Queering Benedict Arnold 4 In some Woods near Poughkeepsie: July 2012 By Jake Preston
"Queering Benedict Arnold" is historical gay fiction. The story alternates between twenty-first century scenes in which Jake Preston and Ben Arnold (a descendent) investigate Benedict's life, and eighteenth-century scenes imagined by Jake and Ben. Some characters and allusions hark back to "Wayward Island" (in nifty's file on Beginnings). Jake Preston is the narrator in both works.
Most episodes are faithful to history, except for sexual encounters, which are fictional. You should not read this story if you are a minor, or if you are offended by explicit gay sex.
Benedict Arnold was an American military genius who was treated unfairly by jealous rivals while he lived. After his death, he was denounced as the archetypal traitor in history and folklore, but he was a target of inexplicable hatred long before his treasonable conspiracy with John André to surrender the fort at West Point to the British. Taken as a whole, "Queering Benedict Arnold" is an attempt to discover the origins of that hatred. Comments welcome: contact Jake at jemtling@gmail.com.
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I awoke in the dead of night with a chill in my back. Our campfire burned low, and Ben was gone. I figured he had ducked into the brush to take a leak, and called his name softly. Hearing no reply, I called loudly through hands cupped toward a cluster of trees darkened by night-shadows and brush. I put on my jeans and boots. Stumbling over stumps and rocks and wishing I had a flashlight, I climbed the ridge toward a clump of trees where I had parked my motorcycle. Ben wasn't there. I followed the grassy trail to the road.
Ben sometimes startled awake with flashbacks of bad times in the Kunar River Valley, like the morning when the latrine blew up when Private Stan Mueller opened the door. That morning the latrine had been avoided by eight Pashto cops from Kabul, who had attached themselves to the Askars, attracted by for higher pay and (as it turned out) the possibilities for corruption. After Mueller was killed, the cops-turned-soldiers were quick to advance the theory that local Taliban snuck into our base at night and booby-trapped the latrine door. The cops called them "Taliban," a term never used by the Askars, who referred to their enemies as "dushmen"-outlaws: a Persian word. In the 1980s the Afghanis applied it to the Soviet army. Instead of 'dushmen', the Marines sometimes said 'dushies', a Pashto word meaning 'ghosts' or 'evil spirits'.
After this fragging-attempt, Ben's platoon used latrines without the privacy and danger of doors. Was it the memory of Private Mueller, or some other wartime tragedy, that caused Ben to wander in the dark? Or did he think he was back in Ganjigal?
A car passed by on the road. It was just before 3:00 A.M. A hundred yards ahead, the driver honked his horn. I ran ahead as the car sped off. I found Ben walking alongside the road, butt-naked. It took me a few minutes to realize that he was sleep-walking. I led him by the hand, back to our campfire. He was compliant. The only difficulty was finding a path where he wouldn't lacerate his feet any more than he already had done. When I coaxed him into getting dressed, he woke up. I told him what had happened. I figured the driver of the car had called the cops on his cellphone, so we'd best get dressed. It was too dark for us to break camp and take off on the motorcycle. We let the fire burn down: no need to give away our position. In the upper branches of trees, we caught reflected glimpses of headlights, most likely a cop car, but it never stopped.
The mention of a cop triggered an association of ideas in Ben's head: "The cops from Kabul who blew up the latrine and Private Mueller with it, I think they were trying to get our Askar lieutenant, Aziz Rahul, because a week before, he had stopped them from siphoning gas from their trucks and selling it to a village elder. He knew that the bomb was meant for him."
"How do you know that, Ben?" I asked.
"He told me," Ben said.
"When these memories come back, is that what makes you walk in your sleep?" I asked Ben.
"No. The memories wake me up," Ben replied.
"And the illusion that you're back in Ganjigal?"
"For me that's more of a waking trance, to be under attack in Ganjigal," Ben said.
"Do you know the cause of your sleep-walking?"
"No. But I know what triggers it," Ben said. "It's a dream that keeps coming back; nothing to do with the war. I'm at home in Calgary, in the parlor. There's a tall raft of shelving where the bay-window should be. The shelves are stocked with dozens of identical coffee mugs. Each one has my name inscribed on the side in block letters: 'Benedict Arnold'. An elderly lady climbs a stepladder and reaches for one of the cups. 'This one is meant for you', she says: 'this one and none other.' It seems a harmless dream. Still it disturbs me. When I wake up later, I don't remember walking in my sleep, but I remember the dream."
Ben's mind drifted back to an earlier subject: "A month later the cops from Kabul tried to cut Aziz down by 'friendly fire'. Lieutenant Rahul led a detachment of eight Askars on a regular patrol in the hills above the Kunar River. I was there too, and Corporal Floyd Jones. On the trail above our base, a grenade exploded just behind us. It sounded like a grenade. That surprised us: How could the dushies move in close enough to lob a grenade? Our question was answered by another explosion. It was fire from a forty-millimeter shell. It came from our own camp. From a glint of light, I knew that someone down there was watching us with field glasses. Aziz- I mean Lieutenant Rahul- telephoned camp to say that we were taking friendly fire. I stayed close to Aziz, hoping that the Kabul cops (it that's who it was) would refrain from shooting at an American advisor. 'Those dushie shits are trying to frag you', I said to Aziz. He looked puzzled. His English was poor. He didn't know the word 'frag'. But he knew 'shits' well enough and grasped my meaning. Everyone in our party put on tarp-like orange vests to identify ourselves as friendlies. Still, we kept away from the trail, and crept among nearby boulders. Another forty-millimeter shell deflected from the boulder that afforded Aziz and me with our only shelter from friendly fire. Jonesy (Corporal Jones) got on the horn with Sergeant Kowalski, another American 'advisor', and told him to knock it off with shelling from base camp. 'One more forty-mill and I'll telephone Fort Joyce for aerial on your position!' (By 'aerial' he meant artillery fire from the air.) He shouted his threat into the phone. He never would have done that, and even if he had, Fort Joyce would never have sent artillery against our own base, but the threat got results. There was no more shelling from the base, but the commotion attracted the dushmen and soon our platoon was in a firefight with them. No one was injured on either side, but the 'friendly fire' crisis was forgotten.
"Officially, Jonesy and I were 'advisors', like all the Marines attached to Askar companies-a political fiction," Ben continued. "It was part of counterinsurgency theory, not unlike Richard Nixon's attempt to Vietnamize the Vietnam War thirty years ago. How could Lt. Rahul be in command of a patrol when Lt. Jones was required to keep control of the radio? - Anyway, Rahul's English wasn't good enough request aerial artillery from Fort Joyce. We were under orders to pretend that the Askars were in charge of defense in Afghanistan, except when they weren't, which was any time we had a firefight with Taliban insurgents."
I put in my two cents: "George Bush once said that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would not be repetitions of the Vietnam War. That's when I knew that Afghanistan would be another Vietnam."
Ben ignored my political commentary. He had an urgent story to tell. It was personal, not political: "After the second fragging attempt, Rahul concluded that his only chance of survival was to stick close to me. This was possible because I was assigned to him as his tactical and communications advisor. He moved his cot into my two-room hut, so we became bunkmates. None of the Marines objected to this: Rahul was the only Askar they thought they could trust. He never included the Kabul cops in any patrol mission-instead, he delegated command of them to an Askar Sergeant. 'They're worse than useless, they're homicidal', he would say.
"Aziz Rahul was relieved when four of the cops got blown up in a transport truck by an IED. They were peddling stolen gasoline in a village. The danger to Rahul was reduced by their deaths, but a new danger presented itself: Rahul and I became lovers.
"Our two-room hut was 'Communication Central' in our outpost in a settlement called Monti. We slept in cots in a windowless room. We hung a tarp over the door for privacy, and blocked the doorway with a desk that was loaded with maps and tactical plans. Marines and Askars came and went freely, but our sleeping quarters were off-limits, and anyone entering or leaving had to squeeze around the desk. Often we sat at the desk together, studying maps and patrol tactics by the light of a window, or by a battery-powered lamp. That's where the body-language between us gradually became intimate.
"Our courtship was silent intimacy by metonymy: his sun-browned, hairy arm on the desk, pressed against the fair-skinned smoothness of mine while we imagined the contrast of our bodies, if only we could enjoy freedom from military fatigues. In the evening, when we seldom had unannounced visitors, I dared to keep my shirt unbuttoned. Aziz followed my example. An exchange of glances confirmed the imagined hairiness of his chest, and the fair smoothness of mine. The physical differences between us proved to be an irresistible attraction. One evening while we poured over a satellite-map of the backwater-wash in the Kunar River, near an unfriendly village called Ganjigal, I took Aziz's hand and guided it to my chest. Aziz fondled my nips and ran his hands over my smooth torso. He took my hand to his hirsute chest, and while I explored his pits and nips, he fondled my cock, nestled in a clothen trap of khaki and jockey-shorts. If only he could free it from its trap! Mutual desire was mingled with our terror at getting caught.
"We ventured outside to piss before bedtime. We stood together and watched each other piss against the wall of our hut. Ever since the fragging- attempt against Aziz, we kept visits to the latrine to a minimum. Back in the hut, I got naked for Aziz. I guided his hand over my torso. He pulled me into an embrace. We kissed while he fondled my butt. No words were exchanged. We kept alert for sounds of our fellow Marines and Askars.
"I helped Aziz out of his clothes. We stood face to face. His moans echoed mine in the mutual groping of a sword-fight between cocks. It was too dark to see, but Aziz's fingertips found my foreskin, which quickly became the focus of anatomical curiosity. I showed him how to pull it forward gently and let it retract over my shaft. He held his shaft firm at the base while I pulled my gunny over his glans in the dim glimmer of moonlight from the window. A bulbourous pool formed between us when he took over the docking-action. 'Docking', I whispered, 'but don't use that word in public'. I didn't need to explain why.
"I knelt in front of Aziz and went down on him. He couldn't conceal his surprise that I did that for him-but then, everything we did together was a first- mostly for me, too. He raised me by the pits and went down on me in extended reciprocation, motivated by his interest in my foreskin. When I jizzed in his mouth, he was hungry for me. I was the satisfied beneficiary of his first blow-job. I took his hand and led him to my cot. When we got sidled, I lay on my belly and gave him the license he needed to roam his hands everywhere over my body. When his fingers reached my cleft, I arched to let him know that nothing was forbidden. After months of cautious friendship, for us it was more than sex. It was freedom. 'Take what you need, Aziz', I said.
"Aziz pressed his finger against my virginal button. I told him to slide it inside. At first, he didn't understand me. I demonstrated by making a circle with my left thumb and index finger, and stuck my right middle-finger into it. 'Use your fuck-finger', I said-a new addition to Aziz's English vocabulary. He wet it with spit as best he could, and inserted it slowly. 'Get it all the way in, Aziz', I said. 'It IS all the way in', he said. 'In that case, you'll have to use something bigger', I said. I tightened my sphincter around his finger. No translation needed.
If you think it's gonna hurt getting your cherry popped, try it with spit for lube! I grit my teeth and deep-throated a howl when Aziz pushed his cockhead past my sphincter. I clutched the end of my cot and watched my knuckles turn red when his shaft drilled its way inside me. 'Don't stop, Aziz, no matter what I say', I told him, but all the while I was thinking, 'if only his cock was six inches, or seven, it would be easier to take!' When he burned his way through my inner sphincter, he saw the redness in my complexion, down to my neck and shoulders, and offered to stop. 'God no!' I said. If he pulled out of me now, I knew we'd have to do it again from the beginning. 'I want this,' I said. This was true, though not at the moment.
"'Allah akhbar!' Ben whispered, jubilant. I reached around and felt the base of his cock at my anal rim. Sure enough, Aziz had made it all the way up my ass. He thought it was the point of no return, but for me that point came earlier, when I arched my ass for him. As long as he fucked slowly, his dick-friction was tolerable, but when Nature took its course it was almost as painful as initial penetration. I took it like a man because in our relationship at this moment, we needed to go all the way. Be both felt this need. Aziz would have bottomed for me, but since I volunteered, how could he refuse? Our intercourse was lubeless but not loveless. Even so, don't let anyone tell you that love works well enough for a lube. The rocks above Kunar River could be measured on satellite maps, but the friction that Aziz administered to my anal canal could not be measured. Words cannot tell my relief when he moaned in my ear and his rigid rod turned lubriciously silken. Moments after he removed his cock dripping with cum, his erection returned and he plunged into me again, and humped furiously until he orgazzed a second time.
"After the agony of unlubed sex, romance returned when we lay in each other's arms, whispering and cuddling. I held Aziz's hairy body like a teddy-bear. When we got horny, he offered to take his turn in the saddle. I said no: 'Now that my ass is lubed with your spooge, let's take advantage'. Unlike spittle, spooge works quite well as a lubricant in anal intercourse. Our lips locked while he missioned me. His earlier kisses had been tentative, but now his tongue could not be extricated from my mouth, nor his prick from my portal. 'Allah akhbar (I used his expression), you've conquered my ass'. Afterward, in pillow-talk, I had to explain the North American idiom of 'conquering' ass, a suitable expression for two lieutenants, and 'missioning', a verb formed from 'missionary position'. He thought it had something to do with a military 'mission', as in 'missioning a Marine'. I had to admit to his logic, but 'language is rarely logical', I said. 'That's why it's so hard to learn'.
"Aziz thought it strange that Americans considered any position besides the 'missionary' one as a deviation from the norm. He liked missioning because it felt exotic, and he liked the way I opened up to him spread-eagle, 'like a rose in a garden at dawn opening up to a hummingbird'. He had learned the word 'hummingbird' earlier in the week, when we saw one in Camp Monti. At last he found a way to use it in a sentence! I had to explain the American idiom of 'cherry-popping' or 'cherry-busting', too, something that Aziz had just done to me. 'It's not just North American, the Brits use it, too' I said. 'In Pashto we talk about piercing the pearl of virginity, which makes me your jeweler and you my prize pearl', he said while he fondled my butt. If I could have seen his face in the dark, it would have glowed with pride.
"'They say that a virgin will always have a special place in his heart for the man who takes his virginity', I told Aziz. 'What do you say, Ben?' he asked. 'I think it's true, at least for us', I replied. 'They also say that when you fuck a guy, it's the second time that really nails him'. We drifted into sleep, but three times more during the night, Aziz rose to the occasion with additional contributions of spooge. We tried it at different angles. He even fucked from behind standing up, but we always returned to missioning. I was glad for the freedom he took with my body.
"'I'm one happy guy', Aziz said when we woke to the light of dawn. He wanted to fuck again, but it was way too dangerous. 'Besides, you already got me, how many times was it?' I asked. 'Five times, but who's counting?' he replied. 'Six times, if you count the double-fuck you gave me the first time', I said. 'That's six fucks I owe you', I quipped. While we got dressed, we argued about whether a double-fuck counts as one or two."
I asked Ben if Aziz ever offered his ass in return. He did, but that's a story for another day, Ben replied.
"The fear of being discovered was always part of our relationship," Ben said. "I was afraid because 'Don't ask, don't tell' was still the rule in the Marines, but more than that, I was afraid that I might get fragged by one of my buddies if they found out. There were two ex-cons in my unit, both privates, so I had to allow for the possibility of criminal behavior. They won't allow gay guys in the Marines, but apparently they have no objection to common criminals. Still, Aziz had more cause to be fearful, because a homosexual act, and even just being gay, is a capital crime in Afghanistan, punishable by stoning. That's if you're lucky. Aziz told me about one gay guy who was murdered by neighbors. They plugged his rectum with superglue, and kept him naked in a cage while his stomach distended and his internal organs were poisoned by his own shit."
Ben continued: "One night after we made love, I asked Aziz if he was a Moslem. He said he was, because in Afghanistan it was unlawful to be anything else. 'Then maybe I should ask if you're an observant Moslem', I said. 'Let me answer your question by telling you about something that happened when I lived in Kabul. I witnessed a Taliban execution of two nineteen-year-old boys for the crime of being gay. Who knows if they were gay or not? Their accuser owed a debt to the father of one of the boys. Maybe the boy's father spurned a blackmail attempt. The accuser caught them in the act, or so he said, although gossip was contradictory about what act. I recognized them as neighbors. The Taliban summoned all our neighbors to the stadium to witness the execution. The Taliban had banned sports, along with music, dancing, movies, and all forms of entertainment, so the stadium was available for public executions. While the two boys dug their own execution pits, jeered by hundreds of spectators, a succession of mullahs gave long-winded speeches about shari'a and sodomy-an alien vice brought by Russians, then by Americans, to sully the moral purity of the Pashto people. Hoots rose from the crowd when the two boys stood in their pits and the earth was filled in up to their shoulders. The boys' mothers and grandmothers were brought in to cast the first stones at their exposed heads. They were followed by other family members. A younger sister of one boy, distraught and defiant, removed her black burqa and placed it over the boys' heads for protection. She knelt between the boys and screamed about the injustice of false accusations. At a signal from a Taliban cleric, one of the guards shot her in the head. They would have shot her in any case, for the crime of removing her burqa. After that, all the neighbors hurled stones at the dying boys, caught up in a surge of religious enthusiasm. I'll become an observant Muslim on the day when these two boys and their sister are brought back to life and the persecution of gay people comes to an end. Until that day comes, for me Islam is just another barbarity inflicted on the world by fanatics'. That's what Aziz had to say about Islam," Ben said. "He wanted to be an American, or a Canadian like me. He'd go anywhere he was wanted."
There were gaps in Ben's story. Life is experienced chronologically, but memory is never chronological. This is especially true when it comes to events that are always present in our minds. In Ben's case, the most obvious gap was the Battle of Ganjigal. He referred to it often, but it would be weeks before he could talk about it. Maybe he never would. Was he afraid that the terror would come back if he told the story? Did he feel guilty about surviving a battle in which other Marines were killed? I wondered.
"After Ganjigal, I was in the base hospital in Kabul waiting for transport to Okinawa, and from there to San Diego. The only visitor I remember was General Petraeus. He took a special interest when an aide informed him that I had been wounded at Ganjigal. 'Son, is there anything I can do for you?' he asked. I told him how Lieutenant Aziz Rahul had carried me from the firefight, and that the only reward he wanted was to be a U.S. Marine and a U.S citizen. 'That's all I want, Sir', I said: 'A Purple Heart or a Medal of Honor would mean nothing to me unless Lieutenant Rahul had a share in it.' The General nodded, gravely. His aide took notes. There had been some talk about awarding a Medal of Honor to Marines who survived Ganjigal."
"So there's hope for Aziz Rahul, then," I mused.
"Possibly; I don't know," Ben replied. "At least he's still alive, as far as I know. When I was in San Diego, and when I returned to Calgary, some people feared that I might be suicidal. Megan's family and friends warned her away from me for that reason. They didn't know me at all. I would never kill myself, as long as there's a chance that Aziz might still be alive. In the meantime, I keep my mind occupied with Benedict Arnold. Some wartime survivors take up jogging, or bicycling, or writing, or political protests, whatever eases their minds. Discovering the historical Benedict Arnold, that's my obsession, but really I'm just waiting for Aziz."
"That's a powerful life-force, Ben," I said. "Staying alive for the sake of another, like the Jews who survived the Nazis in Germany. Their task was to stay alive as witnesses on behalf of those who were killed. Your task is to stay alive for Lieutenant Aziz Rahul. Maybe we can find him together, if we knew where to look."
Dawn came to the woods outside Poughkeepsie. We had spent most of the night talking about Benedict Arnold-not the infamous ancestor, but his living descendent.