Sex for America: Politically Inspired Erotica (9 page)

delicious. My prick rumbled against my pants, and I stopped thinking about it.

She told me she was scared of the things we had to give up. There were other things besides the cars; we all could see it coming. Babies, for one, and that had already happened; it was law now, in almost every state. Every teenage girl goes on the pill as soon as she gets her period. Pills they could make easy; it’s the condoms that were hard to manufacture without the oil. And we were running out of room, any fool could tell you that. Not so much here in the heartland but all around the edges of the country, and in practically any big city, people were jammed into homes like cars on a freeway during rush hour. At least the way I imagined that would look. I hadn’t seen too many rush hours in my life.

I will admit I acted up when I went into the draft office my senior year of high school. That was during the war with China, and there was just no way I was going. I exaggerated my walk, the gap in height between one leg and the other. I wanted to make sure the recruiter knew. I’m sure I would have disappointed my father, only he was already dead. Long gone, eight years. And not enough of him had been left behind to roll over in his grave.

I did not tell her this story as we walked. I thought she would like me less if she knew. I let her talk instead. “I know I shouldn’t complain,” she said. “I know how lucky I am, how lucky we all are. We live in the safest place in the world.” It was true: we won every war we started.

“But I just wanted to see what it was like,” she said. She threw her arms up toward the sky and all around. “Out there.” She stopped and touched me, turned me toward her. “Not that I care

about the cars so much. Although I guess I do care. I just wanted to be somewhere new.”

And then because I wanted to impress her, because she had impressed me with her ache and desire and energy, even though I didn’t know her at all, even though she could have been lying about who she was and why she was there, even though I might never see her again, even though she was tired and dirty and she smelled of the earth (or maybe because of it), even though I could have been trading in my freedom—because who was she after all? Only a girl I had met on a dirt road—I said to her, “Do you want to see something really cool?”

We shifted direction toward my home. She dug the trail be- hind us with the stick, like we were headed for a witch in the woods somewhere. We made it home quickly; we were both ex- cited. She dropped her bag on the front porch. I took the dog off the leash and let him run around in circles in the backyard. We walked toward the small island of trees and bushes behind my house. He barked, nervous, but I ignored him. I had nothing to lose. I held her hand and cleared us a path through the bushes, until we came upon it.

A 2017 Chevy. The roof was missing, and the leather had been beaten down by the rain and snow. Everything else was rusted. But still we slid in the backseat immediately.

She started to cry, but I think maybe she was laughing, too. “It’s just a useless piece of junk,” I said. “It’s not that special.” “No, it’s really nice,” she said.

I put my arm around her and we slouched down in the seats. “There should be a radio playing,” she said. “Classic rock.” So I sang, my voice echoing in the trees. I sang her every song I remem-

bered, songs that smelled of revolution, songs of the days when my father was alive, when she and I were still young and knew nothing, nothing of war or fear or what it was like to have to walk forever, and then when I was done with those, I made up a few new ones just for her.

DESERT SHIELD
‌

LYDIA MILLET

The mission of our troops is wholly defensive . . . they will not initiate hostilities.

—President George Bush, press conference, August 9, 1990, scripted speech

I think it is beyond the defense of Saudi Arabia. So I think it’s beyond that.

—President George Bush, press conference, August 9, 1990, Q&A

My Boy Scout in the White House knew where he was going
from the start. He had consulted his pocket compass, and the nee- dle was quivering between “War Powers Resolution” and “First Strike.”

It was an auspicious and exciting time, what with the large- scale mobilization of our troops, by mid-September costing taxpay- ers about twenty-nine million dollars a day. A bargain. You can’t put a price tag on glory. Everyone and his brother felt downright historic; it had the momentous panache of an impending WWIII. We were an empire again, and it was scoring 75 percent approval ratings for G.B. He had been Born Again in the opinion polls, and I was watching his ascent there somewhat fearfully. Because we

79

were still living in hungry Reaganite country; my fellow Ameri- cans would line up behind G.B. only as long as he stalked like a predator, slavered at the chops and pretended to wipe his drooling fangs on a sleeve.

Russell had a new synthetic hipbone and had been prescribed a couple of months’ worth of Percocet, so he felt he was sitting pretty. He lay on the sofa all the time in front of the TV, which forced me to use the second, smaller TV upstairs for my sessions with G.B. That was working out fine, until one night there was a realignment in our domestic geometry.

I’d stopped on my way home to buy a goodwill present for Russki in the form of twelve Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Russell had virtually no appetite, so I looked forward to the pleasure of consuming the lion’s share myself. Imagine my shocked chagrin when, green-and-white box in hand, I entered my base of operations and saw that he had company.

Russell’s complete lack of friends, or even casual acquain- tances, had long been a selling point for me. His isolation from a larger community was both liberating and complimentary. To find him lying in the living room with his legs up on the sofa arm and his teeth on an end table, sharing visibly stiff whiskeys with what appeared to be an Appalachian mountain man, was unnerving to say the least.

The mountain man had a matted gray beard that hung almost to his waist. I would not have been surprised to find small animals nesting in it. He was wearing a safari jacket of Lawrence of Arabia vintage, which apparently had not been doused with water since the turn of the century. He committed his first faux pas right off the bat, in what was to prove a defining moment for me. When I

came into the room, and was standing staring at them at a loss for words, he jerked a thumb in my direction and asked of Russell, “Who’s the roly-poly?”

And then he proceeded to eat eight of the doughnuts himself. Little did he know, at that instant, that he had made his worst enemy.

The mountain man turned out to be an old comrade-in-arms from Russell’s service days. Or post-service, to be precise. After leaving our nation’s armed forces in the wake of their separate Korean experiences, they had met in the VA hospital, gotten along famously, and subsequently worked together for over a decade as soldiers-for-hire, that is to say, mercenaries. It was a part of Rus- sell’s life that, until then, he hadn’t shared with me, and I found it hard to believe at first. I guess I’d had some preconceptions about mercenaries. We all have our prejudices.

Anyway, our visitor went by the unlikely name of Apache and now, in his dotage, made his living as a part-time truck driver. His eighteen-wheeler was parked down the street, illegally. I was not pleased to be informed that he visited Russell on an annual basis, and was planning to stay for a week.

Leaving them to while away their time by telling tired anec- dotes of senseless brutality, I made my way to the basement and locked the door to my private chamber. This done, I repaired to the kitchen to cook them a three-course meal while developing my strategy quietly. I had quickly determined that I would work, over the first couple of days, to enlarge Apache’s trust in me by playing the part of the servile domestic female.

In those months I was walking a tightrope both at home and at work, where I had started angling for a ten-cent-an-hour pay

raise if they moved me to Class III. I was cannily maneuvering to optimize my personal freedom and my opportunities, in steadfast pursuit of the founding fathers’ bright dream.

Apache seemed to be opening up to me by the third night, when I barbecued steaks; he tore into his sirloin ravenously and made several grunting noises that I interpreted favorably, as I sat beside Russell and diced his portion into small pieces. But the next day, when I came in at 6:00
P
.
M
., Russki was dozing splay-legged on the bathroom floor and there were eight empty Red Hook beer bottles beside the Louis Seize. Russell looked down on beer as a weakling’s drink; I knew there was only one possible culprit. Sure enough, Apache, drunk, stoned, and wandering through the house, had picked the basement lock. I came upon him standing in front of my G.B. media crucifix, leafing through my most recent policy memo file, a homegrown joint dangling from the side of his chapped mouth.

“Lady, you’re fat and you’re freakin’ crazy,” he drawled, crassly but not unaffectionately.

“This will not stand,” I said, taking a hint from G.B. and clenching my jaw. “Put that down and get out of here.”

“Eat me,” said Apache.

An energetic struggle ensued. I was taken off-guard by his strength and agility; the hirsute old codger had lightning reflexes and evident martial arts expertise. I soon realized I had made a grave error of judgment in engaging him in combat physically. Ten minutes after hostilities had been initiated, the sour-smelling car- pet of his facial hair was flowing over my face, blinding me, suf- focating me, and tickling my nostrils unpleasantly, and my wrists were pinned to the floor while Apache had his way with me.

I was not new to the game, fortunately—on the contrary, I was by that time a seasoned veteran—and was able to relax even- tually, to minimize abrasion. When Apache slunk away I had only two bracelets of bruises to show for my trouble, plus an incipient kidney infection and a small cut above my left eyebrow.

What does not kill us makes us stronger, and I came out of the episode extremely Firm in my Resolve. That night at supper, a tacit social understanding seemed to arise between Apache and me. So long as I did not bring up the subject of his rude Assault with Russell, he wouldn’t mention his basement discoveries. (Per- sonally I’m not sure Russ would have minded what Apache had done to me; he wasn’t the jealous type, and he wasn’t what you would call “overprotective” of me. I’ve never had an “overprotec- tive” boyfriend, come to think of it. You don’t see gerbils guarding a warthog.) We ate Tater Tots and spaghetti in sullen silence, with Russki breaking the silence occasionally to reminisce about a boy- ish escapade the two of them had shared in Angola.

But Apache’s behavior really rankled with me. I’d had a lot of that in Max, and I figured I’d exceeded my quota. Plus I had been trying to steer clear of entanglements that dirtied me. The episode was disrespectful of G.B.

After the meal I retired to the empty guest bedroom that con- tained the second TV and watched taped footage of President 41 while eating ice cream until I fell asleep. I considered approach- ing the authorities with reference to Apache, but dismissed the notion, deciding such action would be bound to have unpleasant repercussions ultimately. I had broken my parole the year before, by relocating to take the job at the factory. (My parole officer had found only sewage work for me, and the fumes had been sparking

blackouts that reminded me of those olden days on PCP.) So red tape was one of my many enemies.

With only three days remaining in Apache’s planned visit, I had almost decided to let bygones be bygones when he announced to Russell and me that he was extending his vacation.

The truth of the matter is that I could not identify Apache’s Achilles’ heel. Every man has a weakness, and every woman, too; and it is never wise to launch a first strike without foreknowledge of the target’s vulnerability. And because of the détente that had arisen between us, I had few chances for in-depth study. No mat- ter how many meals I cooked him, I could not win over Apache to induce him to confide in me. Like G.B., I cannot be all things to all people; some of my fellow humans lack the ability to see the greatness and the wistfulness in me. Frankly, I will not stoop to teach them.

“The anchor in our world today is freedom,” G.B. had said in his 1990 State of the Union. I didn’t know about that metaphor at the time. If I had been G.B., I would have found myself some new speech- writers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m under the distinct impres- sion that an anchor, like a leg shackle, is there to hold us down.