Private Payne

Like a good Catholic boy does in confessionals, I confessed something to her while on one of our late night walks down a logging road that seemed to go on forever, into the woods of southern Bavaria.

I admitted to Lisa that I am attracted to men and was repulsed by her pushy passes.

"I knew it! Who you blowin’, damn it? I’ll kill the bastard!" she cried in the forest of Bavaria.

I told her little tales of a few male exploits who were creeping into my barracks room at night for me to pray over.

I only told her because I was totally happy doing it and that I was breaking up with her.

It was liberating. It suddenly occurred to me that the stigma that attached itself to my big ugly lips was disappearing as I accepted my homosexual tendencies with a big fat smile across my watering mouth.

The big lips jokes were actually starting to make me laugh too.

I was hydro plaining on a slippery when wet surface and puckering up every chance I had as the world, the military and Lisa reminded me over and over again, that it’s sinful to be gay.

Throughout childhood in white America, they called me ‘nigger lips’ for fun. Even my grandmother laughed when they said it to me, all in wholesome fun. I promised myself as a child that there was a purpose for having fat lips and to not blow up when someone made fun of them.

Sure enough, those lips saved my soul.