Late Night Publishing      Explicit, Erotic Books & Stories      

Viet Nam wasn’t what he expected, and he’d just thought it sucked during the Crucible test back on the island; the heat and humidly made South Carolina a destination resort in comparison to the steam room he found himself in now. Of course, at least he could get all the grass he wanted here, everybody had it and the supplies never dwindled.

It had been the beginning of the sixties but no one knew it yet, nor that it would be a milestone in American social consciousness. As far as the old man’s home town went, the sixties were over before they arrived, replaced by John Travolta dancing around in his cool white lounge jacket and matching pants.

He’d been in-country long enough to lose the FNG label, but he had so many days and a wake-up left to go that he was sure that the flight home wouldn’t have him onboard except as part of the cargo, stuffed in a black body-bag. As his buddy Frank often said, “Better to just expect the worst.”  For Frank, his expectations had been met shortly after he predicted them.

He didn’t know what time it was, dark was as close as he could figure it as he hunkered down in his hole. At least at night, you could usually manage to avoid one of the Goddamn mines that either Charlie had planted or had been left by some other Uncle Sam squad. Just keep low, smoke your weed, and forget about the real world for a while, he told himself as he listened for Charlie.

His former girlfriend, and once you climb on board for your tour, it was always a former girlfriend… if she had suggested to him that he’d be using drugs eight months later, he would have thought she was nuts. Now, he wondered why they simply didn’t just issue them as part of your rations. Nobody gave a shit, not even the officers.

Like most of the guys in his squad, his normal state was to be pissed off. It didn’t matter what you were pissed off about, and if you weren’t… some bullshit directive would get posted at base camp and then you could get on with being mad about it.

Tonight, the teenager that even before the military, had mostly given up on being an old man, was pissed about his cock. The conventional wisdom was that it was the shit they put in your rations that kept you from getting it up. In high school, before he’d dropped out, he thought all the crap about saltpeter was a myth. He was certain of the truth now, since he’d failed to get an erection for at least a week now, and maybe two. Time passes slowly minute to minute, but damn, somehow the weeks seemed to fly. He knew that counting down the days didn’t help but talking about it with the latest unlucky bastard to arrive was about as much fun as you could get without having your dick up some little cunt.