(no subject)
*
Nate spends an uncomfortable first week back in Baltimore in his parents’ house.
Everything’s a bit too loud, a bit too sharp, too focused, like the rush of sensory input after surfacing from the muffled darkness of a dive. Except he feels that all the time now.
In Iraq, he pulled thirty-six hours without sleeping and still felt fresh enough to direct artillery fire. Here, he barely makes it through half a day without napping. He finds himself waking up a lot on the couch, the TV cycling through late night infomercials. Someone would have usually covered him with a blanket and left a glass of water on the side table.
His parents are worried, he knows, but they don’t push him. Their questions are all of the “What would you like for lunch?” and “Do you need anything from the store?” variety. He tries to smile more, but he doesn’t think it helps.
Five days in, he catches his mother on the phone with his sister. She’s crying. “He doesn’t go out, he doesn’t sleep properly, he doesn’t even look sad,” she says. “He’s just- empty.”
“I don’t know what to do,” she says.
The next morning, Nate takes a long shower, shaves for the first time since he’s been back, and goes to the aquarium.
His dad brought him here once as a kid. He remembers closing his eyes in front the large salt water tank, frightened by the overwhelming vastness of all that water.
Now, it’s the first place he goes. There aren’t many people here so early on a weekday, a few tourists, some stray students. The quiet is nice. He lets his breathing align with the beat of the artificial currents.
It’s the first time he feels like he’s back in his own body.
He thinks about calling Brad, telling him about the otherworldliness of this place, the way the density of marine life here is so artificially that it’s nothing like the ocean at all. He gets as far as pulling out his contact list before he realizes he doesn’t have Brad’s number.
In theater, Brad was never more than a short walk away. Now, he feels the Earth stretch out away from him, distance taking on tangible meaning.
It starts to rain as he drives back to his parents’ place, one of those sudden torrential downpours that they get sometimes between summer and fall. He hasn’t been in a storm for a while now. The water hits his windshield in fat splats that obscures the outside world.
It’s very beautiful.
*
In San Diego, it’s his waitress friend who’s waiting for him at the airport.
She’s graduated now, last June. She’s got a job consulting in San Francisco for a year, maybe business school after that. Nate asks questions in all the right places and tries not to be bored.
She hesitates in his driveway, fumbling with her keys, but Nate sends her away with a hug. He doesn’t know why. He hasn’t gotten laid in months now, but the thought of all the preparation and energy and small talk involved just leaves him feeling tired.
His roommate’s out of town for the weekend. The apartment’s emptiness seems to take on a ringing quality. Nate does a load of laundry and drives up to Pendleton.
The base is mostly deserted. A lot of the guys are still on leave. Technically, Nate is too. He daydreams while working through three months of paperwork.
*
Nate doesn’t see Brad again until his promotion ceremony. Despite being half a head taller than the rest of the crowd, Brad doesn’t stand out. When Nate meets his eyes, Brad gives him a smile.
Afterwards, Brad doesn’t stick around long enough to be found.
*
The next morning, the battalion XO calls him in to discuss his contract.
“You were great in Iraq,” the XO says. “We need more officers like you.”
Nate’s come through college with Classics majors who read Homer for the presentation of Greek society, analyzing the political ramifications of city-state kings and mass mobilization. They didn’t dream about the glory of Achilles’ sword. Most of them were in it for the philosophy.
When Nate told them he was joining the Marines, they thought he was joking. Then, they thought it was a phase, a last rebellious grasp at adventure before settling down to adulthood. Their perception of the military was born from peace and the media. Their stereotyping was not thought to be untrue.
But Nate’s always understood the importance of action before rhetoric. In theory, anything was achievable, but actualization requires people. When he joined the Marines, he knew what he was doing. The possibility of something more beckoned not with dim promises but real transformation.
Nate hasn’t changed his mind about the Corps. He’s lived in this world for six years now. Despite everything, he does love it here; it’s home.
But he can’t do this anymore.
*
In August, Harvard calls. They got his application. They’re very interested, but they’d like some clarifications.
“You were quoted as saying, ‘The good news is, we get to kill people,’” the admissions counselor tells him. “Would you like to explain your statement?”
Nate picked Harvard because their Public Policy program is damn good. He wants to do this right. But it doesn’t mean he exactly belongs.
He tells her, “No,” and hangs up the phone.
Two weeks later, his acceptance letter arrives in the mail.
*
Nate’s paddle party is on a Saturday. It’s the second to last night that he’s still a Marine, seven days before his flight out. Half of his stuff has been sent over to Boston already.
Most of the speeches are funny, a few thoughtful. Nate doesn’t feel the urge to do anything particularly civilian-like like start crying, but he is grateful. He’s more grateful than he can express.
Later, when everyone’s more than half drunk, Nate finds Brad in the backyard. He’s leaning against Mike’s picnic table, talking with Person.
When Nate comes closer, Person pulls him into a hug and says, “Man, I’m really going to miss you LT,” before heading back inside. It’s the sincerest thing Nate’s ever heard him say. It fits with the mood of the evening.
Brad’s got half a bottle of Corona left. He doesn’t look up when Nate says “Hey.”
“Hey,” he says back, soft and distant.
They’re far away enough from the house that the lights don’t quite reach. In the darkness, Brad’s profile almost blends in with the shadows of the trees behind them.
When Nate sits down, their elbows brush. Brad’s body heat feels obscenely warm against the night chill.
“Where’ve you been?” Nate asks finally. “I haven’t seen you around Oceanside.”
Brad’s looking down still. “I was visiting my parents in LA.”
It’s weird to think of Brad with his family. In Iraq, Brad rarely mentioned them. He talked about his bike more. Nate wonders if it was hard for Brad to see them again or if Brad’s mastered the transition by now.
He doesn’t ask. He offers instead, “When I was in Baltimore, I thought about calling you.”
In the relative quiet of their corner, Brad’s thumbnail makes a loud clinking sound as it fidgets with the label of his beer bottle. Nate finds himself fixating on it, on the shape of Brad’s fingers moving against the glass.
Brad sighs before he answers. Maybe Nate imagines it. “Yeah? You could have.”
“I didn’t have your number,” Nate says back.
Mostly, when Nate drinks, he gets calmer instead of maudlin. He used to hate people who started sobbing out tragedies after two beers. He’d rather they didn’t drink at all. It usually made everyone else’s night miserable.
He says anyway, “Brad, I’m sorry-“
“For what?” Brad sounds genuinely curious, confused.
Nate hadn’t come here to make confessions. They all had jobs to do. Nate wants to believe he did the best he could, but he can’t be sure. Sometimes, in the middle of requisition forms, he’ll feel overwhelmed with doubt, with guilt. It’s one of the reasons why he’s leaving the Corps.
Most of Nate’s memories of Iraq have nothing to do with Brad. The ones that do usually weren’t bad.
And then sometimes, he remembers with perfect clarity Brad’s bent form over a dying child, Brad firing a smoke grenade, the accusation in Brad’s eyes when Nate ordered him away from an unexploded bomb.
“For- everything,” Nate says. It doesn’t seem like enough. He’s not even sure what he means. He adds, “I wish I had been better.”
Sitting here with Brad, it’s hard not to think about Iraq. He wishes he could put it behind him better. He wanted to leave happy. He wanted to have memories of Brad that had nothing to do with being the best Team Leader Nate could ever hope for. He wishes he could start the conversation over again.
Brad seems to think about his response for a long time. “Nate, you’re the best thing I remember about this war.”
It’s close to a confession.
It’s not what Nate’s expecting to hear. On Nate’s first night back in Oceanside, he drove up to Brad’s house and circled the block three times before he got up the nerve to knock. It didn’t matter though. Brad wasn’t home anyway.
He should say something, he knows, but Brad’s always been braver than he is. Nate wouldn’t know the proper response anyway.
“Come back to my place,” Brad says.
He probably shouldn’t. It’s his party. He should stay and help Mike clean up.
He thinks about missing Brad in Baltimore, looking for him everyday at Pendleton, finding him in the darkness of the backyard away from everyone else. He thinks about a dusty Iraqi soccer field.
“Let me go say goodbye,” Nate says.
*
Brad’s house is surprisingly suburban: white, two-stories, shingled siding. Nate’s never been inside before, but he imagines it’s neat, minimalist, bold, like Brad himself.
On the drive over, Nate stays at a steady 20 miles per hour for the whole five blocks, sure that he’s going to run into a telephone pole. Brad’s waiting for him on the curb when he pulls up. Underneath the warming light of the streetlamp, Brad looks more relaxed and carefree than Nate had thought possible.
Inside, after Nate toes of his shoes, Brad takes his hand without preamble and pulls him up the stairs. Nate catches a glimpse of an open living room: glass coffee table, square, white couches, a very large TV.
Driving over, Nate’s had some time to think about what Brad was asking. He thought they’d sit and talk. He didn’t think to expect anything beyond that.
In the bedroom, Brad begins to strip: overshirt, jeans, socks. He’s wearing non-regulation plaid boxers for a change. When he’s done, he crawls underneath the covers and looks back at Nate and waits.
In Iraq, Nate used to think Brad could communicate with just his eyes. He’s used to finding soundless words in Brad’s lingering glances. Now, he wonders if he still speaks the language.
Nate collects himself from his slouch against the doorframe and takes out his wallet and keys and sets them on the dresser. Brad had thrown his clothes carelessly in the open doorway of the closet, but Nate takes his time with his own. When Nate’s in only his boxers, Brad pulls back the comforters and lets Nate get in before folding it back over him.
“Comfortable?” Brad says.
“Yeah, thanks,” Nate answers.
When Brad kisses him, Nate’s eyes are still open. He closes them and leans in to the kiss. When they part, Nate whispers “I want this” against Brad’s lips.
“Okay,” Brad says.
They’re kissing again. It’s wetter, hotter, with more intent than before. Nate settles himself over Brad, tries to get a better angle, tries to get more. Brad’s hand brushes against his cock, almost incidentally, before it rests along the back of his neck, pulling him closer. Every trace of skin Brad touched on the way tingles. Nate’s half hard already. He wonders if Brad felt it.
He gets a hand underneath Brad’s t-shirt, just to feel. He thinks about pulling it off, getting Brad all the way naked, licking down the ridges of Brad’s ribs.
The last time Nate saw that much of Brad’s skin, they were in an Iraqi field. Nate tries to blink away the image but it stays. Brad, naked without his kevlar, arms outspread. Brad yelling after another dead civilian. Brad aiming his gun.
The room’s too warm. Nate can feel himself beginning to sweat. His hand on Brad’s hips is shaking a little. He tries to tense his muscles, push back harder, control his response, but it doesn’t work.
He feels it spread, chocking him with a rising sense of hysteria until Brad eases him back. “Hey, hey,” Brad says, soothingly.
Nate’s hair’s gotten a bit longer now so that his bangs stick to his forehead with sweat. He never had this problem in Iraq. He pushes them away. “I’m kind of fucked up right now,” he says.
Brad laughs, a soft puff of breath against his neck that Nate feels more than hears.
“You’re a Marine Corps officer, of course you’re fucked up.” He doesn’t sound unkind.
In the intimacy of a shared bed, it’s harder to hold back. Nate doesn’t want to. “I don’t- I have no idea what I’m doing.” He meant about everything. He doesn’t try to explain.
Brad’s got one hand splayed across Nate’s stomach, his thumb stroking the skin above Nate’s belly-button. “That’s okay, neither do I,” he says. Underneath the sheets, his hand is warm and comforting.
They lie there for a long time in silence. The buzz from the alcohol and the lust is starting to fade now, leaving Nate satiated and drowsy. When he looks, Brad’s eyes are closed, his breathing even.
He looks peaceful, young.
Nate brushes a soft kiss across Brad’s forehead before he reaches over to turn off the bedside lamp. “Good night,” he whispers in the darkness.
In the morning, when Nate wakes up, the sun’s just breaking over the horizon. This close, Nate can see the individual lashes of Brad’s eyes flutter in sleep. It’s one of the most beautiful things Nate’s ever seen.
*
Nate spends an uncomfortable first week back in Baltimore in his parents’ house.
Everything’s a bit too loud, a bit too sharp, too focused, like the rush of sensory input after surfacing from the muffled darkness of a dive. Except he feels that all the time now.
In Iraq, he pulled thirty-six hours without sleeping and still felt fresh enough to direct artillery fire. Here, he barely makes it through half a day without napping. He finds himself waking up a lot on the couch, the TV cycling through late night infomercials. Someone would have usually covered him with a blanket and left a glass of water on the side table.
His parents are worried, he knows, but they don’t push him. Their questions are all of the “What would you like for lunch?” and “Do you need anything from the store?” variety. He tries to smile more, but he doesn’t think it helps.
Five days in, he catches his mother on the phone with his sister. She’s crying. “He doesn’t go out, he doesn’t sleep properly, he doesn’t even look sad,” she says. “He’s just- empty.”
“I don’t know what to do,” she says.
The next morning, Nate takes a long shower, shaves for the first time since he’s been back, and goes to the aquarium.
His dad brought him here once as a kid. He remembers closing his eyes in front the large salt water tank, frightened by the overwhelming vastness of all that water.
Now, it’s the first place he goes. There aren’t many people here so early on a weekday, a few tourists, some stray students. The quiet is nice. He lets his breathing align with the beat of the artificial currents.
It’s the first time he feels like he’s back in his own body.
He thinks about calling Brad, telling him about the otherworldliness of this place, the way the density of marine life here is so artificially that it’s nothing like the ocean at all. He gets as far as pulling out his contact list before he realizes he doesn’t have Brad’s number.
In theater, Brad was never more than a short walk away. Now, he feels the Earth stretch out away from him, distance taking on tangible meaning.
It starts to rain as he drives back to his parents’ place, one of those sudden torrential downpours that they get sometimes between summer and fall. He hasn’t been in a storm for a while now. The water hits his windshield in fat splats that obscures the outside world.
It’s very beautiful.
*
In San Diego, it’s his waitress friend who’s waiting for him at the airport.
She’s graduated now, last June. She’s got a job consulting in San Francisco for a year, maybe business school after that. Nate asks questions in all the right places and tries not to be bored.
She hesitates in his driveway, fumbling with her keys, but Nate sends her away with a hug. He doesn’t know why. He hasn’t gotten laid in months now, but the thought of all the preparation and energy and small talk involved just leaves him feeling tired.
His roommate’s out of town for the weekend. The apartment’s emptiness seems to take on a ringing quality. Nate does a load of laundry and drives up to Pendleton.
The base is mostly deserted. A lot of the guys are still on leave. Technically, Nate is too. He daydreams while working through three months of paperwork.
*
Nate doesn’t see Brad again until his promotion ceremony. Despite being half a head taller than the rest of the crowd, Brad doesn’t stand out. When Nate meets his eyes, Brad gives him a smile.
Afterwards, Brad doesn’t stick around long enough to be found.
*
The next morning, the battalion XO calls him in to discuss his contract.
“You were great in Iraq,” the XO says. “We need more officers like you.”
Nate’s come through college with Classics majors who read Homer for the presentation of Greek society, analyzing the political ramifications of city-state kings and mass mobilization. They didn’t dream about the glory of Achilles’ sword. Most of them were in it for the philosophy.
When Nate told them he was joining the Marines, they thought he was joking. Then, they thought it was a phase, a last rebellious grasp at adventure before settling down to adulthood. Their perception of the military was born from peace and the media. Their stereotyping was not thought to be untrue.
But Nate’s always understood the importance of action before rhetoric. In theory, anything was achievable, but actualization requires people. When he joined the Marines, he knew what he was doing. The possibility of something more beckoned not with dim promises but real transformation.
Nate hasn’t changed his mind about the Corps. He’s lived in this world for six years now. Despite everything, he does love it here; it’s home.
But he can’t do this anymore.
*
In August, Harvard calls. They got his application. They’re very interested, but they’d like some clarifications.
“You were quoted as saying, ‘The good news is, we get to kill people,’” the admissions counselor tells him. “Would you like to explain your statement?”
Nate picked Harvard because their Public Policy program is damn good. He wants to do this right. But it doesn’t mean he exactly belongs.
He tells her, “No,” and hangs up the phone.
Two weeks later, his acceptance letter arrives in the mail.
*
Nate’s paddle party is on a Saturday. It’s the second to last night that he’s still a Marine, seven days before his flight out. Half of his stuff has been sent over to Boston already.
Most of the speeches are funny, a few thoughtful. Nate doesn’t feel the urge to do anything particularly civilian-like like start crying, but he is grateful. He’s more grateful than he can express.
Later, when everyone’s more than half drunk, Nate finds Brad in the backyard. He’s leaning against Mike’s picnic table, talking with Person.
When Nate comes closer, Person pulls him into a hug and says, “Man, I’m really going to miss you LT,” before heading back inside. It’s the sincerest thing Nate’s ever heard him say. It fits with the mood of the evening.
Brad’s got half a bottle of Corona left. He doesn’t look up when Nate says “Hey.”
“Hey,” he says back, soft and distant.
They’re far away enough from the house that the lights don’t quite reach. In the darkness, Brad’s profile almost blends in with the shadows of the trees behind them.
When Nate sits down, their elbows brush. Brad’s body heat feels obscenely warm against the night chill.
“Where’ve you been?” Nate asks finally. “I haven’t seen you around Oceanside.”
Brad’s looking down still. “I was visiting my parents in LA.”
It’s weird to think of Brad with his family. In Iraq, Brad rarely mentioned them. He talked about his bike more. Nate wonders if it was hard for Brad to see them again or if Brad’s mastered the transition by now.
He doesn’t ask. He offers instead, “When I was in Baltimore, I thought about calling you.”
In the relative quiet of their corner, Brad’s thumbnail makes a loud clinking sound as it fidgets with the label of his beer bottle. Nate finds himself fixating on it, on the shape of Brad’s fingers moving against the glass.
Brad sighs before he answers. Maybe Nate imagines it. “Yeah? You could have.”
“I didn’t have your number,” Nate says back.
Mostly, when Nate drinks, he gets calmer instead of maudlin. He used to hate people who started sobbing out tragedies after two beers. He’d rather they didn’t drink at all. It usually made everyone else’s night miserable.
He says anyway, “Brad, I’m sorry-“
“For what?” Brad sounds genuinely curious, confused.
Nate hadn’t come here to make confessions. They all had jobs to do. Nate wants to believe he did the best he could, but he can’t be sure. Sometimes, in the middle of requisition forms, he’ll feel overwhelmed with doubt, with guilt. It’s one of the reasons why he’s leaving the Corps.
Most of Nate’s memories of Iraq have nothing to do with Brad. The ones that do usually weren’t bad.
And then sometimes, he remembers with perfect clarity Brad’s bent form over a dying child, Brad firing a smoke grenade, the accusation in Brad’s eyes when Nate ordered him away from an unexploded bomb.
“For- everything,” Nate says. It doesn’t seem like enough. He’s not even sure what he means. He adds, “I wish I had been better.”
Sitting here with Brad, it’s hard not to think about Iraq. He wishes he could put it behind him better. He wanted to leave happy. He wanted to have memories of Brad that had nothing to do with being the best Team Leader Nate could ever hope for. He wishes he could start the conversation over again.
Brad seems to think about his response for a long time. “Nate, you’re the best thing I remember about this war.”
It’s close to a confession.
It’s not what Nate’s expecting to hear. On Nate’s first night back in Oceanside, he drove up to Brad’s house and circled the block three times before he got up the nerve to knock. It didn’t matter though. Brad wasn’t home anyway.
He should say something, he knows, but Brad’s always been braver than he is. Nate wouldn’t know the proper response anyway.
“Come back to my place,” Brad says.
He probably shouldn’t. It’s his party. He should stay and help Mike clean up.
He thinks about missing Brad in Baltimore, looking for him everyday at Pendleton, finding him in the darkness of the backyard away from everyone else. He thinks about a dusty Iraqi soccer field.
“Let me go say goodbye,” Nate says.
*
Brad’s house is surprisingly suburban: white, two-stories, shingled siding. Nate’s never been inside before, but he imagines it’s neat, minimalist, bold, like Brad himself.
On the drive over, Nate stays at a steady 20 miles per hour for the whole five blocks, sure that he’s going to run into a telephone pole. Brad’s waiting for him on the curb when he pulls up. Underneath the warming light of the streetlamp, Brad looks more relaxed and carefree than Nate had thought possible.
Inside, after Nate toes of his shoes, Brad takes his hand without preamble and pulls him up the stairs. Nate catches a glimpse of an open living room: glass coffee table, square, white couches, a very large TV.
Driving over, Nate’s had some time to think about what Brad was asking. He thought they’d sit and talk. He didn’t think to expect anything beyond that.
In the bedroom, Brad begins to strip: overshirt, jeans, socks. He’s wearing non-regulation plaid boxers for a change. When he’s done, he crawls underneath the covers and looks back at Nate and waits.
In Iraq, Nate used to think Brad could communicate with just his eyes. He’s used to finding soundless words in Brad’s lingering glances. Now, he wonders if he still speaks the language.
Nate collects himself from his slouch against the doorframe and takes out his wallet and keys and sets them on the dresser. Brad had thrown his clothes carelessly in the open doorway of the closet, but Nate takes his time with his own. When Nate’s in only his boxers, Brad pulls back the comforters and lets Nate get in before folding it back over him.
“Comfortable?” Brad says.
“Yeah, thanks,” Nate answers.
When Brad kisses him, Nate’s eyes are still open. He closes them and leans in to the kiss. When they part, Nate whispers “I want this” against Brad’s lips.
“Okay,” Brad says.
They’re kissing again. It’s wetter, hotter, with more intent than before. Nate settles himself over Brad, tries to get a better angle, tries to get more. Brad’s hand brushes against his cock, almost incidentally, before it rests along the back of his neck, pulling him closer. Every trace of skin Brad touched on the way tingles. Nate’s half hard already. He wonders if Brad felt it.
He gets a hand underneath Brad’s t-shirt, just to feel. He thinks about pulling it off, getting Brad all the way naked, licking down the ridges of Brad’s ribs.
The last time Nate saw that much of Brad’s skin, they were in an Iraqi field. Nate tries to blink away the image but it stays. Brad, naked without his kevlar, arms outspread. Brad yelling after another dead civilian. Brad aiming his gun.
The room’s too warm. Nate can feel himself beginning to sweat. His hand on Brad’s hips is shaking a little. He tries to tense his muscles, push back harder, control his response, but it doesn’t work.
He feels it spread, chocking him with a rising sense of hysteria until Brad eases him back. “Hey, hey,” Brad says, soothingly.
Nate’s hair’s gotten a bit longer now so that his bangs stick to his forehead with sweat. He never had this problem in Iraq. He pushes them away. “I’m kind of fucked up right now,” he says.
Brad laughs, a soft puff of breath against his neck that Nate feels more than hears.
“You’re a Marine Corps officer, of course you’re fucked up.” He doesn’t sound unkind.
In the intimacy of a shared bed, it’s harder to hold back. Nate doesn’t want to. “I don’t- I have no idea what I’m doing.” He meant about everything. He doesn’t try to explain.
Brad’s got one hand splayed across Nate’s stomach, his thumb stroking the skin above Nate’s belly-button. “That’s okay, neither do I,” he says. Underneath the sheets, his hand is warm and comforting.
They lie there for a long time in silence. The buzz from the alcohol and the lust is starting to fade now, leaving Nate satiated and drowsy. When he looks, Brad’s eyes are closed, his breathing even.
He looks peaceful, young.
Nate brushes a soft kiss across Brad’s forehead before he reaches over to turn off the bedside lamp. “Good night,” he whispers in the darkness.
In the morning, when Nate wakes up, the sun’s just breaking over the horizon. This close, Nate can see the individual lashes of Brad’s eyes flutter in sleep. It’s one of the most beautiful things Nate’s ever seen.
*