hilton, bahrain

It’s late.
My back burns.
Something’s askew in my spine. I don’t know what, but it’s askew. A disc maybe. A disc protruding pinching a nerve. A muscle strained.
I don’t know.
I’ve been in this pain for two months.
Yesterday I thought I might have recovered, but I was wrong.
I woke up and my back burned. Burned up along my spine, running hot and dull and achy and when I turn my neck something pops and creaks.
Something is always going wrong.
Inevitably.
A big zit on my cheek.
Deep and bulbous and hurting. Can’t find a head to lance, so it remains there until my body consumes it.
An ingrown hair on my testicles.
Another bad hair day.
Starched shirts collapsing around my neck with sweat.
An ulcer steaming inside my stomach.
Unyielding bowl movements.
A torn meniscus hobbling.
Stubbed toe engorged with black blood.
Waking up with a sty.
Huddling in the corner of the USS Pearl Harbor as mononucleosis abrades my throat.
The waxy build-up of dirt and sebum on my “t-zone”.
Stretch marks.
Wrinkles forging their indifferent trails along my forehead.
Pores widening.
Screaming.
Birthmarks.
Liver spots—I’m getting old.
The shotgun blast of exploded melanin on my nose.

So I take my allotted VA narcotics and crack a Coke Zero.

And then I remember being in Bahrain.

View Larger Map

Being in Bahrain alone.
Medi-vac’d off the USS Pearl Harbor.

I’m in the gift store of the Hilton, Bahrain and I buy a Monte Cristo cigar. Take it to my face and inhale. Robusto, dark and reminds me of my grandpa.
It is six inches long and still supple despite its long journey from Cuba.
I began smoking cigars when I was sixteen. I never inhale, but puff, puff and let the blue smoke rise like the connoisseurs suggest. I hold it with a semi-cupped hand, as opposed to how I hold a cigarette; between my forefinger and middle. An assortment of Arabs and Europeans pass me, staring.
A United States Marine alone in the Hilton, Bahrain.
A Sunni Arab floats by silently in his white cloak and black checkered headdress.
I walk to the pool. 102 degrees outside. I sit and look at the pool. Unearthly aqua-marine in this white-hot sun.
I hear a German tourist bark something to his companion.
I think of Hitler and Goebels and Rommel.
Rommel wasn’t that bad—right?
Just a soldier like me.
Walk through the tiny streets and hear the daily Islamic prayers on a loudspeaker.
It is very unnerving.
And I know why.
Finding my way to a British-themed bar later that night, I buy several beers. Soccer is playing on the television and I look at the screen holding my beer and although I appear attentive I have no clue on what is going on.

I spend the money the military has given me on more beer and a pack of Marlboro's that are counterfeits and smoke fine but taste like cow shit.

But I smoke them and smile and drink.
A middle-aged woman nuzzles up to me and talks about nothing and I respond with eager glee.

She tells me she’s in the Air Force and I think about what a bunch of civilians in uniform the Air Force actually is, but I keep that to myself.
I dance with the middle-aged women.
Dancing an awkward boy dance and I don’t care who’s watching and the alcohol runs pretty deep thick in my blood.
She looks too tired for being middle-aged.
She introduces me to her friend: a large man with arms so wide they made taught his short sleeved shirt.
He’s a C-130 pilot in the Air Force. He’s easy with his words. I look at him while’s he’s on the dance floor. I know he is a man and I am really only a boy and as much as I try to believe being a US Marine automatically garners the title of “man”, I know I’m not.
I think I kiss the middle-aged woman.
I do not bring her back to the Hilton, Bahrain and do the things I had hoped.
I contemplate calling upon one of the many European whores that saturate the Hilton, Bahrain and the various themed bars. But I’ve only got one-hundred and fifty dollars and I have two days left in this desert. I take a cold shower and sleep.
The next night I go to a Brazilian-themed bar. A large green flag with a floating globe hangs above the dance floor and the bar is full of Britons and Germans. They wear simple polo’s and deep cordovan slip-on shoes.
I buy beer and sit in a corner and look around.
It gets late, around 10pm ,and the whores miraculously appear in the Brazilian-themed bar like water on litmus paper.
Again I ponder using their services.
I look at them without letting them know I am looking at them, trying to see some underlying sadness that I’ve observed in so many television shows in regards to prostitution.
I find none.
Just handsome European faces waiting for me or some Briton or German to use their service. No empathy wanted.
A handsome Russian with empty blue eyes and a slender bird-like body saunters near me and I get shy and try not to look at her empty blue eyes, but I can’t help it.
I think of Modigliani.
The women he painted with their vacant stares.
Their indifference.
Beauty.
The handsome Russian with empty blue eyes sips a beer for twenty minutes until a short Arab walks by in his white gown and black checkered headdress.
He floats.
They converse and walk out together holding hands smiling. I finish my beer and walk back to the Hilton, Bahrain.
I draw a scalding hot bath.
I put my foot in first and retract it quickly.
Too damn hot.
I let it cool down.
My foot goes back in and absorbs the warmth.
I enter in sections.
Feet.
Calves.
Ass.
Penis.
Stomach. And then recline into the heat.
I don’t remember what I thought about soaking in that bath in the Hilton, Bahrain, but I’m sure it revolved around the fact that I had recently traversed the world on the USS Pearl Harbor and slept in the jungles of Kenya; patrolling the Somalia border for over a month.
But most probably I was thinking about how I would act if I actually went to War in Iraq or if it all was just soldierly speculation and rumor.
I dismissed that thought though; America fighting a War with troops on the ground and firefights and ambushes and confirmed kills.
I was a naïve kid back then. Believed in world peace.
After the bath I spread out on the bed naked and smoked another Monte Cristo cigar in my room at the Hilton, Bahrain.
It felt very good to be alive.