Part One.

Somewhere in the Central Valley of California there is a soldier with my name on his heart.

I knew everything about him before I met him. His sister is my best friend and she told me just about everything. Why he quit school, why he signed up for the Army, where he was and when he was coming home. So I knew everything about him except how he felt, which is the hardest thing to find out about a soldier. From what I know, from what I’ve discovered, those important feelings only bubble up to the surface at night, when you are lying side by side, with one hand stroking his forehead and the other being held tightly by his. Those feelings go away in the light of day. They disappear, like dew from a flower. But that was always ok with me.

I had always surrounded myself with war; I read and watched it and I could leave whenever I wanted. But he lived and breathed it. He carried a weapon and he carried his fear, I just carried a book and carried on. I carried on to my malls and to my classes; he carried himself into his Humvee and waited to die. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right, but that’s what it was.

When those emotions bubbled up, they hung between us like fog. I tried to scoop them up and move them to somewhere he wouldn’t see but they were always there. I tried my best, but they never went away.

Sometimes I tried to imagine him over there while I sat and read the paper and drank coffee in the morning. I tried to imagine him as one of the nameless soldiers that had been deployed, doing their duty, driving their Humvees. But I couldn’t really see him there. I could look at all the pictures and listen to all the stories, but that was all before I really knew him. Before I had heard his voice and before he looked me in the eye, but right around the time that I decided I was going to fall in love with him.

When men write about war, they almost always write something about women. They write about the women they fucked, the women they want to fuck, the women they should have or could have fucked and didn’t. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Many times, they write about the women that have fucked them over, and their buddies, too. One of them gets a letter, a phone call, an email, “I love you, but, there is someone else.” There’s always someone else. Sometimes, they write about the women they love or the women that love them and who they wish didn’t or the women they wish would. There is always mention of women.

Sometimes, women have short attention spans for men. They need someone to hold them right now, someone to kiss them right now, and someone to love them right now. Other kinds of women can hold out until the war is over. They send letters, care packages, some or all of themselves compressed into envelops with a soldier’s name on the front. These women are waiting for the war to just be over, already. They don’t care about the politics, the logistics, or a general’s empty exit strategy. They’re just waiting for their man to come home.

Sometimes, they’re waiting for marriage and a soldier may come home, only to be left unsatisfied. That soldier may have to wait two, three, or four years more to remember how exactly a woman feels, with only his hand and his imagination to keep him company. But that is the price a soldier pays for the love of his life, right?

In my opinion, it’s best to just move on. But then, I’ve never been much of a romantic. Like I said, I’ve always surrounded myself with war. Or at least stories about it. I’ve been reading books about the Holocaust since I was old enough to understand what it was. I’ve read O’Brien, Trumbo, Swofford, Vonnegut; I’ve seen Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket, and Band of Brothers. I’ve poured over Newsweek and Time, Winter Soldier, and Frank Kaplan’s “War Stories”. Maybe the romance of war has always excited me more than any love story ever could. I’ve never been interested in the grand gesture, the pebbles on my window at night. Never hoped Prince Charming would come to rescue me. I’ve never really needed to be rescued, just needed someone to escape with. Maybe that is what drew me to him in the first place; we were both trying to escape out of our own heads, same time, different places.

That’s how we started talking, see? His sister, my best friend, suggested it. She said we should talk because we were both so unhappy about where we were. Except my unhappiness was a consequence of self-indulgence and a confused identity, his was a casualty of war. One conversation about life and death later and I couldn’t stop waiting for his name to show up on the right hand side of my computer screen. This is all very un-romantic, this computer screen business, but he was half a world away and letters are just too slow. So, that is how I started to love him, through the clack of a key board. It’s silly, it’s embarrassing, but, that’s what it was.
He told me stories about war. About driving and waiting to die. But mostly we talked about drinking and missed opportunities and books we’d read. I wasn’t hopeless or hopeful even; I was just there, another correspondent. Perhaps I held on to some small hope that he’d come visit me at school when he got out, I guess that was my idea of a grand gesture, but he didn’t. He got back together with the girl who sent care packages, who sent all of herself, who is holding out for marriage, and who had her whole family greet him at the airport with signs and balloons. She was sweet, blonde, and loved him, and I wasn’t there. At least until I was.