Sidney and Adelaide

This time of year I think of the hot weather in Sidney Australia -- that and of a woman that I spent a few forgetful hours with.  God, it was so long ago but, in my mind seems only a few days ago.

We met in a bar the name of which I can't even begin to remember, we both were looking for a few hours of mindlessness, a few hours to forget about the killing, the dying, and the sound of bullets snapping by your ears.  I wasn't expecting nurses to be in the thick of it, I mean, I knew they were in the hospitals and in the MUST units and had even heard of a few of them having been captured and hurt and a few killed.  This was the first time I'd ever actually run into a live one, a "Combat Nurse," as I teased her.  I had seen and been around a lot of Combat Medics, but "The Combat Nurse," I teased her, was as rare as a Unicorn.  She had a beautiful laugh, too.

She didn't have any companion, and nothing to do so we had a drink and that drink became two and those two became more as we sat and talked and got wasted.  We became quick buddies and hit a few more bars when the bartender at the one refused to serve us any more.  I vaguely remember ganging up with her and with a couple of Ozzies (Aussie in Australian), on another poor bartender, tossing him out of his own pub.  I don't remember much more than that.  Several hours later we woke up in bed, I don't know if it was my room or hers and at the time, didn't much care.  I'd only brought  a few sets of clean underwear, another set of cammos and toiletries so it didn't matter where I was, if they stayed behind, it wouldn't be any big loss, I'd get new ones when I got back anyway.

I came awake all at once, a body lying across my chest, and I shoved it off me in disgust.  In my half-numb brain, I thought it was a dead body.  She shrieked and scrabbled around looking for her weapon, I assume.  It took a few seconds, but we both finally came to our senses.  We were both in our birthday suits, so I assumed that we'd gotten very familiar with each other and I smiled at her as some of last night came back.

"Hey, good-looking," I smiled. 

She gave me a "hung-over with my head splitting" smile back, and sat back on the bare wooden floor of the old GI R&R bungalow, holding her head in her hands.  Her feet -- very pretty feet -- splayed apart giving me a clear view all the way to her hairy center. She looked up at me and saw the direction of my eyes and just shook her head, dropping it back into her hands.

"God," she grunted, "do I look as bad as I feel?"

"Worse," I smiled agreeably.

I rolled over and sat on the edge of the bed.  I started to get up but, as the world spun around me a couple of times, I decided that sitting might be better.  I could still reach her from there, though, so I just reached over and took her hands, braced my feet against hers and pulled her up on her feet toward me.  She lost her balance and fell into me, knocking us both backward onto the bed.  She lay across my chest and simply made herself comfortable there, it was less taxing than trying to fight the banging in our heads.

I grinned at her and told her I was damned if I could remember her name.  She said that right now she didn't even want to use her brain because of her head, that she'd tell me when it started working again.  I laughed in spite of my head and said that I'd just call her Sidney until then, it was the city name and I liked it.  She nodded and said okay, as she looked at me like I was some kind of a dumb-ass.  I could literally see her head pounding, the veins in her temples looking like a cartoon water hose, the drops passing through and expanding it and shrinking as the drop passed.  She nodded without looking at me, and said that she'd just call me Adelaide.  I burst out laughing, stopping abruptly as my head pounded back at me.  It felt like a Chinese gong and rang just as loud.  She gave a little snorting giggle.

"At'samatter, Adelaide, head hurt?" she raised up on her elbow, planting it painfully on my right breast.  I, however, was a Ranger, I was tough, I let it hurt and put my hands comfortably behind my head. 

"By the way, did I do you any good last night?" she continued. 

I tried to remember last night but all I could remember was the cops busting up our party and the three Ozzie women and four or five Ozzie GI's with us.  The bartender had called the cops evidently, but past their arrival was a dark alcoholic hole that I couldn't see into.

"I can't remember shit after we ran that poor bartender out," she mumbled.

"I don't know," I shrugged, raising a painful wrinkle from her sharp little elbow.

"Must'a did sump'n," she ran a finger from my forehead, down the bridge of my nose and flipped my lips a couple of times.

I looked at her trying hard to remember, but I finally just shrugged my shoulders and told her I had no recollection of us doing anything.  She was plain as an adobe brick with clean regular features, but when she smiled at me, it seemed as if he sun had broken through the monsoon, she had a beautiful smile.

"We must have," she said matter-of-factly, "my cunt's all full'a goop."

"Then I guess we did," I smiled, "hope you enjoyed it."

"Maybe I did and maybe I didn't," she half-grinned, "first time I did something like that and don't remember."

She grabbed my lower lip and pulled it down baring my lower gum and the inside lip.  I just let her play.  She pulled herself up and kissed the exposed inside of my lip --  gently, sweetly and let it go, her lips still pressed to the spot.  It felt as if I had a face-sized dip in there.  She finally pulled back, took her elbow off my chest and lay her head on my shoulder.

"Gawd, it hurts," she grabbed her head again, then turned to look at me, "what the fuck are you doing here?" she had this wondering look in her eyes.  I started to answer, but she interrupted, "what the fuck is such a sweet and gentle guy like you doing in this fucking insanity!?" she demanded.

"And just what makes you think that I'm a gentle guy?"  I remember that it kind of ticked me off to be called "sweet and gentle."

"Ha!" the single syllable burst out of her mouth, then she did start laughing rolling onto her back, her laugh sounding almost hysterically insane.

"This is insane," she burbled, "so totally fucking insane!!!"

For an answer, I pulled my arm out from under her head and pushed her under me in spite of the gongs reverberating in my head.  I wanted to strangle her just to stop her laughter, but I'd already killed too much and would soon be killing more, so instead I just kissed her, quieting her sounds with my tongue.  She smiled as I rolled on top of her.

"You gonna put more of your goop in me?" she teased.

I said nothing as I spread her lower lips open and entered her, ramming into her as hard as I could.  She groaned with mixture of pleasure and something else that I refused to understand at the time.  We lost ourselves for a few minutes, her cries of pleasure and my ruttish grunts the only sounds we made.  A few minutes later, she lay back and let me spend myself in her feminine softness.  Her soft, capable hands caressed my back and she wept -- quietly and unobtrusively kissing my shoulder gently.

I finished noisily, realizing that she was weeping.  I guess I knew why, because I don't remember asking why she cried, I just held her and whispered that it was all right, that it would all end one day and take us out of our misery.  She continued to weep and asked me to promise her that some day it would.  I promised her that it would, thinking to myself that one way or the other it would end for us someday -- maybe tomorrow, maybe a hundred years from now, but it would end. She wept a few minutes more as she rested and took some comfort from our intimate embrace, letting her pounding head quiet down.

A long while later, I got up to use the bathroom.  I sat on the pot and grabbed a large plastic tumbler and the half of a litre bottle of rum that we'd stashed there, sipping out of the bottle to quiet my head.  I did my business, poured us half a glass of rum, nothing to mix it with, and came back to bed, carrying both.  Sidney jumped up and ran to the bathroom as soon as she saw me come out, practically knocking me over.  She very noisily threw up, before taking care of her business, I smiled.

She sauntered back to bed, still looking a bit green around the gills and complaining of how messy I was as she climbed in.  I shrugged my shoulders and said that the bathroom didn't look a bit messy to me.  She took the glass from my hands and just before she sipped, said that it wasn't the bathroom she was talking about.  I nodded and picked a piece of toilet tissue off her crotch.  She giggled and said "oops." 

Sidney and Adelaide lie side by side sipping their liquor, they're only nine-hundred miles apart.  Sex was our solace and our only communication.

The "concierge," the Duty NCO at the desk when we came out for another round of bar-hopping, leered at us and told us that there was a concert in the city center and if we wanted to go, the bus would be outside in another hour or so for pick up.  Sidney and I looked at each other and shrugged.  Might as well.  We took a quick trip to the nearest pub and I bought a pint of rum and a couple of cokes apiece and fixed us a couple drink in the bottles. 

We went to the concert not knowing who or what was going to be presented and for a couple of hours we listened to Wagner and Liszt as the Royal Australian Philharmonic serenaded us.  We walked around Sidney afterward, neither of us straying far from each other.  We were just a pair of temporary lovers, caught up in the only moment we knew.  We got lost several times and had to ask directions, refusing to get a cab.

We had a pleasant time, which was heaven to us, I mean, pleasant was better than the alternative.  We felt as if we were in a new home-town, a boy with his girlfriend, goofing around and acting stupid, sneaking little kisses in the dim corners and groping each other as unobtrusively as we could.  We finally took one wrong turn too many, and found that it actually was the right turn, it had brought us to stand in front of our guest house door.   I turned her to me and, still assuming a long-time familiarity, pulled her into my embrace and kissed her.  It was a long, tender, loving kiss, the kind of kiss that a guy gives his steady girlfriend.  And, I guess that for those few precious days, we were boyfriend and girlfriend -- maybe even temporary newlyweds, married by our common ties to death and mayhem.

I held her desperately as she in turn held me, neither of us wanting to let the other go, trying to make this moment last forever, wishing that what we felt, in these few brief hours, was the reality and not the dream that it was.  Neither of us wanted this moment, this brief wrinkle in time to pass.  We were both trembling as we separated, and I wish that I could say that it was trembling in desire, but instead, it was fear, knowing that, as much as we wished it were the reality, in another couple of days, we would both be traveling back to our units.  Back to the upcoming bloody fight that would almost kill me and her back to the wounded, the dying, and the dead that she had to minister to.  She finally turned from me, her arm still around my waist, and opened the door.  I couldn't remember if I was staying at that guest-house or not and was about to ask the "concierge," the relief Duty NCO what my room number was, but before I could speak, he asked us to be more discreet and quiet.  He said that he'd pounded on our door several times last night.  I promised him that we would and Sidney giggled at the thought.  He thanked us and handed us each our keys and told us to pick one or the other and please be quiet.  Sidney giggled again and promised.

---- May Be Continued -----