This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.

Farewell, Uncle Ho

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

Chapter 47 (Fri., March 3)

Moffett was shy, embarrassed, guilt-ridden while we were showering and getting ready to go to dinner. Oddly, he returned to his normal self, as soon as we were dressed and out of the room. My upbringing didn't equip me to deal with any religious guilt, really. It would be a strain to come up with just one name of anyone, I'd ever known, who believed in a god. Haruki, for example, was nominally Catholic, but he was what my dad referred to as a Christmas Tree Catholic, who is someone who liked the trappings but didn't, in truth, believe in the teachings of the church. And then there was his mother, who was nominally Shinto, but since she was, by now, an American, I couldn't imagine that she believed that the emperor of Japan was divine.

Gerry was just as clueless as how to help Moffett. In the last line on his dog tags, where on mine was 'MAHAYANA BUDDHIST', there was the word 'NONE' on his. Therefore, neither of us was at all prepared to counteract papal threat of 'losing your soul', not to mention your life, as soon as a bunch of lunatics with rocks got hold of you.

Luckily, the restaurant, Le Chanteclair, was within walking distance from the hotel, and the wind off the Atlantic had died down. But our ears were stinging from the cold when we got to 49th between Fifth and Madison, across from the business entrance to Sacks.

Oddly, the Army provided for the winter uniform to cover everything, except the ears. I was tempted to pull down the up-folded part of the cunt cap, the Labia majora, as it were, to use as earflaps, but was sure that, should I do it, we would either encounter the Military Police or the Shore Patrol and I'd get busted for being out of uniform.

When we entered the narrow and deep restaurant, we were greeted by an elegantly petite woman, possibly in her mid-forties, who reminded me of Piaf. We checked our coats, gloves and cunt caps; I told her that we had a reservation, and she complimented me on my French.

We went through the narrow bar with red walls and black and white photos of racing cars. Approximately every third of the roughly twenty stools was occupied by serious drinkers who protected their privacy and were willing to pay the just-this-side-of-exorbitant prices.

The menu intimidated Moffett and Gerry, and they asked me to order, but Moffett asked for no meat because it was Friday. I ordered a sixty dollar, four-course meal including wine for each of us, which made Moffett gasp, presumably since we were earning $87.90 a month before taxes. Even my Gerry questioned my sanity. "You sure about this?"

"Look, aside from your birthdays," I forced my index finger to stay relaxed and not to revert to lecture mode. "we don't know if we'll ever be able to do this again. In two weeks, we're off to advanced training, and we don't know where we'll be." I sighed. "I want this evening to be something we remember, not an evening where you worry about paying the bill. Relax and enjoy the meal."

Our pre-dinner drinks arrived: Dubonnet and gin in a ratio of 70 to 30 on ice with a twist of lemon. I would imagine the number of Americans who knew about this drink was far less than would fit safely onto a Staten Island Ferry.

"It's named after a pharmacist, Joseph Dubonnet, who ran his drug store, situated next to the Parisian Opera, and had concocted it as a palatable medicine for the French Foreign Legion against malaria." I raised the glass in a toast, disregarding the funny faces they made at the thought of drinking medicine. "To surviving Vietnam."

"To surviving Vietnam." was their response.

We touched glasses and I waited for their reactions. Moffett took one sip, then four more in rappid succession. To judge by his purring, he approved. Gerry, on the other hand, put his approval into the form of a sly question: "We're going to have to take malaria medication in Vietnam, aren't we?"

By the time the hors d'oeuvres of baked clams with garlic butter and bread crumbs arrived, I was feeling the drink; we hadn't had any lunch in preparation of tonight. Moffett was picking at the starter with his fork. By the time I'd said something to Gerry and glanced back at Moffett's plate the baked clams were gone. Big boy, big hunger.

About the time our chestnut soup arrived, Gerry had asked Moffett where he'd studied economics. For some reason, Moffett seemed embarrassed to answer that he'd attended Cornell at Ithaca. "Have you been thinking about going to college," He spoke meekly to Gerry, trying somehow not to offend. "when you get out?"

"Yeah, I might go back for at least an MA." Gerry answered frankly, spooning his soup. He looked up to see Moffett's puzzled face. "I've got a BA in German from Columbia." Moffett's face was still puzzled. "I placed out of the first two and a half years. I'm a fluent native speaker and had read Goethe, Schiller, the Grimm brothers when I was in grade school and high school. So, it was pretty much clear sailing from there."

In order to avoid anymore awkwardness, Moffett focused his attention on me. "And how about you, Ben?" At this Gerry sputtered, pushing chestnut soup up through his nose.

To keep me from having to toot my own horn, Gerry came to my rescue. "Ben's got a PhD from the University of Paris in Cantonese and French."

"Yo," Moffett chuckled. "and the waitress complimented you on your French when we came in." He tittered again nervously. "How did you manage a PhD so young."

I put my soup spoon down and blotted my mouth and lifted my glass of Riesling to my lips . "For starters, I skipped the fourth and seventh grades. Like Gerry is with German, I'm a native speaker of French and Cantonese, I got all the preliminaries out of the way and went for it."

"Wow, I--" Moffett was interrupted by a man from the bar and the bartender.

"Excuse us," The stocky man, who'd had a bit to drink started out. "uhm, Madame overheard that you're shipping off to Vietnam?"

"That's right." I scanned the bar and saw everyone standing.

"So, we took up a collection." He gestured to the bar. "And René here reduced your dinner to half," He looked flustered, probably not used to public speaking. "and we're putting up the rest." He looked as if he could become emotional. "What I'm trying to say is that anyone willing to go over there to protect Indochina from the god-damned communists, and you being Oriental and all, deserves this little bit of thanks. You wear that uniform proudly."

I, of course, was touched, but the first thing to zip through my mind was that he probably wouldn't be this cordial had he known that he was buying dinner for a card-carrying member of the French communist Party, one of the founders of which was Ho Chi Minh, himself. But side-stepping the landmine of political persuasion, I rose, together with Moffett and Gerry, as we raised our wine glasses. "Thanks to all of you, and I'm sure that I also speak for my comrades-" I gestured to Gerry and Moffett for an appropriate pause. "in-arms for this exquisite meal. Messieurs et dames, au Vietnam libre." We drank to a common cause. Just that my definition of 'free Vietnam' and theirs were two entirely different kettles of fish. And at that, the spineless, boneless trout arrived, sautéed in butter, in a raspberry vinegar sauce and spiced with tarragon, parsley, and shallots.

***

We were just crossing Broadway on our way back to the hotel, when Moffett, obviously having overcome his guilt trip, at least for the moment, asked us sheepishly if he could watch Gerry and me, while we have sex. Gerry looked at me with a certain amount of unease. I wasn't sure.

"Tell you what," Moffett proposed. "I'll get a separate room, when we get back, and I'll leave if I go all funny again."

"You sure you can handle it?" Gerry questioned him bluntly, then gave me a please-do-something face.

"Look, Moffett," I used a modified version of my command bark. "get a separate room and go to confession and mass tomorrow noontime, like you were planning," I coughed, due to the strain on my voice. "and if you still want to watch us, we'll talk about it."

"In other words: No." Moffett stated moodily.

I reduced my voice strength. "You have been through a lot. I'll admit that." I took his hand, the touch of which he immediately rejected. "But so has Gerry, and so have--."

"--What's Gerry ever been through, that was so tragic?" Moffett scowled.

Before Gerry could speak, I took over, again with my modified command bark. "Well, for starters, he was born in a Nazi concentration camp, where both of his parents died. How does that compare with scenic Franklin County, New York?"

"Is that true, Gerry?" Moffett was about to laugh, when Gerry nodded. "No wonder you hide being Jewish."

Gerry threw up his hands in mock surrender and shook his head. I grabbed his hand before he wandered off. "Look, Moffett, what I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry you lost your fella, really I am. But all of us have lost people we loved. And just because you've lost someone does not give you the right to horn in on our relationship. You are looking for something that we cannot give you."

"And what would that be, monsieur le docteur?" Moffett used a mocking voice that made him sound like a prepubescent twelve-year-old.

"Absolution for what you are." I almost yelled, but toned it down, since we were standing in front of the hotel.

***

True to his word, Moffett got a separate room on the same floor as ours. Also true to form, he still wanted to stay and watch us fuck. But I had to admit that he did leave peacefully after he'd gathered his things.

Once we'd finished cleaning up for the night, we were lying as close to one another as we could get. My left leg was draped over his right hip with my dick tickling the base of his balls, as he tickled my hole with his middle finger. "Have you ever" Gerry's voice was soft in my ear. "known anybody quite so fucked up by their upbringing as Moffett?"

I had to give it some thought. "Yeah," I started scratching his back. "remember Sergeant Hernandez?" Gerry whispered that he did. "Haruki and I went to school together. And his Japanese mother taught him that we Chinese are inferior to the Japanese. So, ever since I've known him, he's called me Chūgokujin, which is Japanese for 'Chinaman', just to remind himself of where we stand on the social ladder."

"Is that why he dumped you for Sean?" Gerry's tone took on a tinge of sorrow, that I couldn't explain. "Does he see you as racially inferior to Sean?"

"Probably." I admitted, even to myself, for the first time. My Gerry's sobbing enhanced my desire for his love; he was sad for how I'd been treated. That was an emotion, which I couldn't feel, but one I couldn't deprive him of.

He turned with his backside to me and guided my cock into him. From this point on, I knew that our sex was going to be as mellow as our feelings for one another. I lifted his left leg over my shoulder, spreading him wide. The sight of my prick penetrating, reappearing and disappearing into him made me yearn for his toes. His feet smelled like a baby's, sort of milky.

Each time my tongue lapped at his big toe or I sucked it, his cock would twitch. When he moaned his signal, I dove for his cock to suck him dry. I still had my fingers intertwined with his toes, which he clenched in orgasm as if trying to make a fist with his foot.

I rolled onto my back to battle with my cock to make it spurt. Gerry's mouth took control and he began to hum. Within seconds my member was surrendering semen onto the vocal chords of my best buddy, making him sound as if he were gargling mouthwash.

"I love you so much, Gerry." I pulled him up so we could exchange tastes.

He purred and pulled back enough to look at me. "What would you say if I told you that I really am Jewish?"

"I'd say you're lying." He chuckled mischievously in response to my boldness. I went for the shocker. "What would you say if I told you that I'm a communist?"

"I'd say…" He trailed off as if he were thinking but was grinning too much. "...What? You, too?"