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Combat Reprieve

It was unusual to be tumbling down a flight of stairs trying to take my clothes off at the same time. Her lips pressed against mine and it felt sinful for me to remove them to pull the shirt over my head. We left a trail all the way down; rifle at the door, flak jacket at the stair landing, shirt and pants on the stairs, and finally underwear and helmet holding the door open to the shelter.

Inside, I had my mouth around her nipple and was sucking and biting while my hands explored and touched all the places I had learned to touch. I was going quickly, but still taking measurement. What caused her breathing to be faster, what made her press herself against me more, what was simply a nonplus. I took this all in as we kissed and licked each other all the way to the mattress in the corner.

We banged heads as we made our way down onto the bed. It was old and smelly, but it was a comfort for what we needed. A place to fuck. My hand snaked down between us until it was between her legs. I pushed my middle finger in and felt her wetness and in that moment it felt so good to be wanted. My erection, I would think, would be a pretty obvious sign that I wanted her, but the confirmation that she was wet for me was nirvana.

I played and I wriggled my finger around and she moaned into my ear. I leaned down and enveloped a nipple with my mouth trying my best to imitate an amphibian and wrap my tongue all the way around. The response was enthusiastic and I clamped down sucking hard, her body pressing against mine even harder. I bit lightly and looked up at her. She was staring down at me with the bluest eyes that seemed to shine through the grime and soot on her face. I realized that she must have been blonde, before the dirt and the mud and the war.

“Hurt me,” she whispered.

I bit harder and forced my finger deeper and she arched into me and moaned loudly. I pulled my finger out and traced upwards. I found her clit and lightly rubbed my finger over it. She wrapped her arms around me and tossed her head back in ecstasy. It was a perfect moment that I lingered in until her head came back and instead of a kiss she clamped down on my shoulder with her teeth and bit hard. “Fuck!” I jolted backwards looking down at her.

”Just play, okay? Not even a flesh wound, just a nibble.” She flashed a smile at me and another of her features illuminated brightly against the canvas of battle blush, her perfect teeth.

I paused to take it in and then cast a glance down at my shoulder and could see the indentation there. I grinned back at her and considered what she might see. Would she see see a kid? Or, would the months since conscription have made a difference. The many times broken nose? As if she could sense my thoughts she pulled me back down and whispered in my ear, “Think later. Fuck me now.”

I thought I had been hard before. I got in between her legs and pushed forward and missed. She reached down, grabbed me and guided me in and I felt her warmth and wetness. The feeling shot through my body and again I was forced to pause and enjoy it. I felt her legs wrap around me and she pulled me into her and so I sunk all the way in. Fully inside, I kissed her and then began to pull back and drive forward. I started slow enjoying the sensation of her body pulling at me as I moved away and then reveling in the feeling of her welcoming me back with each thrust.

Slow turned into quick and then shortly after quick turned into fast until I was pounding against her. She was moaning and encouraging me to keep going and for some reason I could not stop thinking about Basic Training. She pulled me down so my weight was on her and she told me to keep going, “Keep going Gaky, keep going! Oh fuck, that’s it you’re gonna make me come. Fuck, Gaky I’m coming!”

I thrust into her again hard and then stayed still. I could feel her muscles contracting around my cock. I looked down at her and she had her eyes shut tight as the sensation rolled over her body. I kissed her lightly then on the forehead and her eyes shot open. I gave her a lopsided grin and she smiled back looking me in the eyes for a moment. She pushed me to the side and I noticed she was strong and not just for her size.

“That was good Gaky, boy.” Her voice was rough yes soft and brittle as if the words were so sweet to speak they would break as she spoke them. All our voices change from the propellant smoke, but something made think it was a part of her.

“My name is–”

“You’re Gaky to me.”

A Gak, or Gaky was the slur of choice for a Grunt. It had come into vogue in the early days of the war when a company of Grunts got glassed and all that was left was cinder. In fact, it was granulated carbon, GAC, and from that came the name Gak. It’s all that’s left when you get hit by a torcher or a plasma bomb. It had been many years since then and I had seen my fair share of GAC in the last few months, in fact, I was pretty confident it is what was smeared on my face and hers.

”Alright. You can call me Gaky. You a General Staff Stewardess that got lost or something?”

She did something amazing. She laughed. “Naw,” she drawled, “I’m one of them PSYOP attendants, ya know? I am here to fuck your brains out so you feel better about the war.”

“Damn, you must be busy.”

She leaned over and bit me again. Hard.

“Ow! Jesus, lady.”

“Alright,” she said getting up. “You’re turn.”

She got on top of me and gripped my still throbbing member and slowly dropped down onto it, all the while looking me in the eyes. Now it was no longer an uncanny thing to think of Basic Training. I was doing it on purpose to delay my own orgasm as long as possible. I watched her as she started to ride me slowly. She was dirty, filthy really, but I didn’t hold it against her because I was too. Her hair was short and shaggy, but looked as if she maintained it when she wasn’t in the field. Her face was sharp and angular, but to be honest her eyes took me to another world.

I reached up and cupped one of her breasts and noticed that I could see her ribs underneath her skin. She must have been on the front lines because we were all a bit starved. I pushed my hand up higher and wrapped my fingers around her throat and she looked down at me and smiled again. I remembered when she whispered “hurt me” and I felt a little more rigid. I squeezed her throat and used my other hand to pull her down onto me harder.

She moaned and tilted her head back. I squeezed harder on her throat and with my free hand pinched one of her nipples. Slowly and softly to start and then increasing the pressure to see how she would react. She started riding me faster almost slamming down on to my pelvis with her own.

I released her nipple and throat and brought both hands to her hips and pulled her down onto me hard. I felt like I might break her, but I remembered her strength and looked upwards to see if she was enjoying it. Her eyes were screwed shut and she had her breasts in both hands.

”Fuck, I’m close,” I breathed.

“Keep going, Gaky I’m gonna come too,” she moaned.

I felt the surge coming and the point of no return.

“I’m coming now! Oh fuck, babe.”

She wrapped herself around me as I felt pleasure explode in my head and body. I saw stars as I felt her breathing and moaning in my ear. Wave after wave, it felt like it would never end. I felt her warmth combined with my own added to the mix and it made my whole body shake.

After what seemed like hours the moaning and shaking stopped and it was just breathing, her still wrapped around me. I could still feel the throb of my cock inside her and felt for a moment that I never wanted to leave that place. Her breaths became shorter and she shook a little and I realized she was crying.

I held her closer and remained silent. I am ashamed to say that my erection returned and I was still inside of her. After some minutes of her muted sobs I heard her giggle softly.

“You really are some stone cold killer, huh, Gaky? Get all hard seeing a little girl like me crying, huh?”

She sniffed and I looked at her and could still see the tears in her eyes. I began to try and explain myself. My words got caught up in my teeth. I was trying to tell her that it wasn’t her crying that was the reason it was her movements, or maybe it was the crying, or maybe it was the fact she was so close to me and for the moment she was mine. I never got it out. She just put a finger over my lips and smiled.

Slowly she disentangled herself from me. I slid out of her and I could feel the combination of our efforts oozing all over my still hard penis. She slowly worked her way down kissing my chest and my own exposed and telltale ribs. She gave the red and swollen tip of my member a wet full-lipped kiss and seeing me look down at her she gave me a wink.

She proceeded to lick the underside of my cock up and down and it felt so good I put my face in my hands and tried my best not to sound too dumb as she slowly licked up and down. She stopped teasing and took me in her mouth. She sucked on the tip before engulfing me entirely. My head went back and my mind whirled in a hot and sticky thoughtlessness. I could hear her sucking, her lips smacking as she pulled me from her mouth.

“Mmmm. You like that, Gaky? Come on use my mouth like the hard killer you are. Do it for the Front.”

I looked down at her and my mouth gaped. Almost dreamlike I reached down and grabbed her greasy blonde hair and forced her down. She looked at me the whole time. I started pushing her up and down on my cock and moaned. Her words ringing in my head over and over.

Do it for the Front. DO it for the Front. DO IT FOR THE FRONT. We had all heard it for years. Blasted from HR’s and speakers, in homes, before sports, and just in the streets. Here in a burnt out city, in some basement this combat angel-vixen just told me to fuck her face and to do it for the Front. Briefly, I considered this was being filmed as some sort of sick war-horror-live-action-porn. But, it was a brief thought, I was far to busy indulging her.

I let go of her hair. “Fuck, babe I am going to cum again.” I moaned and looked down at her and she was staring back at me and stroking. As my orgasm hit she leaned down and took me in her mouth. She expertly swallowed what I had to offer and continued sucking for some time after sending me into a paralytic state where I was incapable of making a sound or movement.

After some moments, she crawled up and laid beside me. Looking at me with those big blue eyes that seemed to pierce through days of soot and mud she said, “Why’d you have to call me, babe?” She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in and even then I could feel her strength. We both faded into sleep and my final thoughts echoed through my nightmares: Who was this girl?

Norm.

All my heroes are dead. They went and have gone forever as though they had meant to all along, leaving small little hints to their demise. It is easy to look back and pick apart these hints and derive from them some meaning of significance, but ultimately they are just gone. Gone, Gone, Gone.

There is a man whom I have never met. I have never been in his presence, or shared the rarefied air he breathed and was breathing not long ago. However, he has had a profound impact on my life. It is sad, really. I cannot proclaim to be his first acolyte, or someone who saw the brilliance in his ways so early on. Instead, I came to him randomly and as a skeptic. In a few short years I was transformed as I listened to more and more of what he had to say. In fact, in three short years I exhausted all there was to absorb and I spent time going over my favourites. I would replay the best parts and re-watch to surmise the sheer exquisiteness of his words, or perhaps his cadence.

I am so sad. My heart has been broken in a way that I have never felt before and it cuts down to my very core. It has been like I have spent my life building and positioning emotional armour to deflect such a blow, but this man lived and breathed in a way that his death found a way to split me in half and let all of the guts of my sadness flow out of the wound I now suffer.

A prayer:

A great man has left the ranks of us mortals. His soul must be conveyed in the way that he wished it to be because the alternative to that is too morose to bear. He was hilarious in a way that struck each person genuinely, even in their distaste. He was a soldier of sorts not bearing a rifle, but bearing the truth of reality and armed with that telling us things that would make us laugh despite his own pain and suffering. I pray, you gods, that you handle his transit from the mortal coil gently and with reverence. I pray you do this and if you do not then damn you for you are not gods at all, but monsters and I swear upon all things that I will exact revenge should his transit be marred in any way.

This man has a family. He has loved ones. He is loved and he shall forever be. He is my favourite person and someone whom from I have learned so much. I emulate him and pretend to be him and now my heart breaks because I wish I could have known more. Thanks, Norm. I am just some guy, but you really changed my life and your passing has wrecked me in a way I have never felt before. It is so stupid and I know you would have a laugh at someone like me, but you were great and I will keep you in my heart wherever I go.

These are just some ramblings, please forgive me. I have never cried so hard in my life.

Objectifying Women

“What is anatomy?

Something of which we all have, but looks best on a woman.”

I have met this girl a few times now. We get coffee, or whisky when I’m drinking again. We sit and we talk and solve the world’s problems. A little salt in Liberia, a sprinkle of paprika in the Balkans, a dash of sugar in the Middle East, and set to simmer in the American Midwest.

Sometimes the banter is light and pleasant and other times things become more drawn out with the tendrils of our conversation reaching far deeper and more sensitive topics. Of course, it means nothing really, just a way for us to continue to see each other and talk about the things that interest us.

I worry though, and you’ll have to forgive me. I worry that I will not be taken seriously when I describe how much I appreciate and how wonderful this woman is simply because I find her attractive. Much ink has been spilled to point the finger at men who write about women and I worry that my point about this girl will be lost because I find her attractive.

She is smart. Not just in an intelligent way, but an emotional way as well. In one breath denouncing an easily solved atrocity and in another lamenting the circumstances that led to it and all the lives it impacted. Not single minded at all, but I worry that how I feel about her is invalidated because she also has magnificent breasts.

Therein lies the problem I am recounting to you now. I worry that there is not space for my adoration to be perceived both ways because of the inherent bias against a man and it is troubling. Is it wrong to admire her ability to quote Foucault in one sentence and comment on the delicacy of her pubic grooming style in the next? Does one invalidate the other?

I get it. I am a man and therefor the things I say are put through a singular prism created from a semen based epoxy. But, I must lament that fact because who then will write these things? Is there not some truth to the fact that this woman is both beautiful and intelligent? Can I not focus on both items separately and together as I please as long as I am not disparaging her?

Is it possible that there has been one too many men who have gone out of their way to describe a woman based on her looks alone that to even bring that matter into the mix is an insult? Perhaps, there has been one Pygmalion too many and we as men must avoid the physical nature of attraction and focus instead on the ephemeral side of attraction.

I believe it is a fallacy. That it is more important for me to wonder what she looks like in the throws of a good book as opposed to what she looks like in the throws of a good orgasm. I believe we are in a place now where one thought is outwardly praised more than the other and I believe that is where we have gone wrong as humans.

It is a personal fact: This woman is gorgeous. I could lie to you and say that I did not realize this until I spoke to her and felt her life-force knock against mine, but the truth is that I watched her walk into the bar and my cave-man brain started itemizing the things that I found particularly appealing about her. I won’t bore you with the details, but friend, let me tell you this lady has legs that would make a fertility goddess forget about hips.

Then we spoke and talked some more and the things I said were improved or eclipsed by the things she said. In the midst of this I felt my gut tightening. No one would believe me. To say, I have found a Unicorn out in the wild: “Ah, yes, fellas let me tell you she is stacked and it was delightful to hear her relate the parable of the previous reincarnation of Buddha to the homeless epidemic we are experiencing in the sad peripherals of our great cities.”

It’s a lot like using niggardly in a sentence. If you use it too early on most folks spend the rest of the sentence deciding where they come down on the racist implications of that word rather than listen to the rest of the sentence. Because I mentioned that she is ‘stacked’ the fact that she was able to use a philosophical story to fully describe a modern problem is lost on the audience.

There is a point to this. You see, I am blessed in having met a woman with such an equilibrium of beauty and intelligence. It makes it easy on me in describing her because I can tap into where the blood rushes. I can describe what makes her attractive to me and I can explain what it is like the swim in the estuaries of her personality.

I suppose it is not too much to worry about after all. She is what she is and if it turns out that I have exaggerated then others can rest easy that such a being of perfection does not exist, or if I am right on the money then I cannot be assailed for telling the truth about what I saw. I am practicing honesty and as it occurs to me there is nothing wrong with a little heroine worship. I just don’t want people to be distracted, you know? I feel that if one were to focus just on how beautiful she is then they would be missing a whole other world of what makes her so lovely. If one wanted to circumvent the typical protests and focus solely on her intelligence and personality they would being doing a disservice to how those things are presented to the world.

Inevitably, this wonder-woman will discover that I am far beneath her. I know it will come and am resigned to that fact. It will be a click in her mind as I say something that reveals my true nature: a drooling idiot, who was taught manners in the same way apes are taught sign language. It will be a good realization and she will leave and I will look to the door for more potential partners.

But, what of the next one?

I would like to deconstruct something…

Okay let’s break it down like a shotgun, folks. You see, there is something very sick and wrong with the way things are today. Not just in the general sense but on a very individual level. Not even just a societal thing, but; you,you,YOU, and; me, me, ME!

It is so easy to point the finger and say no, not me, not me, sir. You are mistaken,you see I read Foucault and I have several bound books on my shelf that I look at longingly. No there is no wool over my eyes. But, you’re wrong. The thing is you have been deceived to believe that that matters. It doesn’t, you’re not beautiful enough and I’m sorry but it’s a problem.

Everything has become so visual and that’s the problem. Before reality was just reality, plain and simple. You walked out side and you saw a drunk at your door, or you’d see one travesty after another and it would be real and you would become desensitized that way. Now nothing is real. Everything that is visually consumed is some sort of magic trick and the magicians are the beautiful people.

People used to be so in tune with each other that there was a communal unspoken language that could be interpreted as telepathy. Now? People have to be overt. There is no more body language, instead just bright colours that we wear obscenely to make ourselves different from the next person. “Oh gosh, Lucy, you wore blue today? Fuck me, Lucy, you stupid bitch today is a pastel yellow day.” Yeah, yeah… I know it all sounds insane, but you know. Deep down inside you know.

We are weeding out ugliness in our ranks. Even now there are legal proceedings to determine if someone is beautiful enough to be right or wrong. Before, the gods could preside over trial by combat, but now that the gods have all been murdered in their sleep there is no real justice. So, people have tried to make themselves beautiful by mutilating their bodies, or tapping into a sub-genre of not-so-ugly so that they too can be loved. But, the devil is in the details. They may pass for a while, but they might have kids and when others realized they have passed themselves off as beautiful they will kill those children. Trust me, it’s already happening.

I would feel bad for those beautiful people if they weren’t fucking things up for our species so much. They have performed the magic trick too well, they have gotten their way. Now, that is all there is to aspire to. You have to be beautiful or else. Maybe not this generation, maybe not the next, but soon, in the grand scheme of things they are going to start culling. They will be praised for it. How could they not? You’ve already seen it happen. The beautiful blonde girl goes to the hovel to help and on a mission of world betterment, but at the end they simply got some pictures and videos of them beside the ugly people. It is proof that their ultimate plans of genocide were benevolent.

Eventually, it will just be the beautiful ones. They will die in opulence with a mirror overhead, but that too will come to an end. They will be brilliant and beautiful and they will have destroyed anything unique about humanity and then once that is gone they will kill each other out of spite. The killing will be barbaric, that’s one thing about ugly folks like me, we are good killers. Beautiful people want everything to be clean, you know, a fell swoop. Well that’s not how it goes when you want to kill your fellow man. Plus, in the pursuit of beauty I am assuming they will have forgotten a lot of important things along the way.

Ha-ha! I can’t help but laugh. It a real fucking tickler, you know? The old adages are true and none truer than beauty being skin deep. You know how I know? Because I have ripped and torn into people. With my bare hands even and let me be the first to tell you what is inside is not pretty at all. Sure, there is a certain aesthetic to it. Indeed, indeed I will be the first to admit that there is something about blood and gore, but you tear a man open and things get messy quick.

Anyway, anyway, you don’t need my life story. You have most of it on camera anyway don’t you? Can you hear me out there? Can you heeeeaaaarrrrr me?

Burn me up…

…let me pretend I was beautiful in the dark.

These last breaths I breathe in defiance of what we have become.

* * * *

“God-fucking-damnit!” A man leans heavily on a desk equipped with a microphone that sits not far from his dry, much chewed, lips.

“What is it? Have you managed to talk to him? The cutters should be through the hull in a minute or two.”

The man’s shoulders hunch and his head drops lower, “No. He’s gone.”

“WHAT?!”

A pause

“The cutters are through… Oh, Christ.” The woman watching the progress of the rescue team covers her mouth. Her eyes are wide with fear and disbelief.

“He killed them.”

“I thought you were communicating with him? We saw the life-signs they were good. He had enough air to last another 10-15 minutes at least. We were going to save him!”

The man shakes his head and looks over at the woman in the command station with him. She is tall and blonde, her lips are perfect and full and despite the ordeal they had been through the last hour trying to rescue the floating ship, she looked delightful.

He stops a moment to consider her and what the lone survivor said.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Lucy, but that bastard talked himself to death.”

Where does OnlyFans go from here?

To the Knife Princess,

Not knowing you is pleasurable in some sense of the word. You see, it is because knowing you in earnest would fill my heart beyond its capacity. It would fill and fill and begin to overflow, ultimately consuming me in the process. So, it could be said that I am better off not truly knowing you so that I may remain me and avoid the changes that I have grown to fear in myself.

This banal and ludicrous theory of keeping true knowledge of you at a distance, does not mean that you have not invaded my thoughts. To the contrary, there are swirls and currents of you that penetrate my waking hours and force my mind to wander and float in these imaginary estuaries of you. I am surprised and thankful my mind applies well maintained brakes and screeches to a halt in front of the effigy of you that has been built up in my mind. I am even more surprised when it comes to life and begins to perambulate and make its way into other segments of my psyche.

I am glad of the tenuous nature of you. It allows a certain liberty when it comes to the perversions of my mind when we enter the boudoir of my memory palace. Once there, you look back at me; naked, beautiful, and smiling with the invitation for me to do my worst and in the process fulfill your own desires.

You are not mine. Let’s be clear and account for some realities of our situation. I know I am not unique as an individual who admires you. There are many, I am no fool, I see the numbers and the views you receive and this is okay too. I mean, there is a subdued ecstasy that twirls around inside me as your projected glow reflects off my own pale, sun deprived features. I am resigned, but also comfortable with the fact that your virtual presence is ephemeral and not necessarily directed at me. Perhaps, it is a pathetic admission to say so, but I am okay with it. I’m okay, I swear.

On the subject of reaffirmation, these distances and barriers and payment plans that we have put between each other may indeed be for the best. You see I worry about your proximity and the physiological effects that may result if we were in the same room. I have experienced sensory overload in the form of a pistol being pressed to my temple and, darling, that pistol has nothing on you.

You are opulent in the way we understand divinity. You are gorgeous like electricity illuminating a forgotten place filled with innumerable riches. I sometimes wonder if a goddess allowed her reflection to be born of earth and then I remember that you are your own goddess and I have been genuflecting for sometime now. I tell you this as a somewhat honest man, that should you find yourself in my little corner of the moon, I promise you will drink for free.

Your Admirer,

The Barkeep

There is no fucking behind the bar.

Sex is everywhere. You can find it in the cracks and seams in every aspect of our lives from when we are young and still wondering what exactly it is to when we are old and we consider that we should have stuck more fingers into said cracks and seams.

Sex is so prevalent that they have a hard time giving it away these days. Sex has to be dressed up or modified until it isn’t sex at all, but a part time job at a hardware store, or a strongly worded letter. There is so much sex in the world that it has become the thing by which we describe how mundane something is. How often have you heard the term, “it’s better than sex,” huh?

There is no fucking behind the bar because it is a refuge. I can pour drinks and I can cast my gaze over the small empire I have carved for myself out of the crater in which this city resides.

There is no fucking behind the bar because there are forces at work which I may have had a hand in creating, or may not exist at all, aside from in my imagination.

Once, drunkenly, I masturbated behind the bar when everyone had left. I drank that night harder than most nights. I drank with the customers and watched a young couple in the corner touch and talk and for some reason I could taste and feel them together and once they had gone I rubbed myself until I splashed my jizz all over the already dirty mats that lay at my feet behind the bar. I remember coming to my senses then. A clear sobriety that echoed through my body and seemed to vibrate out into the very room.

I knew I had done something wrong. Perhaps, one of the gods who watches over this place saw me bend or break a rule that I had been resolute to follow. I’m not sure. All I know is, what followed was a terrible week. It was like I had been cursed. Looking back it must have all been a self-fulfilling prophecy, but at the time it felt like the only way to atone for my sin was to wash my mouth out with the shotgun I keep underneath the bar beside the dusty unused wine glasses.

I made it through, though. I made it through and learned my lesson, that the rules you set for yourself in the realm you created are the worst to break and bear the harshest consequences.

So, now, there is no fucking or sex of any kind behind the bar. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a red-blooded barkeep and my perversions remain intact. I saw that couple again that had caused me to violate myself that night I broke my own rule and I slung them drink after drink. I flirted with them both and told them about the after-hours special where they could drink and touch and play and fuck all for free as long as they let me watch. I watched. I helped. However, we did it all on the other side of the bar. Where it is safe and the rules are different. We didn’t fuck behind the bar and because of that the week proceeded without darkness or fear.

The Lack of Love Letters

Why have Love Letters gone out of vogue? Why are they no longer popular to be written? It is as if the love that used to exist in this world has taken on a new form and a new way of being expressed. Indeed, it used to be that a man or woman was judged on their actions, not simply how they navigated a person’s psychology.

Love is hard and difficult and now it is as if folks are looking for the hack, the work around to get it done quicker or harder.

SearchEngine: I like I girl how do I make her like me back?

Result: Here are 20 articles distilled down into manageable bite sized facts that will inform you how most female brains work and how you can use a twisted evolutionary human biology to your advantage only to realize that these tricks will work too well.

Instead of all that why don’t we take risks anymore? Reach out from across the void of our own existence and put pen to paper for someone we think we love and express that. Perhaps, the words never meant as much as we thought they did and it is all propaganda from the Love Corporations who wanted us to spend money on pens and papers. Now that those mediums are obsolete Big Love is trying to make us buy into the other modes of expression. Don’t write your feelings down like some 20^th century sap, no; use our crafted emote pictures to really express yourself.

Do you love this woman? Does the yearning in your soul make you wish that you could simultaneously rip out your beating heart and pounding brains and smash them together to make them stop moving to the rhythm of your longing? Well, fear not, citizen. We have just the tiny animated picture for you!

It also takes time to write a Love Letter and this may be why they have gone extinct. You see, in the time it takes to write a love letter one must spend that time thinking about the words to write down on the page. These words are inspired by the feeling inside you and for an effective Love Letter one must allow these feeling to flow from the interior down into the ink that is hitting the page. Prolonged thought on a subject causes an individual to explore different facets of the idea. In the time it takes to write a Love Letter one may come to find that they never really loved the individual in the first place. Or, quite possibly the opposite. That all those feelings have been reaffirmed and made stronger.

Perhaps, this is more a treatise against time and the distillation of our efforts to fall in love. Everything is quickened now and optimized. So, as a result so to may our thoughts and decision making promise. No longer is it acceptable to spend some time and think about how one feels or how to even put into words. If we have the inkling of a feeling we can express it immediately and directly onto someone else.

I didn’t even get started on sex…

Unloved.

I think the reason I set up shop in an illegal bar on the Moon was to have a purpose. You see, I have come to find that men as a species are expendable and always will be. I have seen wars come and go, various man-made disasters, and the other kind that seem like an act of God. In each of these I have seen the breach filled with human lives. Eaten up and destroyed, sometimes to return; more often than not to disappear.

I have played my part in these. I was lucky in a few cases to be thrown into the breach and come up for sweet air afterwards. Many of those who went with me did not fare as well. Others were scarred by it and they are the haunting reminder of what came to pass. I see them in my bar whether they are real or not I still pour the drink to honour them.

I have come to know a great tragedy and that is when a man is unloved. I have seen boys killed, dying in silence, pure courage in the face of final knowledge that no one will suffer heartbreak at their passing. These men are often mourned as a group, but by and large the individual is forgotten.

It is why I seek purpose in my little bar. I fulfill a need for those who seek inebriated distraction, which is an important aspect of our society. Yet, even here in my domain I see the boys who are unloved and who move through life largely unmalevolent. I see them as the ones who stand just outside the group, the lonely drinker, or the fellas paying for drinks in the small hope that later that evening he may disguise pleasure as love for a few moments at least.

It helps that I serve a purpose. It helps to have my patrons to focus on to distract me from the oppressive truth that I am indeed unloved. I will say this to the passerby who feels as I do that there is some benefit to our condition. It is that we can move through life untethered and without fear that when greatness or opportunity knocks we will need not hesitate to answer the call.

It is why so many idealistic boys go into the breach. It is why we are expendable. Because many of us are unloved and seek greatness as a substitute.

Kill or be Killed.

“…and I just think we are different people now.”

The young man takes a deep breath and runs his hands through his long dark hair. You can tell he has done it a lot today because the strands are curled and greasy from repeated touch. A sure sign of frustration. He exhales steadily. This is his shot. Say the right words and everything can be okay again:

“I am difficult. I know it. I know it because I can feel myself being that way. It is like small bits of sandpaper that scrape across my cerebelum as I speak the words that I know are destined to displease you. Please trust me, I know when I am doing it, but I really just can’t help it. It is a testament to how I feel about you.”

Another breath and a look around the bar. It is quiet this time of day. Just commited drunks and the others.

“It is not a bad thing either. No, no. It’s just you make me a little crazy. You run through my mind constantly and as you do it I am conflicted by how much I am in awe of you and how much I feel that I am not worthy. I feel this way and when I see you outside of my mind only the awe exists, but when you are gone the insecurity remains.”

“Plus… Our history. Mistakes on both sides that only add to it. But! Scar tissue is good. A reminder of what drew blood, but did not kill. I know this: I would suffer for you; more scars and abbrasions. Even now as we seem to drift apart and the pain is most intense I would stay in this flame. “

They look at each other and then to their drinks. She is hunched forward and his shoulders have sagged. He takes a sip of his drink and it seems to revitalize him slightly.

“Remember our perfect day? In the shell of that ruined church we found along the river path? We sat and talked and we talked so long that we nearly got stuck out in the woods. That was right before we left, together.”

“I think about that day a lot. There was no rush and everything seemed important and unimportant at the same time. Like, the words no matter their subject, held their own seperate and intense meaning. We loved each other then, I think.”

The last words cause her to sit straighter and cast a sideways glance at him.

“We did. I remember the next day I said so while we were laying in bed in the morning. You were pretending to be asleep and I told you I was in love with you. That wasn’t a dream, right? It wasn’t a mistake. It was a purity in our lives that we have seldom sought for again and I am truly sorry we have not. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

More silence, but also heat. I can feel it as I refill their drinks. It cinges my knuckles that grip the bottle and I feel a sweat break out on my forehead. He’s not going to win. They weren’t the right words, but there is fire in that soul of his. Briefly and insanely I worry about it physically setting fire to the spirits just behind the bar, but I mentally shake that worry in time to hear her:

“I’m sorry, too. I have to go.”

There are losers every night in my little bar on the moon, but I felt for this one. He charged the battlements, but sometimes a lady’s cold steel resolution cuts through even the most valiant of heroism.

Drinks on me, fella.

Why build a bar on the Moon?

Originally, the bar was supposed to be on the Sun; but if I followed through with that I could only be open at night. I feel as though the patrons I cater to require their libations day or night and so I settled on the moon.

The Moon is a tough place to set up shop. What with their dry counties. However, I know honest people just need a drink and sometimes they just need a drink to hold onto for dear life. A beverage to see you through the small, but particularly violent storm that is day-to-day existence. I hear you, friend. Which is why I opened this speakeasy. As long as you keep it to yourself and away from any of those Lunar Magistrates; I think we will get along just fine.

The Moon has changed in the short amount of time I have been here. Not as shiny and new as it used to be. Each crater a little less deep, each dust pile a little less charming. But, I don’t let the diminished luminosity of the Moon get me down. I serve folk their drinks and sometimes I sit and I talk with them about their troubles.

This one fellow came in the other day. Real business type. Ordered with authority and wore a suit like plate armor. He was busy trying to heat up his glass of whisky with his eyes and I focused on cleaning glasses myself. He quietly ordered another neat whisky before upending his own glass and downing the whole thing in one go. You see a fella down a drink like that and it just picks at your brain why he did it. I’m not one to let questions like that stew, so I ask him about it as I bring him another drink. I almost wish I hadn’t.

Business hasn’t changed much in the last century. Everyone has to make a dollar, sure; but some search for ways to get it faster and harder. It didn’t take much, just a little suggestion and he told me everything I had already suspected. He told me about Earth and another outbreak. He told me about the cure and just how much it cost to make it and just how much it cost to buy it. He told me how difficult it was to live with what he did and how there were drugs to suppress those feelings. He told me all this and then downed his drink, left money on the bar top, and put on his hat all in one smooth motion.

I tried a moral suppression pill once when I was just some kid. Let me tell you; there is a reason I work a job with booze close at hand.

After all that I didn’t hate the man. In fact, he is one of the reasons I opened a speakeasy on the Moon. Everyone needs a place to drink. Some folks drink slow and easy and others, like the businessman, drink quickly and with purpose. Him, like I, won’t ever forget why were drinking though.

At some point in your life you’ll need a drink. If you’re on the Moon, come have a drink at my place. It’s cheap, I sweep up the dust, and there is no judgement on my side of the bar.