The Way We Were

At lunch, the question, from an embittered partisan co-worker, angry and bile-filled with hate and rage. 

At lunch, the question that took me back.  "What I want to know, is does anyone," he brayed rhetorically, "Anyone remember Afghanistan?"

Do I remember Afghanistan?

The question is:  How could I forget it?

It was May and the poppies were in full display in the field north of beautiful Kandahar. My on-again, off-again friend with benefits, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and I, were holding hands and letting our joined fingers trail across the tall grass and plant tops. He had just come in for a two-day visit from Jalalabad on some secret arms deal. "A quickie visit," he called it, and I giggled. Because there was nothing quick about Slow Hands Don.

We walked in the field and we laughed, talking of how one day we would stroll just like this through the streets of Paris, and about our future, and about multi-stage bunker nukes, and of how happy we were. We walked and he kissed me. That lip-less kiss that said, You're gosh darned right I dig you, baby! We kissed and he took me, there in the sticky sap and heather.

After, in the warm embrace of post-coital afterglow, Donald chewed on a poppy stem and gazed upward at the smoke-filled sky, the sheen of sweat glistening off his pocky, alabaster chest.

"One, day, kiddo, I gotta tell ya, all of this could be yours," he said, spreading his spindly arms expansively.

"What, all these scheduled, controlled narcotics?  Oh, Donald," I cooed.

"No, this place.  This country.  Right after nine-eleven the President was all piss and vinegar, and itchy for a fight.  He asked me what I would want to attack Iraq, and I jokingly held my hands up in the victory sign and said, 'Afghanistan.'  Superman II had been on the night before, and I was just fooling around.  Well, gosh, can you believe it?  He promised me the place, the whole kit and caboodle, right then and there.  It was the darnedest thing."  Slow Hands shook his head slowly in amazement and sucked the opiates from his plant.

"Oh, Donald.  I don't want Afghanistan.  I just want you, silly," I gurgled, tracing lazy circle eights on his hairless, spongy pecs. 

He looked at me, pushed his glasses back up his nose, and smiled.  "You don't fall madly for the love you want, you fall madly for the love you have."

I squeezed him closer.  I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.

But then again, with Donald, there in Afghanistan, I never needed to.