thousandyardstare

In a skirmish line, the squad runs around the wire of the base. We will get gassed today. We’re running in a circle. Around the base. We’re wearing gas masks. We inspected the respirators before we went running. The inside of my mask is full of sweat. The goggle lenses are foggy. The sky is foggy. Petersen’s back is a foggy green and brown blur. We’re getting gassed today.

We are a long foggy, brown and green centipede circling the base. The line stops. I see a foggy green building. We are getting gassed today. The foggy sergeant says, “Ladies, you are being gassed today.”

Yesterday we sat in desks. A civilian told us about CS gas. CS gas hooks into mucus membranes. Even if you don’t open your mouth, your lungs will feel like they are on fire. The tiny pores covering the skin are big enough for the molecules of CS gas to sneak their way inside your body. CS gas will fuck your skin until it’s on fire. Even if your eyes are shut, CS gas will infiltrate your tear ducks and set your eyes on fire. The civilian doesn’t say exactly this, but everyone in the squad infers it, then silently confirms it when they lock eyes with the person sitting next to them.

The sergeant opens the airtight door, and the foggy green and brown centipede crawls in. 

The sergeant screams at us to stay in a line. Do not spread out. Stay in a line. The sergeant says, “Grab the shoulders of the person in front of you. I grab Petersen’s shoulders. Randhawa grabs my shoulders. Petersen grabs Moretti’s shoulders. Moretti grabs LaFayette’s shoulders. Lee grabs Randhawa’s shoulders. We are a foggy green and brown centipede. We are wearing special uniforms. They are air tight, like the building. Our masks form a hermetic seal with the hoods of our jackets. The door closes behind us. I hear hissing. Yesterday, the civilian told us these uniforms are for chemical and biological warfare. We are wearing green and brown prophylactics. Inside these uniforms, tiny particles can non fuck our pores, our lungs, or our tear ducts. The sergeant screams, “Remove your right hand from the shoulder of the person in front of you, and grab the bottom of your mask.” The only light in the room goes dark.

Yesterday, the civilian told us about the CS gas particles and how they are going to fuck us when we take off our masks. Then that civilian left, and another one came in. He was a psychologist. He wanted to tell us about pain. He assured us he was not a pussy. He was in Desert Storm. He said that this pain will not be like getting shot in the stomach or having the bottom three fingers of our left hand blown off. It will be worse. He said it will be made worse by the atmosphere surrounding the pain. We will be disoriented, the room will be dark. We will all be disoriented and will want to panic. We will be in excruciating pain. Psychologically, he said, it will be less like getting shot in the stomach from 1000 yards away by a person who doesn’t know our names, and more like being tortured. Our squad kept silent. No one shifted in their chair. The civilian looked at our eyes, but he saw through them. Our eyes were holes and he could see the wall behind us. The civilian told us about an Iraqi man he met. The Iraqi man was buried up to his neck in sand for two days. The Iraqi man could not move and his head was cooked under the Arabian sun for two days. His interrogators buried the one litre bottle of water in front of his face with a straw leading from the bottom of the bottle to his mouth. The civilian said that the Iraqi man said, he survived by watching the shadow of the straw move. He didn’t crack because he would watch a bug slowly walk across his line of sight. Inside his head, the Iraqi cheered for the bug in anticipation of the straw’s shadow separating from his own. For two days the Iraqi man cheered for the bugs and waited for the straw’s shadow to turn while the sun arced over his head. The civilian said, “The key to surviving pain, or torture, is dividing time into tiny increments. Pain is made worse when it comes all at once. Divide the pain into small moments. Focus on the miniscule movements.

Randhawa said, “What about thinking about our parents?”

The civilian shook his head.

I was going to ask if we should think about our girlfriends. Not as a joke. Girlfriends and parents fall into the same category. Loved ones. People we miss. Warm arms not foggy and covered in green and brown.

The civilian said that thinking about our parents, girlfriends, cats, dogs, grandparents or any other nice old people we know just  make the pain worse. The civilian looked at the back of the wall through our eyes one more time then said “All right. Tomorrow, you get gassed.”

A red light turns on above the door ahead of us. It is right above Lafayette. The light shines on me and the fog on my goggles is red. The sweat on the inside of the glass condenses and I watch tiny drops fall down along the lens. The sergeant says, “Remove your masks.”

We all inhale deeply, out of instinct, before we tear off the masks. Then , the particles begin fucking us. My face catches fire, then my eyes fill with hot needles. I feel the gas sliding down my neck, in my now useless brown and green prophylactic. Every tiny pore on my skin is fucked, and set on fire by an even smaller CS gas particle. Lee’s fingers dig into Randhawa’s trapezoids. Randhawa’s fingers dig into my trapezoids. My fingers dig into Petersen’s trapezoids. Petersen digs into Moretti digs into LaFayette. None of us scream. The sergeant laughs, then apologizes. He still has his mask on.

With my eyes closed, there is no bug or straw shadow. I think about my girlfriend and how I forgot to ask her when I left about what shampoo she uses so I can buy a lot of it and wash my own hair with it then rub my head on my pillowcase so that maybe I might trick myself into thinking she’s been with me the whole time, but that just makes it worse. The civilian was right. An alarm goes off, I open my eyes, see the red light change to green then immediately regret opening my eyes. I feel a gust of air, and the green and brown centipede rushes outside. We all scream for water. The gas fucked our throats and now we’re thirsty. The sergeant says water will make it worse. We don’t believe him but trust him anyways. I drop to the grass and puke. Puking makes it worse. I start crying. Crying makes it worse.

Last week, we got gassed. Today, they let us go home for a week to “See your mommies,” the sergeant says. He laughed, then apologized. I am hungover and fall asleep on the plane.

My girlfriend is waiting for me when I get off the plane. I love her. She is smart and pretty and funny and smells good and doesn’t call me a pussy when I sprain my ankle while carrying one-hundred pounds of shit on my back running uphill.

She turns her head and kisses me on the cheek when I hug her. We hold hands walking to her car. She is slower than I am, and I don’t know where she parked.

On the drive back to town she asks me how Basic was. I tell her it was fine. I ask her how school is going and she talks until we get to my parents house. The car lurches into the driveway and she stops. The keys are still in the ignition.

I say, “Are you going to come in? My parents are still on holidays.”

She says no. She has to go set up for a party in her residence on campus. I can come if I want to. I should wear something nice, and she’ll pick me up in a couple of hours. She kisses me on the cheek. I get out of the car and she drives away.

My room is the same. My mom vacuumed the carpet but there are cobwebs on the ceiling. All my clothes are hanging in the closet still. They are all a little bit dusty but the suit I wore to Grad doesn’t smell that bad. I smell bad.

My parents re-tiled the bathroom. The water coming out of the shower head is soft and warm. I missed this shower head.

The blazer of my graduation suit is tight around the shoulders, arms, and chest. The pants are loose around my waist, but tight around my thighs and calves. This is the only part of the suit that fits. 

When I hear my girlfriend honking her horn outside I stop trying to stretch my pants without tearing them. Inside her car, I can smell her hair from the passenger seat. I reach over and squeeze her hand. The music blasting from her CD player is terrible. The singer sounds like a pussy. His acoustic guitar sounds like it is made of rubber bands and a shoebox. My girlfriend hums along to it.

The residence building is five stories tall and has sixty-eight windows on its west side. 

Inside, the people look like old friends. They smile and laugh and bump into each other to show affection for one another. It’s nice here. Someone offers me a drink and I take it. My girlfriend bumps into me and smiles.

She recognizes a person. They talk and I sip out of my red plastic cup. Another person comes over and starts talking. Two people walk towards me and I say Hello. How are you? 

They say Good. How are you? I say Good. They keep walking. These are nice people. I sip out of my red cup and see two guys, who look like they could have been my friends in high-school, play ping pong. The white plastic ball slows down, the music lowers until I can’t hear it anymore. I follow the plastic ball over the net, hit the table and float towards a guy’s blue paddle. Then it floats back over the net, slides down, hits the table and bounces towards a guy’s red paddle. The ball missed the red paddle and click against the wall. It clicks on the floor. Clicks on the floor. Clicks on the. Clicks. Click.

“Excuse me. Did someone die?” a voice says.

The voice came from a guy. The guy is small. He’s wearing a white t-shirt. He’s wearing jeans. He has colourful tattoos. My girlfriend hits him on the shoulder. She knows him. She says, “This is Orion.” I say hello and reach to shake his hand but he clenches his fist and taps his knuckles against mine. His knuckles are soft.

“Did you like my CD?”

“Yeah. I was listening to it on the way over.”

“It’s nice being off res, I have a room for a studio at my apartment. Hey! You should come see me play live some time.”

His knuckles are soft and his neck is thin. His neck has a checkered white and black Keffiyeh wrapped around it. The sergeant and other people on base call it a towel. I call it a keffiyeh. In Iraq, lots of men wear them. The sergeant says both your friends and enemies will wear a towel, so don’t get confused by it. It’s not an open invitation to engage, but it’s not a cue to lower your weapon either. Orion is white. Orion has black hair and blonde roots. He has tattoos and is slowly moving closer to my girlfriend. I sip out of my red plastic cup.

For the rest of the night. I stand diagonally behind my girlfriend, so I can see everything she sees plus some things she doesn’t. She is drunk when the party winds down, and leans against me. It’s nice. Her hair smells good and she is soft. I missed her.

I have to drive because she is silly-drunk. Her head is rolling around on her shoulders. She slurs the words, “I used to miss you” a few times before I stop the car in my driveway.

I carry her into the house, up the stairs and lay her down on my bed. She peels her clothes off then grabs my hand and pulls me on top of her. She coughs out, “You’re heavier than I remember,” we have sex and I fall asleep holding her.

I wake up holding nothing. My girlfriend is already dressed and sitting cross-legged next to my feet. Her hair is messy and she looks sad. She stares at me, moves her mouth up and down, but doesn’t say anything. She inhales deep before she begins to speak but I see a spider on the wall. It is climbing towards the ceiling. I envy its ability to move vertically up the walls. Each of its eight legs moves in harmony with the others. The spider crosses a small pinhole I made when hanging up a poster I used to own. The spider is covered in brown spines with a small white “V” on its back. The legs move past the pinhole. The spider navigates around a dent I made with a baseball a long time ago. The dent was an accident but I meant to throw the baseball. The spider looks like it could be a spider I knew before, so I wish him good luck when he finally makes it to the cobwebs my mom forgot to vacuum. I like this spider. I like this spider. I like this spider.