The Post Office Smile

The Post Office Smile

            I have never been proud of my body, as it has betrayed me many times.  In football; in love; in health; in promotion points it has.

            Now, I am in Iraq and a nation has put more trust in my body than I ever have.  While the US government whispers sweet nothings about what my body is capable of doing, I purposely reject any notion that I even have a body.

            Instead, I focus on the bodies of others and what I want to do to them: militarily; humanely; sexually.

            From the insurgents that lay IEDs along my daily path to the women I see at Baghdad University to the interpreter girls at Camp Shield to Ali and Ahmed, and finally to the portrait of the woman inside the Camp Liberty Post Office, I focus on the bodies of others, ignoring mine altogether.

            The first time I walked into that bustling epicenter of solider communication, I noticed the portrait.  She was what I used to affectionately refer to as a “yellowbone”.  She was Hispanic, or maybe the daughter of a white father and a black mother . . . and she was beautiful.  She was posing in her DCUs with her arms crossed around her chest; a gorgeous smile stretched across her young face showed off her pearly white teeth.

            Every time I walked into that building, I admired (some would say lusted over) her image and never thought twice about why her portrait hanged in such a shoddy building in Baghdad.  It wasn’t until my last week in Baghdad, however, that I walked inside the post office to mail home souvenirs and found out.  The place was swamped and I found myself in a very long line.  AS the path of the line brought me within inches of the familiar portrait, I finally read the plaque underneath:

“PFC _________ died ___________ 2003 while convoying a shipment of mail from Baghdad to _______ . . . “

            I felt guilty; I felt ashamed.  For the past year, I had found myself lusting over a woman who had been dead for years.  I felt angry that such a beautiful face was gone, never to grace mankind with her smile again.  I left the building that day again feeling guilty, guilty that my body was intact . . . while hers was six feet deep.