The numbers were bad, the scandal was worse, the colonel was apoplectic, the headlines were grim, the war was a mess. The Congress was concerned. The president said he did not see any reason for him to worry about anything. In public the White House press spokesman was upbeat and calm; in private, things were different.
A secret e-mail from someone in Rumsfeld's office to the colonel said, Get those fucking numbers up or you'll be going down. And do it without making a horse's ass out of the army.
Someone from Chaney's office was overheard saying between bites of sushi, The vice-president said that if those cocksuckers don't know how to get boys and girls into uniforms, they should be wearing diapers and sucking their mothers' tits instead of carrying weapons and wearing the uniforms of the armed services.
Scotty Mason had a lousy headache. He'd had it all day. He'd had it yesterday. It wasn't going away. Neither was his unfilled quota. Neither were the stories about what recruiters were doing to fill their quotas. Neither was the growing disgust with the war and the government.
He would have preferred to be in a combat unit sticking close to his buddies, sharing the adrenaline rush, focusing together on one thing, rather than to be waylaying these boys in the mall and suffering humiliation after defeat after humiliation.
He came back, nevertheless, after each blow, after each failure, taller than before, crisper than ever.
Gentlemen you need to talk to me about putting some purpose in your life, he'd say, and some bright-eyed smart-aleck who needed a hair cut and a belt for his pants would answer back, Hey, man, I got a purpose. It's keeping out of the clutches of guys like you.
It shouldn't have gotten to him, but all through the day, and every night, sentences like that just kept on banging around inside his head clogging his memory. And the faces of the boys he saw, he couldn't get them out of his head. All those young, sweet faces saying No to him! All those bodies churning with life, who could have been his buddies, retracting from him! Or worse -- meeting him with taunts and defiance. Oh, when they taunted him, when they showed that defiant attitude, did he ever want to take those cunts and bend them to his will like they'd never been bent.
Name's Scott. What's yours? he said, hand extended, approaching a guy who was a more likely looking recruit than the average hippie faggots he had to comb through. He was well built, stood straight, dressed conservatively but with style. He was lookin' good. And he was by himself.
Derek, dude.
Cool, Derek. You look like a man with a plan, a guy with a purpose, a dude who's above the crowd. We should talk.
About what? Derek answered, freeing his hand from the soldier's grasp.
How 'bout your future?
What about my future?
Have you ever thought what it's gonna be?
Derek almost smiled, but otherwise, he did not answer.
I thought so, Scott said, riffing his way through the ambiguity.
Here's the plan, Derek, he said, biting into a hamburger and taking a sip of cherry soda.
You sign with me... You sure you don't want a burger, hey? Maybe just a soda?
I'm sure.
...for two years and you've got...tastes good... sure?
Derek nods without a word.
Ok. But if you change your mind....So you've got four years in college, an extra five Gs to spend, and a feeling about yourself that no amount of money can buy and no one can ever take away. Now, that sounds good, huh?
Not so good, Derek said quietly.
What'd you say? Scott said stopping chewing.
Not so good, Derek repeated no louder.
Not good!
No.
How's that?
I'm not into it.
I don't believe you.
Suit yourself.
I mean, come on, a smart dude like you. All you can say is I'm not into it.
I'm not.
So why you here talking to me?
You're the one who's talking.
But you're still here listening, Derek. Why you sitting here with me if you aren't interested, dude?
To see what you have to say.
To see what I have to say?
Yeah.
Just like that.
Uh huh.
You jerkin' my chain, man?
You feel like I am?
This was getting difficult. Scott took a breath and then resumed.
So what do you think about what I had to say, Derek?
He was working hard to keep the edge out of his voice. This fish wasn't off his hook yet, even if he thought he was free and just teasing. He wasn't going to let him get away. The kid was too cool by half, too cool for his own good. He'd take some knocking down. But it was a good challenge. He had backbone.
If I can break him, I'll own him, Scott thought. That, he felt in his deepest gut. This kid was a prize among a lot of losers.
From outside, it didn't look like it but inside the space that hung between them there was a struggle going on between two minds for which one was going to be dominant. Each of them knew that they'd sat down together with the purpose of transforming the other one.
C'm'on, Derek, what can you say against what I just told you?
Wrong question, Derek said in the same low tone but with a direct and steady gaze that made Scott uncomfortable: what the fuck was that supposed to mean? And, hey, he was the one who was supposed to be doing the heavy eye-balling.
Wrong question? Scott repeated trying to hide his confusion, rifling through his mind for interview techniques he'd been taught in training.
Yeah.
You needed a can opener with this guy.
Ok, I'll bite. What's the right question, Derek?
That's your job.
I've met some tight assholes before, Sgt. Mason said, but...
Derek stood to go.
Hey wait, Buddy. Sit down. No offense.
But Derek turned and started walking away.
Yo, Derek, Buddy. The conversation was just getting started. Don't split.
But when the kid didn't turn back and Scotty was left staring at a solidly well built American guy with an attitude as hard and as polished as an industrial diamond getting away from him, he pushed his tray to the center of the table and stood up and took a few quick steps and was walking out of the mall alongside his prey.
You got something to tell me, Derek, you're not saying.
No.
How come you're turning down my offer, Derek?
How come you're following me?
You know you made a commitment, Derek, when you sat down with me, which isn't so easy to get out of, dude.
What commitment did you make?
Derek turned his head when he said it, and again looked steadily into Scott's eyes, and it was unnerving to him. He was as good as they come at holding another man's glance without flinching, and making the other guy blink first. But Derek wasn't trying to stare him down or lock his gaze. It was an open look the likes of which Mason had never seen before. And it confused him, threw him off balance. Derek's eyes were soft.
Try out-staring the blue sky on a spring day.
But Scott caught himself just in time.
Why don't you come back to my office with me and I'll show you. My car's right over there in the lot.
No, Derek said.
Don't you ever say anything but No, Derek? You are one negative dude. You know that, Derek?
Derek shrugged, didn't say anything, and just kept walking, indifferent to his companion, somehow giving Scott the feeling that he wasn't his companion, that he didn't really exist, as far as the boy was concerned.
And this, even more than his fierce desire to lock the boy into a contract is what kept him going, pushing at the boy: trying to get Derek to acknowledge him, to feel the volume of his presence, its solidity, to act like he was there and that he took up a certain amount of space and had weight. He could have dealt with resistance.
Mason got out of his uniform and stood in front of the mirror, alone in the apartment he shared with two other recruiters, looking at himself, naked, the no frills, stripped-down version. It wasn't so long ago he was a carefree college jock who took everything easy and for whom things, in fact, came easy, athletics, academics, friendships, girls. Girls, Christ, they were all over him. It was ok, but it never lived up to the feelings he'd imagined when he'd talked to other guys about girls.
He still had the body, it was even buffer, but he saw something new in his eyes, something tighter, something frantic. Eagerness had been replaced by anxiety; spunkiness, by guile. And his hair, he had plenty of it and it was well-groomed, but it didn't have that spring-foliage-after-the-rain look it once had.
He had gone into ROTC because he thought it was a good idea, a good thing to do because the head of ROTC had given a talk in the locker room and fired up a lot of guys on the football team with a mix of promises and warnings and some A-1 videos of heavy dudes, explosive action, and attention-grabbing technology.
He was a hypnotic speaker and made them feel the need in their lives for a sense of purpose, to commit themselves to something bigger than themselves, greater than themselves, and that only by doing that would they be able to be really big men who not only could take command of themselves but could take command of others.
The guys on the team sat there in the locker room, powerful guys, half-dressed and sprawled out, comfortable in their bodies, confident in their domain, and excited by the comradeship they were feeling around a common mission.
So it wasn't even weird, it did not seem weird, that afterwards Scotty went down to The Slammer with a couple of the other guys and shared a few pitchers of beer and talked about a great future, and it did not seem weird that they threw their arms around each other afterwards as they walked back to Mike Finnegan's apartment and stripped down to their underwear there and popped some more cans of beer and started rough-housing, and it did not seem weird when they got hard cocks. They knew they were men and they lit cigars and started strutting around clownishly showing off how big they were, and one thing led to another, and soon they were getting each other off, and not just with their hands but with their beer-rubbery mouths they were working each others' cocks, too, until the spray from their cocks and the foam from the beer mixed together in one blinding froth.
Mason got a boner thinking about it, and the whole shooting gallery was replaced in his mind by an image of that prick, Derek, standing in front of him, at attention, in his uniform, calling him Sir.
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