2

I knew I would have to go to another FOB for three days, for a course. I decided I would fix whatever was going on with me and K___ before I left. Deployment does that to you, makes you aware that anything might happen.
I would leave at 0500 in the morning, so the evening before, I found myself standing by his bed, as he slept, trying to get my nerve up.
_K___, I finally said, into the darkness. He opened his eyes in a squint.
_Hey,_ he said.
_Hey._ There was silence. _I just wanted to say hey._
_Well, hey._ Then he started talking. Told a story about the football game he had just realized he’d overslept through, one he was supposed to be the official medic at.
He told stories about his past missions, his ridiculous platoon sergeant. K___’s good for that, instantly acting like everything is back to normal.
_Are we good?_ I asked suddenly.
_Yeah, of course._
An hour later, after we had gone to the Exchange and talked up a storm, we were back in the room and I was packing.
_Why do you always make me break the silence?_ I asked him as he lay back in bed, having just finished another story.
_Because you started it. I figured when you were ready to end it, you’d end it. You came into the room and I said hey, and you didn’t say anything back -- or at least seemed to -- so I had to treat you like anyone else who had snubbed me._
I explained to him what had gotten me so quickly and thoroughly angry. My words were low, and sometimes I quoted my own notes. I told him there were two of him, and that the second one, the one I don’t particularly like, had suddenly gotten cocky -- not confident like the original K__ was -- but cocky, like a beast pretending to be K__.
I told him what had made him cool was his supremely pure confidence.
_I swear I’m always genuine, Chuck, even if I don’t come across that way. I think that’s just how you perceive it,_ K__ said. And the words burned into my brain.
_You sure we’re okay?_
_Yes._
Suddenly I didn’t think the two K__’s complex was unique to K___. Maybe I perceived everyone close to me the same way. At times believing them and other times facing Difficulty believing them.
I remembered how the first time K___ and I had fought -- the big one fight that ended with the new refrigerator -- I was just realizing the Quality as I was finishing Tolle’s book, The Power of Now.
When the power showed up, the Aggression was right there with it -- insisting it be dealt with first.
I remember how the Quality showed up strong whenever K__ and I were on a break from each other.
I remember how a guy named Muc___ joined our platoon, and started working the same shift as K___. They got along well, even were working out together.
I’ve done the same with people before, but I knew I preferred K__’s company. When Muc__ showed up it was the first time I’d ever seen K__ with another friend besides me, and coincided with my first seeing the new, beast-like K__.
I asked K__ about it, in my own way, asking him if Muc___ reminded him of his brother. He said, no, Muc__ was just a big goof ball.
Lately I’ve been reckoning with my power, trying to get it under control before it destroys everything or its lack there of destroys everything.
Also, K__ has been more and more accepted into his new platoon, being invited regularly to card games, etc.
Lately I’ve been feeling low, because the deployment’s BS has been wearing me down.
The new K__, the generic K__, doesn’t just show up on its own. When something happens that tests my trust that we are true friends, suddenly I begin to perceive him differently.
The two K__’s I see in K___. The Real vs. Unreal. Ego versus Him. Aggression versus Assertiveness. It’s how I see the whole world, including myself. When I’m not Him, I’m the generic version of myself.
All it takes to be Real is to believe. To trust.
When I don’t believe myself to be Real, I don’t believe other things to be Real, like friendship, love, even the present moment.
The trust was easier, the friendship seemed stronger back in those days. There was an easy validation. No wonder I could get so far into a friendship this time without freaking out. A friendship during deployment isn’t a normal, civilian friendship. It can break through barriers.
K__ doesn’t need me like that anymore, and I guess technically I don’t need him like that anymore. I miss it, the ease of it. Though the barrier had been broken through by the extraordinary experience of deployment, normal life did resume after awhile.
Maybe I red too much into the friendship. It contrasted sharply with the House, and I noticed.
If I deserve such friendship now, than I must’ve deserved it all along. It can get easily confused; seeing K__ for more than he is, because what he’s representing and incidentally teaching me is enormous.
When I trust K__, it means I trust myself, something the boy has a hard time with. At first it feels that by distrusting K___ I’m asserting my trust in my self, in my own power. Of course the boy would feel that way, but as a twenty five year old I feel different, I know I know better.
I did this with W___, my best friend in my last unit. I realized the same stuff about trust. As an adult the situations come and go, as a boy they seem set in stone, so that it takes little for the boy to distrust, and much for the adult to trust.
When my identity is my own, what other people do doesn’t matter. When my identity is tied to others, who they are and what they do matters.
Moments come and go. Meanwhile the Good they mean stays the same all the time. Moments don’t decide or change anything, they’re just a gift.
The friendship K__ and I shared through the worst of the deployment was Good and even extraordinary at times, but I was always deserving of it. Chance -- beautiful, Wild Chance -- allowed me to know those moments, like a gift.
If I just had the power -- the Quality -- the Masculinity -- then all these notes wouldn’t exist or have existed. If I just trusted it. If I just trusted at all.
It’s true that the real reason K__ and I are friends is because he reminds me of God‘s Country. It’s why I was risking this messiness.
Like the way the baby grand piano made the risk of forming close relationships with Max__ and E___ a necessary hazard.
Every story K__ tells has special meaning. It’s like he lived on the same street as me, were around all the same elements and events and people -- only he was living an opposite life.
The violence that shows up when I come into contact with someone like K___ is incredible. It feels natural, universal, to the point where I suddenly understand every crime ever committed, every human conflict, every revolution.

__________