Page 27 of The Playboy SEAL
I sit down at a tattered table in the corner and nod at a teammate named Mason. He grins at me and tosses an obscene gesture my way. I’d send one back if I wasn’t listening to my mother prattle on about the terror attacks happening.
“Okay, Gem,” she says, because I’m the crown jewel. “I’ll let you get back to work now. Call us later. We miss you. Are you coming home for a visit soon? We’d loveto see you. Please be safe,” she says.
My father’s beard scruff rubs against the phone, and then his voice says, “I love you, son. Kick some ass. Come home soon, though, okay?”
It takes a lot to make me feel guilt. They just had a full-on, one-sided conversation, and guilt is all I feel. I’ll have to go home soon to visit them. Especially before I deploy. I’m not so naïve as to assume it won’t be the last time. My job is one of the most dangerous in the world. Imminent danger is evident in every facet of my life. Take today, for example. I’m jumping out of airplanes over and over. The odds will stack against me one of these days.
I compare it to cats. How many lives do they have? Nine? How many life-sucking hobbies and adventures can one person practice before they catch up to their given amount of allotted lives? You can never anticipate how you’ll go down. Personally, I hope I go down in a blaze of fire and glory, doing something to help my country. Most people want to fall asleep peacefully and never wake up. Not me. I want to know I’m alive when I go. I want to feel every nerve ending as they click off for the final time. I want to feel it all.
My morbid thoughts are broken when Mason throws a wadded-up napkin. “Where are you at right now?” he asks.
My sub sandwich is half gone. My friends know not to fuck with me when I’m eating. It’s a sacred time of day. I love food.
“Fuck off, Mason. I’m trying to eat a peaceful lunch.”
“Chute packing got your panties in a bunch? You primadonna,” he says.
He’s wearing the smirk that lets me know he’s trying to bait me. It’s no secret that I’m different than my friends. Where they could give two shits about their clothing, hair, or their appearance, I’m in the opposite camp.
I once told a group of them that I pay forty dollars for my haircut every three and half weeks. Combine that with my collection of designer T-shirts, and it was a recipe for a slew of nicknames. If I have to wear T-shirts, why shouldn’t they feel soft and nice against my skin? Most men don’t care about stuff like that. I get it. It doesn’t change me, though. My money is copious because I don’t have a family. All of my bonuses are saved for the most part or are poured, like water, into my house.
“I like nice things,” I say, shrugging and chucking the napkin back at his head. It’s a direct hit. “Just because you’re fine wearing Batman boxer shorts doesn’t mean that you should. Standards, fucker. Get some.” I’m joking, but I see the competitive glint in his eye. We’re all type A personalities. It’s a constant battle to best each other. At work and at home. If you can drink five beers and act rationally, I can drink six. Target practice is a pissing match. How hot our chicks are, too. Though that’s mostly an unspoken rule if we’re talking about wives.
Chicks and fucking are fair game in discussions so long as they’re only girlfriends or sidepieces. The second they turn into wives, you forget they have a vagina. It’s odd because you know sordid details about Mold-A-Dildo kits and fingers in asses and what sounds they make while they have orgasms, but when your buddymarries that same hot girlfriend, you are supposed to forget it all.
Mason changes the subject to our next jump, and I listen to him prattle on and nod in appropriate places, and because I’m still eating, he doesn’t expect me to respond verbally. My phone flashes a text message. It’s another photo from Teala. Of some green fucking plant in the lobby of her yoga studio. Where are the tit pics? She doesn’t send me actual text messages very frequently. It’s usually photos without captions. I turned off all the notifications for my fucking apps. Deletion wasn’t an option. Not yet. I’m not ready. And what happens after I fuck Teala and return to my old carousing ways? I don’t have time to reinstate my profiles. It’s freed me in a way I didn’t know I craved. The tether to my phone disappeared.
I’m not sure what she expects me to reply with. I’m staring at the photo when Mason makes his way to my table. I’m finished eating.
“Who are you swiping at?” he asks.
No one has noticed I’m not my normal self. I’ve realized I wanted this challenge. Needed it, even. It’s not about Teala even if it seems that way. It’s about determining how much control I actually have over my body and emotions. I control things. Nothing else does. Not even my dick. I snap a photo of the trash from my lunch in front of me and send it to her. If she wants a game of random, I’ll give her that.
“Ahh, you know, just the usual,” I reply.
Mason scrunches up his face.
“What the fuck are you doing? Did you just take apicture of the water bottle?”
This is where I could come clean, but Mason has a big mouth, and everyone will know within hours that I’m not swiping any pussy on this trip, and it will be more of a spectacle than I want. Typically, I’ve got at least three chicks waiting in whatever city we’re traveling to. It’s a game. See how much of a whore Macs can be. My need for sex almost affected a start time once, and I got in trouble. Not real trouble, but it was enough to force a chick cap. I meet Mason’s eyes.
“Texting my friend. How’s your girlfriend?”
A trick everyone should know. People love to talk about themselves. They prefer it to almost any other sort of conversation. Even if it’s bitching about their horrible lives, it still means more than if I was talking about my awesome life. He takes the bait.
“I broke up with her. It got stale.”
Picking up my trash, I wad it using one hand. “Too many missionary trips?”
He shrugs. “She was awful at head, too.”
I nod like I know exactly what he’s talking about.
“Joining the dark side now?”
Mason squirms. “No one is as dark as you.” Little does he know. “It’s hard to find anything stable with all the trips. It’s okay, though. Being single works right now anyway. Maybe after deployment.”
I agree with him and tell him it’s a great idea. I tell him about a few of the apps I use, and he seems interested, if only for the reason to switch the conversation back to me and my life.
