I'm sure it was because he looked so much like Chad. The Kadena Officers Club was playing a beach volleyball match with the sailors from down at the U.S. Naval base in Naha. It was a hot day on the sandpit by the officers club pool, the beer was flowing steadily, and all of the guys were playing skins. There was more young, cut musculature per square yard on that square of sand than on a Chippendales' stage. The officers were losing badly, but we were all having a good time of it.
I wasn't actually an officer, but I was living on the Kadena Air Force base and was of officer equivalent. I had recently arrived as a consular affairs officer in Naha and the airbase was where our housing compound was located, just inside Gate 1, overlooking the East China Sea, in an enclave that included the Voice of America staff and a contingency of CIA spooks.
This was meant as a rest assignment for me, and after two years in Baghdad, I certainly needed the rest. My experience in Iraq had devastated me—not least because of the loss of Chad. I had never known what my preferences were before I met Chad, who was temporarily filling in as a Marine guard at the American embassy in the Green Zone, which we not-so-fondly called the "bubble," before he deployed in the field. Before I got there I had thought I was just asexual and turned on completely by the job.
I didn't want to be anything else, really, latently or otherwise. I was trying to do my best for everyone involved and not make waves or bring emotions into anything here, and that just wasn't possible in Iraq. And my wandering eye and fantasies were beginning to obsess me. So many young, fit men around me. I'd thought as little as I could of sexuality before arriving in Iraq—and whenever I came close to thinking of my preferences, I'd quickly sublimated them. I'd been born into a wealthy family with a pathway to position and riches already scheduled for me. Having a "thing" for other men, consummated or not, simply was not on the agenda. It was driving me mad to keep it off my agenda in the Baghdad bubble, though.
I'd had a meltdown at my desk late one night and was sitting there, looking at a loaded handgun, when Chad came through on a lockdown checkout.
He'd taken the gun immediately, of course, and got me a glass of water and held me until I stopped quaking and crying. He'd told me to hold tight when I'd calmed down until he could finish his rounds, which were almost done. He offered to take me back to my own quarters in the compound and fix me coffee or something and listen to me rant, if that's what I wanted. I didn't want the coffee. I wanted Scotch instead, and Chad joined me. My ranting got quite personal—and so did Chad. And before I knew it I was lying on my back on my bed, with my head hanging over the side and Chad suspended over me on his knees, looking lovingly down into my eyes and his hands gripping my knees, holding my legs open and slowly working my legs back and forth to the rhythm of the fuck, while his cock carefully examined several inches of my virginal channel.
He was gentle with me—at least until we both got lost in the moment. I told him I was willing, but completely inexperienced, and he prepared me well and long until I was in a frenzy of want and grasping that long cock of his with both hands and trying to draw him into me. When he did enter me, it was only to the depth of the edge of his glans at first, holding there as I gulped and gasped and clutched at him. Kissing me, telling me it would be OK, that I could take it, that we'd go slowly.
Then he slowly gave me two more inches, and I was panting and groaning. He asked me if we should stop there. I begged him not to stop, but to put me to the sword, swiftly, and take me out of my virginal frustration. But he just smiled at me and lowered his lips to mine—and gave me a couple of more inches of the cock. He was rubbing across something inside me that sent off fireworks and made me come—my prostate, he said. I started to sob my disappointment that it was over and apologizing profusely that I hadn't stayed with him. He laughed and said it was far from over. Another couple of inches, and I could feel my channel stretching with his throbbing need, and I rested my heels on his calves.
He held there, momentarily, throbbing inside me. And then deep in, that last inch or more, and sliding out, with me clutching at him, pleading, because I thought he was leaving me. But he wasn't. Back in and then out, back in and out, repeating, faster—and then faster yet, establishing a rhythm, both of us losing all control and letting nature take over. I engorged again, and the muscles of my channel walls undulated over his throbbing cock. I rubbed my heels up and down his calves in the rhythm of the fuck, wanting to be part of the rhythm, digging my fingers into the bulging muscles of his back, throwing my head back and crying out to the ceiling. As we both came, almost in unison.
He didn't pull out of me immediately. We lay there, arms entwined, whispering to each other. No, he didn't hurt me, he released me, I assured him. Kissing. Me exploring his virile young, well-muscled, hard Marine's body with my hands and then my tongue. Hearing the intake of his breath as my lips closed over the head of his cock. Him asking again if he'd hurt me, if I was sore. Me lying and saying I wasn't, begging him to fuck me again. Him complying, young and virile and ready to go again almost immediately.
In the next couple of weeks, we spent every moment we could get together on my bed, with Chad teaching me how well a hard-bodied young man could make love to another man and both of us pushing the reality of where we were and what was to become out of our minds.
Chad saved my sanity, but I lost Chad. When he deployed, he was killed by a roadside bomb on his first sortie beyond the protecting walls of the Green Zone. What a waste of superb body and mind. I mourned Chad, but I didn't fall apart as I almost had done before he saved me. In the short time I'd known him, Chad had given me strength and purpose I didn't have before—and once having engaged in sex with another man, there was no pretending it hadn't happened, no going back. But, perhaps more important, I felt it would be a betrayal of what Chad had done for me to sink to the depths of frustration and despair again.
I did, though, turn down an offer for an extension and asked for a less-taxing posting for my next one. Can't get much less taxing than the consulate in Naha, Okinawa—or at least I thought so at the time.
There were a lot of young sailors across the volleyball net that afternoon at the Kadena Officers Club who could remind me of Chad. Handsome young men at the height of physical conditioning, both proud and able to serve. There was something about this one guy, though—his easy sense of humor or his smile or something—that singled him out. And as if he knew there was this mystical connection, he was doing a lot of his smiling for me. That didn't stop him from spiking the ball down my throat a couple of times, though.
I found out after the game was over and we were all draped over the patio chairs next to the pool—when we weren't diving into the pool to cool ourselves off—and drinking beer that his name was Ron Rivelle, and that he was part of the crew left with a destroyer receiving some upgrades in Naha port. He was sitting near me, and I overheard him saying he'd have a lot of time on his hands, as they were quite lenient with leave while the ship was being outfitted. There were far more sailors assigned to the ship while it was in port than were needed to pull security, which was the only duty required.
"Ah, security duty," I thought—and that made me think back on Chad and how we had met.
"Do they have a USO facility down at the port?" I asked, throwing the question out to the group the sailor was sitting with rather than to him specifically.
"No, they don't," the beautiful young, dark-haired man said as he turned his flashing dark eyes on me. "My name's Ron, by the way. Ron Rivelle. You with the Air Force? Do you fly?"
