War Porn (4 page)

“I'm alright,” she said. “I'm okay. I just
. . . 
I don't know what the fuck happened. With all the whiskey, I guess, I went a little sideways.”

“You went, like, diagonal,” Rachel said.

“That was crazy, Mel,” said Dahlia. “You just called Wendy's boyfriend a Nazi.”

“He's not my boyfriend.”

“Well, he's not a Nazi either,” Dahlia said. “He's a soldier who just got back from a war zone. He's a person.”

“I know, man. I'm sorry.”

“Honey, I love your political passion,” said Rachel, “but goodness gracious. You might as well have just called him a baby killer. We don't
do
that anymore. You know how messed up your dad is.”

“I'm know
. . . 
I just . . .”

Dahlia stood between the flickering tiki torches in the dark, feeling the adrenaline course through her arms and legs, thinking who decides things? Who makes choices? You go do a thing, you commit to things, then something happens. Sometimes you just do things. Sometimes things just happen. “I'm going inside for a minute,” she said to no one in particular, then slid away into the house, through the kitchen, down the hall and into the bathroom where the
lightless gray and black wrapped around her like blankets. She locked the door behind her, felt her way to the toilet, and sat. She didn't want to see his eyes in the mirror. She didn't want to feel him. She rubbed her arms hard, trying to scour away the electricity, the gold flecks in his green irises, the way he sat too close, his chipped incisor, the way his knee bumped hers. His body pressing on her as she came between him and Mel, his arms, his muscled chest and shoulders. His smell that seemed to catch in her throat.

Why'd Wendy even bring him?
Some jerk
. He could do anything.

You have to stop.

But not if it happens to someone else. Who says I always have to be the same when I'm always different? Always different.
Pull yourself together
. Pull together what? Who? And what would it feel like?

Does Matt know? Is he gonna take you home?

I am home. You gotta get out.

Pull yourself together. You're the one who got her shit together. You make choices. You're the one who does what you do, this life, right now. Ride it.

babylon

 

between men and lions wolves and lambs

 

continued strong techniques, life's blood TV detainees

use of stress is essential

two CSHs with four sites out and
Operation Iron Hammer
when these fail an Arab's honor can cause him to react by interpreting the facts to suit himself or flatly denying them. Therefore a Westerner should remember the “yes” you hear does not always mean yes and might mean no. That he answer “yes” whether it be true or not. In the American world, a flat “no” signals you want to end the very indirect approach toward corrective remarks and include praise of any good points. Similar to this by grace of God, our friend the Sheikh Talat, those rounds were close. People demand we stay for lunch, continue past as we turn along a street, pointless to question the political blue decorating

 

the edge of Babylon

this point

aligned with the global lowest

art of an edge, heart of the city, the streets

 

blood TV

heart of the city

 

therefore about a minute use auditory stimuli hoods six operating tables, some between us till mild physical contact and mobile hospitals
Operation Planet X
Department of Defense by the grace of God global consensus my spear Rumsfeld fully functional in 24 to 48 hours his story from the bombs over
Operation Longstreet
and goes to work for the US as a translator. As the insurgency mounts, he's threatened by
Operation Ripper Sweep
to give them intel and/or quit the Americans. Even as revelations have been made and behavior exposed, oil policy throughout all running a mathematician who doesn't know where action might be warranted and

  we see distinctions that

are not distinctions:

 

hides faith somewhere in Asia, perhaps Afghanistan, among the symbols calling forth stages of military passage for example opportunities lost indeed he's brought specifically “graduated levels” and it stands sheikh danger

“Humvees”

 

will be his lie and if CIA case officers local Hard Site

initiation of the abuse once the importance of a method used at GTMO you (with) surely Allah facilitates
Operation Vigilant Resolve
majority of Iraqis are delta until the government regardless, for example, appearances and politeness automatically require an answer of “still checking” or something similar means “no,” an indirect response also means “I am still your friend, I tried” therefore when dealing with
Operation Bulldog Mammoth
polite way for an Arab to say no is to say “I'll see what I can do” no matter how impossible after the Arab concerning his success have fled to Iran from Baghdad works as a journalist. When the uprising begins in earnest
Operation Warrior
lives in the flood plain

heart of the TV

according to Military Intelligence

 

knowledge or implicitly of what will be yours my spear the Kingdom this day

 

I could hear the water I threw up

fall back on

 

the frequency of interrogations and the middleman's hands: having failed punishment of Allah to come victorious out of interlocking to circumvent public rage, buildings and the leashed hotel, pyramids naked, naked blood, heading off some report, the collective flattened and critically wounded patients sealed off from the responsibility made to spare those targets on the edge, the heart

your leader will
control your fire

(operation iraqi freedom, 2003)

 

i am an american, fighting in the forces which guard

my country and our way of life

i am prepared to give my life in their defense

 

 

The major in the lead truck took a wrong turn and we all followed. We drove two miles down the wrong highway before looping back to the intersection with the chipped concrete barrier spray-painted
MSR Cleveland
TO BAGHDAD
.

We got lost again just the other side of the border and wound up driving down a dirt road behind a line of tank pits. Blackened hulks jutted up from the sand.

Later we saw our first Iraqis, a farm family thin as whippets, standing outside their hut watching us go by.

We stopped and dismounted. All along the line, men clambered down and stood or knelt on the road or shoulder, rifles aimed at the empty desert.

No radio traffic.

We stood in the sun while the wind whipped sand at us. Waves of silica slid and ebbed across the blacktop like the ghosts of snakes. Engines hummed. We watched the horizon.

The radio crackled and beeped twice. We looked to the truck in front and to the one behind. I wiped dust off my glasses. I drank water, then dug for an MRE. Chicken Cavatelli. Beef Teriyaki.

A few minutes later, the call came to roll out.

We crossed a bridge near a village, and on the far side, Iraqi kids ran at us waving knives.

“Watch those kids, Wilson,” Captain Yarrow said.

“Roger, sir,” I said.

Sergeant Chandler in the back leveled his rifle out the window.

“You buy!” they yelled. “Ameriki! You buy! Baynet!”

“Stay back!”

Men rose up behind the kids, grinning under mustaches and dragging coolers. “You buy, Ameriki,” they sang out. “You buy Pipsi.” They held up cans of red, white, and blue, wet with condensation, dripping ice. I could taste the sand in my throat.

The radio barked: “
All elements, Deep Steel Three. Be advised of unknown contacts both sides. Do not stop, do not say again do not buy anything. Say again, do not stop.”

“Can I shoot one, sir?” Sergeant Chandler asked.

“Balalalalalalala!”
Lieutenant Krauss shouted. The kids laughed and pointed. One of them jumped and danced, his knife shining in the air.

Captain Yarrow turned to me: “If they get in front of us, honk. And if they don't get out of the way, run him over. I mean it. Run him over.”

I imagined the Iraqi boy's body dragged beneath the humvee's tires, three tons of steel rolling over his chest, squirting intestines onto the road.

“You buy! Ameriki! Baynet! Pipsi!”

Captain Yarrow double-checked his pistol. “Roger, Specialist?”

“Roger, sir.”

When it happened, I thought, I'd speed up to make it quicker. I wouldn't look in the rearview at the stain of blood on the road. I'd keep my eyes straight ahead and not even from the corner would I look at the boy I'd killed.

Of course I'd look.

No. I'd watch the taillights of the truck in front. I wouldn't look.

Of course I'd look. I'd speed up—but would I even feel the body under the humvee's tons?

 

face the target, place the weapon to your shoulder,

move the selector lever from
safe
to
semi

 

 

Night fell. Against the bruised and blackening sky, flames shot up from distant towers. Armored ruins lined the road in squads, charred corpses scattered in among the blasted metal. A dead Iraqi grinned where fire had burned away his face, leaving yellowed teeth in a black ring, eye sockets smears of shadowed flesh.

The convoy slowed.

Coils of wire bloomed along the highway.

A sentry directed us in, her pale cheeks washed in humvee light and smudged with dirt and soot. Refinery fires shone gold and red in her empty eyes. She swung her arm again in front, again, directing traffic.

To our left burned a great fire into which three joes shoveled trash. Beyond that some kind of rusting, latticed, industrial turret, erratically lit, rose in the dark. To our right loomed the shadows of the big green, lines of hemmets and trucks, machines rumbling low. Guided by soldiers with chemlights, red lines floating in the black until our lights hit them and they flinched, we circled along avenues of wire, down mazes of green steel. We stopped.

Word passed: stand by.

We dumped our gear and dug out MREs.

After eating I slung my rifle, lit a smoke, and walked down the line searching for someone to talk to. I found a bunch of guys standing watching three National Guard females changing their brown t-shirts. They'd climbed on top of their fuel truck for privacy but still we could see.

One girl was black or Hispanic, so timid she sat and all we could see was her forehead. Another was skinny like a boy, with buzz-cut hair, no tits, and a face like cratered rock. The third, she was our favorite. She had a nice face and brown hair pulled back in a ponytail—even in DCUs you could tell she was a woman. When she pulled off her sweat-soaked brown t-shirt, we cheered.

“Fuck you assholes,” she shouted.

She had a gut, love handles, big tits. We adored her.

Someone shouted “Hey take off your bra” and she gave us the finger.

They pulled on their tops and the brown girl yelled down, “Show's over, shitheads.”

Reading took this as an invitation to go backstage, but the rest of us scattered. We walked down the line, me, Villaguerrero, Healds, and Bullwinkle.

“I bend that white girl over the hood this humvee and fucking
bam
, right in the fucking ass.”

“I want the Chicana.”

“She black.”

“No she ain't. She a hundred percent Puerto Rican. I can tell, I got spicvision.”

“Wouldn't that be spicdar?”

“Beanervision.”

“Beaners are from Mexico, motherfucker. I'm Puerto Rican.”

“Beandar.”

“You don't eat beans in Puerto Rico?”

“They fucking eat bananas.”

“Anyway you couldn't even see her.”

“Bananas and mangoes and shit.”

“I could see her face and that's all I need, cuz that's what's I'm gonna have wrapped around my cock. Oh yeah, baby, oh you like it? Fuckin' eat it, bitch.”

“Shit, I'll take two and make a Nasty Girl sandwich. Bread, bread, I'm the meat. Make my own mayonnaise.”

“Fuck that.
I'm
gonna fuck the black girl. Y'all can fuck the dog.”

“She a fucking dyke.”

“Fuck, man, this point I put a MRE box on her head and call it even. I gives a fuck.”

“Hooah.”