Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 07:32:59 -0800 (PST)
From: Dolphin Dan
Subject: lust in iraq part 2

LUST IN IRAQ
Part II

By Dolphin Dan

***** SPECIAL WARNING *****
In addition to the usual warnings (that if you are not of legal age, or
otherwise prohibited from or offended by reading about sexual acts among
consenting adult males, etc.) it should be mentioned that this story is not
intended to be political in any way, shape or form, and that ANY political
agenda or bias perceived here lies entirely in the mind of the reader.  If
you are not able to set aside the political aspects involved with the
setting and theme of this fictional piece, than this story is NOT for you. 
***************************

It was nearly a month before Toby Smythe and I had a chance to get together
again.  During that month we ached for each other, or at least I did for
him; I assume he must have for me, although we did not get to talk
privately.  Dealing with him as a subordinate, just one of the many
infantry grunts under my command, was excruciating.  I grew to find him
even more attractive than I had when we first met.  One blazingly hot
afternoon as we conducted drills I got too fixated on Toby.  We were on the
firing range, with bullets chattering away, the empty shells showering from
the men's M-16s glinting gold in the desert sunlight as they fell into the
dust.  I watched Toby.  There was something gloriously romantic about him,
something intensely erotic about laying eyes on him, though absolutely
nothing about the situation even hinted at anything sexual.  The way he
leaned into his gun was sexy.  The way the recoil shook his body was sexy.
The way his finger curled around the trigger was sexy.  In those days I had
it so bad for Toby that he could have spit on me and I would have loved it.
After the firing range I went to my quarters, tore down my BDU's and my
underwear as quickly as possible and began masturbating with a fury I
hadn't exercised on myself since high school.  I came in less than thirty
seconds, my engorged dick splattering cum onto the concrete floor of my
quarters.  My eyes were squinted shut, my mind concentrating on the
pleasant thought of firing a thick wad of semen into Toby's mouth--or
receiving his spunk in mine.  The one brief night we'd spent together had
certainly changed me.

But I had two other things to worry about.  One was the war, and the other
was my girlfriend back home.  The war did not wait, and refused to be
interrupted by such petty things as lust or sexual self-discovery.  The
very morning after Toby and I had sex in the office of the Quonset hut that
was our unit's barracks, we found ourselves in a hot spot.  It was a normal
dawn patrol of one of the major thoroughfares leading toward the Green
Zone--an area thick with U.S. headquarters, international aid organizations
and facilities housing the embryonic Iraqi military and government
functions--but a firefight erupted out of nowhere, and with bullets
whizzing here and there, clacking and pinging off the sides of our HMVVs
(and all too often piercing the armor or windows), there was little time to
think about sex.  The patrol ended in tragedy.  Janney, one of the young
soldiers who'd shipped in with Toby and who had proven to be one of the
best assets in our unit, was wounded in the leg.  "I'm hit!  I'm hit!" he
cried, pressing blood-covered hands to his thigh, wincing with the pain.
Our HMVVs were not very well armored and the bullet had gone right through
the door and into his leg.  We got back to the base all right, but Janney
was in bad shape.  The medics did what they could for him, but two days
later I was not surprised to see a Purple Heart recommendation for Janney
and orders back to the States cross Captain Simmons's desk.  I visited
Janney in the medical barracks and learned that the doctors had only
narrowly saved his leg, and doubted he would ever have full use of it
again.  Even at that I thought Janney was lucky.  It had been nearly four
months since we'd had a KIA in our unit and I figured our luck was running
out.  The thought that the next mission could claim Toby at any time nearly
gave me night sweats.

I also agonized about what to do regarding Meredith.  When I had shipped
out to Iraq we'd discussed getting married when I got back, and I knew that
the long months of absence, and the endless nerve-wracking of worrying
about me, would not diminish that desire.  But I had a severe problem.
While I guessed it was remotely possible that the danger, the stress, the
predominantly male atmosphere and the moral confusion of the mission in
Iraq had turned me into a homosexual only temporarily, and that I'd revert
back to my old desires when I returned Stateside, morally I had strong
misgivings with just letting it go and not saying anything at all to my
girlfriend of nearly three years.  Besides, I knew Toby was fully gay.  I
wasn't yet sure what he felt about me emotionally, but suppose we got back
to the States and he wanted to continue a relationship?  I considered
writing a letter to Meredith and telling her the whole thing.  In fact I
even started writing it.  "Honey, this is a very difficult letter to write.
But there's something I have to tell you..."  Eventually I crumpled it up
and couldn't believe my own callousness.  There she was back in Columbus,
working at Target and saving every penny, scanning casualty lists on the
Internet every morning looking for my name--and then she gets a letter
informing her that I'm not sure where our relationship stands because I had
an affair with a man in Baghdad?  How cruel would that be to do to someone?
But at the same time it seemed wrong not to tell her.  I really had no idea
what to do.

Yet despite my misgivings, I never doubted that I would see Toby again, and
when the chance presented itself, I jumped at it.  After a particularly
grueling all-day patrol the men were relaxing in the rec area, and I got
involved in a card game with Toby, Kinnear, and McHugh.  On the communal TV
the guys were watching some insipid Adam Sandler movie; our unit loved Adam
Sandler.  At one point Kinnear got up to take a piss and McHugh went to get
us some Cokes.  Toby sat across from me, calmly shuffling the cards with
his nimble sexy fingers, cigarette in his mouth, dogtags dancing a little
jig in front of his chest.  He didn't even make eye contact with me.
"Tonight?" he said, in barely a whisper.

My dick was hard in less than the amount of time it took to pull a
cigarette out of the pack on the table in front of me.  "Where and when?" I
replied.

"Hummer Two.  0300.  I've got an extra key."

"How'd you manage to do that?"

"Less you know about that, sir, the better."

"0300, then.  Bring back my underwear."

"Yes, sir."

An HMVV was a particularly odd place for a tryst, but our circumstances
were pretty extreme and I had to take what I could get.  At a few minutes
before 0300 I crept out of my quarters; I brought a set of night-vision
goggles.  The pen where the hummers were parked was patrolled, though not
heavily.  I had to play hide-and-seek with the night guard, a very capable
soldier named Sanchez, and my heart skipped a beat as I stole off toward
number two.  It didn't even cross my mind how mortally dangerous this was.
If I was caught there would be no way to explain what I was doing out of my
barracks at three o'clock in the morning, sneaking in the dark around the
vehicles with a set of infrared goggles; with all the paranoia about
saboteurs, terrorists and other things that went bump in the night in
Baghdad, a man one-tenth as competent as Sanchez would be likely to shoot
at shadows first and ask questions later.  But I made it to the hummer.
Thankfully the door was cracked open.  It opened wider and I scrambled
inside.  Sanchez was then on the other side of the pen.  With the constant
noise of motors going back and forth and F-16s screeching overhead,
thankfully we didn't have to be too quiet.

I took off the goggles.  It was pitch-black inside the vehicle and the
metal floor of the crew area inside of it was cold, even through my
clothes.  "Jimmy?" I heard Toby whisper.  His arms clasped around me and we
kissed powerfully.  Our tongues forced past each other.  He was already
unbuttoning my tunic.  My erect penis pulsed inside my shorts with the
rhythm of my heartbeat.  We parted.

"I missed you, Toby."

"Christ, I missed you too.  It's been like a fucking year."  He kissed my
neck.  "I found something," he told me.

"What?"

"Condoms."

"Where'd you get those?"

"Medical tent."  He pulled off my tunic and pulled up my T-shirt.  The
feeling of his bare hands on my stomach was gloriously exciting.  "Getting
the lubricant was the real bitch."

"Lubricant...you mean you want to--?"

"Only if you do.  If you don't, it's OK, I mean, I won't be disappointed."

I wanted to do whatever Toby wanted, and I told him so.  I had an amusing
idea.  I pulled away from him and reached for the night-vision goggles.
After taking off my undershirt and my BDU's, I put the goggles back on and
clicked the switch.  Toby couldn't see me, but I could see him.  My world
was a green digital screen and Toby was the center of it.  I smiled.
"Strip," I commanded.

"You want me to do a strip tease in the dark, eh?"

"I just want to look at you.  You're so beautiful, Toby."

He smiled.  It was a little eerie that in the dark his eyes did not look
directly at me because of course he didn't know where I was, but he took
his shirt off, then his boots, his socks, and his BDU's, and I couldn't
even help myself.  Seeing him in his underwear made me have to reach into
mine and stroke my erection.  By the time he doffed his boxer briefs--which
I realized were actually mine, the ones he wound up with the last time we
were together--I was full-on masturbating.  Toby's dick was standing
straight up from his crotch.  He gingerly took it in his hand, felt the
head and the tip, and cupped his other hand around his abnormally large
balls.  "You want this?" he whispered.  He jacked it a little bit, and then
crawled on his hands and knees toward me.  "You want me in you?"

"Yes."

"Say it.  Say you want it."

"I want it, Toby.  I want it."

He was pulling off my underwear.  The metal of the floor of the HMVV was
cold against my bare butt.  He moved my hands away and gently took my dick
in them.  Feeling him begin to masturbate me was a glorious sensation.  I
sighed and arched my back.  It was very pleasurable, but yet, even excited
as I was, Toby's touch was so light and gentle that if he kept going it
would take me a long time to cum.  I raised my knees and spread my legs.  I
was almost glad he couldn't see me in the darkness.  I probably would have
looked pretty ridiculous, lying on my back, naked, erect and wearing a set
of night-vision goggles.

He left me alone for a few moments and I heard him clambering.  "Toby, come
back," I begged him.  "Just you wait," he said.  "I'll be back.  Shit,
which pocket did I put those in?"  He was rifling through his BDU pants in
the dark.  From a pocket he took what looked like a small bottle of contact
lens solution and a few telltale square-wrapped packages of condoms.  He
crawled back to me.  He found my dick first and began jacking it again.  I
was staring only at the ceiling of the hummer now and sighing softly at the
pleasure of feeling his fingers on me.  He spread my thighs wider.  At this
moment I didn't even care that in a few minutes I would be anally
penetrated by a man, something I would never in a million years I dreamed I
would do voluntarily, but I was so happy to be with Toby that I really
didn't care.  Indeed after another pause in his very light, teasing
masturbation of me I heard a plasticy squirting noise and then when his
fingers returned to me they were covered with a wet and slimy substance.
Oddly he greased up my balls first.  Maybe he was trying to get used to the
lube, or perhaps trying to stimulate me in an unusual way.  When he had my
testicles good and wet he leaned over and blew very softly on them.  I
giggled.  "That feels...weird," I said.

"If I do something you don't like," said Toby, "you just say so and I'll
stop.  I don't want to hurt you."

"You couldn't hurt me, Toby.  But thanks for the thought."

Then he went to work on my butt.  He started very slowly and gently,
probing between my cheeks with the finger of one hand while softly stroking
my dick with his other.  He found my butthole.  He left it alone for a
moment, came back for more lube--I had no idea what it was, although it had
a strong chemical smell--and I felt his greased fingertip press gently into
my anus.  He found it stiff.  "Relax," he told me.  I hadn't realized I was
so tense.  Slowly he worked the finger inside me.  In the entirety of our
relationship this was the only thing he did that reminded me of my
girlfriend; after a tremendous amount of coaxing I had once gotten Meredith
to stick her finger up my butt while we were having sex, and very briefly
this felt like that.  But only for a few moments.  Toby went much farther
up me than she had done.  His well-lubed finger slid in, stiffly at first,
then more easily.  He went back for more lube, and I felt a second finger
gently pry me open.  Uncontrollably I farted.  Toby's reaction was to
laugh.  Finally I did too.

"Does that happen often?" I asked him, still chuckling.

"More often than you'd think," he said.

"How many guys have you had sex with?"

"Not that many, really.  I don't go to bars or anything."  I felt a third
finger penetrate my butthole.  "How is that?  Does it hurt?"

"No.  Actually it feels good."

The fingers left me.  Toby said, "Take off the goggles and get up on all
fours."  I obeyed him.  A moment later I felt a strange, cold, gelatinous
mass dribble down the entirety of my butt crease.  He slowly worked it in.
The wet crackling sound of the lube nearly drove me crazy.  I felt
something warm and hard and glorious press against my right butt cheek, and
I realized it was Toby's penis.  His tip was wet with precum and he wiped
it on me.  Then I heard the sound of the condom package tearing open.  "I'm
gonna do it now," he whispered.  "You OK?"

"I'm great, Toby."

"Say you want it," he said.

"I want it."

"Say the words, 'I want your dick inside me.'  Say it."

"I want your dick inside me, Toby."  I don't know why he got off on this,
but he obviously did.

He pressed his latex-covered dickhead against my butthole.  Toby had done
such a good job of applying the lubricant and stretching me out that I was
amazed to feel the head of his penis sliding into my butt with almost no
resistance.  He gave a long sigh as he fed himself inside me.  It was
intensely hard, like cement.  At first it did hurt, though not enough to
spoil the effect.  It felt very full, like I had to take the greatest shit
of my life.  Then a strange pleasure pressed from deep inside me.  I moaned
a little.  That was the prostate, I knew.  The tip of Toby's dick was
touching it.  I concentrated on relaxing as much as possible.

He put his hands on my hips and began pumping me against him, gently,
doggy-style.  It was curiously like the first time we were together and he
fucked my mouth.  I use that choice of words because it's more accurate
than saying I gave him head, for I did very little.  So it was this time.
Having his penis in my butt was much more pleasurable than I expected it
would be.  It was strangely compelling, and, like my first time with him,
something totally new to me up to that point.  He said nothing.  I learned
that you simply don't talk to Toby during sex.  He communicated his
pleasure through his rhythm and the sound of his breathing.  In thirty
seconds he was pushing and pulling pretty hard and panting like a marathon
runner.  I felt a drop of something wet and warm land on my back; it went
cold almost instantly and I realized it was Toby's sweat.  For some reason
the thought that I made him sweat was incredibly erotic and exciting.  The
eerie slide of his rod in and out of my ass was a gloriously unusual and
liberating sensation.  Toby's grip on my hips grew tighter.  He was in
ecstasy.  Finally he gasped and his dick exploded inside the condom.  I
could feel the reservoir tip filling up with his semen; it was like a stiff
little finger poking even further inside me.  Several drops of sweat landed
on my back.  His penis slid out of my ass probably even before he was
finishing coming.  He lay back on the metal floor of the hummer, still
panting.  I crawled over and embraced him.  I put a hand on his smooth
belly.  It was heaving.

"Was it good?" I whispered.

"Incredible," he replied.

"I'm glad."

"It's your turn now."

He took the lube again and squirted some on his hands, then took his hands
in mine.  He helped me get him ready.  It was tremendously enjoyable to do
to him what he'd done to me, but strangely I liked it better when he had
been fucking me.  Toby's ass was incredibly tight.  He sighed softly as I
slid inside of him.  "Is it OK?" I whispered.  "Am I hurting you?"  He told
me it felt great.  I pumped much slower on him than he did on me.  It was
so tight that there was a fine line between pleasure and pain, and, as this
was my first time, I was hesitant to go at it with complete abandon.  Toby
moaned contentedly.  "Jimmy, that feels great," he said.

"It's good."  I was starting to go faster and a tingle was building at the
base of my prick.  "Oh God, Toby, I'm going to cum.  I'm going to cum...I'm
going to cum..."

The orgasm had almost crept up on me, but soon I felt my dick go super-hard
and a wave of mind-shattering pleasure spread out from it to every part of
my body.  I grunted and thrust as deeply into my sweet boyfriend as I
could, and then my dickhead split open and I gasped in the powerful throes
of orgasm.  It felt like I was shooting forever, and I held as still as
possible, not wanting to move my penis from the enveloping warmness that
surrounded it.  My hands were quivering.  I came down and slowly slipped
out of Toby's butt.  I stripped off the condom, tied a knot in its end, and
then lay next to Toby until our breathing went back to normal and it was
again quiet.

We didn't talk for a long time.  It's possible we might even have fallen
asleep for a brief period.  But later, as I floated out of a kind of
dreamlike trance, I asked Toby, "What was your first time with a guy like?"

He chuckled.  "That's a story," he said.

"We have time."

"Well, I was 12.  My family lived in the country then, and in the summers
when there wasn't school I used to spend the day hanging out in the woods,
especially by this little creek out in the middle of nowhere.  My brother
and I used to swim there sometimes but he got bored of it and I started to
go there on my own.  This one day I went to my favorite spot which was
where a big rock stuck out of the creek, and there was another boy there.
I recognized him, he was Leon, this black kid who lived not too far away, I
saw him walking to school sometimes.  He was about 14 or 15 then I guess.
He only had his underwear on and he was laying there in the sun.  After a
while he pulled down his shorts and started to jack off.  I was hiding in
the trees and I was watching this, like totally amazed.  He had one hand
around his balls and the other cranking on his dick like there was no
tomorrow.  I didn't really understand what that was about, and then I saw
him cum all over himself, and the rock, and it was almost scary--I didn't
cum yet and didn't really know what happened.  But it definitely seemed
like he enjoyed it, and when it was over he left his underwear on the rock
and jumped into the creek to wash himself off.  He didn't know I was there
watching him.  Well, that night in bed was the first night I tried doing
it, and it was pretty amazing.

"I went back the next day.  Leon was there, and again he didn't have
anything on 'cept his underwear, but he was just fooling around by the
creek, trying to build a dam with sticks or something.  I took off my shirt
and my shoes and went over to him and said hi, and we started playing, just
hanging around down by the edge of the creek, and we'd go swimming.  He
sorta knew me and I guess we were friends but the real reason I started
hanging around was because I wanted to jerk off with him, or watch him do
it again.  So for about a week, we'd meet down by the creek and just horse
around, talk about stuff, play, that sort of thing.  We got to be friends.
I thought there was a chance we could do stuff together, I mean like sexual
stuff.  It was so hot most of the time--this is Mississippi in the summer,
remember--and we were swimming so much that we usually didn't have anything
on except underwear.  It was kind of exciting, I mean, I wasn't open like
that with anybody else, even my brother.

"One day Leon and I started playing this game we called 'water wrestling,'
where we'd have wrestling matches while swimming in the creek.  I was
noticing this kinda stuff was getting me real turned on.  Well, after we'd
been playing at it a while Leon noticed I was totally hard.  He even
touched me, you know, through my shorts, but we didn't say anything about
it.  A little later we were out of the water and making a little fire pit
in the woods and he said, 'Do you play with it?'  I asked him what, and he
said his dick, and that it felt good when you play with it.  I knew what
was coming next and sure enough he said it, 'Want me to show you?'  I
didn't let on that I already knew about jacking off, and I pretended to be
dumb.  So we both got up on the rock and he told me to get naked.  I was
totally hard.  He put his hand around mine and made me put my fingers
around my dick and tried to get me to stroke myself like you're supposed to
but I pretended like I couldn't get the hang of it.  So he said, fine, I'll
show you.  He put his hand on me and showed me how it was done, and he kept
stroking me faster and faster until I came, but of course I didn't shoot
yet.  Still it was way better than doing it myself, and I thought it was
the most fun thing I ever did.

"Then he got naked himself and I could see he was totally rock-hard too.
He sorta crawled over me, and he put my hand on his dick and told me to
stroke him like he'd done to me.  So I did, and he was moaning and kept
telling me how good it felt.  I really liked doing it, and I thought it
would be gross when he came, but it wasn't.  He shot his stuff all over my
stomach and my hands, and I remember feeling how warm it was and it was
really nice.  I remember him laying there on top of me, and hearing the
water of the creek, and the frogs, and the sounds of the woods.  It was a
really--I don't know, interesting moment.  One of those you remember for a
long time, you know?"

"That's a great story.  Did you see him again after that?"

"A few times.  We hung out at the creek, and we played with ourselves a
lot, but we didn't really do it with each other.  I kept asking him to, but
I think he was sort of embarrassed about it.  We came on each other
sometimes but we didn't really go farther than that.  School started, and
the next summer Leon had a job and didn't hang out at the creek anymore.
It wasn't 'til high school that I really did it, I mean, like real sex."
He stroked my belly.  "But that's another story."

"I look forward to hearing it."

We were hugging each other.  The warmth of Toby's body against mine was
incredibly comforting.  I had a strange rush of the feeling I had
experienced after the first night I'd been with him, that, amidst all this
carnage in this violent fucked-up country, being with him made me feel
normal.

"What do we do?" said Toby.  "I mean, when we get back to the States when
this is over.  If it's ever over."

"I don't know.  I really don't."

"I like you, Jimmy.  I REALLY like you.  I don't know if I can give you
up."

"I don't know if I can give you up either."

"So, what?  You want to date when we get back home?"

In a split-second I made a decision that I realized would affect the entire
rest of my life.  "Yeah," I said, unhesitatingly.  "I do."

"You mean it?"

"Yeah.  I mean it."

He kissed my neck and pulled me closer.  "That's good," he said.

We lay together in the HMVV for a long time.  We fell asleep.  It was pure
luck that we woke up in time to save ourselves from potential
court-martial; it was almost 0500 when I raised my head off the metal floor
of the vehicle and realized we had mere minutes to get back to our barracks
before Sanchez and the other sentries would notice we were there.  "Toby!
Wake up!  We have to go!"  We scrambled.  We took our clothes, and I took
my underwear that Toby had brought back dutifully.  We waited by the side
of the vehicle before the sentry passed, we kissed quickly and then
immediately rushed back to our respective barracks.  I was still incredibly
turned on by what had happened during the night.  It took me almost two
days to come down from the sexual high I'd experienced with Toby in the
HMVV, and I masturbated myself nearly raw thinking about him, about his
nimble hand around my penis, or about his lips giving me pleasure.  In
those next few days I shot cum with an intensity I hadn't experienced since
I was a teenager.  I jacked off everywhere--on the floor of my barracks
quarters, in the shower, into my underwear, everywhere.  After masturbating
one time and thinking about Toby my balls literally ached.  It seemed I
would not be complete without him.  I had pretty much resolved by then that
I would write to Meredith and break it off with her.  It was cruel, but the
depth of my emotion for Toby Smythe seemed to trump everything else.  There
was no one else I wanted to be with.  The pleasures I'd experienced with my
girlfriend--and they WERE pleasures, to be sure--seemed to pale in
comparison to Toby, though I had been with him only twice.  It scared me
that I could fall so completely, so easily.

About a week after our session in the HMVV we met in the shower again.  It
was late at night, and I came in to find him rubbing soap over his lovely
hairless chest, casually splashing lather on the nipples I had licked and
tweaked the last time we were together.  "Evening, sir," he said in his
chipper Southern tone.  I smiled back at him.  I wanted to say, "This is
where we met," but I couldn't.  Who knew who else was watching or
listening?  I tried to go about my business, but it was impossible.  My
penis was rock-hard.  Just seeing Toby's own tool, starting to stiffen and
rise in his crotch, infused me with a glorious excitement.  When he
finished washing off the soap he stood there under the water holding the
bar.  He had a very mischievous look on his face.  I saw him glance around
from side to side briefly, checking to see if anyone else was in sight, and
he began to roll the bar of soap between his palms.  Then he reached over
and touched my penis, covering it with the thick white lather of the soap.
I moaned and moved as close to him as I could, but not too close.  This was
extraordinarily dangerous.  Another soldier could come into the shower at
any moment, and if he saw what was going on, both Toby and I would be
drummed out of the service under a cloud of scandal.  Luckily I was so
aroused it didn't take long.  His palms slicked up with soap lather, Toby
masturbated me to a shattering climax.  I grunted as semen exploded out of
my dick, spurting back on my rod and covering his hands before the stream
of the shower nozzle washed it away, spinning the white pearly pleasure
down the drain in a matter of seconds as my penis began to slacken.

With his right hand, the hand he had used primarily to jack me off, Toby
grasped the back of my neck and pulled my head close to him.  "Next time,"
he whispered to me, "no condom.  I want you to cum in my butt.  Do you want
to?"

I would have said anything in that moment.  "Yes," I replied.

"OK.  I love you."

"I love you too, Toby."

He let go of me, we both washed off the soap and did not touch each other.
When we toweled off our dicks were limp and no one would have ever guessed
how bad we had it for each other.  But a kind of completion had been
reached between us.  Realizing that I was in love with Toby Smythe was the
most wonderful moment I ever spent in that God-awful country.  It was even
better than the sex, better than the liberation I felt, better than even
realizing I was human in an environment full of inhuman circumstances.  A
towel wrapped around my waist, I went back to my quarters with a smile on
my face that I doubted anyone would not know came from the glow of
gratification, both sexual and emotional.  That night I dressed in my BDU's
and undershirt, sat there at my desk and wrote to Meredith the cruelest
letter I have ever written to anyone in my life, one that I knew, even as I
wrote it, would shatter her life, and very likely mine.  The world had gone
insane.  I was in a faraway place, facing danger every day, and she was
back home trying valiantly to keep body and soul together so we could enjoy
our lives and our love when I returned, and here I was telling her that it
was not going to happen--and why.  That I had the capacity to inflict such
cruelty upon her seemed in a way to underscore the inhumanity that had
taken root in me during my time in Iraq, but at the same time it was an
affirmation that I was alive, that I was a man, that I had feelings and
hopes and desires that could not be ignored.  To this day I do not know if
our mission in Iraq ever brought freedom to the people on whom we were
supposed to be endowing it, but it certainly liberated me, and for that
alone, it may well have been worth it.

* * *

I choose to end my story here.  What happens after is not important.

Maybe Toby died.  Maybe he was killed in a hail of random gunfire on a
Baghdad street, or the hot flash of a suicide bomb that left a row of cars
merely a graveyard of flaming metal skeletons.  Maybe he died heroically,
saving members of his platoon--maybe me--from certain death, sacrificing
himself in the process.  Maybe he wound up as one of thousands of
smart-looking mobile slabs carpeting a hillside in Arlington National
Cemetery, lain to rest with the dead of every American war.  Or maybe he
got out of Iraq, and we lived happily ever after, our love growing stronger
with every day that we put between us and the dark days when we served
together in that place and found each other, and discovered our true
selves.  Maybe none of these things came to pass; maybe all of them did.

Life has no pat endings, and neither do wars.  Heroes die, but their deaths
are not always heroic.  Cowards live, and sometimes they do not deserve to.
Such is the way of the world.  But know this: sex and love and death are
never so far from each other, nor so different.  They are all facets of the
same crystal--the faces of the same God.

THE END.

THIS STORY IS DEDICATED TO THE BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN WHO DAILY RISK THEIR
LIVES FOR THEIR COUNTRY, AND TO THE SACRIFICES MADE BY THEM AND THEIR LOVED
ONES AT HOME.