What if I had not? Perhaps he would have come out for the third time, to find me, and where would I have been? I might have been in my room down the hall. Or I might have simply just been down the hall. Sitting by the phone. In what way, sitting? Perhaps my knees might have been drawn up to my chest, the way you sit when you want your butt to fall asleep. And then my forehead may have rested on my hands, putting my face in the dark, or maybe my chin on my hands, my face in the light. Or I might have sat with my legs sprawled out straight in front of me. One’s butt can fall asleep that way too. Or at least mine does, but I have low blood pressure; low enough that the medic said I should be dead. (I see it as a good thing; when I get shot, my blood won’t come out as fast.) Or maybe I might have just lain on the floor, and I think I would have chosen to lie on my stomach. But she… she would lie on her back. And there, there I would wait until the fateful hour of 2300hrs to call down to the green desk (it’s not really a desk but it actually is green; in the green sector, a lot of things are green) and tell them, that in my knowledge, all lights are off and all persons are present in their beds. And then I would go to my own bed (assuming he didn’t show for the third time).
But that’s not how it went. No, that’s not how it went at all. I remember it quite well, my choice, my betrayal. Or maybe this is a fabrication. I can’t be sure that my memory is as true as I think it might be. In my imaginings, I’m sure I have elaborated it but I shan’t fail you as I have a story to tell.
I had been talking with a candidate. Private, or Officer Cadet, that I cannot remember. Their back had been to the door. He came out and beckoned me to come into his pod (of which contains many rooms). He must have been so frustrated, because I stubbornly persisted to finish my conversation, and then he came out a second time mouthing “Get in here” while motioning with his hand. I hovered, there, in the grey hallway with the blue doors (in the blue sector, a lot of things are blue). It was so quiet. Oh, but how curious I was… so curious. So I opened the door, and entered, closing the door slowly behind me.
It was so quiet. And dark. My boots were screaming with every step on the floor. What if somebody heard? What if somebody was in the bathroom? Oh God. But as much as I tried to be quiet, I seemed to be louder than a screeching parrot. But somehow, my feet still moved confidently forward (must have been the curiosity), and I reached his room (a few feet from the door).
“Close the door behind you.” So I did.
And that’s all you need to know, for this part of the story. What? You’re not reading this for the sex. Besides, I was far too terrified of being caught.

There are those that live; the rest die. Those that find happiness; the rest collapse in despair. And then some that win, leaving behind those who lose. I realize now that I have been losing for many years, curbing any chance I may have at success. I have not followed the norms. I do not giggle and gape at boys. I despise makeup, relish in wearing clothes that don’t match. I live in a state of embarrassment. I don’t do my hair. I don’t even wear a thong; my choice of bra bought from Zellers (now tinged green by the issued green towels of the CF; I think it is their attempt at conformity). I would be the most unexciting girl to undress.
I walk down the hallway of doors. Inside one, girls talk about their latest crush while another down the hall lies on the floor listening to her neighbour fuck and wonders when her chance will come. Miles away, a man takes his daily dose of Prozac, wondering if it will ever be possible to love and be loved again. Across the ocean, another watches his friend shoot himself in the head playing quick draw with his firearm. Would his family be notified of the reasons for his death? Perhaps they would be fabricated anyways. At the end of it all, he’s just +1 on the number of American fatal casualties in Iraq.

I didn’t really think about it at the time. He told me he was OK with “open relationships”. Great! I was now free to do as I wished. But wait. I always forget. There had been another.
I had been a fool. I still am, actually, so I should probably rephrase that to, “I was and still am a fool.” Depending on the scene of the crime, I am a fool to many different things. Here I suppose it was hormones and trust. Or maybe I just been plain curious then too, and it went too far for me to handle.
We were coming back from the fair; he and I needed to be back by 0100hrs, as that was when our leave ended. They were drunk (they bought beer from the beer truck for the cups, and then proceeded to refill them from the alcohol in the knapsack). I was not. My first, and longest, ‘lover’ left us alone to take his car back to its proper parking spot. I figured he (my second ‘lover’, if he can be declared as such) and I would just walk back to the MEGA (that’s what the building is called; where we sleep, eat, learn, and remember).
“What’s wrong with you?”
“What?”
“Why don’t you go and have a bit of fun?” (My first ‘lover’ had been making several advances upon me.)
“Because I think I would greatly regret it. And he’s 25. I’m 18… well, almost 19. At least you’re 18.” Oh shit, wrong thing to say. “Not like I’d have sex with you anyways.” Great save!
Not so much, I realize, after the fact.
We carried on about other topics, mostly about our platoons and staff (he was still undergoing training, and was a Private) and how the training was different for me compared to him. And did the staff act differently towards Officer Cadets? He may not have been that drunk, actually. We had been sitting outside the MIR (Medical Inspection Room; it’s actually a hospital though) on the grass, but after getting scared that we’d be seen by MPs (Military Police), we decided to walk down the path, towards one of the parking lots.
And then we sat on the grass, which I figured was alright. A bit chilly, but he had a solution for that. And I still had time. We carried on our conversation. I actually learned something from him, a survival tip. A human cannot walk in a straight line continuously. One leg is naturally stronger than the other, causing one to eventually walk in a circle. And I told (probably didn’t teach him because I think he was focusing more on his goal by then) him the nine enemies of survival; hunger, thirst, cold, heat, boredom, loneliness, fatigue, and pain. I was at a loss for the ninth, then.
And I told him of how much I loved paintballing, and that quite enthralled him. He said he’d never met a girl who enjoyed it. He had never been paintballing outside, so I think he was missing out. By then, his fingers were stroking my waist.
And he told me of how he would have liked to just sleep outside, there on the grass. I said it would be rather cold, to spend the night on the cold ground (survival tip: don’t sit on the ground or against a tree when lost; you lose body heat that way). By then, I was lying on my back beside him. Not close to him, mind you. May as well have been though.
“I broke up with her as soon as I was accepted into the military. I knew it wasn’t going to work out, with me going into the infantry and being sent on a tour after my training is complete. What about you?” Honest question.
“I have a boyfriend… but he doesn’t care what I do.” But this was before I had talked to him on the phone. I really am stupid, aren’t I?
I can’t remember what he said that caused me to turn my face towards his, or even if he really said anything at all. And I have to say that he was quite within my tastes for looks. And then his mouth was on mine. And I realized that this is what it’s like, when you get that surprise kiss. And I realized that it’s actually quite easy, to do this. And it was great; he was to say later that I had been having fun. But then he started undoing his belt. No, no, no. And the Wile E. Coyote popped up in my mind with a sign that read, “Help!”
Then I remembered the ninth enemy of survival: fear.

So I lied to you, the faithful reader. That was the betrayal, or at least the first one. Maybe the second one can’t even be defined as a betrayal. But I’ll get to that, and you can help me decide.
So let me continue with my story. When trying to find out my name, I posed the question that what if I just told him a fake name? He (the first ‘lover’, not the second) said that I had more integrity than that. So I couldn’t damage that.
I wrote him a letter. I told him everything, absolutely everything. But without the details. He found out what was important to him though. We had gone on a ride together, at the fair. He asked me there to kiss him. I couldn’t do it, partially because I didn’t trust him at that point and because I just didn’t have confidence for it. So when I answered ‘yes’ to the fact that I had been successfully kissed, he was rather disappointed in me. Understandably.
But looking back on it now, I think he played the game. His doting on me provided considerable distraction, and I enjoyed it tremendously. So, he played the game of turning me away, saying I was playing too hard to get. So of course I would come running back, do anything to have him pay attention to me like he had been. It even might have been that night that I entered his room.
But then, the whole thing was really his fault. We had been walking toward the MEGA when we saw lights flashing off a MP’s car and suspected he had been caught for speeding (which he had been). So we had walked the other way.

I think I may have fallen in love with him. At least a part of him. Or perhaps I just needed a space to be filled. But that’s not what was supposed to happen. We had discussed it already; if we were to enter in an “open relationship”, I wasn’t to have feelings for anybody else. How do you stop it though? Can it be stopped? I think now that it can’t.
I think it goes like this. I loved his confidence, and how I had so much to learn from him, in terms of life. I also loved how he would scream when he was tickled. And he didn’t want to hurt me, in fact I can say that he didn’t like to. He was a lot stronger than me, of course, and so he considered it funny to force me to hit myself and he would laugh, saying, “Boatman! Stop hitting yourself!” And sometimes, I hit myself too hard and he would immediately ask if I was alright. Except then I would hit him, and it would start all over again.
There was a question he asked me once that I never answered. It went like this.
“Jane, can I ask you a question?” He liked my middle name best.
“What?”
“Has anybody ever wanted you so badly?”
I remember I laughed. But what I thought wasn’t much of laughing. It was ‘Yes’, at first, but it is now ‘No’.
He told me a lot about his girlfriend. He broke up with her after that night, though she didn’t know about me. He said that she was always angry with him, always yelling at him about something and I know that he liked, or rather preferred, to be the dominant power in the relationship. At one point, I even became too confident for him, and he didn’t like it.
He told me once that, with her, he thought he was ready to start steady dating, and I think he would have done well in that. I can see him really being in love with someone, and he might have been with her. He said that he realized he was still too much of a flirt, but I think it was different than that. She had disappointed him, and now he was back to looking for someone to fill the space; that hole that exists in the pit of your heart and sits in the back of your mind and rots. Rots away, and ferments, giving way to feelings and thoughts that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. I have that same hole now too. I like to think that I filled that space for him, for a while, because he had filled mine. Or perhaps I’m just giving myself too much credit.
And then there was an alternative, the third ‘lover’. He wrote a note about me, he said writing it down caused him to not think about it as strongly. It was about my eyes, and I was able to convince him to show it to me and then he crumpled it up and threw it away, embarrassed. He wasn’t like the first ‘lover’. He was shy, unsure, displaced. Tall and lanky, while the other had more bulk. He asked me a question once, while I was brushing my teeth. He was drunk, and he had been trying to kiss me (but I was not going to be a disappointment again). He came to the door of the bathroom, leaned against the door frame and said, “It’s because I’m ugly, isn’t it?” But he had also loved my personality too, he said. How I didn’t seem to give a shit what people thought, that I just did what I wanted. I was and am my own person now.
I think, in reflection, there are two main things I have learned. Your lips are only devoted to one, whether to another or to yourself. Once you kiss another that is not who you’re devoted to, your lips are now free game. They’re the world’s possession now, lips that are free to be sucked on, swallowed, licked, and whatever else comes to mind. If you cannot keep your lips as belonging who they’re supposed to be for, then your heart is meant to stray. I acknowledge that mine did.
And I know now that I can be loved, loved for how I look and for how I am. Another memory comes to mind, a sad one. I was 2IC, I always left the floor last to make sure that everybody else had left so we could make our timing. He was always last, always hanging around. So I was there to tell him to hurry up, because that was my job.
“Shut the fuck up and go away.”
I must have looked so tired then, sounded so tired when I told him to fuck off and walked away. I was truly torn about him, how differently I would look at him if we didn’t exist in the situation we did.
He called after me, “Boatman! I’m sorry!”
“No, you’re not. You’re not sorry at all.”

And neither am I.

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