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________He kissed her because she was horse-faced. He kissed her because her
nose, masculine and Greek, was irrelevant when he considered her equally
equine figure_____________
________He kissed her because his serpent and nautilus tattoo, his shellback
family crest, a two-inched radius drawn around his right nipple, was bared
and bright in the ultraviolet strobe. He kissed her because his collared
flannel, too warm and smothering in Club Asia's climate control, flapped
open on hinges of sweat-matted fabric______________________
_______He kissed her because her eyes, expectant, were buoyed at uneven
depths. He kissed her because she was a white novelty in yellow Tokyo, and
as such, unique and exotic only in the moment________
________He kissed her because there was no reason to pay for what you could
get for free. He kissed her because the last time he purchased a girl was
shore leave two months ago in Manila: a dark skinned teen who teased him,
prompted him in a hybrid language, more Spanish than English, and though
well-versed in both, he growled and purred to make clear her
duties___________
________He kissed her because of a mechanical pencil and a memo pad, both
mine. He kissed her because I watched him and he watched my pencil, which
danced to the same beat they danced, and he knew, with a kiss, he could make
my pencil dance faster______________
________He kissed her because she had made an honest attempt to mask her
pockmarked cheeks with expensive foundation. He kissed her because her
brown-lined-red lipstick, even as his mouth smeared against hers, failed to
divert his attention from her hips__________
________He kissed her because his dance floor, brightened by a disco ball,
was far more promising than my sticky table, shaded by an Asahi Beer banner.
He kissed her because pouring drinks into his horse-faced Sure Thing was far
more ambitious than scribbling words into a memo pad______
________He kissed her because he'd alleybrawled two nights before in
Roppongi, bruising two Pakistani jawbones and a breaking a third’s shin. He
kissed her because the blue knuckles of both his fists were too sore to do
it again___________
________He kissed her because the fog machine was ready for another round.
He kissed her because the air again was blurred by the machine's exhale, and
the billows in the strobe illuminated like monsoon clouds over New Mexico.
He kissed her because it was under one of those electrical storms 'Tilda had
given herself to him, glistening naked on a quilt lain inside the
McClanneys' abandoned buckwheat shed: "With postcards and care packages,
Tucker, I be yours."______
_______He kissed her because--- because, because, because, because,
because--- because of the wonderful things he does______________
________He kissed her because he wasn't a jarhead; jarheads were brainless,
they were killing machines and faggots -- a jarhead was a Marine, get it
straight. He kissed her because he was a deck ape, a damned proud swabby,
with a legacy to defend from Portsmouth to Tonkin Bay____
_______ He kissed her because in his long island iced reality she could be
the daughter of a diplomat, or an expat violinist, world class, and these
possibilities could be improved upon in each recount: told over pools of
spillover and coiled lanyards, again while tweaking the bilge pump, in the
head, in the bunks, in the galley, fore, aft and evermore__________
________He kissed her because while I could always tell a story, he would
always have a story to tell____
________He kissed her because he couldn't read books, only brochures and the
inner pallor of a girl's thighs; hers in particular had been included in the
sales pitch. He kissed her because the salty recruiter, paternally grounded
in a Santa Fe strip-mall, had been ashore too long to remember the detailed
impatience, soft and awkward, of her face opposite his own shaven brash mug
way back when__________
________He kissed her because his breath stopped short when the frills of
her skirt brushed lightly against his father's pride, bundled and buried
beneath durable layers of jeans and jockey shorts_______________
________He kissed her because I, his bunkmate, who Tucker said had come to
basic training looking for a "backbone and a weight-loss program,” could
not. (He kissed he because I, his bunkmate, having accompanied him, glared
reprehensively and nibbled enviously on the black eraser of a mechanical
pencil)_
________He kissed her because her tongue shimmered, beads upon beads, like a
buckwheat pillow, ready to swallow any line he fed her_______
________He kissed her because he was 5,179 nautical miles from God and
Country_______
________He kissed her because loose lips sink ships and he didn't want to
sail anymore______
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