Spent Shell Casings

by David Rose

  I opened my eyes to realize that I was no longer with a girl, but was now bound in a wooden chair in front of a table. A harsh light lurched forward from the tabletop, shining in my face. There were three men who looked to be KGB or something, one holding a curved blade up to his throat, smiling. Another had a pistol and was pulling the hammer back and then riding the trigger home. They were all smiling as the hammer kept getting re-cocked over and over.

  I woke up to see my team leader next to my cot. In the weaver stance, he was practicing pistol drills. He glanced down at me as I stared at him, confused and with a headache from dehydration.

  A co., in the mid-section of the 2000s, was arguably one of the most sordid carnival heaps to ever work under a military standard. In Camp Fallujah, stately B Co. Marines would walk through A Co. trailers, holding tight security as hoots and hisses emitted from the darkened windows and vague crannies. Piss bottles hurled at their heads, the knew if they stopped they would likely be mugged and have their gear traded for DVDs.

  Listening to half the platoon in their Cretan drunkenness. Henry Miller, well I really think I am missing something he’s trying to say. One thing his writing has made me do lately is appreciate the hidden beauty in all things, mostly hidden in things that are looked down upon. To see ruby and gold in the blood from a guy’s forehead after a fistfight. Tequila brings out aggression and it impresses me how brotherly all the A259 guys are, even though we’re all stressed and want to get back to the States. The beauty in all things! Americans are so brainwashed to see “beauty” only in things of force-fed value, or sex appeal. If you live your life through that scope, I think you’ll never see what beauty is. I still can’t really label it. I suppose it’s a quality in something that makes you feel good about either it or yourself. To see beauty in two smashed Marines bitching about life and how in the civilian world they’d never hang out together, while the whole time one’s arm is around the other.

  B Co. guys would be doing mag changes in their room at 9 p.m. on a Friday night, while most of A Co. would be convoying out the back gate to bum rush the front door of our favorite strip club. B Co. guys were the ones going into the offices to talk about reenlistment; A Co. Marines had become legends for beating the piss out of a dozen engineer students and then, briefly, escaping from the MP’s car. Somehow, despite the highest DUI rate, per capita, in the Division, our unit received the Division Safety Award right before going wheels up to participate in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

  In the camp—been here three days. We spent a full day flying and one in Kuwait. We moved to TQ north of Fallujah for a couple more days. The majority of this place is a barren wasteland, sheer nothingness but wind and sand. I’d hate to live here! The camp is awesome; trailers, chow halls, gym, phone center, showers (although cold), etc. . . It’s a fucking desert Hilton. Last night while we were on the BZO60 range, on the outskirts of the camp two mortars came in and killed the oncoming regimental XO61 and comm officer and seriously wounded the sergeant major. The good food and air conditioning doesn’t hide the fact that we are not safe here and these people want to kill us. We were ordered not to tell our family and friends anything about what we are doing. That bugs me; I like to inform my parents. The brutal truth of things is often more solace than sugarcoated lies or silence. I agree with it, though; it is for our own security.

  Due to an ill-planned parking job, an entire stock of B Co. vehicles were roasted by a single mortar, launched by an Iraqi who must have went to bed that night certain Allah had rewarded his mortar-tube marksmanship with a glorious fire. Of course, this same platoon was soon given all the vehicles from an A Co. platoon. Destined to walk the Zaidon with bloused boots and a clean shave, A Co. Marines’ penchant for theft developed early. By the time all vehicles were returned to our company, it had become SOP: Vehicles stop to set up a forward operating base. Nearest house is pillaged-Pillows, blankets, the occasional Koran and family photo. One hard-charger would seed panties found in temporarily confiscated drawers. Violence erupted in our AO62 and the pass times took a backseat to a lot of long hours and a bit of bloodshed.

  I’ve seen the machine come alive! You dwell in it so deeply at times that you forget you’re a part of it. I doubt a gear in a clock knows it’s a gear in a clock after long enough, especially if the clock is not in motion. In spite of the fact that the parts are made of bitching, nagging flesh, the machine works. The machine is iron. A standing, manlike iron shape that’s crushing hand oozes liquid metal as it makes a sudden but strategic clasp. Sparks fly and no expression is made. In darkness it stands a giant among giants.

  Three A Co. operators sit in a stripper’s car, the front passenger door flung open. Two strippers roll on the ground outside a trailer, like cats, with an assortment of hair care products strewn about on the flattened grass. Fighting over one of the guys in the backseat; the owner of the car had seen her bathroom contents being tossed out by the other one, perched on the center-block stoop of the trailer just a moment before. Now engaged in hair-pulling combat. A matriarchal crone, equipped in a Johnny Cash shirt and a frog voice, attepts to break up the scrap.

  “Steal her car, dude” from the backseat.

  “I am not stealing a fucking stripper’s shit box car! Okay, shut up, here she comes.”

  Dispute resolution complete, the four make it back to the base. The victor fucked her trophy on his bed, blades of grass all over the sheets. Her phone was thrown in the barracks pond for not being receptive to group sex.

  I woke up in the same position I usually sleep in, my right side against the trailer wall. It was dark and I felt. . . odd. There was a window-sized gate right above my right shoulder, parallel to the window in the middle of the wall. It was open and one side was being moved to and fro by the wind. I knew immediately I had made a mistake. How stupid could I have been to forget to shut and lock it?! There was something there, I couldn’t actually see it; the world was black and so was it. I could only be aware of its presence. I was in trouble and I experienced for the first time what it is to be “frozen stiff” by fear. I couldn’t move, as if I had two bodies, one inside the other. The inner one would respond to my mind, pulling and tugging on the reluctant limbs of my outer shell. I lay there watching the creature caress my chest with what I thought was an arm. Although my flesh and nerves couldn’t detect it, a cold feeling appeared along with a sense of violation.

  A provocative whistle turned their heads, all three of them. In a mad dash, dust and leaves awhirl; it was like a video was put on fast forward of Marines running into their rooms to avoid standing at Attention for Colors. The three female 2nd lieutenants made their approach. The cat call; they were having none of it. Looking to my left, then to my right, I am the only person now on the entire first deck. In their crosshairs; I, woefully late, retreat into my room. One of the few A Co. Marines to defy our unwashed and decadent aura was the very one to go all David Lee Roth on these girls with a beach voyeur’s whistle, and then vanish—but it was my door they approached. The door gets knocked. The confrontation begins. The confrontation ends. I am reported. I am yelled at. I go on leave that same day, and refuse to pick up the beer cans one of the lieutenants demanded upon their unsaluted departure. Upon return from leave comes the official reprimand. In my room, platoon mates bring over a case of beer. I push aside a paperback copy of In Search of the Warrior Spirit. The case finds a home.

  I read. Shit, books are just mnemonic devices anyway. I never read to fulfill a need to look or even be intellectual. I really don’t even read to entertain myself. I read to answer questions, period. Think about it; learn all that you want to know. Books are created by man and read by man, an intellectual cannibalism that feeds on one another. I read to find answers, I live to find answers.

  15

  B.A.H.

  “The ‘humor’ expressed on this page and similar pages. . . contribute to a culture that permits and seems to encourage sexual assault and abuse. . . many of the pictures imply women only advanc
e professionally by performing sexual favors and otherwise promote the idea that women are inferior and only useful as sexual objects and sandwich makers.”

  —California State Representative Jackie Speier in a letter to the secretary of defense, commandant of the Marine Corps, and various others, regarding a particularly raw, military sub-culture Facebook page

  “Politics and an open-minded scientific discussion of human nature mix about as well as oil and water.”

  —Michael Ghiglieri, The Dark Side of Man

  FALL 2005

  There’s the distinct possibility that a bizarre yet primitive nature is brought out when in certain institutions. For instance, while I was in Iraq, word had bounced back and forward that a female lieutenant had been the willing centerpiece of a gangbang. According to certain people, who’ll remain in the shadows, she was blonde, short, and sturdy with hips ready to pop out a couple dependents. During this poly-coitus she wore a gas mask, and the climactic moment of this extreme case of fraternization was the insertion of an M16A2’s compensator up her ass.

  The story has always resonated with me due to the high number of reported sexual assault cases in the military. Supposing a few years later, after a ring on the finger and some time to deliberate, the gangbang-centerpiece speaks about her experience with disdain and remorse, what are we to make of it? There’s no question that a willing participant isn’t the same as someone who has an act forced upon them. However, despite the machine-gun scream of “rape culture,” and the urge to assume defilement after defilement is swept under the rug by the raging hard-on of a cleaner for the Good Ol’ Boys Club, most who’ve served in the military will attest the unpopular and politically-targeted view that too many cases that go raging up the flagpole actually commenced in a nature similar to that of the libidinous lieutenant.

  Sex and military life are systematically untraditional. Paper marriages for BAH63 and the UCMJ’s64 definition of “sodomy” are only the tip of a cum-soaked iceberg—floating in a freezing sea of loneliness, hyper-masculinity, government checks, childlike invulnerability, and evolutionary psychology.

  This all can be placed into two apt categories actually, and once done, one can’t help but reflect on their differences. The sexual exploits of servicemen back home are nothing compared to what happens overseas. CONUS, the extent of it usually involves a cheater or some sloppy parody of European porn in a barracks room. OCONUS, however, a compensator up a lieutenant’s ass only paints a tame and timid teaser for what has transpired in ports, forward operating bases, and huts of conquered villages as long as such have existed. Strip off the veneer; moral, immoral, or amoral, sexuality is a central theme reoccurring in the lives of men with guns in a foreign land.

  When I was contracting in Afghanistan, I ran into one of the most unsavory human chancres in all my life. A legend of sorts, this sordid debauchee was every type of foulness encapsulated on two legs. With thick-glasses, bristly white chin hair, and a personality as charming as a tapeworm—having contracted for several years, and feeling the horny imps of Below start to nibble on his feet, he left the gun world to enjoy retirement in Vietnam. It was widely known, his plan, and thanks to the few who kept in touch with him, the plan was apparently executed.

  He bought a bushel of twelve-year-old girls, maybe boys too. He spent the remainder of his days—which couldn’t have been many—lying on his side, smoking cigarettes, and watching Vietnamese television. According to those who knew his fetishes, as he lifted one leg like a dog airing itself in front of a fan, the human chattel were subjugated to licking his asshole and sucking on his nut sack. Maybe most amazing of all, the sex slaves were Buddhists, and you can’t help but wonder if they contemplated what they did in their former lives to deserve their current occupation.

  And then, of course, there are my own contributions to this library of acts and testimonies which encompass cum and the gun, albeit devoid of underage harems and all took place on native soil. To wit:

  Billy was a short, uppity New Jersey Native. In uniform he looked like, and sometimes was, the guy who’d start the most shit at the wrong times. In regular clothes, he sort of resembled a clean-cut version of Jackass’s “Party Boy.” Billy would always leave our barracks Friday evening, dressed to the nines with a pep to his step. While many of us geared up for our pilgrimage to the strip club out the back gate, case of Bud Light sweating on the catwalk, Billy would pull out from the barracks parking lot, checking his teeth in the mirror. After a couple days of our gym routines, beer and Xbox, we’d see him return Sunday night.

  One day I finally had to ask, “Bill, where the fuck you going?”

  “If I tell you, you gotta promise not to let it get out,” he said with a furrowed brow.

  “Yeah man, sure.”

  The next three minutes would forever alter, and formally shape, my sex life. I learned about a website teeming with horny women. Cheaters, divorcees, cougars, MILFs, dangerously curious college girls, and oddities so on the fringe they couldn’t be classified.

  This was great news! One rather frustrating detail of living in Camp Lejeune was that it was an entire county full of men. Sure, you had your occasional female Marine, spit bottle in hand, or the repugnant monstrosities out in town. But even with a lenient head count, men still overwhelmingly outnumbered women in the 28542 zip code.

  This website offered access to girls in Charlotte, in Raleigh, and sometimes even Virginia Beach if the profile lassoed the phallus sufficiently enough.

  I was on this website immediately; posted two shirtless pictures taken by Dez and I was on the hunt. The cornucopia was overwhelming. The spectrum galactic. In one moment a picture of a three hundred-pound woman, unshaved and spread eagle, then right next to her an up-from-under shot of a sleek stripper in librarian glasses blowing a kiss—blowing me a kiss. It took me a bit to learn the cosmetics of the site, and I also learned fast the futility of lengthy, individual messages. A canned email polished up and a quaint intro later, I was soon making contact.

  The first target I had any real correspondence with was a tight-jeaned Southern belle, fiery and fresh off a nasty divorce. “Come fuck me tonight” was her message, more direct than a platoon sergeant. I touched myself involuntarily, followed by wailing in despair as I realized I could not fulfill her request. Alas, the Marine Corps dictated some god-awful schedule, and to my heartache I had to decline. Soon after, however, I received a thoughtful message from a five-foot-two brunette with a tiny waist and a sun tattooed around her belly button.

  She commented on how I put off an artistic essence—and damn right. Finally someone saw it. And it just so happened she was sexy as hell. After a dinner with a team member, cut short by her anticipated “I’m ready” text, I was sliding my truck sideways into the parking lot of the town movie theater.

  I’d never met a girl off the Internet before—Hell, barely understood email—and this stranger was in the running for the hottest thing I’d ever had the chance of bedding down. Trying my best not to pace around like a caged animal, I hung out against a wall of the entrance and scanned the gaggle for the girl in the profile pics.

  “There you are,” a spritely voice said to my right. A tanned, toned beauty in tight jeans with a pearly-white smile approached me with arms outstretched. As her hug widened I saw the sun on her stomach. “I was waiting for you over there.” This was possibly the most positive first encounter I’d ever had with a prospective female at the time. Something about having met online made it extra adventurous. She and I were in cahoots, some whisper draped in sexuality. We were both excited, and we both knew it.

  After some movie, thoroughly upstaged by the up-down caressing of her fingers on my arm, we made our way to a dark, vacant playground. We sat in the same swing and struggled to find something to talk about. Afterward we headed to the beach, where we had sex in the sandy dark.

  For days afterward I was floating on a cloud, a sex-cloud whose golden staircase was a mouse-click away. My poor brothers endured the
flogging of my story, over and over again. They were happy for me, of course, and I’m sure a few slinked off to make accounts of their own. I wanted more, and to my delight I soon got an invite from her to a quiet get-together that coming weekend at her friend’s house.

  The week’s running on tank trails and weapons cleaning slogged until its Friday death, upon which Billy and I peeled out of the barracks parking lot, checking our teeth in our mirrors.

  Following my MapQuest printout, I ended my trek in the driveway of a small family home right outside the front gate. And there she was, running up to me for another hug. She had golden makeup around her eyes, coming out the sides in that feline type of slash that strippers and Goth girls love to sport. I noticed wrinkles in her face, things I hadn’t seen last time, and a smile that didn’t include her eyes. No bother, it all disappeared the moment she reached down and cupped my manhood. “Take your clothes off, right now” she said in my ear. She took me by the hand, escorted me into the house, and introduced me to her friend and her friend’s man.

  Her friend was a bawdy redhead. She was of that uppity Irish essence, with an ass that looked to be forged from riding horseback and Marine. Next to her was her man, about 130 pounds soaking wet with spacey eyes, a black high and tight, and emitting a look that appeared to be something akin to shame. With a large, deep scar running down the right side of his head, he looked like what he was, someone who’d relatively recently just barely survived an IED attack.