Private Payne

I missed the Army and the magical life that unfolds for those who serve there.

After a few months of writing for the newspaper, I decided I hated the profession and that I would much rather be an Army beautician.

I reenlisted for six years even though I didn’t tell that I had tendencies.

I figured my mother’s shame was enough of outing and I saw no reason to try to find happiness in the world as a queer writer.

I threw down my pen and turned my back on writing stories other than my own.

I requested an overseas assignment in Germany and got it.

I was assigned to a new duty station near Frankfurt, and Lisa followed me there. She somehow got papers pushed through the walls of Congress and cancelled her transfer to a duty station in Brooklyn, New York only to show up in Hanau, West Germany on the same post as I.

I told her to stop coming around and to leave me alone.

She kept inviting herself into my Barracks room at my new duty station like a vampire coming to life from an Anne Rice novel.

She didn’t want to have sex, she only wanted to sit in a room and read with me-- something we did together back in Ansbach, inside communications rigs during the winter months when we first fell in love and before the deviant sexual acts began.

We read Ann Rice novels together and sipped tea I made with Herbal Essences tea bags from water heated in an electric coffee pot on Army field training exercises.

It was Lisa’s idea to start using the hot water from the electric coffee pot to take baths, and not only make tea.

I stole her idea and turned my rig into a beauty salon where all my man on man fatasies were fulfilled.

I didn’t take my coffee pot with me to my new duty station. I no longer had a taste for tea or reading and those difficult coming out days in Ansbach.