It stayed with me, that manner of handling things while I let them abuse me, the way I egged them on, ensuring that when I later tell of the abuses the listener would gape instead of just say something like: _The world can be such a terrible place._
The knowledge of thievery came from a silent place, not from my head, and I knew it wholly, same as I knew sex back then, I just happened to be six, seven.
The two games I play -- pretending like I’m not violent or sexual -- play into that.
The game comes from my head but the vague knowledge of them comes from that same silence. That empty space where there should be memory. The criminal mentality I had as a boy, growing up to be a mule, with unarticulated ideas always in the back of my mind that history calls revolutionary.
_See, I didn’t even have to smile that time,_ House said, getting away with something else. _It was all just good looks alone._
I didn’t want to be like R___ and P___, my dad and uncle -- Am I more of a man now? I can see what’s in front of me, I’m not weak. I don’t stare at eleven year old girls like R___ and P___ did.
Violence -- working poor -- indemnity -- these things I could never talk to K__ about except in the intellectual sphere only. Meanwhile House knows these things from personal experience. I feel relieved by him. Meanwhile I still had the most in common with K___. I haven’t heard from K__ in a long time.
I expect a woman to see things the same way. I’m suspicious of a girl who falls for a guy’s usual tricks -- good looks, attention, manipulations, instead of only registering what’s Real and UnReal.
Sex should be as natural as friendship, like how it is with K___. It’s not like that for most guys here -- guys who are manipulative about getting laid, guys who get off on porn and strip clubs.
After dealing with W___, I don’t feel that K___’s absence and silence is my fault. So I made some mistakes in our friendship, but so did he. I simply know mine best, so when I think of why he’s absent, mine are the only ones I have to go on.
I remember Tiger Cubs. I remember Bible School. It’s happened before -- remembering -- but after awhile no matter how hard I try I can’t remember it anymore.
I woke from nightmares to the sound of House playfully calling my name: _Chuck, wake up, Chuck. Time to get up Chuck._
Our cots are less than a foot apart -- all of us are packed into this tent like sardines. We completed our first movement in the middle of the night. Now we’re waiting for the beginning of our second.
I feel reactive to these guys -- House and Mace. I can’t talk freely like I could with K___, because our tastes are different, and I want to fit in.
Guys are buying t-shirts that say: _I know I’m going to heaven when I die because I’ve already been to hell._ Most are making the deployment out to be more than it was, like they’re battle-hardened heroes or something.
The most battle hardened person I know is W___. He’s been hit by eight IEDs and shot at several times. That’s maybe 20 days out of 365 that something happened.
I don’t want to be like SFC Stew. The rank caricatures him. Now that I’m free and well-to-do, now that I’ve survived the deployment that has made me free and well-to-do, I could lose my grip on Reality -- on being Real -- if I’m not careful.
I notice how Mace__ and H__ (sometimes) can be dorks -- it makes me miss K___.
At worst, the boy wasn’t a dork, he knew what he knew in the silence -- not a word in his head.
My situation -- my having to be functional -- forced me to learn it in my head.
My story -- whatever it really is -- weakened me. I refused to accept it. Hence the numbness.
Maybe all this was handled brilliantly all along.
Can it be that simple? Maybe being Real equals being Cool, and being UnReal equals being a dork.
House’s small hands. It startled me to notice their lack of size and lack of scarring. Mine are the opposite.
House is popular in the same way K___ would try to be -- popular enough to get away with anything.
Law___, a medic I’ve never met before, started talking to me in the smoker’s hut, because we were the only ones there. He suddenly started talking about a medic named K___ without my bringing him up. Just as I was sitting there missing him.
As always I stayed numb until the Work was done. By being numb I forced myself to fix the problem instead of accepting it. I did this because I absolutely could not allow myself to be like R__ and P___; they were weak, that’s why they looked at A__ and H___ that way.
Getting high on Tussin involves huge pupils, bad taste, and an unusual tendency to trips. I have a third place to go to now. Being High on whatever happens to be available. Memory, Numbness, and High.
I got high for what I thought was the first time as I went through customs. It was an adventure. The most important part was how unbelievably familiar the high was, so familiar I recognized it from my dreams -- from my memory. I don’t know what it means.
House seems to insist on an intimacy. He puts things in my pockets -- even my trouser pockets -- and takes them out, without warning, in the middle of conversations, duties, even in the middle of conversations with others.
He’s always worried about finding me. He should be worried about how much his always having to be around me gets on his Sergeants’ nerves.
As soon as I begin to feel warm, he mentions how he wishes how it was a bit colder. It’s weird how on the same wave length we are.
He drinks from the same bottles as me, and the same cups.
Now that the deployment is winding down we’re all talking about our plans once we get back. Turns out it’s normal for battle buddies to shack up after deployment.
I make fun of him for a dimple he doesn’t have. _Everyone falls for your dimple except me, why is that?_ I joke to him.
He tells me he’s ashamed of his behavior, doesn’t like himself because none of his qualities are real, people simply allow him those qualities because he flashes them the dimple.
He says I’m the realest person he knows, all my qualities are real, no one has ever allowed me anything.
__________
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