A Love Effete

Pivotal moments that change who we are come along in every person’s life, sometimes

more than once. I could argue that my pivotal moment was the day I found my wife and later that

night told her I was going to marry her, and did. Or when I was sent to Japan to live for many

years, bringing my Michigander along for the ride. It could also be said that my life changing

moment occurred when my wife and I got pregnant for the first time on our first try or maybe

even when I was given orders to deploy to the Middle East for war. Well, it wasn’t any of these

moments, it came from a phone call after all of these other things had transpired.

The monkey on one’s back. The ghost who haunts those that wronged them in life.

Omitting one’s criminal record to gain a job interview only to have everything dug up and used

in judgement against them. These are the sensations and heavy weights sitting on the chest of the

mind of someone who has, or had, The Devil as their friend.

Maybe friend isn’t the right word to use here. Perhaps partner in crime? No, that suggests one

would be complicit or aware of the dastardly deeds and thoughts bubbling in the cauldron of The

Devil’s mind. For brevity’s sake let’s just say that The Devil was my friend.

Let me straighten one thing out before we go any further. The Devil I am referring to

isn’t the mythological beast of Hades, the fallen angel from the ephemera. He was a flesh and

blood man named Tim Johnson, born in Virginia, the son of a chimney sweep and a secretary.

From all the evidence I was able to gather, witness, and recollect, his life was nondescript and

filled with love. He experienced no great traumas in his life before meeting me that would

account for having become The Devil. There is a movie from the 50’s called The Bad Seed,

about an attractive young girl from a doting family, who inexplicably, is rotten to the core. She is

so vile in her thoughts and behavior that she murders someone trying to limit her play time. This

movie always reminds me of him, not that I have any evidence of him killing another but I

wouldn’t put it passed him.

I met The Devil in training school while I only have been in the Air Force a couple of

months and he remained a fixture of my life in the service for the 10 years I served and even

after I got out. It didn’t matter where I travelled in the world or how long it had been since last

we talked or wrote each other, I would round a corner and he would be standing there smiling his

evil smile. Already scheming his plan to terrorize me even though we had just encountered each

other seconds ago. I know this makes it sound like someone you don’t want to be around and the

opposite of the definition for “friend” but he had his moments. When you really think about it,

why do amusement parks with terrifying roller coasters exist? Well, to scare the crap out of you

of course, and do it within some limited boundaries of safety. He was the source of adventure,

uncertainty, insanity, and extreme intelligence and as long as he was on my side I could harness

that power.

The day when my world started falling apart I didn’t run to him and seek solace. Matter

of fact it was a day or two later when I ran in to him and decided to bare my breaking soul that

he reminded me of his purpose in my life with a short sentence, “Stop being a pussy and shut up

about that shit.” which almost made me react with violence until I realized that he wasn’t ever

meant to be my confidant and that the world didn’t give a damn about me, or any other

grievance. The world was neither good nor evil, it just was, and so was this moment in my life. A

struggle that seemed too great for my talents but yet no ways to avoid it so just live it. Be alive.

I was listening to music from all genres at this time in my life despite that it was pre-

DJ’ing, pre-mp3, and pre-internet. Access to music was still very easy since almost every solider

sent to the desert brought tons of music with them. Music, the universal escape and solace of

humanity. I would borrow CDs and tapes from everyone I encountered. What made it even better

is that the military is the great equalizer, all races and socio-economic backgrounds were present.

I could pick up some favorite artists of the guy down the hall he grew up in the Boston ghetto or

the girl at my shop who grew up on the reservation in Oklahoma. Everyone was from

everywhere and they brought the sounds of their world with them.

I would get “care packages” from people back in the states too: non-perishable food, candy,

notes, pictures, and of course, music. My wife, at the time, would send me all kinds of goodies,

and those were the ones I looked forward to the most.

“Tore open a package it was an empty box

No meaning to me just an empty box

Sender was a woman

She said she's sending me everything that I…I… I never gave her before

She said fill it up and send it back

Fill it up and send it back

So I send her back an empty box

A big mistake sent back an empty box”

It was in one those packages that I got what would be the greatest gift I could have asked for. In

with all the other items she packed was the ultrasound of our son. Three months along. We had

gotten pregnant on our first try and this was the literal fruits of our labor. He was going to be

born before I got back from the desert war and I couldn’t be more excited to get to know this

new human. One of the last things we had done together before I left overseas was to go

shopping for baby stuff. Just thinking about those little toys, plates and forks, and clothes just

made my eyes misty. My life was just beginning and I was going to miss some of it, but we

needed this deployment. The money a solider makes going to a war zone is pretty fantastic and

we knew this was our much needed nest egg to get a family started when I got back. Buy some

furniture, get a house, and be parents!

 “Well I guess I'll see you next lifetime

Maybe we'll be butterflies

I guess I'll see you next lifetime

That sounds so divine

I guess I'll see you next lifetime

I guess I will now

I guess I'll see you next lifetime

Wait

Wait a little while”

It was after dinner and The Devil had run all the humor out of me with his constant heckling and

elbowing. We had finished a walk around tent city and I called it a night and was lying on the cot

in my space staring at the tent roof while listening to Johnny Lang. I heard someone come in the

tent and ask something in a loud voice. I knew it wasn’t The Devil’s so the message wasn’t for

me, I continued staring off in to space as blues poured through the headphones.

“Davis.”

“Davis!”

Wait that is me! I pulled off my headphones and heard the third “Davis!” and yelled back

through the sheet, “Back here!”

A young solider pushed aside the sheet and stood on one of the wooden pallets we had cobbled

together to form a pathway down the middle of the tent to keep the sand from sticking to our feet

after coming back from the shower tent. “Davis, the First Sergeant wants to see you in his tent.”

Shivers went down my spine. It’s late at night and the big cheese wants to see me? Damn.  I

hadn’t done anything that I think he could have found out about and be mad enough to see me.

This is going to be bad. My heart was in my throat from the moment I slide off the cot and into

my shower slippers. Each step on the warm sand towards his tent was like a step closer to the

hangman. I didn’t cut the most direct route through tent city to reach the First Sergeant, it was

more of a ramble, as I tried to make sense of what was happening. I replayed the last few days of

activity keeping a focus on what The Devil had said and done just to make sure I wasn’t about to

walk in to a legal proceeding. After a few minutes of cataloging my days I knocked on the door

of my destiny. I heard steps coming from inside and the sound of a TV and then the door opened

and a smiling man asked me to come in. I was caught off guard as I had only a few encounters

with this man, and men of his stature, that usually revolved around my somewhat anarchist and

certainly rebellious nature. If I remembered correctly this very man not weeks ago had asked me

why I even joined the military if I had such a problem with authority. But here I was being

guided to a couch in the relative splendor of his Living Room.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked me, and of course I never turn down a cold

beverage. In short order he returned with a can of Mountain Dew for me and water for himself.

We made small talk for a minute or two but everything in his face told me a storm was coming.

His smile was painted on. He looked worried. Worried for me.

“I need to tell you something, and I don’t want you to get up and leave. I am going to tell you

something very important and then we are going to sit here and talk about it, ok?”

I think my heart stopped and the room began to spin like a carnie had somewhere pushed a

button to begin the ride now that everyone was onboard.

“Sure, sir, I’m listening.”

“I just got a call from the hospital in Japan. Your wife had a miscarriage a few hours ago. She is

in good health but no in good spirits, as one would imagine. I have arranged for you to call her

directly from right here in my living room. We can call right now or we can take some time and

talk. What would you like to do?”

The carnival ride spun up to full speed and everything seemed blurry, my heart was racing, and

nothing made sense through the fish-eyed lens of tear stained eyes. I sobbed openly. I cried hard

like a six year old boy losing his golden retriever best friend. Through it all the First Sergeant

kept a hand on my back and spoke gentle words. After a few minutes I mumbled words that I

wanted to talk with Dawn now and he walked to the other side of the room where a phone set

was. He picked up the receiver, pressed a few buttons, spoke to someone at length and then

walked over to me and said, “The next person on the other end of this will be your wife, I’ll be in

my bedroom. You have ten minutes.”

When Dawn’s voice finally whispered its way through thousands of miles of phone line and a

dark valley of misery the size of the Grand Canyon it was only recognizable as her contextually.

My wife, my lover, the mother of my child was speaking to me from under the “peine forte et

dure” levied against her from Mother Nature.

“Come home.”

“I will, my love.”

“Now?”

“As soon as I hang up I will get to work on it.”

Sobbing…sobbing…oh the sound a heart makes when the love is being squeezed out of it.

“Misery, love's company and its lonely on the darker side

And when the party is over

And the music has died

You'll be dancin' to the music, baby

Somewhere on the darker side”

America had started building up forces in the Middle East after Saddam Hussein began

invading neighboring countries. The Desert War was supposed to have remedied this but here we

were again, bombing him on a daily basis. There were bases strung all over the desert and I was

on a small one still under development. All of the troops lived in tents, except the officers who

had real buildings and furniture. Our base was just a bunch of tents in the sand with a very large,

and heavily guarded, airfield. The only brick and mortar present were large and functional in

nature; hangars, fuel depots, armories, and so on. With no access to newspapers, news channels,

or internet we relied heavily on the security briefings we got every morning and the occasional

phone calls we got to make to folks back home. One name kept coming up over and over. This

man was threatening to attack all bases, kill any American troops, and wreak havoc on all US

convoys inside of Saudi Arabia.

Right where I was.

He was furious that infidels would be allowed in to the holiest location of Islam. What made him

even more made was that we had a base near Mecca. The place all Muslims have to visit before

death and the direction they have to direct all their prayers each day. The United States was

allowed to be in the center of the Islamic world and wage battles against Muslim people. This

man would not let that stand.

This man was named Usama Bin Ladin. At the time he was not very well known to America but

the military Intelligence agencies knew him quite well. The average solider had no idea who he

was or why he was so furious. I understood why he was mad but what I didn’t understand is why

he would attack us. Especially since every single building we encountered. Every fuel depot we

stopped at. Half the roads we traveled on and almost everything that was written in Arabic with

an English translation had one thing in common, Bin Ladin. Usama was from the same family

that built most of Saudi Arabia and much of the Middle East. This wealthy son of the second

most powerful family in Saudi Arabia, behind the family of Saud, who ruled Saudi Arabia and

gave it its name, was going to use his connections and money to get us. That was scary to me.

No one back home was talking about this guy besides a few news outlets carrying his badly

recorded death threats and fatwas. Only our morning intelligence briefings mentioned it.

The world had Saddam Hussein on their mind, and each one of our bombs had his name on them.

That would only last a few more years and then  the whole world would know who Usama Bin

Ladin was and how lucky we all were that he couldn’t convince his family and the ruling class of

Saudi Arabia to wage a holy war against American soldiers stationed in the Middle East.

I would like to say that I knew what was coming, but I didn’t. I was only concerned about getting

back home to my wife and baby in the oven.

Every day after the phone call from back home was half dream and half nightmare. I was

a somnambulist traversing the desert battlefields and military bureaucracy. My sole goal each

day was talk to the right amount of people in my chain of command to get a release from the tour

of duty in the Middle East back home to be with my wife. I would report to work each morning

and ask my supervisor if he had heard anything from command about my orders. He would say

he had other things to worry about and that someone would contact me. I knew he was just

blowing me off because there were so many other things to worry about and no one really

wanted to be stationed in the desert. To him there were so many problems waiting back home

and everyone had to deal with them somehow? Of course my wife had a miscarriage, shit

happens. Guys get Dear John letters every day and have to struggle with the dissolution of their

marriage and they don’t get orders home. Tough shit.

I would work all day and then when we got back to Tent City I would rush over to

command and see if there were any officers willing to hear my story and consider my plight. It

became a ritual to enter the headquarters and get tear-eyed while begging for mercy from

military officers who have probably heard so many other sob stories that mine was just another

annoyance. But, as I was taught from an early age, they don’t have to really care about me,

because I knew they didn’t, however the old axiom did matter “The squeaky wheel gets the

grease.”

Order of operations: wake up, feel my heartbreak, get in my uniform, ride the bus out to

bomb dump, meet my supervisor, beg him for help, get told off, ask to call my wife, get told to

shut up, go to work, finish for the day, look at the clouds swirling around my head, ride the bus

back to Tent City, race over to command, ask if there is anyone I could talk to, get turned down

or presented to an officer who was rolling his eyes at my parroted story, go back to Tent City,

beg to use the phone and call home, feel my heart break listening to the ruins that was my wife

and our life together, tell her it won’t be long, eat dinner, take a shower, go to sleep and have

nightmare, wake up, and repeat.

With enough badgering, visits to command, and calls back to my home base things were

worked out so I could exchange my remaining tour of duty with another person back home. They

would get to come and complete a full tour with only half remaining (a bonus for them) and I

would have to take another tour of duty within two years to make up for this debacle. The day I

called home and got to tell Dawn that I would be leaving soon was one of the greatest moments I

remember. The weight that was holding me down, the stifling air that I was struggling to breath

in, all seemed to be swept away knowing that I could head home and start fixing things. But isn’t

that just like the error of man? Always trying to “fix” things.

I really thought I was going to be able to fix her. To fix this loss. To fix everything.

“Sometimes, yeah

The black holes inside you

But if you can just lighten up yourself

It'll make you stronger

Been down, yeah"

Home for me was a steel cot two and a half feet of the desert floor. On the steel cot was a

government issue ultra-single mattress, wool blanket, white sheet, and white cover for the lumpy

pillow. My space was about four feet in width by seven feet in length and separated by sheets

previous soldiers had asked people to send from home. Those sheets hung from random cordage

zip lined across the top of the tent. Seven other men shared the tent with me. All of us with the

same amount of sparse privacy accorded by the hanging sheets, empty boxes piled up, and food

crates stolen from the cafeteria. There was one central light bulb some ten feet away and no

electrical sources available in our little cubbies. The heavy canvas of the surrounding tent kept

out most of the wind, dirt, sand, bugs, and sounds of the outside but not everything. It was

common practice to check your clothes and bed before use to ensure there was no scorpions,

camel spiders, and other pesky poisonous creatures building a nest in your space. If you wanted a

light to read by at night (which wasn’t recommended because the other guys in the tent would be

disturbed by the light) it had to be battery operated. If you wanted to listen to music it had better

be kept at a decent volume on headphones because not one, but all men would quickly descend

upon you.

My living area was Spartan to say the least. I, like most everyone else, spent most of our

waking moments outside. There weren’t a lot of things to do but if you were adventurous and

dumb enough you could find a veritable carnival of oddities out in the desert. But when I was in

my “room” it was to read one of the few books I had, look at several of the photos of my wife

and home, listen to music on my headphones while lying on the cot, or writing private letters in

the half gloom to my dearest.

At that time in my life there weren’t very many people to love and correspond with.

There was Dawn Lorraine Davis, my wife. Tim Johnson a.k.a. “The Devil”, my friend. Sarah

Brownstone, my coworker and sometimes kissing mate. Dawn lived in Government Issue

housing on the military base outside the small Japanese town Misawa. It was a nice condo style

unit on the second floor with three neighbors we never got to meet except when they were

complaining about noise, our cat shitting in their children’s sandbox, or me being passed out in

the communal stairwell. The condo was decorated with entry level furniture that 20 somethings

can afford on limited credit, most of the color and comfort coming from posters and art on the

wall and a fancy stereo, with a couch and clunky kitchen table thrown in for people to use in a

utilitarian manner. The Devil and Sarah lived in almost identical surroundings as I did, though I

never visited their domiciles personally. Like I said, we all were given four feet by seven feet.

Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death and most of us in the military couldn’t be

happier. Any time the media mentioned he was a former solider it was a small cut to our sense of

self-respect. He was a monster. Nothing like us. Nothing like me. That’s what I thought and

believed at the time, anyway. This man planted a bomb to get back at the government and blew

up children. Babies! It just didn’t make sense to me. Meanwhile the comet Hale-Bopp was racing

towards Earth and wouldn’t come back until the year 4397. NASA had landed the Pathfinder on

Mars and for the first time in human history mankind was exploring another planet. Little did I

know at the time that there was another group just as interested in the comet as I and other

aspiring astronomers were, Heaven’s Gate.
There was some bad blood between my command in the desert and me. The guys I

worked with were envious and exhausted with my situation. It doesn’t mean they were heartless

to my plight or that a life was lost but this was war for godssake. We built bombs and shipped

bullets every hour of the day to be used against men, women, and children. I knew they were

saying things like “It’s not like his wife died.” and “It was a miscarriage, he didn’t lose a kid,

there was no kid yet.” which is hurtful but true. There are a lot of things worse in this world than

having a miscarriage, and some of them I had seen and lived through. Somehow, this was worse.

Dawn and I thought we were blessed. We had one of the best starts to a marriage and

everything seemed like a dream come true. When we wanted to get pregnant we did. It was as if

destiny was on our side. There was never a thought in our minds that anything was going to go

wrong, or that anything could go wrong. We were golden children living in halcyon days. So,

when the carpet was pulled out from underneath us it hurt all the more. The loss of our son was

something akin to the end of innocence I’d always heard about. I can’t say I was ever an

innocent boy, far from it, but there never seemed to be anything taken from me that I couldn’t

overcome, regenerate, deal with, isolate, or shake off. This time, the core of my being was

shaken. This time I didn’t know who I was, what I stood for, who to trust, where my love was

safe, or how to make sense of the tragedy. It was like knowing black holes really exist and will

eat everything. A meaningless and dystopic reality.

No one I worked with wanted to say goodbye, hell, they wanted to be going home too.

My command didn’t want me to show up and turn over any equipment and perform the normal

military rituals. Everyone wanted me to evaporate.

So, I did.

I woke up, packed the one bag I brought with me. Left the military issued items stacked

neatly on the bed for the next guy. Walked over to the airfield, since no one wanted to give me a

ride. Sat on a metal pallet outside the hangar where a C-141 was being unloaded and thought

about what was going to happen next. I didn’t know where this plane was going to land next or

how long this whole trip was going to last. I was given open ended orders. I could fly on any

plane, anywhere in the world. My goal was to find the least amount of connections and the

quickest route back to Japan. No frills. No hunger. Just the hope that everything would go as

planned and I would be home within 24 hours. I don’t remember sitting on planes, waiting in

airports, eating any food, or talking to a single soul. The whole trip was lost in the doubts and

fears of what lie ahead.

My wife wasn’t there to greet me at the airport. No one was. I walked outside and spoke

in Japanese asking the taxi driver if he would be willing to drive me over to Misawa and if his

cab was allowed on base. He said yes to both things and we drove in silence, which would be the

case no matter the situation as Japanese men aren’t chatty. When he dropped me off in front of

the condo my bag felt like it was filled with lead. I could barely carry it up the steps to my front

door. When I knocked on my own front door I felt like the stranger I was. This had changed me.

This loss had changed us both.

When I finally got back home to my wife it was like returning to a disaster zone. She was a mess,

the house was a mess, it felt like the only thing we could do was grab the family photos and

make a claim with the insurance company. She cried day and night. Inconsolable, her

heartbreaking was so loud it was making my broken heart shatter to fine powder. Lying in our

bed reminded us of what we lost. Going to the bathroom brought back the vivid and raw

memories of her miscarriage. I had to get us out of there and quick.

Road trip. I got us a flight to Hawaii and we weren’t coming back until smiling felt natural again.

As soon as we landed I hit the rental car lot and found the best convertible they had available,

which wasn’t that nice, but it was still a topless road tripper. We piled the luggage in the trunk

and started doing a loop around the island. We zipped right through Honolulu and headed for

Diamond Head Mountain and the famous beaches on the Northside. The views were spectacular,

the smells were mind boggling, and the freedom was palpable. We were young and ready for

adventure and I was desperate to reignite the passion in our marriage.

There was no doubt in my mind that Dawn loved me, but I wasn’t sure if the pain from losing

our son had extinguished the flame between us. I wanted to remind her that life was just

beginning for us and that there was still so much joy and wander to uncover and this trip was

going to be the swan song to do it.

We were driving for a little while and the city was far behind us. I decided to turn on the stereo

since conversation had died down between us and she was staring off dreamily at the ocean to

our right. Her big brimmed, while hat was tied on to her head and the ribbon was whipping

silently behind her. I watched as she almost smiled several times looking at fruit trees and

tropical birds passing us by. The radio announcer came on and was yelling something about a

local show taking place the weekend coming up and a female was chiming in about all the swag

that every should come and grab up. It was a little jarring at how excited they were and over the

top with the word exchange and then the jangle of the next song came on:

“I’ll go there seeking only what I need

La ti da we’ll stay there till we bleed

Let me keep you in this place

You’ll be better off this way"

When she opened the door I understood by how much.

After all the hugging and kissing, the tears and the talking, and even after we fled to

Hawaii to rebuild our spirits and our love the conclusion was the same. I had been back home

and with Dawn for three weeks, counting our time in Hawaii, and now back to work. I left one

morning as she slept headed for the munitions area. Worked a normal day and did things like I

did before my deployment to the desert, before we got pregnant, and before our son died in

utereo. I came home at 4:15pm and walked in to find Dawn sitting on the couch staring out the

sliding glass door in to the distance.

“Come here and sit down.” she said.

“Sure.” as I took off my hat and boots.

Sitting next to her, now cross legged, I could see she had been crying again. She cried every day

but now just not as much throughout the day.

“I’m leaving.”

I kept looking at her face. I didn’t understand what she said. Or maybe I did understand what she

said, just not what she meant.

“I want to go back home and be with my mom. I’m leaving.”

“This is home.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m leaving.”

I turned to stone. I felt the broken pieces of my heart freeze and harden. Every fear I had in the

world had come true. At that moment I knew that all the bad words said to me, the hurtful

actions taken against me were all true. I deserved them all, I was worthless.

“It seems that you've changed

In these past few days

For when I try to kiss you

You just push me away

Now I don't know what's wrong"