On Pass in Arabia, 1

　
I rode the bus to another terminal. It was a full bus and seemed like a long ride. The conversation included me sometimes, because I was from the FOB they were talking about, but mostly it was between the four people around me and about the b_s_ they were experiencing.
As I gathered it, they had just arrived in country, and they were a coed unit, with a lot of adultery going on.
One girl was particularly vocal and judgemental; she couldn‘t believe men and women would cheat on their spouses like that.
She sat beside me, across the aisle, and had on Army shorts. She was small and latino, and effortlessly hot. She kept her hands between her thighs, which pushed the shorts up farther. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her legs and the line between her upper thighs. I was glad I was wearing dark shades. I felt the wave and heat run through my body
So this is what it’s like to be twenty six.

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Everything is on the way home to that haven. I come from a woman. That connection never registered in my brain before. She had thoroughly, casually, rejected me. In turn I simply rejected her, including my feelings about her, even the anger and hate.
I came from a woman. There’s something there, a sense of entitlement, a calmness. I was approved by Nature in that way, entitled to its inheritance, its Qualities.
All the stories along the way, even homosexuality, even Numbness, even Indignity, is on the way to those breasts, those legs. There’s a power in it, feeling that connection to the world, to Life, so connected its qualities are your qualities.
It becomes an effortless masculinity, an effortless knowing. I could feel the -- click -- where everything falls into place. I don’t wonder why Mom treated me the opposite. She was one small example of something enormous and eternal.

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I sat in a terminal and read an article about a small boy who shot and killed his father, then called 911, crying.
The police arrested him and he is now locked up.
The article never mentioned the idea that there may have been abuse involved. I thought about the rifle on the mantle in the House. How many roads I could’ve gone down back then, how one kind action or word could turn a path, bend a fork, stop a bullet.
I can pick out the loved ones. I’ve been able to do it for a long time. This time I picked him out of a military airport terminal.
I can never say what it is exactly. The way he was talking to his friend, the way he smiled and handled himself. He was normal. That kid came from love. He carried around a black canvas case that looked like it contained a tennis racket.
A scene from the movie ‘Singles’ was playing on the television. In the scene the most amiable, eligible guy is a wreck, his apartment is unkept, not to mention his hygiene.
Him and his girlfriend decided to just be friends, because their relationship had gotten so close it began to get triggering, it began to have a power they were afraid of.
He had changed his mind and tried to get her back but failed. In the scene his neighbor comes by to check on him. He tells her charmingly _You know, in modern society it never becomes necessary to leave your apartment. Everything can be delivered, work can be emailed._
_I don’t understand what’s wrong, it was just a girl_ she says.
He lets go of the cheerful act. _I Trusted my instinct_ he said. _And they were wrong -- the opposite of right._

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