A NEW YEAR'S TALE (A SEQUEL TO "A MIDWINTER'S TALE)
PART 1: "INTERESTING " TIMES
By The Binary Alchemist 2014
(From "One Man's Battlefield; The Autobiography of Roy Mustang")
Now then…where was I?
Another "no shit, there I was tale".
I was telling Alphonse about telling Edward about the absolutely worst holiday I had ever spent when I wasn't on the battlefield….
It was Solstice for us-but elsewhere in the Far East it was Xingese New Year. Might have been the Year of the Drunken Fruitbat or something equally ridiculous. One of those years when, as the Xingese will say, your worst enemy will curse you by saying "may you always live in interesting times and in interesting places."
My life had turned 'interesting' exactly one year before when Hughes came back from a Solstice furlough, nailed me thru the cot mattress, rolled over on his back, folded his arms contentedly behind his head and announced with a happy sigh that he'd met The Woman of His Dreams.
Five minutes after pulling out of me, I might point out.
Even for a joker like Hughes, that was about as amusing as a steel tipped boot up the rectum…
…okay, maybe I should rephrase that….
Anyway, for the better part of a year the pleasure of rolling into bed with Maes Hughes was eventually interrupted by my lover wiping my leavings off his chin and then launching into some idiotic (not to mention insensitive) monologue in which the Beautiful Future he and I had dreamt aloud about since becoming lovers had suddenly been modified to include a picket fence, a rose covered cottage and some scrawny slip of a girl with mouse-brown hair and breasts like fried eggs who would fill his house with bouncing babies and, he fervently hoped, would be half as good at sucking cock as I was.
"I mean…how does a man ask his wife to….you know? I don't know what their mothers teach them—I mean, I will definitely return the favor—haven't ever actually done that—with a woman, I mean—but it can't be any worse than a mouthful of come, right?"
"Gee. Thanks." While I didn't actually despise the woman who was writhing around in his daydreams with her legs wrapped around my lover's head, just the mention of his game plan for staining sheets and breaking bed slats with his little mouse made me want to shove something large and flammable up his backside and use him as a practice dummy for my incendiary accuracy exercises.
"In fact," he babbled, "I'm…well…I'm kind of afraid I might…well…" A flush started at the tips of his ears and spread all the way to his chest. "She…might get…hurt. You know what I mean?"
He was so goddamned blind that he wouldn't have noticed the stunned look on my face even if the lights had been on. "Hughes," I mumbled, "I've told you, nobody likes having their ears grabbed during a blowjob. They aren't handles, for god's sake—"
"That's not what I'm talking about," he snapped. "I mean…hell, even you say I'm pretty big down there."
Part of me—the masochistic part, no doubt- couldn't wait to see where this was going. "And….?"
"I'm scared I'll choke her."
"I'll choke you if you don't shut the hell up about your girlfriend." Yanking the lion's share of the covers and turning my back to him, I socked the pillow a few times, jammed it under my head and screwed my eyes shut, silently wishing I knew enough about human transmutation so I could cross him with some inanimate object that could be useful—and quiet. A toilet seat was the first thing that came to my mind."
He kissed me on my shoulder. "Aw, come on, Roy! You don't think I was actually serious, do you?"
"Fuck off."
He cackled fiendishly in the dark and curled up against my back. "Choke her! Bwaaahaaaahaaaaa! That's so funny! Sometimes I just kill myself!"
"If only…."
Back when I was in the Academy, we were required to attend 'hygiene lectures'. The auditorium was always jammed packed. Major Westheimer's lectures about the perils of venereal disease were unintentionally hilarious, delivered in a Brigg's Mountain Northern accent that almost incomprehensible, 'thick enough to spread on toast', as they used to say. He also had his own lexicon of euphemisms for body parts, fluids and functions that had us half-pissing ourselves with barely suppressed laughter.
"Lizzen to me. LIZZENTOME,! Joo are all jung chentlemen, und memberz uff diss prrrroud military trrrrradition, ja? Und we expeckt joo all to behave like chentlemen ven you are avay frum der post und interactink vid der local populaaaazion!
"Now, den. Joo haff been infarrrmed uff der hazzzards uff veneeeeerrrrreal disease. Dese arrrre verrrry serious diseases. Dey can make your schwanztoooker rot avay. Dey can make your schrotummm turn black und de millions und millions und billions uff schperm vill die a trrrragic und unnezzizzary death-because YOU ver fool enuf to put your schwanztooooker ver id must not be.
"I know dat each vun uff you vants to someday make a fine husband to a fine vife, ja? To have healthy children who izz not brain-damaged from der syphilis. Und I alzo know dot you do not wish to end up vid de brain rot yourselfs. Un I alzo know dot you are thinking 'vell, I can put der cundum over mine schwanztoooker und keep him save und happy, ja?"
A crammed auditorium of horny young cadets shouted back, "YES, SIR!"
His meaty fists pounded the lectern. "NEIN!" He held up a standard foil packet and waved it like a madman. "LOOK AT DISS!" he shouted. "Look at diss flimsy ting! You keep diss in your wallet—in your pocket—it rub and rub and rub against de leather und your backside—"
"-amen to that, brother," Hughes whispered and winked at me.
I kicked him in the ankle. "Shut up, moron!"
Major Westheimer glared at the offensive packet and ripped it open with his teeth. "It is already worn from all dot rubbing und rubbing und rubbing-den you tear it vid your teef-like zo."
"I usually get the girl to do it for me," the nitwit to my right snickered. 'Then she puts it in her mouth and leans down and-"
Westheimer spat out a fleck of foil and plucked out the condom, which looked pitifully shriveled and more like the finger cots the doctors would roll onto their fingers before shoving them up your backside and asking you to cough during an Army physical. "Look at diss….thing. If I vass to fill it vid vater, it vood leak all offer me." He held it aloft with an air of contempt. "Diss….iss not going to save joo from disease! De only ting dot vill stand betveen you und de dangers uff destroying yourselfs und your loved vuns vid de incurable diseases…iss a strong moral fiber! JA! Joo heardt me! Clean thoughts! Clean deeds! Avoid dangerous companions. Do not let your heads be addled by der drinking und de drugging and der erections. Joo must be above does temptaaaaashunz! Joo must not defile yourselfs! Stay clean for your loved vuns—and for Amestris und de Fuhrer!"
"Clean thoughts, Roy! Clean deeds!" We were sitting in our tent on the Eastern border, about fifteen miles from the nearest Ishballan village and right smack dab in the sort of low-rent hell hole area that Westheimer had warned us to avoid. We hadn't actually seen combat yet but we'd come close enough to its aftermath to be scared shitless…not that any of us were going to admit it. That kind of tension, as any soldier from any side could tell you, makes you crazy.
You want to get drunk. You want to fuck someone—anyone—because you don't know if it will be the last time you feel someone's arms around you. If you were very much younger you'd be crying for your mommy. You're not full grown but old enough to die for your motherland and if you just sit in your tent you will go stark raving mad.
You put your meager soldier's pay in your pocket. You put the familiar foil wrapped condom in your wallet and hope that you can beg or buy a drink and find someone to keep you warm before you march off to die.
The warm body I wanted was right there in the tent with me. The problem was, it wasn't in my cot. It was curled up on the cot opposite mine and its occupant was staring wistfully at a picture of a mousy-haired girl and—if you can believe this—lecturing me on not running off and getting laid with someone else.
His impersonation of Westheimer's hygiene lecture had always made the platoon laugh. Right at that moment, though, it made me want to break something over his head—like that framed photo of Gracia he kept by his bunk these days.
"Look, I care about you, buddy! You don't want to go out there and get picked up by some prostitute and wind up giving the drips to your girl back home, do you?"
What girl back home? Where the hell did that come from? (Years later I learned that the Army psychologists would call this 'projection' Hughes was so wrapped up in his white picket fence dreams of Gracia that he couldn't relate to anything else—including many, many sweaty nights spent under the blankets with me.)
"Rubbers—I mean, I know the docs say they can keep you safe…but how long has it been in your wallet, Roy?"
"I don't have a rubber in my pocket, asshole. I'm sleeping with you, in case you've forgotten—"
Eyes glued on Gracia's picture, he shook his head. "Roy, buddy, you're not listening to me! You can't go out on the town without some kind of protection!"
"Protection? Hell, I can chargrill anything that moves in a eighth-kilometer radius—and if I can't burn it I can shoot it."
"Roy! That's not what I'm talking about and you know it! You saw all those slides in Westheimer's lectures. All those—shit, did you see the one of that guy whose foreskin just rotted right off his dick? Man, I'm scared to death that something like that is gonna happen to you!"
Weary of all this bullshit, I rose and pulled on my duster. Obviously, I was not going to get laid. Might as well get drunk. I had seventy two hours before I had to start killing people. Oblivion sounded damn good to me—better than lying in my cold bunk while the man that I loved was crying over his girlfriend's letters.
"All right, damn it. I'll keep my pants buttoned. No crabs, no clap—no nothing. The only thing I'll stick in my mouth is the business end of a bottle of whiskey. Okay?"
He looked dubious. "Hey, pal—some of those dives look pretty risky. I'd better go with you and keep your sorry ass out of trouble."
The edge of the Eastern desert has a hell of a lot more things that can kill you than a mob of angry Ishballans. I'm not talking about all those wild tales about camel spiders and dune vipers and sand millipedes that are rumored to burrow right through a soldier's pants if he's sitting on the ground and chew their way right up your rectum. That's all bullshit and tall stories. No, the hazards I'm referring to are the Outlanders.
Outlanders don't belong to any one race, nationality or code of ethics. The edge of the desert is a no-man's land, and no man in his right mind would risk walking alone into an Outlander encampment.
This is where the drug smugglers, arms dealers and rum-runners conduct business. All colors, nationalities and preference meet in shady places to conduct shady business. Many of them are from the Eastern Kingdoms—Xingese, yes but also from neighboring kingdoms like Nihon that has no other trade relations with Amestrians other than what goes on in these dives on the border of the desert. Here a bizarre kind of pidgin is spoken and if you walk into one of the brothel tents you'd better have a good command of sigh language and gestures or you could find yourself in bed with a farm animal.
Step into the encampment and getting syphilis was the least of your problems.
Some sens passed hands, and after a half dozen beers Hughes declared he wouldn't mind finding a hot game of cards and something to drink with a bit more kick to it. A woman with green teeth—and, she assured us, three daughters—and a dog—that were 'very clean, all virgin'—pointed us in the direction of a likely watering hole.
"And remember, Roy—keep it buttoned up and safe so you don't have it drop off in the crapper one night. Is this the place?" Swaying slightly, he pointed at a rusted, makeshift sign that was riddled with bullet holes.
"RONG PHUC HAPPY BOTTOM RIDING AND SOCIAL CLUB." Underneath, it read 'Open 24 hrs. Liquor in front. Poker in rear. Rev John, proprietor"
As the Xingese would say…things were about to get 'interesting"…..
….TO BE CONTINUED….