About the Author Enrique Diaz has been writing stories since the age of eight and currently edits Nuvein Magazine.

Billy never wore clothes. Benjamin also told me of how he would never go out of his way to kill anyone, but if someone ever did try to harm him, he would not hesitate and would not feel a fiber of guilt or shame afterward. I sort of agreed with him. I saw lots of love in Benjamin, and when we talked about killing people, my thoughts went back to Charlie, back in recruit training; during smoke brakes and such we’d lay outside the barracks and watch the stars, and while almost everyone else smoked and talked about the families and girlfriends they’d left back home, we argued about murder. And survival. And betrayal. Sure it was easy for Charlie to define them all without actually encountering any of them; he, like Benjamin, had said that in self-defense you can destroy any living human being, and I had told him that whether I agreed with the theory or not, I didn’t think I could ever betray anyone. Probably because I’d never have the guts to shed my clothing, and I felt jealous as a pig of Billy, whom I didn’t know except through Benjamin. A little.

Now everyone is gone.

Charlie had been smoothing his straight, desert-colored hair, which reminded me of a homemade straw broom, as we rode the bus from the Greyhound bus station in Los Angeles to the Naval Training Center in San Diego. He had tried to avoid my eyes while I had tried to look into his, which were soft as cottoon swabs which have been soaked in a blue dye and then left in the hot sun to fade, making them powdery turquoise.

“My name’s Rick,” I had volunteered, extending my right arm in his direction.

“I’m Charlie,” he’d said, leaving my hand to hover in mid-air.

Who the hell cares? It had felt uncertain inside me, kind of madden- ing. But the way Charlie smiled at one of the other boys in our group reassured my suspicions. I care, Charlie, I thought to myself. And that was to be one ot the things we’d arge most about later: caring. He had said that not one human cared for another. Not really. It was hypocrisy he’d said, and it came down to the time when it’d be you or the other guy, and even if you had said that you loved the other person, you knew it would be your own skin you’d save first.

I hated to be wrong, but in a way he was right. How could I possibly care for someone I had met only a few hours ago? How could I care for anyone? The duel had been fought and I had not done well, now on my way to wherever loser go; I was running away, hoping that the speeding bullet wouldn’t catch up to me.

“Where are you from Charlie?” I had asked, trying to keep him talking.
“Orange County.”
“I’m from L. A.”
“Oh,” he had said, and our first conversatioon had become still-born.

•••

“I think that when Billy becomes an old man, he’s going to be one of those flashers,” Benjamin had said. “The ones who go around with long, black coats, wearing nothing else, waiting for the right moment. ‘Cause I’ll tell you Rick, when we would talk, Billy would sit there in- front of me, and at first I wouldn’t notice it because I’d be looking at his face, but then, for a split second his eyes would dart down between his legs, my eyes following his gaze. ‘Meatgazer!’ he would scream out loud, and I would laugh so hard that my side would hurt like you wouldn’t believe, Rick. I have never met anyone else like Billy.

“Sometimes he would jump on top of me and start humping me. You know, I still don’t understand how he ended up with Sharon when I should have gotten her.” Benjamin rubbed his thick, brown moustache, then scratched his balding head.

My mind raced back to graduation day at recruit training. We were dressed all in black, pants and shirt, even a black tie. Only our caps were white, like our leggings, which fit snuggly around our calves, reaching down to where our black shoes began.

Charlie had been at the front of our company, all alone. His right hand clutched a long, silver-colored saber which extended forward from the side of his right leg. He was bow-legged, and the space between his tall, think legs looked like the round entrance to a tunnel as he stood still, at parade rest, his heels at least one and a half feet apart. He had risen from Laundry Petty Officer to Recruit Chief Petty Officer our company; nothing spectacular, except that I hadn’t been able to do it, and now with him out of the way, I had been promoted to senior Laundry PO. He never said that he was afraid of his new job, but then I never asked him. Even if he was afraid, who could tell? His appearance was menacing; the veins which bulged at his temples breathed every time he spoke. Two months before when we had first met, those veins had been covered by his hair and his face had seemed round. Now it looked squared.

I myself with my six-foot-two, two-hundred pound body probably projected more strength than I really felt. Inside I had changed nothing, only that now I was beginning to put myself outside of me and was beginning to see what others were seeing, and why a gun had been fired, and how I might be able to put up the palm of my hand and make the bullet ricochet into oblivion.

I hadn’t really focused on the reality of it until I had met Benjamin and he had talked about Billy. Without clothes. With long, blond hair which he never combed, and dirty teeth, and how Billy had gotten Sharon and Benjamin had not.

My fumbling attempts back home to do what I perceived Billy had done only caused my folks and friends shock. Repulsiveness. Looking back I can recall observing others doing it many times, and if someone else could do it, why couldn’t I? I looked at myself in the mirror. Nice body, I thought, good album cover. But even that comparison erred since most album covers did reflect the contents inside. Daniel had been like my album cover; that’s why I had become his friend and that’s why someone else had gotten him.

I had met Daniel six months before meeting Charlie, and I had started going out with him and his friends. Sometimes he and I went out by ourselves, and those were the best times because he would dance only with me all night. Yet every time the DJ played a slow song and I asked him out to the dance floor he’d say No in a tone which degraded me, made me feel lustful and malicious and perverse, which I was because I wanted only to hold him.
Hold him. That’s all I had wanted to do at my sister’s birthday party. Hold him. I mean, even my father would put his arm around one of his male friends when they’d be drinking and singing together, so why did everyone stare wordlessly when I slid my arms around Daniel’s waist?

Why didn’t everybody laugh until their sides hurt, like Benjamin had done when Billy humped him? Daniel had pushed me away and no one else had spoken to me the rest of the evening, so I had gone up to my room, and lying there in the darkness, on my bed, I had tried to figure it out. I couldn’t, but that had been the first hint that my outer shell advertised a different product than what lived inside.

Did I even know what it was?

I was not a total idiot, and I had seen all the faggots dancing with each other at the discos we used to go to. But I didn’t feel like one of them, even when I dance with Daniel. I wondered. Surely people didn’t think that I, because I loved Daniel , was a faggot? What a stupid assumption; and two weeks later I was on the Greyhound bus with Charlie.

***

“Come back here,” Benjamin told Lisa, his brown eyes lit.

“For what?” She asked, obeying.

“Never mind,” he said, once she had reached his desk, “nothing.”

“Oh! “ She giggled and walked away, and Benjamin laughed. I was puzzled, like she was.

“I just wanted to see you walk away once more,” he explained, “I like the way your ass looks.”

“Oh, I swear, you guys,” she said, running her velvety fingers through her blonde hair, the span of her blue eyes also including me. “Ah...me too,” I managed to say, knowing I had to,” I like your ass too.”

When she had left with a smile on her face, we were silent, but there was communication between us. Benjamin knew I was a rookie, so he didn’t press the matter. In a crowd he would have, there could have been no other way.

That night at the Enlisted Men’s Club I ordered a Black Russian at the bar and went to sit by myself while Benjamin played with the electronic games in the next room. There were several squadrons onboard the base, a couple of them Marine squadrons, and the population at the EM Club was large. The few women there seemed to soak up the men the way a sponge absorbs water. I felt awkward sitting by myself and wished Benjamin would come and join me. I didn’t have the will to do like the herd and compete for one of the ego-giving queen bees. Instead, through the uncomfortable atmosphere in my head, I looked at a tall Marine who was sitting at the bar.

“It’s not polite to stare,” Benjamin said, startling me.

“I was not staring,” I protested, turning to him.

“Okay. Whatever you say. I was just telling you for your own good.”

“Who the hell was I staring at?” I asked, noticing how irritable I’d become.

“Forget it Rick, you weren’t staring, okay?” He left again, leaving me angry because I had breached the ethics which he had slowly and diligently been teaching me. I had been gazing at the Marine who sat slumped against the bar, alone.

I remember how explicit some of Benjamin’s lessons had been. Graphic. Some he had managed to tell me about in public, in the presence of the rest of the crew in the office. He had narrated what Billy had told him in a letter. Billy had been sent to an isolated island somewhere in the Indian Ocean, a place without women. I take so many showers, Billy had written Benjamin, because that’s the only place where I can jerk-off in peace, and it’s gotten so bad now that every time I hear running water, no matter where I’m at, I get a hard-on.

I thought about that story: when in the desert, do the rain dance, but if you’re in the ocean and you perform it, you drown.

It fascinated me to think of what kind of association existed in my own mind. When did I get excited? My god, gazing! I was doing it again.

The muscular Marine at the bar had almost fallen off his stool.

“Just one more, gorgeous,” he told Kristy, the bartender.

“I think you’ve had enough for tonight,” she told him, her plump body glowing with wisdom.

“Just one more,” he insisted. “Please.”

Kristy pointed at a sign which plainly stated that the club management reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

A strong association overcame me and I walked over to the bar. “Hi Kristy,” I greeted the big-tit woman, “I’ll have a...what’s he been drinking?” I asked, pointing at the Marine.

“Rum and Coke.”

“Okay, I’ll have one of those.” While she poured my drink into a glass, I turned to the Marine, “Hi there, how are you?” I asked him.

“Huh?” He squinted, “Who, me?”

“Yeah, how are you?

“Fine, I think.” He smiled, acknowledging that he was drunk.

“Good. My name’s Rick,” I said, giving him my right hand, “Nice to meet you.”

“Well, hi, ah, Rick,” he said, extending his arm across his chest, squeezing my hand. “My name is Chet.”

Associations, associations; fetishes? His green eyes were accentuated by the green uniform he was wearing. Survival.

Kristy had set my drink on the counter, taken the money I’d put down and was serving another customer. Picking up the drink, I said to Chet, “Why don’t you come over to my table?”

“Well, yeah, okay.” He followed me, stumbling, half leaning on me.

“Here,” I said, handing the Rum and Coke, once we were sitting down.

“But it’s your drink.”

“Don’t worry about it, I got another one right here, see?” I picked up my Black Russian. “You said you wanted one more drink.”

“Yeah, right. Alright buddy, thank you.” He took the glass and aimed it at his lips. Thick, soft and pink, full of meat.

“Say,” I said, “after you finish that, how’d you like to go into town for some fun?”

He looked at me with those green eyes, big as a cow’s and rubbed his giant, blunt tipped nose with his finger, and sipped slowly. A chill ran up my spine. “Any good clubs in town?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I told him, thinking of his nose. In it I pictured another part of his anatomy; one which was an intruder, through cracks.

“Sounds good to me, let’s go get fucked up!” He said, laughing. For a minute I thought he was making fun of me. He gulped the last of the Rum and Coke and was getting up when I realized that I did not own a car.

“Wait, sit down a minute, Chet, I’ll be right back.” I rushed into the game room next door while Chet plopped back on his chair. I didn’t like to lie, and it was especially painful to lie to Benjamin. “It’s an emergency,” I told him, “I’ll be right back, I’m just going into town and back. I’ll even fill up your gas tank.”

Reluctant because I wouldn’t tell him what I was going into town for, he handed me the keys to his red Datsun. I went back into the club and told Chet to meet me outside in the parking lot. I felt that my head was hot and the smell of blood lingered about me, at the same time that my hands and knees trembled, a knot in my throat. I knew what I wanted to do with this man, and Charlie had been right, and Benjamin had been right; at this moment no one else mattered, not even Chet, only the pleasure that I wanted to feel. Just me.

I had picked up a six-pack of beer before leaving the club, and Chet now opened on of the cans as we passed the security shack at the main base gate.

“What time is it?” Chet asked.

“A little bit after ten-thirty,” I said, looking at the clock in the dashboard.

The blood all around me had concentrated itself in the center of my crotch and hardened there. I began breathing irregular and hard, feeling goose-bumpy ticklish all over. I wanted to reach over and touch him.

Leaving his beer alone, he smile, and asked me, “Are you queer?”

I shook my head vigorously, but he reached over and grasped the hard lump of flesh under my pants. “You are, ain’t you? Well blow me down!”

“I will not.”

“Ah, and y’have a sense of humor too,” he said, not letting go of me. “I was wondering why you were fussing over me like you were back there at the club, buying drinks, invitin’ to town when we ain’t even friends or nothin’. Do you know just how ridiculous you seem to me?” He let go, and I felt all the blood drain out. The tingling was replaced by a cold, icy wave. “How can you even imagine that two men-”

“Shut up! Shut up! How many times do you think I’ve heard it?” Picking him up had to have been the most idiotic thing I had done in my life. I felt like vomiting, then I felt a wetness in my eyes and it console me some. It made me happy because I hadn’t cried ever since that night at my sister’s party when people had barred me from their circles. I twisted the steering wheel and turned the Datsun around.

“Hey, buddy,” Chet said, “I’m sorry. I ain’t got nothin’ against you, and I ain’t scared of your kind. Don’t go back to that fucked up dive. What was your name again?”

“Rick.”

“Listen, Rick, Ricky, why don’t you turn this thing around and go find us a good spot by the road whre you can park and we can talk. I need to be away from the crowds, I need someone to talk to real badly and you’re perfect ‘cause if my wife was here I’d have nothin’ to worry about.”

“You don’t know that,” I said, swinging the car around once more.

He smiled and relaxed his head on the seat. “Back in Georgia,” he said, “before I married Carlea, when I used to feel really shitty I’d go into a place empty of folks but full of trees and sit all by myself, thinking. You ain’t got too many trees ‘round here though.” He pointed afinger out the window, at the flat, bare desert floor all around us.

“There is a lake not too far from here,” I said, beginning to feel at ease, “hardly anyone goes there, and it’s got some trees.”

“Well buddy, let’s go.” He squeezed my arm.

The nearest I could park from Moonbeam Lake was about a quarter of a mile, which we walked, Chet’s arm around my shoulder. The nippy chilliness made me shiver, and he opened his heavy field jacket, sharing it with me, hugging me tight. He wasn’t scared of faggots, he’d said. Hmmmm.

In absolute silence we stood by the lake, a thousand stars and one moon over our heads, reflected on the crisp, crystalline water, the trees around us hovering tall, like soldiers guarding a secret. I sat against one of the nameless trees, leaving Chet to stare at his figure on the water.

He turned to look at me, the liquor still in he head, five cans of beer in his hand. He walked over, sitting directly in front of me, between my legs, his corpulent, taut body leaning against me. Cautiously, I embraced his torso and felt no tension emanating from him. Instead I heard soft sobs and I knew he was doing his best to cry. At first I felt dumb having such a big, strong man in my arms, wanting to cry, but then I remembered myself. Was anybody what they appeared to be? In my early days of television watching I remembered having placed my face right up to the screen and seeing nothing but a bunch of little dots jumping around. Getting further away from the set, the dots and lines became pictures. Of people. But they weren’t real. I wanted them to be real. I wanted to be real.

“Fuck it!” Chet yelled. “I ain’t no good at this crying business.” He took my hands and pressed them hard down on his chest. “She wants to take Michael away from me,” he said.

“Who’s Michael?” I asked, breathing into his brown hair.
“He’s my son. He’s four years old and she wants to keep him. Hell, she’s already getting everything else I own and she still wants Michael. I don’t know what for. To her he’ll just be a problem whenever she decides to bring some guy into the house to fuck her. She’s a whore.”

“My father sometimes used to say that about my mother,” I told him, “but I knew it wasn’t true. I don’t think she ever considered loving any other man besides Dad. She really loved him. Still does.”

“Let me tell you Ricky, Carla is a whore, no two ways about it.” He opened a second can of beer.

“Maybe you’re being too hard on her, Chet.”

“Bullshit! What the hell are you defending her for? You don’t even like women.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then you do like women?.” He lay in my hands like a child, sipping his beer.

“I think women are beautiful.”

“Have you ever fucked one?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I don’t want to do it again.”

“But you would with me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Ever done it with another man?”

“No.”

“Then how the hell do you know-”

“I don’t know. Just be quiet.”

“One more question.”

“Okay, what?”

“Why the fuck do you like men?”

“Why do you like women?”

“That’s totally different.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you were in my place.”

There was a long silence, then he turned to look at me. He took my hand and inspected it, then the other hand, then he ran his fingers over my face like a sculptor. “You look and feel just like a man,” he said.

“I am.”

“Well, Ricky, if you want,” he began saying, a look of compassion in his green eyes, “everyone’s shit smells the same, no matter who they are, so if you want, you can suck me off...I mean...”

“No thank you, Chet,” I said, standing up, “you’re straight.”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it does to me. Definitely.”

He stood up next to me and said, “Good, ‘cause I don’t think I could get into shit like that.”

I laughed, slipping my arms around his waist. “Kiss me,” I ordered him, pulling him toward me.

“I’d feel funny,” he said, his arms limp at his sides.

“That’s okay,” I said, “I feel funny too.”

“Christ, I must really be drunk,” he said, as I placed my lips on his thick, full mouth.
We were both out of breath when our mouths let go, and we said nothing. All I wanted to do was hold him, so I pulled him down to the ground, kissing him again. I was mixed up. I wondered whether if he had been sober he would have wanted to fight me. No. He could fight just as well drunk. Would he have let me love him if there had been no problems with his wife? Would he want to kill me the next day? So what. Maybe it’d be better if he did. Tonight he was getting all the warmth I was capable of giving. I kissed his head and felt him going to sleep in my solid arms.

***

“What the hell happened to you last night?” Benjamin threw his skinny hands up in the air.

“Benjamin, I...I...”

“Sonofabitch! You didn’t even put any gas in the damn car.”

“Listen, Benjamin...”

“To what? What did you do last night? Don’t think I didn’t see that stupid Marine you were staring at leave with you.”

Thoughts talked to each other inside my head at dizzying speeds. Decisions. Last night I had been able to remove my clothes, part of the way. This morning when I had left Chet at his barracks he had been in a quiet and low mood. Guilty, I guess, because he said that it wasn’t right for someone to care for someone else just like that. No one had ever cared for him before. Not without sex. It had made him happy, but he wished it had not been me, but a woman, any woman. He thanked me, but became angry when I told him that I loved him. Remembering that, I now let the bullet penetrate my skull, shattering into a thousand tiny fractions; my body clad in red, although my skin is brown.

“His name is Chet,” I told Benjamin, “and we went over to this house that belongs to a couple of bitches he knows in town. And Benjamin, those bitches were foxy! They were fine!” I wondered if my story sounded anything like the one Chet would tell his friends.

“Oh yeah?” Benjamin’s eyes awakened from anger into interest, and he knew that I had crossed the fence and was now chained in the world of wholesomeness. “Tell me about it.”

“Terry,” I went on, not understanding why he wanted me to put on this charade when I had just let him know that I was now a moral person, “that’s the one I fucked. She had big tits, the biggest you’ve ever seen, and she rode me so much, I nicknamed her Cowboy.”

“Did she give you a blowjob?”

I wondered what Benjamin had one last night.

“Oh man!” I said, “Did she ever!” I was on a never ending roller coaster, unstoppable, and all that was permitted was gazing, lying, and conforming. I was a coward. It went back to selfishness again, and caring only about self; to live without physical pain, but with a poisonous growth in one’s thoughts. “She had a tight pussy,” I ended my narration, burying Rick.

“Goddamn, Rick,” Benjamin said, “just wait till the guys at the office hear aobut his. It’s fuckin’ great.”

I thought about initiations and acceptances and illusions. Benjamin was a coward too. And Charlie. And Daniel. Only Billy had tried to tell them all. Sharon had to have known and fallen in love , if not with him, with his honesty.

If I couldn’t touch or eat the meat, I could always look at it, discreetly; a Meatgazer, like Billy had put it. I thought about taking showers, and about water, and drowning, and all that.

“By the way Benjamin,” I said, thinking about how I had just warped my life, “don’t call me Rick anymore. Call me Twister, no not than, call me Spinner.” There was no point in using a dead man’s name.