6

Joe didn’t give up. He kept on for another thirty minutes before we finally left. He insisted on going into the restaurant and letting Jon know we were leaving, which seemed odd.
That night Jon and the girls were at the USO. I sat down at the table like Jon seemed to want me to.
He introduced me and I said hi. Then I said I was going bowling. It was in sharp contrast to the sausage fest forming around the table, mostly made up of guys neither Jon, Tank, Joe or I knew.
I bought my first of three drinks and bowled by myself for awhile. The brunette came in shortly, followed by the sausage fest, then by the blonde and Jon.
Jon and the blonde said they were going to the latrine and were gone for an hour. They had cleverly ditched the brunette and the sausage fest with me.
I liked being a good wing man but I really hated the group I was now surrounded by: a bunch of drooling guys all trying to one up each other to impress the brunette who was obviously a tease.
As I got more tipsy, I never let Tank hear the end of it.
Every time the brunette laughingly walked up and bowled for me I told Jon he owed me three dollars.
I said it to be funny but then Jon pulled out his wallet and I had to tell him to put it back. Social awkwardness is a real b-tch.
Jon got them to come with us on the Doha City Tour the next morning.
The brunette seemed determined to get me to act normal and flirt with her but I was put off by her vanity.
As we took the tour I was surprised to find that only twenty five percent of the population was considered a citizen. The other seventy five percent were second class citizens and were treated that way.
I tried to say this out loud but it became obvious that while Tank and Joe had never experienced oppression I certainly had so I quick shut up.
Also, on Fridays were the beheadings and it was a regular thing for someone to have their hands cut off. This is Real, I thought to myself.
They had a very structured society, with good schools and a specific path of survival, for both classes. Most ended up middle or upper middle class and living basically the American dream.
In America they have real freedom, I thought to myself, with the price of survival. Even with my life the way it was, I still prefer the American version of freedom.
Later, at lunch in an Iranian restaurant, the blonde, named Ka___, sat at the end of the table with me, Tank, and Jon. The brunette and Joe sat at the other end, on the other side of me and Tank.
We chose to pay attention to Jon’s end, because Joe seemed extra triggered by the brunette and was being an asshole, in the same way he was to me and last night to Jon. The blonde and I talked about how awkward the bowling alley was with all those sausages.
_I would rather be vulgar and obnoxious than to have to try be cool._ I said. _I would rather lose all hope for procreation. I would rather be a complete f-cking evolutionary sexual failure than to ever have to be cool._
She got a kick out of that.
Tank laughed and said _You’ve got the vulgar and obnoxious part down._
_It was all that practice._
I was too loud, plus I had cursed which is an easy way to get arrested in _____. I felt socially awkward again and remembered what I had read on the internet about how males from sexual abuse will use outrageousness to manage through social situations.
The thing about Tank and Jon and Ka__ was they came from classical educations and nuclear families. I still feel embarrassed about it, everyone else having accomplishments like high school diplomas and captain of the soccer team and musical scholarships.
I came out with a blank slate. My whole life taken up by this enormous Survival, so that when I came out I didn’t know if I was smart or not, athletic or not, didn’t know if I would’ve been a good brother or son, or boyfriend or lover. I had none of the universal markers.
Joe finally insulted Jon to the point that it was clear our four man team was over. In the bus he said, snidely, _You guys ain’t shit compared to me,_ referring to the fact he’d deployed three times. He seemed insulted that the girls weren’t immediately drawn to him. He seemed upset by the normalcy going on around him.
When Ka__ said, _I’m ready for him to leave,_ I felt guilty for agreeing.
The tour of Doha ended with a trip to the local mall. It was the low end mall, but to us it was extraordinarily high end. There was no doubt that _____ was a wealthy country.
We sat at the Starbucks, where a black coffee was nine American dollars. I asked how they felt about Joe.
_Frankly, I’m to the point I don’t give a shit,_ Jon said. It was rare for Jon to curse, he always said things like That’s so F’d up. Literally, he would say the letter F.
Tank agreed, and despite my heavy guilt, I did too, and even felt relieved.
Back at the base, after the tour, Joe seemed to know to go off on his own, and the girls promised to meet us later for drinks.
I tried to explain Joe to Jon and Tank, now that we had decided to let him go. I didn’t want them to judge him. I told them it was the contrast, his three infantry-style-deployments and us on our first deployment with little action.
I told them they wouldn’t believe the violence that shows up in your fingertips when you cross paths with someone who’s had it easy in comparison.
_Like this guy,_ I said, motioning to Jon, _He obviously comes from love, used to be that that would‘ve gotten to me._
Again I felt the social awkwardness of it. I used myself as an example more than I had meant to.
_Something about the way you talk, like you have to know everything,_ Jon said, as we walked to the laundry room. He didn’t say it in a negative way. He said it like it pleased him, that he knew something intimate about me, had picked up on it all on his own.
I was braced anyway. I told myself to let it go, let it go.
Embarrassingly, I could catch myself feeling a need to come out of such an extreme story with some sort of wisdom, something that could be added to my identity so that the story would have some value.
I thought I didn’t feel that way anymore -- that whole concept of superficial value. It’s just a story. I was always valuable, and can’t be anymore valuable, with out without the story.
It turned out to be our last night in _____.
We checked the board and our journey home began at three in the morning.
The three of us played pool, sang Karaoke -- Jon hands down was the best, being a Rock performer and all -- and we drank. The girls showed up and it was a blast.
As we walked down the sidewalk back to our bay, Jon hung his head down, in front of me, beside Tank, and said softly, _Why did the girls leave early?_
_Because it’s now two in the morning,_ Tank said, in a low voice. _And they go running at five in the morning._
_But it was our last night and who goes running at five in the morning?_
_The rest of the people in the Army -- besides us -- are morning people. I mean, it’s the Army._
_Oh, yeah._
_We’re in a rock band, we’re night owls. It’s just how it works._
It was at this point I saw the nineteen-year-old-ness of Jon. The sheer innocence.
I never experienced that, I thought to myself, with a smile. I didn’t allow myself to, it seemed dangerous.
We took showers and cleared the laundry room and repeatedly passed each other in the halls. I mentioned to Jon with a laugh how awkward it would be if Dan__ was also leaving at 0300.
_That guy is so obvious,_ I said.
_Yeah,_ Jon said, _He really is. We met him actually, before you did; that’s why we were trying to hang with you when we got here._
I was taken aback but recovered enough so that I don’t think Jon noticed. Alone in the laundry room, I leaned against a dryer, feeling dizzy.
So I was normal the whole time. Not freak-looking, not overly-outrageous or goofy, not creepily quiet or shy.
What I see isn’t the truth. My perception can’t be trusted. Like it couldn’t be trusted concerning K__, and couldn’t be trusted concerning Angelica that one time. It can’t be trusted concerning myself.
It hurt. Like the way the guy felt in that scene I saw in that airport terminal on the way here, from the movie Singles.
The thought crossed my mind that maybe they were lying, only pretending I was normal till I got on the plane and they‘d never have to see me again.
But the Toughness was there to tell me to Trust. I mean, they made a point to look me up on Facebook, I thought to myself, And they sent me friend requests for god’s sake.
But you’re not normal. Remember your weakness? People didn’t like you back then, they very much didn’t like you. There had to be a reason. Because of my lack of spunk, lack of charm, lack of something; isn’t that why Uncle P__ and Aunt S___ didn’t want you, that no one cared about you?
No, no. I don’t think so. These are my new friends, one is so Normal I picked him out of an airport terminal, and all along, to him, I was the Normal one, so Normal I would keep the weirdos away.
I believed them this time, when he said I was so normal. How many times has Jon said it, on his own, without provocation?
Used to be I felt like a liar, to come across as normal, and especially to come across as Him. It would feel so strong I’d do things to make it true that I wasn‘t normal, that I wasn‘t Him.
This time it crossed my mind, but it lacked the strong feeling it used to, that sense that I was going against nature, trying to be good, as if I had value. It was hard to believe, when the treatment I’d received insisted the opposite, and I had known no other treatment. I guess I’ve lived a sh-tty life.
At the café I was so confident -- so Him. June 1^st had only been a couple months prior to me walking into that café. They treated me well, treated me that way because I believed I was Him, and they believed me. I continued to believe I was Him because the way they treated me reflected it back at me.
I instantly feel and believe I’m Him when a girl likes me, treats me that way.
When I believe, I take care of myself better. Like the way I feel like I don’t belong when I work out at the gym. Meanwhile K__ acts perfectly at home, while I feel criminal and ridiculous, trying to better myself.
In that way I have control of my life, and life has control of me. The only thing that secures me during the bad treatment is the Toughness, insisting the value anyway, despite having no feeling of being of value -- that giant leap of faith -- so giant it goes completely against my own perception.

__________