Private Payne

I still miss washing everyone’s hair in my rig, as we sat around smoking and talking about life back home and how we couldn’t wait to get out.

"You have hands like a girl," the guys would say when I poured refreshing warm water over the suds on their head.

I would giggle and continue listening to stories of their high school sweethearts while thinking what does she have that I don’t?

I kept a hidden cooler of Rolling Rock beer for the cute ones inside the rig under my teletypewriter.

I even had fresh hand towels for the platoon which I washed in Tide, rinsed in Downy, and dried with Bounce weeks before an alert was even called.

"Give me a pack of cigarettes Taylor," the butch gay bashing Army boys would demand.

"Here you go," I would say, and the stories of home and the hair washing and bird like bathing would start, right inside my communications rig.

I sat in that rig listening to their stories and preparing to one day I’d write it all down in a novel.

I miss washing those heads and never had the heart to spread their gossip around in a book.

I had enough of my own drama to assemble into paragraphs.

Lisa didn’t like it when everyone else started coming to my rig to read Ann Rice, talk politics, bum cigarettes and get their hair washed.

Eventually Lisa grew tired of trying to convert me and professed my gayness to the world.

The heterosexuals in the military didn’t turn their backs on me.

"Generators go down every day," I said to anyone who started to question my sexuality as they scurried away running their fingers through their hair hoping I didn’t include their names in my black list of possible homos for Uncle Sam.