And It Happens Every Time (part 1)

Ki ni naru noni kikenai -- Final Distance, Utada Hikaru

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My heart hurt tonight for the ones I love for the first time in a way I had always thought it would, but never experienced.
Yesterday (being last night) was my da kine sister's birthday, so of course, we celebrated. Well, somewhere in the middle of the whole thing, these two guys show up, and at first they're real cool, but things have a tendency to change with random people, especially at these parties. After what I assume were several drinks on top of an already healthy foundation of adult beverages, one of them excuses himself politely from the conversation to use the bathroom. Now, may I point out that it is already around 2am, and he has declared that they would be leaving as soon as he finished his drink; that said, I'll continue with the story. As the man -- whose name I never heard, other than the letter V -- as V made his way down the hall toward the bathroom, he stopped to adjust a crooked picture on the picture board, and his friend, Chuck, and myself watch him do this. I turned away to pay attention to the people around me, and he comes walking back asking, "Who is the boy in green?"

"What?"
"The military guy. He's in the army, right? Who is he?" his voice is heavy with curiosity, and my ears pick up.
"Brother," most mouths say, including my own.
"Oh, brother? Your brother?" V repeats himself, asking Shad.
"Their brother," he replies, pointing with two fingers on one hand at the Lees. The boy in the picture turns out to be Jeremy, (Lady)Lee's older brother and Jlee's twin. He is currently stationed in Alaska and was supposed to come down to Texas on leave before being sent off to Iraq, but the Army changed its mind. All this is communicated, well, as best as possible to the man who was supposedly going to the bathroom and about to leave.

He says he is in the army, and that he just got done serving his 13. I raise my fist and say a thank you, and he nods at me. "I just wanted to see who it was so that I could say [some sort of support]." From even before this whole part started, immediately from the point that he asked who the "boy in green" was, the energy in the room tightened; it was coming from the Lees. I noticed the only people looking at the Lees were Shad and myself, and after a minute of this crazy guy V rattling off, Shad reaches up and tucks his knuckles under Jlee's chin to catch his attention and make him smile; I reached under the table and brushed Lee's leg. She gave a jump and looked at me strangely with a small laugh, and I laughed back, but the man kept on talking. The whole thing got out of hand. It turns out that V was in the Med Unit and was having to go around to the battlegrounds and help the injured and label the dead. I support the Med Unit. I would be one if I was in the military, but for you to come back to a place that you don't know and tell those people what is up and what they're doing is wrong, you just need to get out.

I can't even begin to go into what he was saying, because it was so ridiculous; so asinine and the man was just belligerent to the core. He told us all that we had no respect, because we were sitting there drinking and partying over some birthday while there was a war going on. He told Jlee (ignoring that Lee was there) that he had no honor or respect for his brother for what he was doing, even though he hadn't even gone yet. He acted like we were telling him how it was, but he was putting the words in our mouths, and sentencing us to crimes we did not commit. He called us all pride-less mother fuckers, and that wasn't even the worst of it; Shad flared up, and he couldn't hold it in anymore. His whole family was in the military; his mother included. As for me, my family is military, and my best friend disappeared in the desert for a year and finally resurfaced a couple days ago. And, dear reader, you have to realize that I've cut this down a lot, partly for the fact that a lot happened, and there were many others involved, but mostly for the fact that I'm still angry. Yes, I realize there's a chance of a bias, but I can assure you that what I've provided is so much the basic amount that it runs nearly 1% the possibility of it being that; also, that I've not had enough to drink to distort the facts. At any rate it was over soon with lots of interruptions from the neighbors and me pushing the guy out with nice words, but I can assure you I was shaking out of anger...

Part 2