Sex for America: Politically Inspired Erotica (5 page)

It’s another evening and Tamar’s legs spread. She takes in the sight of the first young man she sees crashing into another. The bodies twist, on fire. Their faces seem hungry. She goes down onto the whisky bottle, opens up to it. She goes up and down, her hands pull at her dress, her cunt meets the bottle’s mouth, naked, she wrings its neck inside her. The glass is hard and wet, and it swings as she twists. The street falls silent or perhaps she becomes loud. Her sighs rise like sobs and become a big shout. She col- lapses onto the floor, whisky all over, and much of it inside her.

It’s day. “Stop it, Tamar. How do you expect any prayers to save the country? Stop praying every night. Go out, have fun, get married. Life goes on. Haven’t you heard about it?”

“Not for me,” she says.

“You sigh so much, sob so much that you break our hearts,” some Brothers tell her.

But Tamar, with the best of intentions, can’t just live on. She sets herself to pray every day. The street under her window is filled with men she needs to save. Who else will, if not she?

Tonight, Tamar listens to the news before her prayers to find if her pure heart’s wish has been granted. “New Brothers and new Others allow the old Brothers and the old Other to bring the war to its ‘grande finale,’” the radio says.

Tamar doesn’t know what it means. It’s time for her prayer. The sound of metal rises up from the streets. Brothers and Oth- ers are obeying the new rules. Now she sees. They won’t spend their ammunition, their sparkling guns, their spades and their swords on strangers. They will utilize it best against them- selves.

They sing the national hymns their fathers and mother or mothers and father have taught them. They have always been prepared to sacrifice themselves for the country. Now they don’t need anyone else to make them heroes. They can do it on their own.

Tamar takes the bottle deep and deeper, lusting for a prayer for her brothers or for the others. She doesn’t remember who’s who. Her sighs spread like clouds over the street, the quarter, the city, the borders. Brothers and Others bring their swords in and out to their bodies, deep and deeper.

“Stop the killings!” she prays, the bottle beneath her. Oh, the pleasure of a sword she doesn’t call cock. She trembles. It enters her as she prays. She sighs, she sobs, she shouts.

Brothers and Others raise their heads for a moment, then go back to stabbing, sticking and rubbing, pulling, pushing and shooting. It’s almost as good as sex.

But Tamar is sadder than ever. Brothers and Others are not satisfied. Their number, too, is not that high. The new agreement between the sides is that of body use, at least for awhile. Her radio explains:

“The methods of fighting have changed from decade to decade and now they are in a justified regression. For lack on sources, in- ternational support and true interest, we are back to the personal treatment, the intimate attendance. Armies are tired of planes, tanks, machine guns and swords, although these, too, have their merits. Bombs are out. Sticking it to your enemy is in.”

She finds it hard to believe.

Some Brothers say more: We need to save the Others from extinction. Once the enemy is gone, the war will vanish forever.”

“As if war is pleasure,” she says. She opens a new whisky bottle.

“And you’re drinking too much,” they tell her. “Have you ever seen me drunk?” she demands. “We are here to protect you!”

Back by the window, Tamar prays. She cries. She sighs. She explores the whisky bottle as if she wanted to have whisky kids. Then she cries, “Bring me your new firearms.”

So they come. First brothers. Amnon I and Amnon II and Amnon III and so on. Then Others.

For all her praying, Tamar is a beautiful woman. Her skin is as slick as shells and pebbles on beaches and in rivers, as soft as grass fields, as tasteful as the sweet water in fountains and lakes.

Her legs grow apart like a forking land around ports, her golden pubic curls are like petals on a hill, the opening, a treasure hunt. Her belly rises softly, oh the wavy dunes.

Tamar’s breasts are white like these clouds you see over the sea. They are a promise of fertility, twin orchards after rains, where her throat is the branch of your favorite tree. Come here, come. Her arms will embrace you like your country. And the sun, Tamar’s head, golden, fiery, bursting with red hair and orange flames. Come closer. You’ll lie down with the warmth of the soil underneath and above you.

Tamar is ready to pray.

Amnon I, dark, strong, and naked, holds her from behind, his arms around her, his hands on her breasts, his head raised in thanks. He bends her forward and says, “For your purity we pro- tect, the glory our enemies can’t touch.” He fucks her.

She sighs. She prays. His body stabs hers. She feels him hard and harder. “Now Amnon II,” she says.

Her wish is granted. Amnon II, his tongue as red as his cock, licks her cunt as he sticks his cock into her mouth. She sighs, as he throws fire.

She sobs. She cries. “Amnon III, now.” He comes. She asks for more. It’s Amnon VIII. She bursts. Does he think about a foun- tain of petrol?

She takes as many stabs, hits, bites, slaps, kicks, and other kind of killings.

She satisfies the Brothers and then the Others.

She is in bits, a black torn land of fire. She implores for her Brothers and then for the Others. She is destroyed beyond recog- nition.

In the end she says, “Now leave me alone.”

Brothers and Others say, “What are you talking about? You are our home.”

She discovers a bit of clean skin, an unbroken bone.

All of them want it. They don’t understand how they gave up a nuclear war.

ESCAPE AND EVASION
‌

ANTHONY SWOFFORD

PFC BROCKNER

When the recruiter asked the queer questions I had a hard-on. I wanted my dick in his mouth, his militarily chiseled jaw working me like a pro. Do you now or have you ever had homoerotic tenden- cies? Are you now or have you ever been engaged in a homosexual relationship? No, sir. No, sir. But, sir, I thought, but sir, I will gladly take you back to the head, the head as you call it, and show you homosexual fucking, which is not necessarily a relationship and absolutely more than a tendency. He smirked apologetically. Sorry I have to ask, you obviously solid tough sturdy renegade straight young youth, soon to be killer in my U.S. Marine Corps, killer of

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gooks and commies and Nazis and ragheads and faggots and all other such scum of the earth shitbag specimens that may currently or someday harbor evil designs against my United States.

Just like the straight recruits, at boot camp I had little time or desire to think about sex. My boyfriend sent me letters under the pseudonym Jackie B. Strong. Jackie be strong, love-letter me like a man. His letters were full of sex, but I couldn’t return the favor. I missed Jack’s chest and pretty face, but I couldn’t think about fucking. I fell asleep every night dreaming of be- ing in his arms, our arms and legs tangled in tenderness, we both with hairy chests and rough faces, his stubble like hickory bark, mine a smudge of charcoal across my queer canvas. In the squad bay, shaving through shower steam, finger squeaks to clear the mirror, asses and dicks in my mirror’s view, I’d pre- tend I was shaving his face. All those men around me, sweating and showering and suffering, calisthenics and punishments and small simple rewards—extra dessert or a bonus minute on the phones Christmas Eve. Yes, the men all naked all around me and on the drill field the rough-sex rhythm of boot black heels into pavement, palms slapping blue rifle metal, but sex was not on my brain, no libido fever for me. I woke up the same as the guys who dreamed of pussy and tits—garbage can lids crash- ing across the deck, boots thrown through windows, recruits being dragged from racks, still attached fetus-like to pillows, Sgt. Barnett screaming, Get up! Get up! Get out of the rack! You have thirty seconds to be battle-dressed and on the road for chow! Get on the road for chow! Our chorus response, Sir, get on the road for chow, sir! I can’t hear you, ladies! Sir, get on the road for chow, sir! Move! Move! Move! If we were in

combat, you fuckers would be dead, all of you faggot mama’s- boy motherfuckers would be dead!

How could I think of cock and ass while drowning in mad- ness and incivility?

SERGEANT SAVINE

Three sniper teams from the 7th Marines, mine included, were coming down from a week in Indian territory, the Indians being the Iraqis, their supposed Red or Gold or Unified Front of Elite Fighters within pissing-on range as we observed their movement back and forth across a minefield.

The command thought we were still out in the boonies, snoop- ing and pooping. But we’d extracted ourselves three days early and were spending our time in a Texaco-field-hospital-turned-British- run-whorehouse near Jabal ad Duyud. Every four hours one of us ran to the roof of the hospital and checked in via PRC-77 radio with the CP. We’d make up troop movement statistics and give them bogus coordinates for enemy OPs.

Our fuckstick major had sent us on the mission without one ounce of support—no arty, no planes, no mortars, not even a lousy fifty-cal. team a click or two back, ready to burn out some brass. Not shit. And our captain didn’t squeak once about it. Sure, he told us he did, he told us he yelled and screamed and told the major he’d fuck the major’s wife and mother when we got back stateside, but we knew that wasn’t true. We were in tight with the major’s driver, who told us that Captain Frost said something along the lines of, Fuck ’em. So that’s how it goes with a Global Peacekeeping Force in place, we figured. Fuck the snipers. Give ’em shit for chow, fuck ’em on the hot

showers, fuck ’em out of Bob Hope and Steve Martin and Brooke Fucking Shields.

Two months into the operation, the USO swung together a show in the middle of the desert, Hope and Martin and Shields and some country musicians, because they assumed we were all hicks. The sniper teams were chosen for the twelve quotas from our regiment, but somehow a long-distance range opened up, the range we’d been trying to get time on since landing in country, of course on the day of the USO show. We had a good shoot, and we needed the rounds, we needed the rifle time, but, still, we were up- set over missing the Creature from the
Blue Lagoon,
teenage mas- turbation princess for us all. As amends, the major slated us to go to Thanksgiving lunch with President Bush and his white-haired wife, and they screwed us there, too. Word suddenly came down that the Theater Command in Riyadh was ripe for enemy action. They needed snipers in six positions 24-7, starting the day before Thanksgiving. Two days after Thanksgiving we saw pictures of the president and the First Lady in
Stars and Stripes,
pumping fists and waving; they even had desert cammies on, boonies even, and right up there, with his nose ass-deep in the president, our fuckstick major, plus Captain Frost, three admin pogues, the comm chief, and, no shit, the major’s wife. The major’s wife was some shithot thinker with a foreign policy graduate degree from MIT, and there she was, in our fucking desert, advising the president. The major himself had a poli-sci degree from Harvard, washboard stomach, and fifteen-thousand-dollar smile, full of recollections from vaca- tions on the Vineyard and brunch in Kurt Vonnegut’s kitchen. The bastard major walked out of the gas chamber yelling, Mustard gas and roses! Mustard gas and roses!, like he ever read the fucking

book, like Vonnegut ever gave half a fuck about the Zeros.

We rented hospital rooms from the Brits for five American a day, and when we were tired of the drinking and fighting in the basement, we’d take a girl upstairs. Thomas the Brit had turned the basement into a bar. He had a fold-up fake oak dance floor and stacks of Marshall amps blasting music.

It was early evening and we settled down to buying five-dollar juice drinks for some prostitutes. My partner, Cash, had already diddy’d up to the fourth floor with his regular girl, Sunshine. All of the girls working for Thomas were Filipino and they had hus- bands who worked for Texaco or they were the sisters of women whose husbands worked for Texaco. Ten miles from the hospital, Brits and Americans and Frenchies lived in an expat oil worker compound. Many of the men had wives from the islands, mail- order matrimony on the cheap.

Cash was the ranking sergeant. Mathis and Boner, two of our newer snipers, were worried about lying to the command about where we were. Before he ran up to his room, Cash gathered us in a huddle. Stick to the story, Cash said. They teach that at boot camp. Stick to the story. Always lie when you fuck up. Never leave a dead or injured marine on the battlefield. A captain tells you to diddy out of the area and leave your buddy there, you put a bullet in the captain’s skull. Real simple. And don’t volunteer. Whatever crazy shit you pull, never volunteer. Of course, all sniper platoons are full of volunteers, shitcrazy bastards, all of us: backwoods loo- nies from Louisiana or Arkansas or Missouri; Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and blacks from the inner cities on either coast; Navajos from near Flagstaff; plus a good share of scrubbed-clean white boys from the burbs, like me, Catholic-schooled, a string of pretty