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B.J. came back from Tokyo acting real cagey, so Hawkeye naturally went through his foot locker while he was in post-op and found a kind of penis sculpture made of pretty, opaque green stone. His heart stopped. He was transported to another planet. At first it was the most hilarious thing in the world, except he couldn’t laugh.
To call it life size would be generous. It did have veins and balls and other photorealistic touches. What was B.J. doing buying a kind of monument to cock? That did not exactly seem like the All-American California football boy way, unless you subscribed to that kind of dirty magazine, which, of course, B.J., being resolutely heterosexual and blonde and beautiful and otherwise normal except for his hairy shoulders and penchant for horrific puns, most assuredly did not.
The stone was heavy and smooth and cool to touch. It refracted a kind of prism on the floor. Hawkeye lifted it up to the shaft of morning light coming in through the tent flap and studied it. Of course it was at this precise moment that B.J. came in the door. There was a tumbling and a fumbling and a stumbling that ended with the luminescent phallus resting comfortably on the brushed-dirt floor by the stove.
Hawkeye looked at it. Then he looked at B.J., who was looking at it too, until he looked at Hawkeye and blushed scarlet. “It’s a gift,” B.J. stammered. “For Peg.”
Hawkeye did not even want to know the story that B.J. probably could read on his face as he worked it out. Maximally pathetically, all he could say was, “Oh.”
“Sometimes — you know, she wrote a bit, um, a bit of a racy letter, few weeks ago.”
“Racy?”
“She — you know, a woman has needs, she says.”
He didn't need to tell Hawkeye any more than that. “Right,” he said.
“Yeah, I figured, you oughta know. Anyway… I guess I hate to think of her lonely. Especially that kind of lonely. It was the closest, you know, closest version I could find.”
You worried about someone else cleaning the gutters, Hawkeye thought, now you’re sending her a green approximation of your penis? “I hate that too,” he said. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to, you know, encroach, pry, sneak, et cetera, but — ”
“It’s alright. I said you could go in there for socks.”
They both took a step forward and crouched at the same time to retrieve the bizarre item, nearly bumping heads. Hawkeye handed B.J. the cardboard box it lived in. “I hope she likes it,” he said. Then he set about mentally flagellating himself.
“I hope so too,” said B.J. He handled it very gently, as though it were made of glass.
--
The first time Hawkeye stole the green penis was the following Tuesday, having been possessed by the thought of it since the incident. The image appeared behind his eyes when he closed them. When he managed to snatch sparse sleep between waves of wounded, it haunted his dreams. The little mouth below the cut head opened and cackled in his face. He woke up in a state of aroused terror.
In the supply tent, with the door locked, he looked at it. It looked at him. “You bastard,” he said.
He felt like he was losing his mind. He had figured that he might as well put himself out of his misery and maybe then he’d be able to break out of this suffocating daze, but he understood logically that this was a fallacy. He opened a packet of surgical lube with his teeth and upended it over the silly thing. Even just stroking it was setting him on fire. His hand would barely close around it and it was supposed to go inside him. B.J. intended for it to go inside Peg in his place. Dear god. His brain was running down the tracks full tilt, screaming and hollering.
It was a whole big production. He lay on the cot and covered himself with blankets and got just the tip of it inside himself before he started hyperventilating and had to get up and pace for a while with no pants on and finally jerk off in futile attempt to take the edge off. In the end he got maybe two inches inside, feeling like his head was going to explode off his shoulders, came again almost without touching himself, just imagining it was B.J., stroking his belly, saying something like, “You’re so good, you make me feel so good…” The sensation of his own body wringing around that thing — he had to cover his mouth with his hand. When he took it out and cleaned up he was shaking. In the morning he hurt all over and was extremely embarrassed, even though he’d returned the box to B.J.’s foot locker without incident. Now it was his turn to be cagey.
“Are you alright, Hawk,” B.J. asked him at breakfast.
“I’m all left,” Hawkeye said. It wasn’t very good, but it was better than Did you notice that I stole your weird cock statue last night?
“You seem kind of out of it,” B.J. said. God damn. When had he decided to be observant?
“Didn’t sleep,” Hawkeye told him. This wasn’t a lie; he’d stared at the roof of the tent absently panicking until it started to get light. “I’m fine. Just cut me off a slice of that coffee.”
He tried again a few nights later. It had been a particularly rough day in the OR and he couldn’t care about any kind of silly thing like getting caught or any of those mortal concerns. This time he did imagine that B.J. had come with him in his typical state of rageful mourning (they had each lost a patient; it was a bad day, a bad week, a new offensive in the hills near Yangju) and was compelled for narratively unexplainable reasons to shove Hawkeye against a wall and have his wicked way with him. It was funny to even think of such a thing, because he knew that even if B.J. was being rough he would be gentle. Lying curled up on his side, rocking and wheedling that thing in and out by most delicate increments, he imagined those hands on his waist and came before he could get it halfway inside him. This time he did cry out, but only a little, like a lost baby animal or something. He floated. He felt unattached from this stupid world. His mouth shaped a silent name.
--
It was beginning to be a problem. Dazedly stumbling through triage in the hall outside the x-ray room, Hawkeye overheard B.J. telling Potter, “Maybe we ought to put in a call to Sidney.”
Potter sighed. “It’s been a tough few weeks for us all, Hunnicutt.”
“He’s really — he’s just not himself, Colonel, I’m worried.”
“How about this. Get a few drinks in him and talk to him, B.J. Winchester’s in Seoul for a conference this weekend. Have a heart to heart and see if you can get to the bottom of this whole thing. And if not, then we’ll call in the big guns.”
Hawkeye immediately went to Radar and tried to get himself scheduled in all the post-op shifts possible, but the kid had picked the Colonel up on E.S.P. “Captain Pierce, you need your rest,” he said. “It’s been a tough week and it’s only gonna get worse with Major Winchester on leave.”
“How could it possibly get worse,” Hawkeye asked. “No, really, I wanna know.”
--
B.J. had made a batch of gin that was actually pretty good. Even if Hawkeye hadn’t overheard his conversation with Colonel Potter, he’d’ve known he was in trouble. It was a cool night. The tent flaps were down. There was a mourning dove going. A nurse tittering. The footsteps of the nightwatchman in the gravel. Occasional gunfire echoing in the canyon, washing down from the real war, miles away. The standard symphony. He paced, first in the limited rhombus around the stove on the floor, then on top of the furniture when he got bored.
B.J. jouncing his knee against the brushed-dirt floor: “Hawk, when are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
How to tell your bunkie, I’ve been borrowing your special gift for your wife in order to imagine you fucking me. That was a toughie. I do this because I’m in love with you, and I want all of you all the time, but I’ll take what I can get. Even tougher!
B.J. was really trying. “Does it have something to do with, um.”
“With um?”
“With that — you know.” B.J. was staring into the stove as though all the mysteries of the universe were in there. “The jade dildo.”
So that was what it was called. It sounded nicer than green penis. “No,” Hawkeye said, probably too quickly.
“Because that was when you started acting weird. And — you know, I realize, we’ve never really had that kind of… guy talk, you and I.”
Hawkeye was flabbergasted. “Guy talk?”
“Our conversations about sex have been…”
“Abstract? Moralizing?”
“Ha.” B.J. rubbed his chin. “Both. Maybe you had — it was different with Trapper. I don’t know.”
“Listen, Beej,” Hawkeye said, ignoring the weird and unsettling Trapper mention, “I figured mommy and daddy had to do what they had to do to have a beautiful baby girl. I didn’t — I figured — ”
“You thought I was a prude.”
Because you are a prude, Hawkeye thought. Your entire beautiful being screams missionary position. He sighed, so of course B.J. decided to believe that was the problem at hand.
“Peg and I happen to have a very vibrant sex life — I never thought you of all people would be judgmental!”
“B.J.,” Hawkeye said, trying to speak as evenly as he could (not very). “That is extremely not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
He looked at his hands. You would only notice the tremor if you were a surgeon. Then he sighed again. Why could he not stop sighing? Something about lack of oxygen?
“Oh, god,” B.J. said, sitting straight. His big blue eyes got big and blue. Oh, shit, Hawkeye thought.
“What?”
“You're jealous.”
This was… close enough for jazz. Hawkeye shrugged.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Any possible jealousy relating to that thing is… not becoming for a gentleman to admit.”
“Hawk, since when have you ever been one to become a gentleman? Is it the size?”
Hawkeye shivered. God damn it! “Close,” he said.
“Is it my beautiful wife?”
“Close again,” Hawkeye said, “but no, not really.”
B.J. shook his head. “I don’t — I don’t understand.”
“You can be really obtuse when you want to be, Beej. Let’s just forget about it.”
“How can I just forget about it?”
Now you know my pain, Hawkeye thought. “In this wind, everything blows over eventually.”
“Hawkeye, come on.”
He sighed. Later he didn't know why exactly he dared. Maybe he figured they were already in too deep to come out without getting wet. “What’s left to be jealous of,” he said.
It took B.J. a while, but eventually he said, “Oh.” His pink mouth made the shape of the letter.
“Yeah. Oh. It gets better. You can tell Peg I’ve given that thing a couple of test runs while you were in post-op. And let me tell you, it really purrs.”
B.J.’s mouth worked around a number of possible rejoinders. For some reason, he settled on, “Well.”
“Well. Now you know. So I’ll — show myself off to the supply tent to sleep tonight and warn you that you ought to mail that thing to Peg before it falls into the wrong hands again and never comes out.”
B.J. was rubbing his hands thoughtfully on the thighs of his fatigues. “It’s alright, Hawk,” he said. “It’s your tent too.”
“Did you hear what I just said?” Paul Revere was running circles in his head, hollering. Consequences are coming, consequences are coming! “B.J., I’m pretty sure this level of deviancy is a little much even for someone with a sex life as vibrant as yours.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why’d you do it?”
Because I love you and I had to have something. “Sometimes…” He winced. Whatever came out, it was going to sound awful. “I need… I don't know.”
“It’s like what Peg said in her letter,” B.J. said contemplatively, filtering through papers on his night table. “Something about needing a good stretch.” He laughed the happy and wistful and nostalgic and half-disbelieving and completely metaphysically enraging laugh he laughed when he talked about his beautiful perfect wife and his beautiful perfect life at home in Mill Valley California thousands of miles from here and thousands of miles from Hawkeye.
Hawkeye fairly collapsed to his cot and put the heels of his hands in his eyes, generating sparks. “Fine,” he mumbled. “That — that's what I mean.”
“How far did you get?”
This shocked him into looking up. The teasing expression on B.J.’s face just about bowled him over. He was sure he had to have misheard. “What?”
“I mean, could you get it all the way inside you.”
Hawkeye’s toes curled in his boots. He was pretty sure his jaw was on the ground. He made a sound approximating “No.”
“It takes practice,” B.J. said. “How about you show me.”
Hawkeye watched B.J. watch him pinch himself, hard. “What.”
“Show me how far you got. I’ll help you.”
“Beej, I don't think you understand.”
“I think I do. I just — ” Rubbing his palms on his thighs again — “You know, the strictures of monogamy…”
“Right.”
“We have to set some ground rules.”
“Alright. You know me, I’m all for rules.”
“I’m serious, Hawk. This is serious!”
Hawkeye sighed. He figured putting his hands on his hips might make him feel more in control. “Fine,” he said.
“One. I won’t touch you. Unless — something — well.”
So this was his game. Breaking Hawkeye’s heart. Well, that was fine. Of course it was going to be a trade-off. “Fine,” he said.
“And no kissing.”
“I should think that counts as touching. Do you just want to sit across the room?”
He was fucking kidding, of course, but B.J. said, “You know, that’s a good idea.”
He tried a steadying breath. It sounded like a pained sigh. The trouble, even more than trying to get that thing up his ass, was going to be trying to pretend like this whole thing wasn’t destroying him. Like it was all in fun. Was that even possible? Well, they were going to find out.
“Two. Clothes stay on. And three. You can stop whenever you want.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. What about after this?”
“What?”
He couldn’t help but ask, but his voice sounded small. “What happens after this?”
B.J. shrugged. “Have a shower. I have my post-op shift at zero five-hundred. You’ll probably want to stay off your feet.”
That was its own answer. Hawkeye clenched his fists inside the sleeves of his robe. “Okay,” he said, “is that all?”
“Well, we can set more if we have to as we go along.”
B.J. got the cardboard box out of his footlocker and set it on Hawkeye’s night table. Then he sat down on his cot across the room, looking quite expectant.
Hawkeye turned his back and got everything off except for his robe. He wasn’t going to give any more than he was getting. He knelt in his bunk and carefully arranged the blankets. Then he reached for the box on the night table. He heard B.J. swallow. At least tormenting him was going to be fun.
Matters progressed.
There was a warm broad hand on his back suddenly. “Easy,” B.J. said, “easy, easy. It’s not a chainsaw. It’s supposed to feel good.”
Hawkeye looked up and askance. The world reduced to the tent reduced to a hot blur. “I thought you weren’t going to touch me,” he managed.
“You’ll hurt yourself.”
“I know what I’m doing.” Though his voice was shaking, which probably gave away that he didn’t. Even if he had done this before he probably wouldn’t know what he was doing. His brain was operating on one half of one cylinder. His body — he didn’t even want to know. Sometimes it was nice to let it take the wheel for a little while. The problem was it usually got in over its metaphorical head pretty damn quick.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” B.J. said. He sat down again. He was tantalizingly out of arm’s reach. “What if there’s something in it for you?”
“There’s already something in — never mind. What else can you get past your censorious monogamy?”
“We’ll see.”
“You think I’d take those odds?”
“I know you would.” Damn. It must have bored him being right all the time. It certainly bored Hawkeye to be wrong, except times like this. “You are a curious cat.”
“You have no idea.”
“I have some. I was curious, wasn’t I?” Horribly, terribly, B.J. let his knees fall open. The seam in the crotch of his fatigue pants was a little torn. He knew exactly what he was doing. Hawkeye was consumed by the mystery for a moment until B.J. said, “Try it again. Go slow. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“You’re a menace.”
“Hey, you got yourself into this mess.”
“You,” Hawkeye said, “parading yourself around, making grandiose claims… I hope you know you make me crazy.”
“I hope I do,” B.J. said.
He wholly expected to get marched before a court martial to answer for the extreme dearth of surgical lube that was about to be suffered by this whole camp, but it would be worth it.
“Easy,” B.J. said again, leaning toward him with his elbows resting on his knees. “I think you could do with someone telling you that every minute of your life.”
He almost said, I think I could if it was you. He was so close to saying it that he covered his mouth with one hand.
“Alright?”
He shook his head and then realized what he was doing and nodded. “Keep talking,” he said. His voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away. He only had half this thing in him and it was half again too much. The sing-songy glimmer of vengeful consciousness still stirring at the edge of his brain reminded him that this was (allegedly!) the literal size of B.J.’s cock. God damn that man. How had he gotten to be enough of a favorite to get all these cosmic gifts?
“You’re doing good,” said B.J. “To be honest, I didn’t expect you’d get this far.”
“We’re all of us capable of — ” He had to stop talking because something struck that spark wheel inside him and caught a little flame to tinder. “Of, of extraordinary things when we put our backs into it.”
“Are you alright?”
“Of course not, stop asking me.”
“Are you in pain?”
“It’s not exactly — why do you care?”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“It’s not you,” Hawkeye reminded him.
“But — it’s — ”
“I wish it was. But you couldn’t hurt me. Not even if you tried.”
B.J.’s eyes flashed in the pitchy shadow. “Hawkeye — ”
“Just — give me a minute.”
Night silence: wind, crickets, breathing. Shells far away. He bit his lip hard enough to taste blood in his mouth. When it was all the way inside him he had to stop. Some switch flicked off. He had the feeling he was waiting for something. He was waiting he supposed for the wherewithal to do what he did next, which was rest his hand against his belly and palpate around all the grist and organs until he felt the shadow shape of the thing that wasn’t supposed to be there and burst into tears.
“Oh, Hawk — "
“You said you wouldn’t touch me.”
“But — ”
“Beej, you said.”
“Are you alright?”
“I said no, my god, will you stop asking?”
“Does it feel — ”
It felt more than feel. It was the only thing he could feel. “I think I want to die,” he said. “Good. Yes.”
B.J. sat next to him in the bed. This had not been negotiated. “You look,” he started, but then he had to stop.
“Ten percent more debauched than usual?”
B.J. laughed. “Maybe twenty-five.”
Every infinitesimal shift of his body — every breath, every quick hummingbird heartbeat — moved something and kept that bell ringing inside. Everything fizzled and buzzed. He felt like a human alkaseltzer. He felt not entirely real. The seam that went up his spine was tearing open, tearing him open. And B.J., god damn him, said, “Go again. Slow — again. You can do it.”
“I can’t.”
“I bet you can.”
“I wouldn’t take those odds.”
“I think you underestimate yourself.”
Hawkeye had never been one to reject an appeal to his competitiveness. But who was he even competing with? Peg?
“I would give it to you slow,” B.J. said. “Again and again. I bet you could take it if it was me.”
“I wish it was you.”
“I know.”
“It’s not — you’d be warm,” Hawkeye said. “Your hands would be on me.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to touch you.”
“Not with this cheap approximation!”
“Hey,” B.J. said, “I’ll have you know it cost a pretty penny. It’s real jade.”
His own heart was running away in his ears. Fleeing out of his chest cavity in search of greener pastures. He did as B.J. said. This time it went a great deal easier. His jaw went creaking open like a rusted hinge and a sound came out that he didn’t recognize. “Good,” B.J. said. He had put the soothing little bedside tone in his voice. “Again.”
“After this I’ll probably be able to survive any kind of torture the Communists throw at me,” Hawkeye said. But he did as he was told. That time the flick of the spark wheel caught to everything inside and started it going in raw blue flame, so after that he really was done. All that smooth stone against all the tender places. He stroked himself once, then twice, then B.J.’s eyes met his, and his thumb skated over Hawkeye’s hip. That was it. Everything turned white, even the noise roaring in his ears. Everything washed clean. He was carried aloft in the floodwaters and they took a long time, maybe the longest time he could remember, to subside again. When he came around, he was being kissed on the top of the head.
“You dirty cheater.” His voice was all breath. “Kissing a man while he’s down.”
He could feel B.J. shaking or it was himself shaking so hard it was contagious. “You alright?” B.J. asked him.
“I’ll be better when you tell me what was in this for me to begin with.”
“That wasn’t enough? I thought you were never going to stop coming and I’d have to get a doctor.”
“You rat.”
“Well, you give me mine back and I’ll show you yours.”
It didn’t feel exactly good, taking it out (not that it had felt exactly good going in), except sometimes when it stretched the deepest and when the cool tip of it slipped over the most secret places. In the rough blankets beside him it looked like a kind of precious ritual object. He couldn’t quite believe where it had just come from and what he’d just done with it, but the emptiness ached.
“You really liked that,” B.J. said kind of wonderingly.
“I like getting fucked,” Hawkeye told him. “Anyone could tell you that.”
“You do that for just anyone?”
Hawkeye sighed, stretching his stiff legs. “You’d make me say? Come on, the anticipation is killing me.”
“I’m nervous.”
“B.J…. sometimes I can’t believe you. What is it?”
It was simple and perfect at the end of the day, like all the best gifts. B.J. unbuttoned the fly of those terrible olive drabs and took the real thing out. It was pink and sweet. Hard, shining. Very beautiful, like a secret jewel. The jade approximation did it no justice. He let Hawkeye lean on his shoulder and watch while he fucked his lubed fist, kiss his neck and shoulder, eventually thumb a little semen off his clavicle and taste it, but by that time it was all over, though something else about it had just begun, and they were draped over each other in the tiny bed like duvet covers or vampire bats, listening to one another’s heartbeats finally slow down.
--
“Do you have feelings for me,” said B.J. sadly.
“I have at least one feeling for you,” Hawkeye told him, curling into his chest. Outside the special silence of the hours before dawn. “The feeling is that my bum hurts.”
“Hawk, come on.”
“Why would I tell you when you asked me in that tone of voice?”
“What tone of voice?”
“Like you didn’t want to know!”
“I do want to know! Otherwise why would I ask you?”
“I think you’re afraid.”
“So are you.”
“Hmm. Touche.”
He walked his fingers over B.J.’s hairy shoulder toward his chest. They had cheated a little on the no clothes thing. “What are you afraid of,” B.J. said.
“What do you think?”
B.J. turned toward him, so that their noses touched. Hawkeye’s heart moved. “Being forgotten,” B.J. said.
“That’s a standard human fear.”
“But it’s yours especially.”
Hawkeye nodded. “It’s mine especially. I knew you could be observant when you’re trying.”
“Why?”
“It seems to happen to me a lot.”
“How could it?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“I mean it.” B.J. turned his face to the tent roof, watching the wind ripple in the fabric. His arm went tighter around Hawkeye’s shoulders, holding him closer. “How could anybody — I just don’t know.”
This was really not a good conversation to be having if he wanted to walk out of this tent again on his own two feet. Already it was a near thing. “You should probably get some sleep before you’re due in post-op,” Hawkeye said. “Let me psychoanalyze myself for a change.”
B.J.’s eyes were closed. “You didn’t ask me mine,” he said.
“Your what?”
“My special standard human fear.”
“Because I know what it is.”
“Hmm,” said B.J. “I don’t know if you do.”
Then he was asleep. For another hour, while the light blew into the sky and began to filter in shades of gray and blue between the tent flaps, Hawkeye just lay there feeling him breathe. Gathered it all up and put it into the loose little place by his heart with all the other scraps. Inasmuch as it would never be enough, it was close. Someday he could cobble it together part by part, like Doctor Frankenstein, into some monstrous thing that almost worked like love was supposed to.
---
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