Sex for America: Politically Inspired Erotica by Stephen Elliott Read Free Book Online

and the fighter doesn’t carry any extra pounds. And you look in the eyes as well, because that’s how you really know. Even the fighter who has never killed, the fighter who knows he will someday, you can tell the difference. The fighter’s eyes are set back in the sockets, like lava waiting in the mouth of a volcano, and in the eyes, when you look closely, there’s a cinema of war going on in them. Inside the fighter’s eyes you’re watching a film of people watching the fighter’s war film. The audience is full of the fighter’s family. The first row is full of his mother, fifty replicas of his mother, straight across. And behind her, the father, and then on down the entire family, to friends, former teachers, coaches, priests or preachers or rabbis, so the theater is full of people watching the fighter’s war film. And the very last row is full of replicas of the fighter. The replica fighters are in dress blues, ribbons and medals, sitting with proper military posture, back straight, hands in fists resting on knees. The replica fighters are blindfolded. Each time the fighter
kills an enemy, someone in the audience dies, one of the mothers, or fathers, or one of the replica fighters. And the audience, except for the fighter, is weeping the entire time, and they reach up to- ward the screen. No, please, no, you are killing us, you are killing yourself. But the fighter cannot hear the voices; the fighter does not see the film.
I joined the rest of the platoon. They were all fairly well drunk and had each already gone upstairs with a girl, so they were happy, too. And they seemed not too pissed off about the pogues. There was Aerosmith or some crap coming through the amps, and they could barely hear me, so I signaled them into the corridor. I told them about Cash, and Professor puked, I don’t know if because he was so fucked up or from the idea of being ass-raped. We double- timed up to Cash’s room.
     
PFC BROCKNER
I used the ether on Taro, and he was angry and hurt for a few days, and he threatened to kick me out of his life, but I told him I’d tell all to his parents, and he calmed down. And that’s how I fucked him from then on, with help from the ether. I missed the noise, the noise of fucking is sometimes the best part, me in the man’s ass and him jerking off at the same time, coming at the same time. But I made my own noise and still we gave each other head without the ether, and head is of course always pleasant.
I knew that I would never stop using the ether. Ether equaled power. As a marine, power surrounded me. The power of rank, of weapons, of machinery. The power of violence. One fist of iron, one fist of steel, they told us in boot camp, mean green killing machine: born to fight, trained to kill, ready to die, but never will.
But I had no power. I’d lost rank in the States after I fucked up an overhaul on a five-ton engine, and I barely qualified with the rifle and pistol, and I had nearly drowned in the pool. I changed air filters and windshield wipers and kept the logbooks. The ether would be my power. Let them have their guns.
     
When Operation Desert Shield started, I knew my unit would be deployed. We were part of the Expeditionary Unit for the 3rd Ma- rine Division. We were en route on the tenth of August and staged at the port at Jabal Munifah on the twelfth, a classic clusterfuck, jarheads living in tents that Division had acquired from the Bed- ouins. Inside a tent where you’d expect a harem and ancient Mid- east sex action, with grapes and palm fronds, instead you’d find jarheads swatting flies and drinking Evian or San Pellegrino.
And the enemy over 150 clicks away, raping and killing in Ku- wait, but still we were assigned guard duty with weapons locked and loaded, so every few days some idiot would be cleaning his weapon, forget to unload, and shoot himself in the thigh or nail his buddy in the back of the head.
My platoon guarded the Port Authority tower, and this worked