Brief Encounters with the Enemy by Said Sayrafiezadeh

Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh [Sayrafiezadeh, Said]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9359-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-08-13T04:00:00+00:00

The truth was that none of us had joined for the right reasons. I might have thought I had in the very beginning, when I’d gone to the Career Center to sign the papers and take the physical and get the brochure that promised a “life-altering experience” and showed half a dozen young men in uniform standing on a beach and looking like they were having the time of their lives. It was easy to delude myself because everyone was congratulating me for living up to my ideals. Who would want to argue with that? There were three hundred people at my going-away party at work, chanting, “Luke! Luke! Luke! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” There were people there who had never said a word to me, who had never so much as looked at me in the hallway, including the managing director. Now they were acting like they’d known my name all along, like I was a movie star making a guest appearance at their company. All the guys were shaking my hand, and all the girls were kissing my cheek. The managing director gave an impromptu speech about “men like Luke,” and about how my job would be there when I got back in a year, because that was company policy. It was the most boring job in the world, and I didn’t want it to still be there when I got back. I was sure that something miraculous was going to happen to change my situation and make me into someone new. All I did was sit in a cubicle eight hours a day, five days a week, staring at a computer as I filled in the little empty blocks on a spreadsheet. Click, drag, drop. Click, drag, drop. Half the time there wasn’t anything to do, and I would sit there staring at the blank screen, pretending that I was working and wishing I could go online and look at porn. Click, drag, drop. This is what happens when you have an associate’s degree.

But at my going-away party, I soaked up the applause. I thanked the managing director for all his support. I thanked everyone for coming. They stood around smiling and waiting for me to say something special, something profound. Three hundred people staring at me with my face covered in strawberry lipstick. Then someone in the back yelled, “Shoot some of those motherfuckers for me, Luke!” That broke the ice and made everyone laugh, and we sliced up the big red-white-and-blue cake they had all chipped in for.

It wasn’t until the moment when we started up that hill that I understood I’d come here for all the wrong reasons. Vanity and pride topped the list. Girls too—if I was being completely honest. In other words, ideals were very low. Staring at a hilltop that was getting closer and closer, I would have traded all of it never to have to see what was on the other side.

When we got to the top, the sergeant at our rear,

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