Of course I loved you. You were a dandy," she said, answering a question I hadn't asked.

Her eyes had white dots in the center of her pupils that looked more like light shining through her than from her.

"I missed you; I hurt for a long time," I tried to say.

"No, Ved ... here we don't explain. We just are."

"Yeah, everyone keeps saying that. Is that printed on a bumper sticker around here or something?"

She didn't laugh, missing the brilliance of my dry humor.

No matter what she looked like, it wasn't her.

"He's young," she said to Pretty Ryan.

"Yeah. He's a twelver."

She smiled at Pretty Ryan, looked to me, and then back to him. "That's not surprising."

"He's going to choose. Any wagers?" he asked Hailey.

It was like the two of them had known each other for all of eternity. As far as I'd known, they'd never met before, making this awkward and somewhat excluding.

Ryan nodded.

"You think so, too?" she asked, looking at me again in that motherly way.

He just nodded again.

"He's a lot of things, but not that," she said.

Being aware of the past and the present, while dead, is what makes the afterlife so confusing. If all my memories of being alive were simply gone, the way she looked and acted wouldn't have been so depressing. It was the fact that I could weigh her coldness now against the passionate nature of her former self, making what I was hearing and seeing now, seem unconcerned.

She looked like my Hailey, the one who had given herself to me in so many ways, but I just knew it wasn't really her. Maybe these were like the "reception battalion" staffers, taking the shape of things I knew in order to ease my mind a little. Had they come as Ryan's mother for him?

I was concerned that I would now remember her as the cold version, rather than the warm one, but if I were dead, why would I need to remember? It was confusing to be part of both places, and to be lost between the worlds. I'd missed her desperately at times, though I knew I had never mourned her the way she deserved. I should have grieved longer, harder ... She deserved it. If grief is like a standing ovation for the soul entering Heaven, I should have sent her to Heaven on a deafening roar, rather than a couple of claps and a whistle.

"Ved, can I talk to you for a minute?" she asked me.

I nodded, and suddenly it was her and me, standing in the drop zone that she'd died above. The sky was grey, the way it had been that day, the trees bare. A wind blew, her hemp dress clinging to her body. I looked at her body; the one I had so enjoyed when I was still good and clean, when there was still blood running through my veins that had been Shell's.

"There are things that you understand, things you have always understood, and that's what makes you something special. You inherited something important, something meant to be used, yet you cower away from the opportunities to use them. You called it a 'gift' when you were younger; now you don't call it by a name because you are equally afraid to call it a curse. It is neither, it just is."

I smiled intentionally, theatrically, politely.

"It's not a party gag, it's not a tool to obtain flesh, and it's not to make you think of yourself as a prophet. It's a path, a destiny. It's a guide. What it gives you isn't the results from what you understand; it gives you the process that it's putting you through. It was given trustingly to you because you were supposed to understand something by now, something you still don't.

"The things that have happened around you were set in motion to shape something better. What you know, you've stopped saying. What you don't know, you mistakenly repeat.

"You know what death is, Ved. You knew when you came to Pennsylvania, yet you came. You followed the path, listened to your gift, and for a while there, we thought you'd seen it.

"Now, as someone who gave you what you needed, let you feed off of me under the pretenses of forever, I ask you, will you ever trust yourself enough to know, for a fact, that you have a path?"

"Faith isn't invented," I said evenly.

"Faith is sought," she said.

"No, it's inspired," I argued.

She smiled. "Ved Ludo arguing with his dead girlfriend on the foundation of faith ... Who would have thought?"

"I don't know what to believe. I still don't."

"Believe then, in the differences."

"Whose differences? Mine?"

"Difference, as you know, is a double-edged sword. Translate the cosmic lessons for yourself. Rescue just a few and move fast. Life is predictably protective of life. Don't be afraid, Ved. You're armed."

"Yeah? With what?"

"Godspeed, my love," she said and was gone. The cloud she'd abandoned with her disappearance vanished a few seconds later.

I stood in a room that smelled of cigarettes, cologne, and wood. The wood, I quickly realized, was dark wood paneling, from an era long forgotten—the era of "the den." Pretty Ryan wasn't standing beside me; he was still absent, and with Hailey now gone, I felt alone.

I looked around, trying to remember if this room was imaginary, or if it was spawned by some memory I'd repressed as a child, but nothing came to mind. There were no pictures, no windows, just wooden walls and a tile floor. There were no lights in the room, yet it was bright. I listened carefully, hearing people somewhere beyond the walls.

The room wasn't big, maybe four hundred square feet, but being so void of furniture, décor, or even a window made it feel a little bigger than it really was. A moment later the walls began to float upward, pulling off of the floor and rising into the sky. I saw a woman's legs first as the walls rose. She was standing in what would have been the room next to me, until the walls disappeared, making her and me in the same room now. She looked at me as I looked at her. I was glad to see her there and eager to ask her what the **** was going on. I needed to know, to understand where I was; all I needed to know was, really, whether I was alive or dead.

As the walls disappeared completely, I understood what was going on. I was standing with thousands of people now, people who had been isolated in their own holding cells, and now we all stood in one massive room. I was among the people who had died that day. It was conclusive evidence that I was, in fact, dead.

We migrated from where we'd been standing toward the center of the white room. We were human beings following some instinct to try and protect ourselves by surrounding ourselves with other people and putting as much distance between ourselves and the edges of the room as possible.

We mingled in the center, talking quickly and passionately about what we guessed was happening. Most of the people wanted to talk about their deaths, describing horrific automobile accidents and airplane crashes—things that were definitively deadly. Even now, they wanted to talk about these things, to understand and relate to each other, despite the mortal battle between good and evil having been already waged. Their lives, our lives, had already been lived, and now it was time to find out what was next.

"All right, folks ... come on up; you in the back, come on up," a black man in a delivery uniform announced from behind a tiny pulpit. He gestured to the migrating mob of living dead. He had one of those cloud-boa things around his neck too that he wore like a shawl or something, making his features hard to distinguish from my vantage point.

"Man, you'd think that there was someone in a suit around here for this sort of event, huh?" the guy behind me joked.

"Or at least a judge," I said.

"Right? They send a highway worker?"

"Highway worker? You mean a delivery guy?"

"What?" He looked at me crazily.

"Never mind ... fu—" I caught myself.

The delivery man began to speak, "One at a time, you will be given a choice. The choices you receive will be based on the lives that you lived. You will simply have to make your decision. That's all there is to it."

A noise, like the rumbling of thunder, and then poof, I was standing back in the wood-paneled room. I turned, hearing something in the room, finding the delivery guy seated behind a desk that hadn't been there seconds ago.

"No waiting in lines?" I asked. "Man, you need to tell the military how to do that."

"Shell Ludo, I presume?" he asked me, holding a cigarette in his right hand.

"Yes, sir," I said, looking at him more carefully. I still couldn't identify features. The clouds were making his face a changing landscape.

"Are you ready to choose?" he asked.

"I guess. Is there something I need to know first?"

"The results from what you chose will be immediate. Other than that, I am under the assumption that you saw Hailey; is that correct?"

"Yeah, I did." I wondered how he knew my Hailey.

"OK. As your bleeder, she should have given you some advice. Did she?"

"Yeah, but not about—"

"Mr. Ludo, here is your decision to make." He looked sternly at me, articulating each syllable, presumably so he didn't have to repeat the question. I wondered if anyone had ever had the nerve to ask, "What?" after he'd done this. Probably.

"You have died, but you cannot stay here. This isn't a resting place; it's a transitional place. You are a twelve, which means we have twelve hours to process you and to get you where you are going."

I interrupted. "Where am I going?"

"You have to go back."

"Back where?"

"To life, to the bloods, to live and die. Think of your life as a foul ball, neither a hit nor a strike ... You have to start over again, from the beginning."

"I don't want to go back to the beginning. I'll just stay dead, if that's OK?"

"You haven't cycled enough, not nearly enough, Mr. Ludo."

"Cycled?"

"Look, Mr. Ludo, I can offer you a wealthy life, millions of dollars, and endless means."

"Oh yeah? I can go back and be born to the prince of some oil soaked country?"

"Indeed, just like that, but this life will bring you more sad days than happy ones."

"Wait, so I can go back and be rich, just not happy?"

"Yes, Mr. Ludo. You can go back and be filthy rich. You can struggle to be a good man, having anything you would like. The only cost is a short, sad life."

"OK ..." I said, wondering what the hook was.

"Or, you can be born into horrendous poverty and remain poor your entire life. There you will be happy, live long, and go completely unnoticed."

I considered this, ashamed at myself for stumbling over this question. A long, happy life, invisible; or a visible, depressed, exuberant existence? I didn't know what to say.

Though I knew I was alone in the room with the delivery man, I could sense someone was listening. It was as if I was being listened to, not seen.

When I'd made my decision, I announced it to the delivery guy. He didn't nod or sigh ... nothing.

"Is that the wrong one?" I asked.

"There isn't a wrong one," he said blankly as a wooden door rose up from the floor.

I stepped toward it, wanting to see it closer. It was ornately carved with symbols and numbers, and I wished I'd paid more attention when I read The Da Vinci Code. I looked at the carvings, trying to simply get a hint from them as to whether this was the "good door" or "bad door," but the fucking symbols meant nothing to me. Robert Langdon be damned.

"Mr. Ludo," the delivery guy said.

"Yes, sir?" I asked, nervous about stepping through the mysterious doorway.

"Some things have changed, some things have not. Isolate the eternal things from the living, listen to it ... for God's sake, they picked you."

He was gone, and so was the room. I was standing on white space with nothing behind me or in front of me except for one door. No voices, no smells ... just the door.

I opened it, straining to peer around it, but all I could see was darkness. I stepped back, allowing the door to fully open.

I stood, looking out the doorway. There was nothing but black, wind, and the flashing of a mysterious light off in the distance.

I exhaled, wishing I had a joint to smoke, and stepped through the door.
Chapter 13

Following Roads and Thoughts

"It was like I stepped out of an underwater palace or something, like I stepped out, but was weightless. I don't know. It was crazy ... I wasn't underwater, really; there was air. I mean ... I don't know. I swam straight up, seeing lights and scenes ... like movies of me in other roles, distorted like they were being held underwater. I don't know. I just swam ... up. When I broke through the surface, I was here, back in my bed. There you were. I just don't know how you got here." I looked at her.

"Ved, I understand. It's OK, just calm down. Relax a little bit."

"You still think it was the acid? I can see it in your face, goddamnit. I can see it!"

"That's not true. I think the acid was a part of it, but that's not what this is about. This is about something deeper, Ved. I know what you've been through, and I know that you've taken enough acid ... I just mean that I don't think that's what happened, not the acid thing, really."

I looked at her for a long time. I thought she was beautiful, always had really. Since the first time I'd slept with her, she'd been different from any of the others. Compounded by the absolute intellectual loneliness I now felt, her beauty was overwhelming me. We had been together for a long time now, eight months, which in my world of apparently "high drama," was an unusual amount of time. I found her charming, attentive, and more than simply intelligent, she was almost genius.

We'd been happy, really happy, hanging out on the weekends when we could, but, of course, with our busy work schedules, that wasn't always possible. Even when it wasn't, I behaved myself. It's not that I was completely opposed to cheating on her; I wasn't quite that noble. It was just that, when push came to shove, by simply observing the prospects, I'd calculated that I would only be disappointed by whomever I slept with. It was really that good, not just the sex, I mean, but all of it. We were happy and connected, if not in love. She understood me, and I understood her. She had a life of her own, which I might have struggled with a little bit initially, the first sign that I was developing real feelings for her, but also alerting me, sending me signs that I needed to pull it back a little.

Regardless of the past, I was happy with her. It was nice to be understood by someone who I knew, for a fact, loved me regardless of my reoccurring paranoia, sleeplessness, and general craziness that I was slipping into more and more often. She always reacted the same way—lovingly, patiently, and reassuringly. She knew I was beginning to slip, she knew what the deaths had done to me, but she respected my ways enough to never say a word about it.

When I struggled with addictions in the aftermath of Ryan and Reed, I went to the depths of my innards. These fucking pain pills and anti-everything shit I was taking were the hardest thing I'd ever had to break a connection with. While I was pale and sweating, waiting to breakdown again and take another Percocet, she waited. She sat quietly, neither telling me to continue my detox nor tossing me another pill. She would wait for me to speak the words; I would either ask for another or curse at the pain of needing ...

"Gem, I'm telling you, this wasn't a normal dream. This wasn't paranoia; this was a message."

"Ved, I understand and believe in dreams. I'm not accusing you, honey. I don't know what I can do for you, and that's what's worrying me."

"They were all there, Gem; they were all out there. I only saw Ryan and Hailey, but they were all out there, I could feel them all."

"You need anything?" she asked, neither continuing nor ending the conversation.

She rolled out of bed and walked across the floor beside me to the refrigerator, bending over to grab something. I looked at her ass as she rocked the door back and forth, trying to decide. It was flawless. It was, without a doubt, her best asset, not only in the eyes of the men she shook it for at night, but to herself. She was proud of her ass, making her the "white whale" of females. She was proud to show it off, she was unabashed when she walked across a room in her underwear, and the combination of perfection and confidence is intoxicating. Her legs were long, thick in the thighs, but narrow in the ankles and calves. She looked like a swimmer, like an Olympic swimmer, but with tattoos and a fake tan.

"Actually, I have some Vodka in the icebox," I said.

"In a glass?"

"No thanks, bottle's fine."

She got back into bed, facing me. Her breasts were pressed together by the angle, and her recently-colored red hair scattered about her pillow as she looked into my eyes, rubbing my head.

Something shocking struck me, just for an instant, something about Gemini, but it escaped through the exit door in my brain before I could catch it. I looked deeply at her, trying to recall it. It didn't return, but the sensation of chasing that thought felt somewhat scary to me, as if I knew I didn't really want to catch it. There was something about her, something that seemed different, I just couldn't place it.

"What's next?" she asked.

"I don't know yet. Say goodbye to a few people. Not many." I smiled despite the sickening feelings in my stomach, feelings of loss and heartbreak.

She looked away, blinking back tears.

"Gem, this isn't bullshit anymore. This isn't clouds taking shapes in the sky; these are messages. These are the signs, and I'm not going to ignore them forever. I already asked you, you couldn't do it. I accepted that; I put that down and left it alone ... I swallowed my own feelings in order to be understanding, but here we are again. If you could give it up and leave the dancing behind, you could come with me."

"And I have already told you, it's not the job, it's the life. I know you, Ved. I know what you are about; I know what you are ultimately seeking ... Me coming along for that isn't going to make it happen; it's going to happen anyway."

"I don't want to be anywhere without you, Gem."

"Is that why you dream of other women every fucking night? Is that why, on our last night together, you dreamt of Monica and woke up this morning shaking me and screaming, 'where is she'?"

"It's a dream. What am I supposed to do about them?"

"Nothing. Keep them to yourself, like everyone else in the fucking world, maybe?"

"I ... I just want to be with you, Gem. I always have. I've appreciated every moment we've spent together."

"And now ... with all your shit packed, you decide to tell me that?" She looked away and wiped her eyes. "I know you know I love you, Ved. I know you know it. You break me now? You crush me beneath your boot as you walk to the door? That's all there is? This is where we end, where we go back to being what we were born as?"

"I guess so. We just can't seem to figure this out. We could make a promise to try this again before either of us gets married ... something like that?"

"Are you fucking kidding me? If you leave here today and disappear on me, I will never ... no, you will never see me again; I promise you that. I love you, Shell. I love you for the man you are, not what you do, or what principle you do or don't follow ... I love you for being you in a place that I think is a challenge for you. I have always known what you were. I knew you the second you walked into my life on that bitch's arm. I can't do this now, anymore. If you're leaving, the me you remember is dead, dying. She won't ever be here again. I'll be cold."

"You wouldn't. I know you want to say that now, but you wouldn't."

She slapped me, hard. My eyes watered as I stared at her ceiling, trying to keep my composure and calm.

"Don't you fucking assume I'm lying. I mean it. Don't you fucking dare challenge me."

"I wouldn't." I looked at her, owing her that.

"Aren't you a dandy," she whispered.

"What? What did you say?" I shot up, looking into her face.

"What are you talk—"

"What did you say? What did you call me?"

"It wasn't a name, idiot. I wasn't insulting you."

"I know. What was it? Say it again."

"A dandy?"

"Yeah, a dandy. Where did that come from?"

"What do you mean where did—"

"Where did you get that? Why did you say that?"

"I don't know, Ved. Jesus, is this still the acid—"

"You've never called me a dandy before, so why now?"

"I don't know!" She was getting frustrated. There were other things that she thought we should be discussing.

"You say something you've never said to me before, now ... Tell me why you said that word!"

"I don't know why I said it, OK? It just came out. I didn't even mean to," she cried.

"Hailey said that to me in the dream. That exact thing." I rolled onto my back, trying to decipher the signs.

"A dandy? She called you a dandy?"

"Yeah."

When we had said our goodbyes, I left her apartment. I drove back to the barracks in her car, smelling her for the last time. We'd made promises to talk all the time, to try and get together when we could, all of which I knew to be "soothing the pain" kind of talk. It's the proverbial crutch, helping you limp along as you walk in different directions, just getting you by until the muscles of recovery and the memories of yesterday get buried beneath the comings and goings of today. Eventually the phone calls stop, the letters that smelled so pretty no longer haunt your mailbox, and the memories of her that were so clear and emotion-evoking become tattered and clouded, frosted by the cold of growing apart.

Regardless of futility, I carried the ideas of what she and I could have been; what wouldn't be, but might have been. I needed them to face the days ahead of me. I needed to carry in my back pocket the idea that someone loved me; someone knew me and understood my paranoia and delusional nature and still found me loveable. So I did.

Her smell was so sweet, so intriguing that I knew, even at that very second, every time I smelled it, whatever it was, I would always be transported through time and back into the arms of my Gemini. I looked forward to the day when I would be bored and safe, old and uninteresting, hopefully having discovered what perfume it was that she wore and purchase some. I would sit in the front window of my cottage, looking out on the mountains, and pull the bottle of Gemini out, spray it onto my neck, and inhale ... I wanted to go back to that first night we'd really hooked up, the one that came after the first time we'd slept together ... I'd want her to be on my lap, in a kitchen chair, riding me ... her neck so close to my nose, her smell so powerfully connected to the visual images before me ... What the youth waste, can keep the old and tired alive.

I had left Gemini's house and was on my way to see a few people to make false promises of returning, before I headed to Ft. Lewis, Washington, to party it up one last time.

It was so quiet ... Not just the barracks or the motor pool; the world in general had become quiet. There were so many whispers, so many people afraid to even pop their heads out from around the door, fearing the angel of death standing in the hallway waiting for them. The deaths had been horrible, but after Reed died, people started talking less and thinking more. It didn't last forever as we all healed at our own pace. I was among those who suffered the longest. I moved on, showed little signs of sorrow other than the silence that befell me, right before I began being somewhat reclusive. Now ... I missed their noise.

My remaining friends weren't like their predecessors. They were acquaintances; they were suitable fill-ins initially, but by the time it'd been a few weeks since Luke left, I was tired of having friends. I needed sleep. I needed Percocet and Xanax, Soma and Vicoden ... I needed Gemini to understand me, to baby me back to "normal," though she and I both knew that normal would mean the end of her and me. See, that's just it, she knew nursing me back to health would mean returning to my man-whoring ways, yet she did it anyway.

Zach had returned, but never really "returned" to the Zach that we'd known. He'd stayed gone for thirty-six days before showing back up at the barracks one night. He was demoted, Article 15'd, and turned loose to do whatever he'd been doing before his time AWOL. He and Jon, and sometimes Shane, would all hang out quite a bit, mostly leaving me alone where everyone knew I wanted to be. I heard them coming in late at night, drunk, and singing ... Sorrow still present in every sound. I'd listen to them as Gemini slept peacefully beside me, trying to hear what they were talking about, what they had done. It was almost terrifying, like I was hiding for my life from killers, killers that were once among my best friends. Every now and again, I'd think I heard Jacob or Ryan say something, usually in some weird point in the conversation where they would have spoken. I'd think I heard their voice, my head snapping to an alert, full-bodied listen, and then, nothing ... Just doors closing and noises disappearing from the hallway.

"It's not him, Ved," she'd whisper to me, rubbing my face lightly. She had become the one thing, the only thing, that remained steady in those days where the need for my pharmaceuticals became so important. I'd forgotten my own rules about containing them to that certain part of my life, not allowing them to spill over. So many times in my life there have been people whose noise I've missed only after realizing I hadn't heard it in a while. They pepper you with their fragrance, and then they blow away on the wind.

The devastation of breaking up my damn-near-perfect-for-the-last-eight-months relationship with Gemini, and actually approaching Ricky about transferring me far away, wasn't without its own set of obstacles. I'd never been west, but wanted desperately out of the east.

The way I came to want the west was through strange dreams and feelings, mostly involving dead people I once knew here on earth. I don't want to lose credibility in saying that, so I often say that sometimes I think that people ignore things that they should be paying attention to. Take that for what it's worth.

It started after Jacob's death. Images of him hanging like that, neck oddly askew and all, and suddenly snapping into perfect place, eyes opening, mouth opening and closing, but not articulating the voice I could hear. I'd speak to the dead Jacob, sometimes having long conversations with him, while his dead mouth just opened and closed like a fucking puppet, creeping me out the entire time. I'd ask him questions, questions I think only he would be able to answer, and, of course, he answered them perfectly every time.

The creepiness of Jacob's ghost was one day replaced by the easiness of Ryan in my dreams. I welcomed Ryan, who, other than an entry hole in the back of his head, looked pretty good. He was easy for me to talk to, and in many ways, he was a blend of my old therapist Mr. Larsen and his former, living and breathing, self. That concerned me a little in trying to separate the real from the unreal. I needed to believe that Ryan in my dreams was Ryan from my life; I needed to believe that this was something special, a connection from far away, planned and acted out just for me.

Maybe my descent into the delusional began the night I found Jacob hanging, or maybe it was the first time I spoke to the dead corpse in my dreams; regardless, I fucked up somewhere. I allowed these things into my head, things like the thought that I was talking to something else when really I was talking to myself. It's a dangerous place to put your brain because once it decides that it's OK to create entertainment, solutions, or even other lives, there's no stopping it.

When Hailey began appearing to me, she came like a white angel. She was surrounded in her shroud of light at first. She was a presence, not a physical being, which made her unique, even in dreams. That's the thing about the dead, they don't care about our quest to know ... They could tell us, but they don't care about it; it's irrelevant to them.

We are obviously missing something key about dying.

"Well, sir, I wanted to thank you for doing all of this. I'm sure you were broken up by the idea of sending me away." I smiled.

Ricky smiled too. "You don't have to send a Christmas present for a few years, Ludo."

"Thank you, sir."

"When are you leaving? Tonight?" he asked me, looking at me earnestly.

"Yeah, just gotta say goodbye to a few more people."

"You stay with Gem last night?" he asked.

"Yeah. You know ... one last time." Tears, to my surprise, came to my eyes. "I uh ... I just hope I'm doing the right thing, Ricky. Sometimes I have a hard time identifying it among the other options." I smiled.

"You'll be OK, Ved. I promise you. A new unit, a new start ... Everyone is looking for a Ved. Everyone needs you around, on one level or another. I've always envied your being cool, envied the way you drew people in. These last months though, I haven't seen that from you ..."

"Yeah, anyway, I just wanted to say thank you and goodbye."

He stood, walked around his desk, standing right in front of me, and said, "You will always be OK, Ved. When the shit hits the fan, try to get back to what you really are. It's your differences that make you magnetic; when you cover them up with this woman or that, they don't pull as hard."

"Thank you, sir. I think that's an extraordinary compliment." I dropped my hand, abandoning the salute, and hugged the man.

He resisted the hug for a second and then embraced me. I felt like I was hugging my father for the first time, or the last time ... The rocky road behind us, and the future before.

I'd hurt now; I'd be alone now on my own terms. I'd asked to be moved; I'd invited this chaos and uncertainty. What people needed to see from me was the courage I had to face it. All your life you are building a memory, a legacy. All the while, you wonder what people are remembering about you. Did they notice this or did they see me do that ... This particular event was a time when I knew I was being observed, so I fucking lied to all of them.

"I'm headed home for a week or so, and then I'm gonna come back through Fayetteville to party with my ... Well, some of the guys want me to get drunk with them. I'll come see you, Ricky."

I'd been the voice preaching that time would eventually heal us. I'd been the one telling the sullen survivors that they would be OK in time, and that there was a "brighter day ahead," and all that horseshit. The truth was I was taking my "therapy" by the handful, swallowing them with water and awaiting their merciful effects while the rest of my barrack-mates did it the old fashioned way. Fuck, who knows, maybe mine was the old fashioned way.

Anyway, while they began to heal through general sobriety and group empathy, I was medicating. The medication made me duller, but despite my admitted external dullness, I became quite enlightened on the interior. The things I began to understand about my life, my ways of doing things, began to give me hope that I was a survivor. At first maybe I didn't know what that meant, but in the weeks and months to follow, I began to prefer the enlightened state, the reclusive-and-high-on-god-knows-what state of being, to the group's company.

Before long, I let go of the people in the barracks, not reaching out to any of them, and without me there to catch their lines when they tossed them to me, they drifted away from me on the current of being twenty-something and single. I fell deeper into Gemini.

"Yeah, do that," Ricky said.

"Yeah, definitely, sir." I stepped back and felt behind me for the handle to his door.

I went to leave and he called out, "Ved?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Do you want me to tell Monica anything? I know you haven't spoken to her. If you want me to, you know ... I will. She doesn't know you're leaving. I uh ... I never told her. Forgive me for that one."

"Of course. I understand."

"I will give her the message, Ved. Whatever it is." He looked at me seriously.

"I know you would, sir. You're a good man, Ricky. Just tell her to tell her ex-husband how sorry I am that I betrayed him. Tell him I know what a fuck-up I am."

He nodded.

David Moses dropped me off at the Fayetteville Amtrak station, where we said our goodbyes under somewhat stressful conditions. All of my earthly possessions were nestled into two medium-size duffle bags—one that had my name and social stenciled on the side, and one that I had stenciled Corduroy on to, after the most meaningful song I had ever discovered.

I struggled to get them out of the trunk of his Honda Civic hatchback as Dave assisted from within the car. Finally, we freed them with only three minutes remaining until my train departed, and we hastily said goodbye. Of course, I fed him the same bullshit about coming back in a week or two before I drove out to Ft. Lewis on the opposite coast.

I ran to the station, boarded the train bound for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and found my seat. I had a leather bag that contained everything I would need on the train for the twenty-seven hour ride to Harrisburg.

I relaxed, opened my bag, and pulled out my Discman. I put the Pearl Jam album No Code in and pressed play. I didn't think about the Sig at all, or the people in it. I closed my eyes and relaxed my brain as the train began to inch its way out of the station. I pulled a flask from my pocket, dumped a few swallows of the brown liquid onto my tongue, gagged as I swallowed it, cursing the whiskey, and closed my eyes.

"Would you like something to drink?" I heard a woman's voice asking me as I awoke from a deep sleep.

"Yes, please," I said, sitting up, alarmed.

A pretty woman sitting across from me was smiling at me. "I think she was asking them." She pointed over my head and behind me.

I turned to see a woman in a black pantsuit talking to her husband. "Yeah. Thanks," I said, sitting up in my seat.

"You were really out cold. You were snoring." She giggled.

"Yeah, I've heard from time to time, I do that."

"Oh, you do."

I smiled. She was attractive, and at least ten years my senior, making her older than thirty-one. She dressed like she might be a banker or a real estate agent ... I mean, she dressed like she'd been to college. Her hair was long, dark, and curly; her eyes were an electric green. She was attractive and maybe younger than she looked. A smoker, I guessed. I really need to quit smoking those fucking things.

"Where you getting off?" she asked.

"I'm going to Pennsylvania."

"Linda McKenner," she announced with a thrust out hand.

"Pleasure, Linda. Ved Ludo." We shook.

"Ved, huh?"

"That's correct."

"What's that short for?"

"Shell."

"Shell? Is that your real name?"

"Yes."

"I like it. I really like it."

"Thanks. I'll tell my mom when I send her a copy of my official name change." I smiled.

"No, you wouldn't do that to your mother. You're too nice of a guy. Army, right?"

"Airborne," I specified.

"Ah, right."

"Yeah, we don't like to be called Army."

"Point taken, sailor." She smiled.

I laughed out loud, thinking that was really funny. Linda wasn't only mildly attractive, she was also witty. Funny, witty ... These were words I was going to use to describe Linda to you, but in the hours that passed after our initial introduction, words like, giving, daring, limber, and noisy seem more appropriate.

We bumped into each other in the bathroom, often, in the hours that followed. Linda wasn't a banker, she was a bar owner, and what I politely refer to as, "not unversed in the practice of lovemaking."

When I stepped off the train in Harrisburg and saw my mother and Dave standing on the landing, I was happy to be home for a month before my transfer. I was also in desperate need of a shower and a muscle relaxer. I had plenty of weed with me. That was one of the reasons I wanted to take the train rather than fly in the first place. It's easy to smuggle some pot onto a train, even to smoke it on a train, but I wasn't about to give it a shot on an airliner.

The other reason I wanted to ride the rails was that trains are way fucking cooler than planes. Yeah, I know, the speed's not the same, but fuck it, life is short; I intend to enjoy the ride.

Seeing my mother and Dave standing there, I felt too many different things to understand them all. I wasn't disappointed to find them arm in arm on the platform waiting for me, but I was immediately depressed. I knew before I even stepped off the train that I didn't belong here, and I should have known before arriving that I would feel this way, but for some reason, it didn't strike me until I saw them standing arm in arm.

My mother's eyes looked like they always had—soft, sympathetic and understanding. But the rest of her looked older than I'd remembered her looking. It hadn't been too long, a couple of years, since the last time I'd seen her, but now, looking at her, it felt longer.

I stepped off the train and walked to them, awaiting the hugs and tears. Just as I was about to them, a voice from the train said, "Thanks, Ved. I didn't know trains could be so much fun."

I didn't even turn around and look at her, but I saw my parents look at her, wondering what could have been so much fun on the train. I'm sure that fucking a stranger was the last thing they assumed she meant, but that was it indeed. I did somehow know for a fact, however, that wasn't the first time Linda McKenner fucked someone in the bathroom of car nine.

We hugged and cried together, right there on the landing by the trains. My mother, who'd met Ryan twice, was devastated after his death, for my sake mostly. Despite the massive distance I kept between us, she could feel the effects of his death in my behavior. I always tried to act happier when she called than I really felt, but my mom was sharp, and she knew.

Standing on the deck of the station hugging my mother, the one who brought me into the world, I released it all. I wept for all of them. I wept for myself, for the people, and for the place I'd just left behind. The home on Ft. Bragg, which had always felt so inescapable, now felt like the house in Blythe. I just cried against my mother for a long time, not saying anything about the life I'd been living. I didn't want to offend or hurt her; I wanted to protect her from the evils of her son, to save her the knowledge of what her son really was.

"Did you say goodbye to everyone?" she asked me.

"Yeah."

"Good boy, son. They needed to hear it from you."

"Yeah."

"Why wouldn't he have said goodbye?" Dave asked.

"He did Dave. He said goodbye. He just didn't know if he wanted to at first," she defended me.

"What, just leave without saying goodbye? Why would he want to do that?"

"Because it's easier, Dave," I spoke.

"I understand, San," he said, referencing his special nickname for me.

My mother's new house was in a neighborhood that bordered the Christian camp that Dave ran. After she'd sold the Blythe house, they'd bought the new one in order to do something with the money, but they never lived in it. They already had the cottage on Morgan Lake Bible Conference Center property to live in.

The new house was rented out to missionaries who were at Morgan for the summer. It had an in-ground pool in the yard that the staff from MLBCC used for swimming when there were no camps running, but other than that, I never even saw the inside of the place.

The cottage was exactly that, but bigger than what first pops into your head when you hear that word. It was a two story, seventeen hundred square foot home that sat directly above the beach access road. All day long, people were walking by the cottage on their way to or from the beach, making it the perfect place for my mother to sit on the porch and talk to passers-by.

Dave's father, who had been a pioneer at MLBCC, like Dave, built the place starting in the 1940s and completing it in the 1970s. For over thirty years, it had been "under construction" and even completed, it always looked to be under construction. Dave's father relied on scraps and donations for materials, making the house look quilt-like with its mismatched wallpaper and sheetrock.

The cottage is one of those places that instantly give me fond memories, a place where smells seem almost more important than the sights that accompany them. Morgan Lake is a beautiful lake, and the summer camps that go on there were among the best times of my life.

After stopping at Freddy's in Morgan, an Italian place that was reserved for the best of occasions, I settled back into what was once my room in the cabin. Pictures of Jesus that varied in likenesses were hanging on every wall. My old bunk bed still connected the top bunk to the bottom by use of AA batteries, the same exact batteries I'd used in 1992. I looked around, closing my eyes to smell the place, transporting me back five years to a time when I thought I could be a good Christian, a time when I thought that the people surrounding me were genuine friends. Funny how things change.

I looked out the window, watching all the Family Campers wandering to the waterfront and back. Family Camp was a ten-day stretch at the beginning of every summer when entire families can come to Morgan together. There are tent sites to be rented, permanent cabins like ours, RV parking, and even a couple of "hotels" which are really just big bunkhouses. It's a fun time to be at camp with kid's programs designed for kindergarten through senior high and adult services and study groups. There's something for everyone.

When I was a kid, I loved Family Camp. It was my favorite of all the camps, not just because there was so much fun to be had, but I had the entire summer to look forward to.

It wasn't until later on that camp seemed to get political, and with Christian politics came eyes that watched me very closely. When someone wanted Dave's job, it wasn't enough for Dave to live a good clean life. The eyes began to watch me, knowing that I would surely give them the ammunition they needed to accuse Dave of "not having his house in order." I rarely failed to provide them with the ammunition they needed, and it never took them long to accuse Dave of things that were my fault, but Dave never said a word to me about it. He always saw the good in me. He refused to be bullied into thinking otherwise.

The easiest issue for the political minded to attack was my lusting for women.

I'd hit puberty so late that by the time it finally came strolling along, I was already sexually frustrated. I was fixated on girls, always girls ... They were all I could think about, and all I wanted to imagine. When girls were in the area, they were all I could focus on. I know, you think young boy... late bloomer, loves girls ... all makes sense, but this went beyond what the rest of my friends felt for women. They too were pubescent boys, forging the river of hormones and trying to cross over to adulthood, but they were better at controlling their desires than I was.

I remember a time when we were talking about how far we would be willing to go with a girl, should the opportunity arise. It was a conversation between me and my buddy John, and his two brothers, Mike and Tom. We were all under the influence of Jesus, having been at camp for a while already that summer, drinking the "Kool-Aid" so to speak, and feeling pretty connected with God. (Which, if you have never experienced it, is a drug that should be had at some point.)

We were trying to set moral limitations on how far we would go with this or that. Our limitations varied greatly from person to person, leading me to believe that right and wrong were not so easily defined, and wonder what the fuck was wrong with my buddies. They wouldn't sleep with a girl if she offered it? Why was I so morally corrupt, and they so devout?

I knew that I would pull the trigger with a girl if it were offered to me. I didn't have the strength to resist the pull of a woman's body, nor did I want to. I wanted to indulge.

I answered carefully, not wanting to be ousted from the group for thinking immoral thoughts, and honestly, my loathing of the "holy" started there. Making compromises in order to satisfy the theological requirements of my "friends" was too much for me, and even as I answered somewhat neutrally, I wanted to rip their hearts out and call them liars.

When Heidi Hunter touched my dick for the first time, my first time ever having someone else's hand on my dick, I knew I was in trouble. The millions of tiny nerve endings that sent sensations of euphoria through my body were now encouraging this sort of behavior despite whatever stuffy by-laws my friends were adhering to. When she put my dick in her mouth for the first time, it was all but over for me.

Touch was a very powerful sense for me. Feeling women's skin beneath my fingers was divine. When I touched women, they loved me. When I begged God to help me, He ignored me.

I realized then that people believe what they believe, and there is nothing you can do to change them once they are decided. I was so different. I wanted a tragedy from life while they all wanted a comedy. I wanted a Pearl Jam song, while they listened to Michael W. Smith.

When I'd touched my first breast, I was already a master at touching. I controlled them, wanting to touch and be touched, but being late to the puberty party required me to touch them without allowing them to touch me ... I had to be giving, touching them with everything I had, and allowing them to feel what I can do without once asking them to return the favor. Nothing tortures a man like touching without being touched. The one thing I needed most, to have someone's hand on my skin, affirming my very existence, was not available to me as an option. So I became a giver.

My fascination with women spawned a need for them, and any addiction is only as good as your ability to supply it. Foolishly admiring the things you want, knowing you'll never have them, was not my style. I needed to find a way to get what I wanted, and what I wanted was women.

I began a makeover of myself, inventing Shell's cool brother, the one who came to camp but was never seen again until the next summer. I'd return to school after the summer and feel the prison bars close in on me as my reputation for dorkiness locked me away with whomever they'd already decided I was. On the flip side, after a year of being imprisoned by a reputation, I was ready to spread my wings. I needed to get out of Blythe, away from my family and my "friends," and be who they wouldn't let me be in high school. I invented Ved then.

He wasn't named then, he just was. Only I knew the difference, and normally that meant being some sort of hybrid during talks with the family or people who knew both of me. I couldn't wait to get away to the Army for that reason: to reinvent.

The "gift" that may or may not be imaginary, came about in my eleventh grade year. Something triggered a reaction in me; maybe it was similar to when really fat people wake up one day and decide they are going to go on a diet, then they lose three hundred pounds ... I just woke up one day, tired of myself, and decided I needed to do a teardown and re-assembly of my psyche.

I was emotionally disturbed, but through years of therapy and drug usage, I got a handle on all of that. I wanted to be normal. No, I wanted to be better than that; I wanted to be psychic.

I diagnosed myself as I spent time alone, tripping on acid and eating mushrooms. I followed the craziest of thoughts to their completion, to the place where thoughts end.

In the back of your brain, there is a dark garage. You can pull into that garage, riding on the thought that took you there, and separate yourself from your body. Once settled into the garage, your body is available to be deconstructed. Like a mechanic taking apart a car and reassembling it in order to know that it has been gone-over entirely, I looked at myself. I took pieces of my father and mother, and Nic and Kelly, and built a hybrid. I re-learned how to react to things and what gestures and body signs mean. Sarcasm was a shield, wit was a sword, and with the right balance of them, I could not be hurt. I relearned everything there was to know about being sixteen and in high school, and applied it. Guess what? I became the smartest man alive!

My reputation as the King of Dorkdom in ninth and tenth grade fell away from me in my junior year, revealing an underdeveloped philosopher who no one understood. You know what a misunderstood philosopher is referred to as? Oddly unique, which is a fuck-ton better than crybaby freak.

In obscurity, there is freedom; in popularity, there are rules; in misunderstood; there is infinite space. I found my way to where I needed to be—on the sidelines, but at the game.

My technique with women got good, too good. The Christian camp thing was just a bad idea when touching girls is what you live for. Now, I don't want to be misunderstood, I didn't pursue them and molest them. I'd mind-fuck them, ignoring them largely, and wait for them to come to me. I'd exploit their personal drama, listen for clues as to what they wanted in a guy ... and then become it.

When we started to kiss, I wouldn't move my hands at all. I'd wait for her to gesture toward it, and then do it. It was consensual, and there was no ill will. When I'd begin to touch them, I'd go easy ... before seeking that place where stopping was no longer a possibility. Of course, I was not prepared to have sex; with a tiny, bald dick, it couldn't go any further than me touching them.

After they'd been fingered and rubbed down, they would return to their friends, and suddenly the guilt that comes from a Christian atmosphere would bear down upon them, making them feel the guilt of sin ... Before long, they'd regret the time they spent with me and consider me a bad seed. One by one, this is what happened ... hundreds of times, until finally, now, standing in the window looking at these familiar faces passing by, I could say, "Hates me. Fingered her. Hates me," endlessly.

There they all were, all my former friends, years later, still friends with each other. Now they were no longer campers or counselors; they were youth pastors, there with their youth group ... and I'd just fucked some slut on the train.

With Jesus as an influence, good people do crazy things. There is something about Jesus being obscure that makes everyone think they can mold their own little Jesus into anything they want him to be. There is no concrete Jesus here to keep people on the same path about right and wrong; there are a million versions of Jesus, all allowing more than the other.

I was ashamed. I guess I can't blame them for hating me.

I went downstairs and had afternoon coffee with my mother, wanting badly to wash Linda McKenner off of my dick. I thought about Linda while my mother made small talk and brought me up to speed about who she'd seen so far at Family Camp.

I thought, while my mother rambled on and on, that Linda had been good sex, and strange sex in that it was so foul, so disconnected. I mean, I was no saint, obviously; I'd had my share of one-nighters, but something about this last one shook me.

Gemini ... I missed her, and as my mother continued on, I wanted to cry. That was the source of the guilt; less than six hours after leaving her, I'd cheated. We weren't still together, well, I suppose we were, but we knew the move was the end.

I began to get uncomfortable with my location. I began to wonder why I'd come here, and why I'd chosen to come to a place full of people who hate me ...

With Mom in front of me, all I could think was how much I had cheapened my life by experiencing so much, so fast. My mother's life was happy and full of surprises; it was simple and relationship-based. Mine was dark and deadly, exposed and raw. She was happy; she had her husband and her camp, her cats and her friends. All I had for happiness was the happiness I felt for her as I watched her from across the table.

I sipped my coffee, realizing that it was 3 p.m. I knew that she wanted to go to the afternoon service that started in thirty minutes.

"You gonna go to the Tab?"

"Yeah, I'll get over there. I wanted to have a cup of coffee with my only son for a minute."

We drank coffee while people walked by the cabin on their way to the services. I watched the people walking like cranes, stepping from smooth rock to smooth rock, barefoot.

Why did mine have to be the life that was so confusing, so difficult? Well, anyway, that's the kind of shit you think when you're twenty-one and alone, lonely and isolated.

On my third day home, I caught a ride with my sister from Morgan to Castle Park to see my father. I'd called ahead to let him know I was coming, so when I got there, they were ready to take me out on the boat. We talked for a minute in the driveway before my sister bolted, leaving me there with Dad and Janet.

The rest of that day was spent riding the river, drinking Southern Comfort and 7UP, and telling stories about the Army. The more I drank, the more I enjoyed myself, and I could tell that my father was both happy and relieved to see such a happy version of me.

He announced that he wanted to get me a car. He said that he and Janet had talked about it, and they would buy me one, allowing me to make payments to them, and saving me the interest a bank would charge. I was ecstatic about having my own car and being able to make the drive across the country myself.

It was then that the first thought of escaping occurred to me. I needed to get out of Castle Park and Morgan; I needed to get to somewhere that I felt peaceful about.

The next day, Dad and I went to Harrisburg to look at a Honda Accord that we'd seen for sale in the paper. I loved the car immediately. Dad bought it right then and there.

We stopped at Garcia's on our way home from Harrisburg and ate chimichangas like we always did at Christmas.

The day after I arrived there, I left his house in my new five-year-old car. I was sure that I needed to get out of Pennsylvania. Being home was so weird. Everything and everyone had changed so drastically that I hardly recognized the place, let alone saw it as home. I needed to get back to where I belonged, but where was that exactly? I didn't belong anywhere.

I'd been happy at Bragg, but the place smelled like death in my memory. Going back there wasn't what I was after, but where was I to go? It was isolating to realize that there I was, in my new car, somewhere on the road without a place that feels like I belong in it. I'd never been this isolated before; this was the loneliest I'd ever imagined possible.

I drove back to the camp, listening to music and smoking pot, considering all the things I should be doing with this vacation that I wasn't. I should just drive; I should just follow roads and thoughts to their very ends.

By the time I arrived at my mother's cabin, three hours later, I had decided. I'd decided on leaving, but I just hadn't decided where I was going to go. I knew it would be heartbreaking for her, and I didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I considered what I should and shouldn't say.

Before I'd left his house, I told my dad that I wouldn't be staying in Pennsylvania for more than two more days. I told him the truth, that I just needed to go, anywhere. I explained to him that I didn't belong here anymore, and between his looking over his shoulder for his wife, he said he understood. Watching him look around for her before he'd speak was tragic. He was like a prisoner who is afraid the guard is walking by. He'd not argued with me when I'd said that time had moved on, and people had moved on without me, somehow admitting that he'd done so, either intentionally or otherwise.

I knew he had; it wasn't news to me, but still the sting of hearing that, not in what he said, but in what he didn't say, was tough. I'd called it right even if it hurt to do so. I'd understood him the way I would always understand him from then on, and again, he broke my heart.

Before I drove away, he told me that he loved me and was proud of me. I sped off before I cried, not wanting him to see the impact that his lies still had on me.

"Mom, I think I'm going to head out tomorrow."

"OK, where you goin'?"

"I don't know yet, Fayetteville maybe."

"Wait, Fayetteville? You're leaving, leaving? Like, that's it, you're gone for good?"

"Well ... no ... I hope not for good, just for now." I tried to smile and ease the building tension.

She wasn't having any tension relieving smiles. "You've been home for five days, and now you are going again? For how long, Shell? Until you get more leave next year?"

"Mom, it's not you ... It's just this place. Everyone here hates me, in case you didn't know that; they've always hated me, but now it's worse. I have to go somewhere that feels good to me. I've been through too much in the last few years to do this anymore."

She put her head down, like she was staring at her feet, and began to sob. I didn't hear her crying at first, I just saw her pulsating shakes. I stepped to her and wrapped my arms around her while she surrendered, collapsing against me.

I hugged her for the boy she lost four years ago; I hugged her for the man I would never be, the one she wanted so badly, the one she deserved. I hugged her for the house in Blythe and for the hurt she'd endured from my father. I hugged her because I loved her, and I knew that she loved me. I hugged her because it could have been the last time in a long time, or even for all time.

"I love you, son. You are so special to God. You have such a clear path. You're a special son."

"I love you too, Mom. I'm sorry. I'm just so ... lost or something."

"I know you are, Shell. You'll find your way."

The next morning, I left before the Family Campers awoke. I poured a thermos of hot coffee down my throat, popped a few caffeine pills, smoked a bowl, and ate an entire strip of Fig Newtons. About thirty-five minutes later, I stopped at a Big Boy's service center to take the worst shit of my life. I finished in the bathroom and came out into the food court, covered in sweat and still pale from the near death experience I'd just survived.

I decided on a bottle of milk, some Imodium A-D, and a banana as a remedying concoction and went to the counter to pay for it. Behind the counter was a man who could have been Osama Bin Laden, but in those days, no one knew that name. He had a long beard, a turban, and some sort of overcoat, but spoke in perfect English.

"That it for you, buddy?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Nine dollars and sixty-eight cents."

I handed him a ten.

"Where you headed?" he asked.

Surprised by the question, I looked at him. "South. Not sure where."

"Oh, OK." He nodded. "Traveling around with nowhere to go?" He smiled.

"Sort of. I have somewhere to go, but not yet." The transaction was complete and people were waiting in line behind me.

"Traveling light?"

"Relatively." I said, looking over my shoulder at the line.

"Isn't that just dandy? Good luck." He nodded, his eyes locked on mine.

In my memory of that odd second, the instant that word came up for the second time, I recall him tossing me a quick wink, the way Hailey did when she said something funny. The rhythmic thump of my heartbeat echoed in my head as my face flushed.

"Did you say ..." I realized he had already moved on to the next customer.

"Not bad, sir, you?" he asked.

Maybe I was hyperalert, almost paranoid, but the wink he gave me was a sign. I was on the right path in life, moving toward whatever I was supposed to find. It was like the trails my mom and I used to hike around Blythe, long stretches of meandering through the wilderness, no visible trail to follow ... when we'd finally spot a dot spray painted on the trunk of a tree, and we knew we were going the right direction. For me, there were no painted trunks; there was only that word, "dandy." It was a word that I had hardly known before Hailey said it in my death-dream ... or was it a dream?

Twelve hours after leaving Bin Laden's Big Boy, I was nearing Ft. Bragg. I saw the signs for the post from I-95, but I didn't slow down. I drove right past my exit, headed south, to anywhere but there. Was it odd, passing by there without experiencing a single desire to stop in? Yes.

I crossed into South Carolina, thinking about the time we'd gone to Columbia to party and mourn the loss of two more lives. Remembering that meant remembering Jacob and Ryan, so I moved on from it quickly, but not before thinking of Venia and the time we'd had together there.

It was just too bad about her, but after she'd seen Monica in person, in my room, late at night, she'd had enough. I don't think it was because Venia had stumbled in and seen the two of us sitting so close on the futon; it was just what Monica looked like in person. Her beauty was intimidating, and her ever-short cropped hair was a statement of her strength, which was something women either resented or feared.

Venia had felt humiliated by Monica's beauty, and when a woman is hurt that deeply, they do not return, ever.

Past the turn off for Myrtle Beach, I decided maybe I'd go to Georgia. I'd slept with a girl vacationing in Myrtle Beach with her family, sometime in my first year at Bragg, who lived in Statesboro. She'd kept in touch via AOL, and occasionally even sent letters to me, so I figured it wouldn't be that weird to stop in and see her. I did, however, think it was best to call ahead.

Christina answered on the third ring, sounding even more thrilled to have me stay with her than the fact that I remembered her at all. She gave me directions, decided I was still three hours away, and promised to begin "getting things ready." I tried not to think of Kathy Bates' role in that Steven King movie ... the one where she holds the author captive ...

I got to her place in exactly three hours and pulled into a visitor parking spot. I climbed out of my new car and looked at the condos, trying to find a number or letter to help identify them individually. When I found her place, it wasn't because I'd located the number 15A, it was because I recognized her, standing behind her screen door. It wasn't her smile or her glasses that I recognized, it was her outie belly button and well-manicured nether regions.

I admired her enthusiasm as I stomped out my joint and grabbed my bag, wondering why it always came back to this. Is this the closest that humans can get? Isn't there some sort of intellectual connection that can rival the act of fucking?

I stayed with Christina for two days, telling her about the deaths. She'd met Ryan in Myrtle, that summer, and remembered him. Even though she met Jacob the same day, she apologized, but couldn't remember him. It made me feel bad for Jacob that she couldn't recall him, one more person letting him slip away.

She cooked for me, fed me some jam-up drugs, and, of course, slept with me. After two days with her, I wasn't dying to get away from her, like I'd assumed I would be. She was pretty good company, had some cool friends hanging around, and scratched my back every night in order to put me to sleep.

I called Zach from her house in Georgia. He was in Bogalusa, Louisiana; he was home and done with the Army. He'd gotten out the day after I left for vacation, and apparently he hadn't done any of the sight-seeing he'd been promising everyone he was going to do on his way home. He needed to get back to his father's trailer as his father was in bad health.

"Zach? What's up, man?"

"Hoooooly shit! Ved Ludo?"

"So ... I'm in Georgia. Don't have anywhere to be for a while. Got room for a stowaway?" I asked

"Come on, get your ass over here. We'll see you for dinner," he said without even thinking about it.

"You sure you don't mind? I didn't mean to—"

"Ved, come on. We'll wait for you for dinner."

"Good enough. See you then."

He gave me directions to his house that involved too many, "After the sharp turn, look for the split tree..." or "After Kroger's hill, stay off to the right, by the windmill ..." but I wrote them down, eager to find my way there despite the directions.

I left Christina—with a kiss on the forehead and some semen on her pillow, chin, and possibly hair—half an hour after I talked to Zach. Not my most poetic departure, granted, but I knew our paths had crossed for the last time.

Back on the highway, I reflected on the last week or so. I had just short of three weeks left to kill before I needed to report to Ft. Lewis. I thought about life, love, and the last few chicks I'd slept with, admiring all the many compromises they'd made on my behalf ...

All the sex ... all the death ... it was all so ... excessive. I was jaded from the endless highs and lows, wanting peacefulness and normalcy, but felt that even there in limbo, there would never be either for me. I was too conflicted; my love-hate relationship with Ved was sometimes unwanted, but the notion of changing back to Shell was impossible. Shell was innocent, something Ved could never be again.

I pulled into Zach's yard, literally, that's where they parked. The trailer was a dilapidated, broken down, sky blue (or 50s' blue, if that helps) single-wide, sitting on a piece of rather swampy marshland. Not exactly the plantation home I'd imagined, but fuck it, beggars can't be choosers, right?

Zach walked out onto the porch, ecstatic to see me and my new car. We talked in the yard, and then he introduced me to his sisters, who were ten and eight. His father came out to meet me, a jovial, rotund fellow with a very red face and very fat legs. He was, indeed, in bad health. I mean, I'm no doctor, but I would have told him he had less than a year to live, just by what I saw. He was welcoming to me, treating me like a family member from the moment I stepped into his home. It only took me a minute to decide what kings and peasants have in common: their ability to welcome people.

Zach and I sat in his room, talking all night. He'd always been a friend, but now, in this setting rather than the barracks, he was better, smarter, and more focused. He brought me up to speed on his father's failing health, and said he needed the lawsuit to be settled quickly in order to afford Toby the best medical treatment possible.

"What happened to him?" I asked.

"You know the paper mill in Bogalusa? You probably saw it; it's all lit up at night and looks like an inside-out factory ..."

"Oh, yeah. I did see that place. It's a paper mill?"

"Yeah, smells like Hell, huh?"

"Yeah, bro ... that's just foul. Like eggs or something ..."

"Yeah, that's what paper smells like. Anyway, one of the trains that brings shit in for the plant crashed and derailed in Bogalusa one day, spilling noxious chemicals and shit. An orange cloud formed over the town, and people got sick."

"Really? That's what happened to your dad?"

"Yeah, man, not just him, thousands of people."

"Holy shit, really? What are the symptoms?"

He looked at me for a second. "They're all different. That's kind of the problem. No one has the same problems. My dad is allergic to everything now; they tested him. Of 100 different things, he reacted badly to 98 of them. He never had an allergy before at all."

"That's crazy!"

"Yeah, it was bad. It's been three years since the spill; they're in a class action lawsuit. We think the plant's gonna settle eventually. When they do, Daddy will be wealthy for sure. He's the worst of them all."

In the sixteen days that followed, Zach and I became pretty good friends. We smoked pot in the evenings, and we sometimes hung out with pretty southern girls who lived in the area, but mostly just played our guitars, smoked chiba, and rode the four-wheelers.

He lived in the poorest parish of Louisiana; it was nothing but open land, dirt roads, and humidity like fucking thunderclouds.

The haziness of the air matched the haziness of our days, smoking and drinking, talking and laughing, and healing, one day at a time, together. He was the only one who understood me now.
Chapter 14

Save Yourself

My new car had no problem doing a hundred miles an hour. Ripping down the road, I was passing cars like they were standing still. I rolled joints with my right hand, steered the wheel with my knee, and wore no seatbelt, tempting the gods. Do it. Just fucking do it. All it would take was the slightest variance. If I arced around this corner, like this ... I would hit the guardrail head-on, ejecting me through the windshield. How bad would that be? I wouldn't survive and be horribly maimed, would I?

These dark thoughts seemed like the natural progression of things. That's the thing about thoughts of suicide ... They come as a wolf in sheep's clothing. They come as a decision, as an option, allowing you what feels like more freedom, when in all actuality, they are there to destroy you. Even the largest things seem small when you are planning your own death. Its universality and grandeur shrinks anything that might be gripping you. She is a powerful foe, seemingly there to sweet talk you, but while you are entertaining her, she is planning your funeral. She smells your rotting corpse as you decay before her, losing control and slipping from the fantasy to the reality.

I took another bump from the coke I'd stashed away from Nic's house. I'd been saving it intentionally, knowing that my first drive across the country was something to look forward to, something to stay awake for, and something that needed to be observed. I just didn't know how much it would impact me.

I rubbed my nose, snorting through it again, trying to clear any lingering cocaine. I felt the white paste that had been stuck somewhere in my nostrils break free; I could taste it as it slid down my throat. Numbness. Heart rate increasing ... happiness returning. Butterflies in my stomach. The road clears, sharpens. I turn the music up; Eddie sings to me and me alone as I speed down the open road. Nothing but wheat fields and passers-by to look at. I light a cigarette as Eddie sings. I think of Gemini, missing her, but inwardly knowing that I'd already shit on that one. I'd already fucked that one up. Gemini was thinking about me. I could feel her; I was that connected. The cocaine sang happy songs to me while Eddie spoke of the painful nature of life.

I popped a few more ephedrine pills because my heart wasn't already working hard enough to keep up ... I weighed life against death, wondering if I was capable of making such decisions. I didn't want the answers, yet I sought them.

The face of death wasn't the grim reaper; it was pretty and soft. It smelled of decay and cotton candy. Either the cotton candy was weighed down by the smell of death, or vice versa, regardless, it was neither all good nor all bad. I wanted to close my eyes and drift ... I'd cross lanes before going off the road. My tires would make that thumping sound as they rolled across the dirt, and the car would bounce wildly as it prepared to roll itself over. The tires would eventually grab something, tossing the car like a rag doll into the air, flipping, and spinning ... I'm weightless in the car, rolling with it, unrestrained ... My limbs are coming apart every time the car hits the ground ... Then I'm spinning again, weightless in the instant of death ... Right there, what would I think about my decision; right there, if I could pause time and ask myself about the decision I'd made, what would I reply? I feared regret.

Oklahoma came and went, and before too long, I was half way across Kansas. I thought about my life, what it was supposed to mean ... Why had my mother told me that I was supposed to be a pastor? If God had a plan, and we were all working to make His plan happen, why had she lied to me? Obviously that wasn't the plan for me, or I would have been leading a church somewhere ... or ... was God crafty enough to make the plan involve my mother believing I was the next Billy Graham? Was disappointing her part of the cosmic itinerary for the universe?

I thought about Osama Bin Laden, and how he'd made my day by saying that word. He'd inspired more delusional fantasies by saying it, and with nothing but endless miles in front of me, I had the time to fantasize. When you first get the feeling that you are going crazy, you desperately want to find clues suggesting you are right and everyone else is wrong. No one wants to be the lone crazy guy; they want to believe that they are the only one who has it right in a world gone mad ... See, someone has to be the crazy guy. The problem is that's rarely the case. I find when you are repeatedly told the same thing, by likeminded opponents, it's best to at least consider their argument.

The sky was bigger than I had ever seen. Most of my trip through Kansas, I felt like I could see a thousand miles in every direction, and above all of it was a very blue sky. Fluffy clouds were scattered across it, clouds that demanded you see shapes and objects in them. I drove on, trying not to lose myself in them as they begged me to stare at them.

Little towns lined the side of the highway; towns I had a hard time believing people actually lived in. Treeless towns that looked uniform and bore huge water towers painted with its name or the name of the football team the town housed. Every few minutes, or every other bump of coke, I'd pass another town that remained faceless. I tried to imagine a family that lived there, just one family. For some reason, that family I imagined looked a lot like Carla Gugino's family from the Pauly Shore movie Son in Law.

All these people out here ... All these places that I couldn't have even imagined. When people asked me in the years to come why I was where I was, I simply told them, "It was Kansas of all places ... The first time I saw the country ..." It wasn't the road or the beauty ... It wasn't the mountains or the valleys. It was simpler than that. I loved the anonymity of it.

I had no address, no immediate destination ... I was moving through cleanly, the way that flowing water is always the cleanest. No one could find me here, somewhere. In ten minutes, I'll be gone from here and headed through there. Anyone trying to find me would fail, even that cold bitch and her demonic thoughts.

I could feel the weight of my evolving family and my dead friends. Nic, the newly dead to me ... Fuck them all, I needed to escape. I needed to fucking run from whatever was chasing me, stalking me ... Save yourself, Ved.

I needed to stop seeing signs, no more dreams ... I needed to starve out the delusions. I needed to talk to someone. Would Mr. Larsen answer my calls? I doubted it. Somehow, I knew when I'd graduated from high school, that he'd had a party to celebrate his freedom from me.

Nic, you broke my fucking heart.

When I made it into Montana, it was dark and windy. I'd been driving for hours and hours. With the help of the cocaine, I wasn't at all tired. I did feel empty, like the coke had hollowed me out by removing all the things that made me a human being, one scoop at a time. I needed some food, maybe a cup of coffee and a pack of smokes.

After I decided what I really needed was a Flying J truck stop, I was suddenly more optimistic. I drove with a renewed purpose, wanting desperately to stretch my legs and take a leak. The thought of food was nauseating, but I promised myself that I would eat, if for no other reason than to give my body something to cling to.

It dawned on me that I was headed back to the Army. Somehow in the last month, it had begun to feel like I was a civilian, popping pills like vitamins, all kinds of drugs ... What kind of soldier was I? I had to be the worst soldier on earth, a disgrace to my country.

That was offensive to realize; I loved my country. Granted, I'd never entered the Army out of a desire to be a good citizen; it'd been all about escaping. I loved the Army. I'd had a good time, for the most part, and I was pretty fucking good at the day-to-day shit that went on. Yeah, I'd been using drugs, but it hadn't inhibited my ability to work; in fact, I was a way better soldier than some of the shitbags in my company ...

I didn't like the redundancy of it, yet at the same time, I enjoyed having little to be personally responsible for. Now I was headed to a new unit, a "fuckin' leg" unit of all things, trying to prepare myself to mentally tackle it all over again.

Where would I find pot in Washington? Would I get "randomed" more because I was new? Was there anyone I could smoke with, or was I about to become the lonesome stoner?

I'd already started over a few times. First when I went to McClellan, then Benning, then Bragg ... For the most part it was the same process over and over again, and the same personalities. I just had to do it one more time; meet these people, spend the next year doing what I did best, uh ... fucking strange women and doing drugs ... then get out and do something meaningful. The Army wasn't giving me what I needed anymore, which is a fucked up way to look at things, especially when the country was so welcoming to soldiers, expecting soldiers to be selfless and dedicated. Rather than being noble, I felt sorry for myself, mourning the loss of life, and asking the Army to provide for me. Maybe Gemini was right all that time, maybe it was a mistake for me to have gone into the service.

I got my coffee and smokes, took my piss, and forced down some Flying J chicken wings before I hit the road again. I felt immediately better. I rolled all the windows down and lit a pre-rolled joint. I pulled on the joint, inhaling the smoke and feeling like I was reconnecting with a long lost friend. Weed was so pure, so natural ... whereas the cocaine seemed so chemical, so false. I felt like I might live for an eternity as I inhaled over and over, feeling the heaviness in my eyes and head. Soon, the music came to life and I switched my Pearl Jam selection to Widespread Panic, trying to enjoy a more festive mood.

I looked around, wondering if Nic would ever get to see this. There was darkness everywhere; the moon gone from the sky. I knew I must be on a high pass because as I looked out onto the world, I saw clusters of lights spread out in the distance, marking tiny towns that I'd never learn the names of, yet someone was from there ... It blew my mind. Blythe was a town like that; a town that no one would ever see or know, yet here I was, born and raised on the soil and water of that town ... Blythe, the name was like Juliet, beautiful and innocent, dedicated and true. I wished I had some soil from there. I'd keep it in my pocket, feeling its texture, knowing that when I died, I would be put back into it.

Poor Nic, my dear friend. He'd hurt me so badly ... recalling an important event, but thinking that it was Jason Maynor with him, not remembering that it was me ... All these years I'd been telling this same story, hoping that somewhere out there Nic was doing the same thing. He was, but in his tale, Jason was with him, not me. Jason was the one with blood on his knuckles, not me ... but I still carry the scars to prove it.

I suppose that's just the way it is with time. Here I had adapted into Ved, using time as a catalyst to solidify it. I'd relied on time. I'd welcomed it so many times that to now accuse it of being unjust, wasn't fair. All the people I'd forgotten, no, erased, riding time and the breathless marathon of life ... Who was I to assume that Nic would remember me as fondly as I did him?

I feared seeing Luke suddenly. It'd been nine months since I'd said my goodbyes to a guy who looked somewhat like my old friend Luke, but he didn't look too good in those days. I hoped he was healed and was better with the time that had passed. I hoped that he and Danielle had patched things up and made a happy life for themselves ...

I had called Luke from Zach's house and told him I was coming. He sounded good at first, when he first picked up, but after I'd mentioned the name Ryan, things had gotten weird. Maybe that was just in my head; it's hard to tell on the phone, but for some reason, I doubted it.

Maybe I wasn't letting go properly. Maybe I was still clinging to people too tightly. I'd already learned by this point that everyone will let you down, and that the strong ones ask few if any favors and just do for themselves, yet still I hoped that Luke could at least pretend to be normal for a day or two.

I drove for another three hours and decided I'd gone far enough for one day. I'd reach Spokane by three tomorrow afternoon if I left by nine in the morning. I was still days early for Ft. Lewis, but I expected that if things went well with Luke, I'd hang out there for a few days.

I pulled off the road and stopped the car. I was in a parking lot for some scenic overlook that I assumed was down the trail a piece. I pulled off the very inside of the parking lot and stopped the car. The deafening silence made my ears ring for a second, and then an 18-wheeler passed on the highway, ending the silence.

I stretched. It felt so good. The only bad thing about road-tripping and cocaine is that when you have the "devil's dandruff" in your bloodstream, you want to do anything but sit still. Now, stretching, I felt like I was going to tear in half, and that, for some reason, was just what I wanted to feel.

The fucking tractor-trailers that constantly rolled by were close enough to where I was parked that they rocked my car as they passed. I pulled off the road farther.

I reclined my chair again and closed my eyes. Instantly Hailey was staring at me. I jumped up in my seat, trying to breathe. "Jesus ..."

I decided to get out and get some air. I opened my door as a truck roared by. The wind that followed it was peppered with tiny rocks, and my face stung as the air whipped past me.

I walked around behind the car and sat down on my bumper. The cool Montana air smelled like fresh linens as I breathed in and out, looking around at the tiny clusters of lights in the distance. Eventually, I was ready to try and sleep, but just to be sure, I crunched up a Tylenol PM and snorted it, hoping that it would speed the medication. Without some sort of sleep aid, I wouldn't be able to do it.

The next morning I awoke with my back against the driver's side window and my feet in the passenger seat. I was looking out through the passenger window, seeing the scenery in front of me, when I became alarmed. It looked to me like the cliff ledge was damn close to my car.

I jumped up and opened my door, fearing my car teetering on the edge and then plunging down while I screamed "FUUUCK!"

I didn't want to upset the balance, yet I needed out of my car. I opened the door and stepped out into the morning dampness, walking around my car to see just how close I was parked to the edge.

My passenger side tires were sitting on the last inch of flat surface before a five-hundred-foot free-fall. Across the highway, on the driver's side, was a massive rock wall spanning five hundred vertical feet. Rocks were precariously balanced along its jagged wall, and I wondered how many people had unexpectedly died, driving beneath it. I calculated the trajectory of any of the rocks, finding my car in the path of them, no matter what.

To my right was a cliff that fell an equal distance as the ledge to my left. I could see other jagged cliffs in the distance. I was instantly terrified.

I looked at the bumper where I'd sat last night, stretching. The place where I had sat, evident by the dust being wiped clean there, was a foot from the edge. Had I leaned over just a little further, the dizziness from the weed and pills might have taken me over.

I was still shaking, breathless even, when I climbed into the cockpit and tentatively pulled back onto the highway. Something had changed in me; the frailty of life, the end being out there, so definite, yet so disguised ... Death was hiding behind one of the tomorrows ahead of me, and no matter what I'd decide in the future about suicide, for now, I was happy to be alive.

Death behind me, death beside me ... Run, Ved. Save yourself.

I pulled up to Luke Jayson's apartment at about five that night. The sky was gray in Spokane, Washington, and the air cool and humid. I opened my door in the parking lot of the massive apartment complex and tossed down my joint, stomping it out beside my car as if to announce, "Yes, that's correct. It's mine."

I stretched, catching a chill. It couldn't have been much more than sixty degrees in the middle of summer. I reached into my car and grabbed a hoodie, hearing someone say, "Well, well ... look who we have here."

I turned, smiling simply from my instant recognition of that voice. Luke was walking out to meet me. He was still ruggedly handsome, but he had a sort of dizzy look in his eyes. His hair was longer than I'd ever seen it, but even when he had been in the Army, his hair was always out of regulation. He was still beautiful. He looked like the all-American boy I'd come to know him as, and when I hugged him, I felt like I'd returned to a blood brother. "Good to see you, bro," I said, patting his back.

"You too, man. Jesus, Ved, I've missed you."

"I've missed you too, man. It feels like it's been a lot longer than nine months."

"It has. Hasn't it?"

"Nope. Nine months exactly, in three days."

"Fuck."

"Right?"

"How are things, Ved? How was Pennsylvania?"

"Disappointing. You know the phrase, 'You can never go home again'? That's how I feel. I ended up spending time in Georgia and at Zach's."

"Georgia? What's there?"

"Remember that girl I met in Myrtle? Christina? The time we went with Derrick?"

"Oh, shit! Yeah. I remember her. She was a hottie. Did you just show up there or did you tell her you were coming?"

"I called. Three hours before I got there." I smiled.

"Ballsy."

"Yeah. It was OK though. Stayed with her for two days and then went to Zach's house."

"Yeah, that's what you said. How was that?"

"Uh ... I'll say this about it, there is no place more laid back and relaxing than Washington Parish, Louisiana. It's like time stands still there. Hotter than fuck, dude, like a hundred degrees with the same humidity. Even at night it's fuckin eighty-five."

"Yeah."

"Yeah. So it feels cold here! Had to put my sweatshirt on!"

"Oh, yes ... you're just trying to hide your fat."

"No, that's definitely not it. I haven't been eating well. For the last year ..."

"Yeah, I remember that. You feel OK though?" he asked, getting as close to the Ryan topic as I thought we should.

"Yeah."

"Sure?"

"Yeah." A moment passed where he didn't say anything. "You all right, Luke?"

"No. No, I'm not OK."

I looked at him, not understanding his gestures.

"No, Ved. I'm not OK. I can't go through this again, and somehow I associate this with you. This feeling I get, this sick feeling, it's from you. You have to go, man. I'm sorry. I know how fucked that is to say."

"Wait. You are telling me to leave? Standing in your apartment parking lot in Spokane, you're telling me to leave?"

"Ved, I have my daughter in there, my fiancé ... They don't know what happened to me there, and I don't want them to know about any of that now. You understand, right? I have to hold it together. I have to try and be normal. I can't go back to where I was when I left North Carolina."

"Luke ... you're telling me I have to leave?"

"I'm sorry, Ved. It's just that you've become the memory. You give me these feelings that something is wrong or something ... I don't know, man. I love you, Ved. I know you'll write me off, and I'll never hear another word from you again, and maybe that's what I need ..."

I smiled and exhaled, incredulous. I walked back to the driver side door, grabbed my squished joint off the ground, and put it between my lips. I reached into my pocket and grabbed my Camel Trench lighter, looking at it as I lit the joint back up.

Luke walked over to me with tears in his eyes. I only glanced at him for a second to see the tears, and then I inhaled the weed. I tasted that taste that only marijuana can provide, and thought that this joint was my best friend in the world. There was nothing else; no one to love, and no one to miss, just me and my joint.

"I'm really sorry that you did this, Luke. Not for the future or what we are, but for what those words did to the past." I closed the car door, started the motor, and rolled down my window, allowing the cool fresh air into the cabin. I ejected the No Code CD and held it by putting my index finger through the hole in the center. He looked at it with a slight smile.

"Remember the song?" he asked, smiling through the tears.

"'Smile'?"

"Yeah. It's a good one, huh?" he asked.

"Yeah, bro, it's a good one."

"Don't disappear on me, Ved."

I looked at him. "This CD always reminded me of you. The day you played that song for me ... that was good shit." I grabbed a sharpie and wrote on the reflective side of the disc. I wrote the main hook of the song, the part he'd thought so important the day he played it for me. "I miss you already." I handed it to him wordlessly, shifted into drive, and pushed on the accelerator. Everything in me wanted him to stop me, to change his mind before I left him forever, to say anything that might reduce the pain in my heart.

Just like Nic, I left Luke standing in the parking lot, releasing him on the wind.

I headed out of his apartment complex, absolutely numb. Nothing was as it was or should be. I went from bitter to pissed off in a matter of three miles. There was something at work here, something evil; maybe the devil had found me? I mean, don't most people assume that when things go wrong for a while that the devil is at work in their lives? The devil must remain quite busy; he's only one man, after all, he's not omnipresent. Isn't that the advantage that God has over evil, the reason good always prevails?

When you imagine things, you are creating them.

I remember playing with the Ouija board when I was a kid and all the lessons that came from that. One such lesson was this: it's not the board itself, or the game, that makes it an unholy entity. It's not the communications between people and the dead, and it's not the part where in order to impress your friends, you ask the friendly spirit you are talking to if Satan is available to talk ... It's really got nothing to do with the game at all ... The danger with the Ouija board is the same problem with cocaine or sex or anything that can become addictive ... You invite them in.

Giving "evil spirits" entrance to your mind is a dangerous game, the way injecting heroin the second time is. The first time you do it, you do it blindly, not knowing what you are about to experience. The second time you know just what to expect and are eager to feel it. You push the plunger faster the second time. The drug is not at fault.

When I began to allow talking to myself, I opened such a door. Up until that point, any time I'd said more than a few words out loud to myself, I'd recognize the behavior as odd. At some point later on, I began to do it a little more, and I allowed it. By not being against it, I was for it, and from that point on, I fell through the outskirts of schizophrenia like a rock from the sky. There were no ledges of sanity to cling to, and nothing to even hope for to break my fall. Only when Gemini came into my room one night and found me on my futon talking to myself, completely unaware that she'd even entered, did I realize I had slipped. That was a terrifying feeling, realizing that I had slipped some, and that I was teetering on the edge.

If I'd discovered that fact while I was alone, it would have been terrifying. Having Gemini see it too, and seeing the fear it put in her, was worse. Regardless, finding out that I was deteriorating unnoticeably was similar to a death sentence. Ever read Sparks' The Notebook?

Paranoia isn't a blanket that gets tossed over your head. It's a virus that molds and adapts to the individual, covering you from the inside out, not the outside in. It's a living thing. Once you allow it inside of you, once you swallow that fucker down, it knows you, because it knows your brain.

Leaving Luke's apartment, I was definitely a little disturbed, but not in comparison to my darker past experiences. I thought about him, standing there looking pathetic, tears in his eyes, and I wondered if he would ever be OK. He'd been such a stoic figure before, the consummate guy. It was hard for me to see him with that broken look still on his face, or around his face, wherever it was. It was hard to pinpoint exactly. He still looked the same; the smile was still convincing, just not as dominant as it once was.

I put him behind me with the rest of the ghosts and drove away. I wasn't fleeing dead people anymore, they were riding with me. Luke and Nic might just as well have become ghosts and followed along because their spirits were all that remained of them.

I rolled down my windows, hoping that the vapor-like ghosts riding in the seats beside me would be blown away on the wind.

It was dark and pouring rain when I came into the Seattle area. Of course, I got lost somewhere along the way, and two hours later, when I arrived at Ft. Lewis, it was still raining cats and dogs.

I'd never found my way to an Army base before, nor had I ever driven into one in my own car. It felt odd to me, being in my car and stopping at the gate to explain my purpose. It made me wonder, for the first time, a question that I would later confront head-on.

I showed the guard my orders.

He nodded and said, "A little early, Private?"

"Yeah. Didn't take me as long to get here as I thought."

"Where you transferring from?"

"Ft. Bragg."

"Airborne?" he asked, his eyebrows arched.

"Hoo-rah," I replied, rather wittily stealing the Marine Corps creedo.

He nodded with a smile. "You like the rain?"

"Love it."

"Good." He reached into his little shack and produced a paper. He handed it to me and said, "Aim for building eighteen on the map. It's on-post lodging. Twenty bucks a night and pretty nice too."

"Oh. Right on, man. Thanks," I said looking at it.

"Specialist," he corrected me.

"Huh?" I asked.

"I'm a specialist," he said.

"Congratulations," I said and accelerated away from the guard shack. Are you fucking kidding me? "I'm a specialist." Fuckin' legs ...

Frankly, rank doesn't mean shit until you reach E-5 in the Army. Until then, you are all "lower enlisted" and the differences between them are nothing more than time served. Obviously, my issue with being outranked by this pussy wasn't that he really outranked me, just that I would have well outranked him had I not gotten two Article 15s.

I promised myself, as I pulled into the parking space in front of my room, that no matter how many times I saw that MP at the gate, I'd never call him by his rank. At Ft. Bragg, which is world-renown for its elitist atmosphere, no lower enlisted had to call a specialist by that title ... Why would this leg think I was going to bow down? Fucking Army!

I was five days early, and without Luke available to help entertain me, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I'd already checked into the on-post lodging and talked to some fat E-3 with a southern accent about my situation, and he tossed me a key and told me to try Mizza's Pizzas.

I set my stuff down on the bed and walked to the window, glancing at the stereotypical room. Gay quilts and plastic pillows, small sized refrigerators and coffee pots, you know ... the norm. I was suddenly overwhelmed with loneliness.

I looked out the large windows onto the parking lot, seeing my car getting rained on and wondered if my car was as out of place as I was. Here I was a nobody; worse than that, I was a nobody who'd once been somebody.

There were no bars here where everyone knew me, there were no girls on their way over to my room, and no joints being rolled in the barracks ... No, this was the real Army, or so it felt. Here, I would have to start all over again, right from the pronunciation of my name, or names, and give them the whole story, one by one. Fucking Army!

I watched the rain falling down with a relentless will. In the hour it'd taken me to get to this room, since entering the post, the tempo with which the rain fell hadn't changed. It was still instantly-soaked rain, but without any wind or fanfare; it appeared to be a silent storm.

I walked to the vending machines at the end of the hallway and filled my thermos with ice. I still had some beer that I'd bought before arriving at Luke's, way back when I was anticipating drinking and talking with Luke all night. Now, drinking beer and smoking pot alone sounded divine. I was feeling a little under the weather, worn down, and stressed out from the coke, the hours I'd been awake, and the general motion of highway driving. I wonder if anyone ever noticed the coke missing. I wonder if they assumed I took it.

I put the beer on ice and turned on the TV in time for the late-o'clock news and watched as unfamiliar faces informed me about the goings-on in the area. I always hate seeing new faces on the news. I want to trust the people telling me about the day's events, and that trust comes from knowing them, well, at least as well as you can know someone that doesn't know you.

The weather came on, and some fat man in a cheap suit pointed to a triangle-laden arc, warning of unrelenting rain for the foreseeable future. The most daunting part of the weather was the ten-day forecast, which showed the same rain cloud and water droplet icon, over and over again for all ten days. It appeared that each day to come would be a carbon copy of the last for the next week and a half. I fucking hate the rain.

I drank a couple of beers, but I just wasn't feeling it. I smoked a joint instead, standing dry in the shower of the bathroom, blowing smoke straight into the fan above me. It felt ridiculous to do this, and frankly, I was disappointed with myself for behaving like that. I'd almost forgotten that smoking pot was illegal, and to do it on a military base while waiting to sign in was even less advisable. I almost respected the pot more than I did the post I was on, thinking that pot's feelings were going to be hurt by my secretive behavior with it. I was treating my dwindling weed supply like a mistress, using her in private, and selfishly hiding her from others' sight.

I'd never realized how long it takes to smoke a joint before that, mostly because if you can stomach to smoke a full joint, you have no recollection of smoking it by the time you are done with it. However, standing there with my lips to the sky, knees slightly bent, blowing the smoke from the unending joint upward, it dawned on me how terribly long it takes to burn one down.

Without much ado, I went to bed and dreamed of Gemini on the first night she'd come to the barracks. That inspired a hard-on, which woke me up, so I handled the issue with deftness, and then I fell back asleep.

The next evening, after another day of absolutely nothing but rain, I called Zach. I had to explain the Luke thing over and over again as Zach just couldn't believe it. He asked me questions about Luke, repeating "unbelievable" over and over again. After he was up to date and clear about Luke, we talked about my road trip, the post, and my absolute loneliness.

"I don't have anything to go back to, or anything to move forward to," I said quietly to my new best friend.

"Yeah, I hear you, bro."

"Honestly, Zach, I don't know why I wanted to come out here. It's fucking awful. It's still raining and has been since I got here."

"Yeah, it's Washington, man!"

"Yeah. Right."

"Come back," he said, simply.

"I will, for sure. I'll have some leave time again in—"

"No, I mean now."

It was then, at that very second, that my life changed because of a thought. It was the first time my brain had ever produced a notion that stopped me in my tracks, but not the last. There is nothing to love behind you, and nothing to love before you. Death is coming for you. Live fast.

A level of confusion and excitement washed over me as I began to recall all the things I'd seen on my way out west. Rather than framing them in a memory, I pictured them in the future, my future, not in my past. Why had I been OK with simply passing by them once when I had a lifetime ahead of me? Wasn't I the decision maker, the captain of the vessel Ved? If I wanted to, I could live in those small towns, and I could wander their streets, looking in windows and remembering it as a name, not a cluster of houses beside the mountain.

I could die out here, somewhere where no one would find me, either by my own hand, or just by rolling the dice too many times. Surely these tiny towns, which appeared to be so tranquil and dormant, held dangers that could kill me if given the right number of opportunities. There had to be something unknown lurking around out there, taking innocent people away without a sound ... I wanted to find it. I thought deeply for a long time about what I was considering.

Some decisions worry you, right from the beginning. Sometimes you decide on a path, only to wonder the entire time if you've chosen wisely. There is no resolution, no glory, in anything half-assed in this world. Only the committed find novelty in their desires; the rest of the half-assed world isn't worth noticing.

I hung up the phone with Zach and sat motionless on my bed. My eyes were fixated somewhere beyond my window, so even though I saw the rain falling, I didn't. I was somewhere else, somewhere vast and open, somewhere where E-4s didn't exist.

Of all the times I'd felt like a fuck-up before, nothing could touch this. I'd lost everything and everyone, half of which was my own fault. My family had evolved; they were surviving just fine without me, thriving even. It was so easy for everyone to tell me how proud he or she was of me for "serving," but really they were just congratulating me on not fucking anything up for a while. They thought that as long as I was here, I was not being a menace elsewhere. No one was really proud of me; what was there to be proud of? My mother didn't ask me questions that she didn't want the answers to; my father was distant, if not gone; Luke was still getting over me, or Ryan, or something; Nic had all but forgotten me, replacing me in his memory; I'd betrayed Gemini two times already ...

I didn't want to do the process all over again. I didn't want to "fall in" on Monday morning and be the new guy. I didn't want to make any more friends who I would inevitably lose, for no other crime than getting too close to me ...

What the fuck was I even doing here? What had I proven, and to whom? Who in this big fucking world even missed or remembered me? Was I a gift to people, or a plague? If I found that I was indeed a plague, would I still be able to accept myself?

What else would I do? Doing what I was considering would cost me the rest of everything. That was the ultimate, bottom line. Was I willing to wash them all away; was I willing to go it completely alone? The rewards or the consequences, mine to suffer all by myself, permanently erasing any lines of rescue, forever isolating myself to what I could manage alone ...

My friends, when you are standing on the ledge, looking down at the end of the line, clarity screams out to be heard. It screams out, trying to rescue you from yourself. If the words you hear are "Don't do it," you'd better not. If they tell you to do it, to raise your hands in surrender and fall, trusting in the world, if nothing else, to rescue you ... you had better listen.

When there is nothing left to believe in, you decide whether you can believe in yourself or not. No one fakes that decision. There is no bullshit about it when you are gambling with everything you have been, and will ever be; you are, at that moment, the truest you might ever live to be.

I called my mother, though I knew it to be after 10 p.m. her time.

"Hello?" she asked in the days before caller ID.

"Mom."

"Son! Are you there? Did you make it OK? How's Luke?"

"Mom? Do you love me?"

"Son! Of course I do!"

"Do you love me, no matter what I do?"

"Of course I do. A mother's love doesn't come and go like that."

"Tell me! Tell me that no matter what I do, you will always love me. You're all I have left, Mom; there is nothing left ... They're all dead and I'm dying myself ... I don't have forever, Mom. I only have a little time."

I'm sure to a mother's ears, this is the worst thing a son could say. Being cryptic and dismal is fine when writing poetry to read at Java Joe's, but when talking to your worried mother, not advisable. I was crying into the phone, my whole body shaking as the devil sat down on my bed and taunted me with the idea of freedom.

"I will always love you, son. You have been a special boy all of your life. I'm sorry it's been so hard for you. You are a sensitive boy with the best of intentions and maybe too smart for your own good. It's always been so hard for you, son ... I'm so sorry. Whatever you're asking me about, I will always love you. There is nothing you can do that could change that, nothing."

"Thank you, Mom."

"Oh, son ..."

"I'm about to really disappoint you. You know that, right?"

"No. I know you're struggling right now. I know you're alone and hurting. Whatever you are doing, you're doing it to survive."

"Oh, Mom ... How did it get this way? How I did I become this?" I sobbed openly into the phone.

"God made you the way you are, son. I want you to know that He has his hand on you, and that you aren't anywhere that He can't find you ... You are moving toward where He wants you to be, no matter what you are planning."

"So you know what I'm planning?"

"Yes."

"I won't tell you much more than that, Mom. If people come and ask you hard questions, it's better that you don't have the answers."

"I understand," she said quietly.

"OK, well, I have things I need to do, so I better get going."

"Oh, son ... Promise me that you'll be careful."

"I will. I'll do my best."

"Son ... where ... I love you. Please don't disappear any more than you have to."

"I won't. But, I don't know what I'll have to do."

"I know."

"I love you, Mom. I'm so sorry."

"Son, I don't want you to be sorry; I want you to be happy."

I hung up the phone and cried into my rented pillow in order to stifle the wailing. Whatever was festering in me was coming loose.

Half an hour later, my uniforms were laid out on the floor with all the patches and nametags cut off of them. I left them there as I locked the key in the room with my leftover Army gear, loaded my shit into my car, and started the engine.

There was a lightness to me; I'd passed the evil spirits from within me to my rented pillow. I'd cleared my conscience by talking to my mother and considered what I was doing. Was this the best thing to do; was this the way to shape the rest of my life?

I didn't care as I flew past the guard shack with an extended middle finger, which was something completely out of the ordinary for me. I turned off the Ft. Lewis access road onto the highway and set course for Louisiana via Spokane.

I had one last thing to say to my old friend, Luke, before I threw the rest of my life away.

The rain continued to pour from the sky as I sang out songs of freedom. I imagined all those small towns I'd passed, and all the things I'd find in them if I were to look. There was no family to return to, no friends I needed to visit, just me and the open road, and endless possibilities.

I crested a hill and the first internal conflict contacted me. Regret showed up, asking me if I was being reasonable. No. I wasn't. I was done with reasonable and safe; I was done falling in line and being what I was not. I wasn't saluting anyone else, I wasn't bowing down to anyone else, and I wasn't attending another funeral.

It wasn't hard to run away. I'd been doing it my whole life. It was an instinct now, a solution, proven time and time again.

Promise yourself to never, ever, regret this decision. Whether it takes me to my death, or to my glory, never regret choosing to live.

I didn't expect to survive a year. In that moment, promising myself these things, I guessed that death was just around the corner, and he didn't scare me nearly as much as falling back into the ranks.

Leaving it all behind me, I lit a joint. I was excited about the unknown for the first time in a long time. If I had a gift, I was going to need it. If there were a God, He'd need to protect me if I was expected to live another year.

When you pry the will to live away from actually living, looking through the gap, there is a fourth dimension. It's the "now" dimension. There is no yesterday and no tomorrow, but only the instant you are in. When I peered through it, I knew I was right. I knew that all the deaths, all the immorality, had led me to this exact moment in time.

If you want to see God, stop looking for Him in the future. Look behind you, watch the symphony of events swaying in time to the gentle music, feel the wind of change, and breathe deeply in its freshness. Listen closely to the rain. Everything had been a ballet; all the chaos and confusion was really the well-rehearsed dance perfected by God in the years before man tried to identify Him, before they tamed God like a circus elephant in order to turn tricks for cash.

For an hour, all the devastation and pain relented. It was like the dot on the trees, showing me the way through an unrelenting forest.

I was beautiful then. No one was around to see the second transformation of Ved Ludo. I was alive and beautiful, gifted and witty, deep and shallow. There was no piece of the puzzle that I couldn't morph into, except that of a good soldier. I looked at myself in the mirror, seeing my eyes looking back at me, assisted by the headlights of the cars behind me. The rain stopped entirely as I got back onto I-90, headed east this time. I was going back to Spokane to settle something.

I was twenty-one years old when I made the decision that would shape my life. Oh, promises are so easily cast, yet so rarely followed through. I hadn't promised anyone else anything; I'd promised myself something.

I wasn't free by any means; I was paying with everything I'd ever known about myself, everyone I'd ever known ... The problem wasn't the decision, or even just sacrificing everything I knew ... it was that I was young, and what I didn't know would come back, carrying a knife, and try to kill me.

I was a vagabond: a middle-class kid who'd single-handedly tossed himself into a world he didn't understand.

Inside of me, everything that mattered was out there ... waiting to be discovered.

In thirty-six hours, Ved Ludo would be on the run.

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