M1 Combat Helmet

Clyde,

The inside of my M1 combat helmet is scratched with the name of someone I don't know.  I can tell the object used to carve the name was a regulation Ka-bar, by the sharpness of the letters, and the many attempts it took to scratch the surface with even a superficial stroke.

BOY

When I showed it to Adam, he ran his finger over the inside of the helmet - the index finger - and then put it in his mouth thoughtfully.

"I suppose it could be heroin," he said, his voice dreamlike.  "Although that particular vernacular might post-date this beauty."

"Mine would say Baby," I told him, and he choked on a laugh tight in his throat while he cleared it of a longing he never specified.

"Ah.  No, Evelyn, I think not.  In fact, it's highly likely yours would still read 'Boy.'  But then, I suppose in your case, the two are nearly the same word."

"Bonnie says the song called Boy is about you," I remind him, and his cheeks redden slightly, and he flusters.

"Mhm.  Well.  Ahem.  As to that.  Yes.  But in that respect, it is referencing heroin."

"Well, mine would say Baby," I tell him, and he sets the helmet on the bed, where it makes a depression in the floral sheet.  He stretches his body out beside it, and tucks his hands behind his head.

"And why is that?"

"Because I'm a girl," I remind him, my eyebrow arching high and singular.  "When I'm a soldier especially.  I'm not a boy until I quit and go AWOL."

He smiles with his eyes closed.

"And this girl, what is her name?"

"Baby," I remind him.  "But it's when my hair is green.  Or I'm wearing this all the time, I can't tell."

"She's beautiful, your green-haired dragon," he reminds me.  "I don't imagine your unit minds calling you that."

I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly alone in a corner at a dance where no one expected me to be, or even know to show my face.

"You don't know how weird it is to be never looked at like that, and then all of a sudden looked at like that all the time by you."

Adam's smile opens to a laugh, and I scowl at him and retreat to the other side of the bed, the helmet squarely between us like the condoms he would've always tossed aside with disdain if I ever dared to bring him one.

"Oh, don't I?" he asks.  He approaches me at our imaginary dance.  My dress doesn't fit the right way, and my shoes are white and somehow juvenile.  I consider for a quick moment biting him on the hand he extends to make him go away, but I don't.

"There's just things you can't say," I tell him in a whisper.  "Not when you look that...ridiculous."