The Name on My Wrist

The room is dark and I can feel his awkwardness like a loaded gun between us. I haven't known him long but he's just the way I like them -- younger than me and blonde. He's one of the guys I've come here with this weekend, at this house along the beach, and he's so full of energy, like I used to be. He reminds me of someone I used to know, someone I swore I'd never forget.

He's in his twenties and out among our friends he's all talk but in here I feel him tremble beneath me -- I touch him, kiss him, lay him back to the bed like I've done with dozens of boys before, whispering it'll be okay, and I know he's just as nervous as I once was, years ago when Don breathed against my neck for the first time, told me he loved me, it'd be okay. I don't say the word love now, this isn't that, it's nothing like that. I don't even remember this guy's name.

When he fumbles with his jeans, he catches a glimpse of the bracelet I wear around my left wrist and laughs anxiously. "This won't be too much for you, will it?" he asks. I pull back, not sure what he means. He points at my wrist. "That one of those med things?"

It's a POW-MIA bracelet, I explain. Means I lost someone in the war. Means someone I loved never made it home. Pvt. Donald L. Jones. I trace the name with my finger and for the first time in a long while, I really see the bracelet -- I've worn it so long, I barely feel it anymore, it's become a part of me, like a wedding band or a cross around my neck. But now I squint in the darkness and see the engraved letters, I see the boy behind those words. Nineteen and amazing. Invincible. Mine.

Another nervous laugh. "Just so you don't have a heart condition," he says. He reaches for me but the moment's lost, I'm lost, back to a time when I was younger and only had one man, one love, who was everything I ever wanted a boy to be.

****

I tell him I'll be right back but it's a lie. The bracelet burns my wrist, the name etched through the silver and onto my skin, the only man I've ever wanted, the only one I can never have. I stand on the porch and listen to the rumbling surf, the sounds from the house behind me, the laughter, the fun. I stare at the metal, dull by the moonlight. I stare at the name.

It's aluminum alloy, the same thing his dog tags were made from. I remember the way those tags felt in my hands, smooth and warmed by his skin. I remember the way they would fall into the hollow of my throat when he lay above me. I remember the way I pressed them to his chest the last time I kissed him goodbye.

They were never found.

All I have of him is this bracelet and the memories, and his field jacket with a peace sign I drew on the back in thick black marker. It hangs in the attic, wrapped in an old dry cleaning bag that's grown thin with age, and I haven't seen it in years. When the war took him, I wore that jacket and buried myself in school, went to college to avoid the draft, cheered when our boys came home. I give money to vets, haunted, broken men in wheelchairs on the street. I wear this bracelet. I laugh when the young guys I pick up, guys like the one waiting upstairs for me to return, talk about freedom and rights because what the hell do they know? Nothing, nothing at all -- they're ignorant of everything we've lost along the way to get where we are today. They have no idea, they never knew him. Pvt. Donald L. Jones.

****

I run my fingers over the words again to remind myself that they belong to a real boy who once loved me back, years ago, before all the other boys I've had along the way, all the nights spent with strangers, all the days waking alone and telling myself that this was what I wanted, when all I ever wanted was him.

It was the summer of love when I last saw him, years ago now, a different era, a different war. I was idealistic and in love and wore my peace sign with pride on the back of his field jacket. Don thought that was cute, me drawing that sign. He saw it and smiled his slow, easy smile, laughed his deep, throaty laugh, called me his baby boy and held me tight. I was only seventeen, he'd say. Another year and I might get drafted, too, you never knew.

He had unruly hair that begged for a comb but the army took that, shaved it off, and it grew back in defiant blonde spikes that I loved to run my fingers through just to make them stand up on end. Champagne eyes, so light, so alive, so full of love whenever he looked at me. I still remember the way his tears shone in those eyes, faceted like diamonds, when he was leaving for basic training and he held me, kissed me goodbye, promised he'd love me forever. We huddled together in his garage before his parents came out to start the car, me in his arms in the darkness. Outside it was sweltering, not yet seven in the morning and we were both already sticky with sweat, and when we kissed, his tears burned my cheeks.

When he came back from basic, he seemed to be a different boy, stronger, self-assured, closed. I was afraid of him almost, afraid to touch him, to love him. In his letters he had written out how much he missed me, how much he loved me, how much he wanted to be with me forever but I couldn't put those words to the stoic boy in the starched uniform who sat rimrod straight at his parents' dining room table and smiled at me over the candied yams.

It wasn't until we managed to get a few minutes to ourselves that I could finally see my lover beneath the soldier's guise. His mother was in the kitchen, his father and sister in the living room listening to the radio, and he took my hand, led me up to his bedroom, didn't turn on the light as he locked the door behind us. Then his hands touched my shoulders, my arms, my hands -- he pressed his body against mine and whispered he loved me, he had missed me so bad. When he kissed the back of my neck I turned into his embrace and his lips found mine, cutting off any reply I might have had.

****

"I love you," I said as we lay together, naked, beneath the thin sheet on his bed. The room was still dark, the sound of the radio drifting up the stairs and under the closed door and into his room, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard and his sister's pretty voice singing along with them. He was my first, I'll never forget him. "I'll love you forever," I swore.

"They're sending us to the front in two weeks," he whispered to me. I didn't want to think about that so I frowned and didn't reply. In the soft summer night, his arms around me so strong, so warm, he kissed my neck and whispered that he was afraid.

Me too.

"I'm going to lose you," I said. No, he promised. "You'll forget me." Never. "You're going to die," and I choked back a sob because I was only seventeen years old and the one man I had ever loved was going off to fight in a war I didn't understand, and he was leaving me behind. Another year and I might be called upon to join him, if my education request didn't go through. "This is stupid," I told him. He nodded, agreed with me, and when I started to cry he let me, held me tight and called me his baby and told me it'd be okay, everything would be alright.

Only it wasn't, and I wanted to run away, the both of us. I hated the Army and the world and everyone in it who wanted to take him away from me. I can barely remember being that young once, that passionate. "Don't be like that," he told me, kissing away my tears. "It's almost over anyway, I'll be back before you know it."

****

There are two lines on the bracelet. His name and rank on the first, and on the second USA followed by a date, then SVN. That's where he was when his chopper went down, South Vietnam. His mom called the day they brought the yellow envelope to the house, told me over the phone he was gone. Gone. Shot down. I'm sorry, James, so sorry --

Me too. Oh God, me too.

I sat with her when she opened the envelope. All these years later I can still remember the smell of her gardenia perfume and the faint scent of peaches, the last of the season, roasting into a pie in the oven. I'm seventeen again and so in love with a boy I've just been told is gone. My heart is like an open wound in my chest, it aches and I tell myself it'll never heal.

I was right -- it never has.

She took out the thin telegram -- his life reduced to one page, all that was left. Silent tears stained her cheeks as she read it. Then she pressed a hand to her mouth and handed me the telegram. I didn't want to take it. I didn't want to read the words, his name. I didn't want to make it real.

****

I don't pack, don't say goodbye, just slip off the porch and into the rental car and onto the road, north. His name gleams from my wrist with each passing car and I know I'm not going to go back to that room, that guy in my bed, waiting for me. I can't. There's no way he can be all that I lost, all that I've been looking for since.

Pvt. Donald L. Jones. His name in silver on my wrist. And below that, in the middle, the date he fell out of the sky, 08-23-69, engraved on my heart forever.

THE END