Acceptable Loss by Kregg P. Jorgenson

Author:Kregg P. Jorgenson [Jorgenson, Kregg P. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-43258-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I knew even less of personal relationships and love than I knew of the war. Any experience I had came from high-school crushes and youthful emotional romances. My sexual experiences were limited as well, and prior to arriving in Vietnam I had been a virgin in various senses of the word. My first encounter with a prostitute in Saigon, when Rodriguez and the veteran team leader checked me out of the hospital, was clumsy, hurried, and awkward. I fumbled with a condom so long that the woman finally took it out of the package and deftly put it on me. Afterward, the woman swore I was “Numbah one good-time lover,” and lying there in the dark, I knew I had lost more than my virginity. I’d lost an opportunity for the first time to mean something special, and it should have been. I wanted to hug her and hold her close. But to her it was just business.

In many ways I was old fashioned, the spitting image of the naive kid down the block, too filled with idealism to believe that love or war would be anything less than romantic and daring. As with the war, I was in love with being in love and didn’t know the first damn thing about it.

My relationship with my girlfriend during my senior year of high school was an innocent, maybe naive, relationship. We kissed a great deal, said the right things, and believed it was something special. Then, maybe it was. Now, was another matter.

I was becoming jaded while learning how to cope and survive. I wanted to be closer to my girlfriend, but knew there was an emotional distance building between us. I wasn’t writing her or even my family as much as I should have because I was finding that I didn’t know how to best say what was happening to me.

Honey,

So how’s school? Are you going to homecoming? Oh by the way, I killed seven people earlier this week. Blew their shit away. Slept with a hooker, too, a real pro. I’m becoming somewhat of a pro, too, at loading bent and burnt corpses into body bags. Sometimes you have to bend rigid arms or legs to get them to fit in the bags. But don’t worry, I’m still the same guy I was before.

Love

Kregg.

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