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I met the Naval Officer (NO) online while I was in the fall of my freshman year at UT, in the fall of 2001. We talked online occasionally, but nothing happened until a year after I graduated, when I temporarily moved in with my grandfather in north Houston. NO lived in southeast Houston when he wasn't stationed elsewhere. Much of the time I talked to NO, he was in Corpus Christi. For those of you not familiar with Texas, Corpus is a coastal city with a naval air station, Texas A&M campus, and refineries. The landscape is overwhelmingly ruined by the refineries. I remember visiting my dad's parents there periodically as a child, and we always knew we were getting close when it started smelling bad. I pitied NO for being stationed there, all the more so since he complained of there not being any attractive local women. Inevitably, I myself proved a solution. NO and I swapped inappropriate photos via e-mail one evening, drunkenly on his part. On my part it was a carefully orchestrated step. I had never exactly nursed a crush on NO, not a real one, but perhaps a small one. Smart guys have that effect on me; the addition of a Navy uniform only helped. NO apologized profusely to me the next day, which I protested. Encouraged, our chats grew increasingly risqué. I let it slip to the jealous FWB what was up; he was displeased and jealous. "He's tiny and impotent," FWB told me. "Oh he is not. . . . How do you know?" "Locker room. ROTC." I hesitated to ask how he could possibly know about the impotent part and decided I didn't want to know, but FWB told me anyway. "He dated a couple of girls in the unit. They talked." "Times change." To be fair, NO's photos had not been all that flattering, but considering that the two I had were grainy cel phone shots of whiskeydick, I knew better than to be impressed by them. I defended NO, but FWB would have none of it. "He's also balding." "What? And anyway, you're worse, you know," I said. "I know. I accepted it and just shaved it. He used Rogaine at UT." Indeed, NO did seem self conscious about his ever-so-slightly receding hairline. He never mentioned that he had Rogained, and I never brought it up. He looked fine to me, anyway. Our chats continued as before. Alas, neither of us was willing to make the five hour drive, so nothing happened. By the time he was finally back in Houston, I was back in Austin, so we still couldn't get together. One night, though, NO was in Austin for a UT game. "I'm in town," he told me online. "Oh? You busy later?" I asked. I didn't even have to try to make it seductive. "I'll message you." Some hours later, after the game, he did indeed text me asking where I lived. I sent him my address, but I didn't hear from him for the rest of the night. I shrugged and went to bed. "Sorry about last night," he apologized the next day. "That's okay." "I was pretty drunk." I said it was fine. I didn't want anyone driving drunk to my house with a case of whiskeydick. We agreed to meet next time he was in town. I didn't hear from NO for a while after that. I instant messaged him one night and asked how he was. "Oh, great," he said. "Been dating this great girl for about three months, so I'm really happy." That was his way of telling me we would not be hooking up. Only slightly disappointed, I congratulated him. I petulantly consoled myself with the thought that at least I wasn't the one getting stuck with his whiskeydick. A few weeks later, NO announced via Facebook that now that he was done with the Navy and taking a civilian job, he and his new girl were getting married. I was surprised at how fast it had happened and foresaw divorce but said nothing. My trepidation only increased when I saw the pictures he'd posted of himself with his fiancee. She looked exactly like him. Exactly. Wondering if it might be my imagination, I showed the photo to a few friends who didn't know either of them. Everyone had the same reaction. "This is my friend [NO]," I'd say. "And who's that, his twin sister?" they'd ask. "No, that's his fiancee," I'd explain. "Ew!" they'd squeal. Precisely. If I wanted to fuck my twin brother, I'd move to Kentucky. I don't. I will never marry anyone who looks just like me; they might actually turn out to be related to me. After his marriage, NO deleted his Facebook account and didn't appear on instant messenger account, so I assumed that he was settling into wedded whippedness. All in all, it was just as well that it didn't work out with NO, because he was fairly conservative, and I could never sleep with anyone right wing. I certainly couldn't have dated him; not just because of that but also because he was obsessed with football and never watched hockey. He didn't even like hockey. I could never be happy with someone unforgiving of my hockey habit, especially if he hypocritically expected tolerance of his football obsession.
I would like to add a non-diegetic note to this story. As with most of my ARSE stories, when I was typing this story, I based most of the paragraphs of text off a few key phrases. My cursory notes for this story were spectacularly awful, which, this being ARSE, logically means I should share them. As I complained to a friend, "I leave myself the worst notes." Here they are:
I love it. I made NO sound like some middle aged pervert. Given the circumstances of his marriage, though, something approximating that fate might yet befall him. |