belly, and covered with running sores. Twin lines of vile maggots appeared on her upper lip, entering her nostrils in endless, weaving columns. Gray fungus grew up her arms. Gaunt, prehensile hands restlessly clutched at each other, like fingers stitching a shroud. When she grinned lewdly, as she presently did, she revealed vicious jagged teeth sharp enough to rip out your throat, as those of Java rats are said to lunge through your cheeks to reach the morsel of your tongue. She exhaled a foul stench. But it was her eyes, eyes as old as tombs, which were most phenomenal. A direct stare is the boldest way to invade the sheath of privacy which envelops each of us, and she was using it devastatingly, diminishing the distance between us to the intimacy of a membrane. Her wide pupils were in turn stony, reptilian, shameless. She trembled suggestively. She was soliciting me, beckoning me toward cathexis.
None of this sounds inviting, let alone seductive. But the shell which had wiped out my squad had barely missed me. So close a call with death is often followed by eroticism. It is characteristic of some creatures that they are often very productive before their death and, in some cases, appear to die in a frenzy of reproductive activity. Desire is the sequel to danger. That is the reason for the recruitment, in most of history's great armies, of camp followers. At a wink from the soiled Whore of Death I became semihard; she knew that and stretched herself, accentuating her bust and her slender waist and increasing my tumescence. I simultaneously loathed and craved her. She was an enchantress in an old tale whom men have loved to their destruction. She wouldn't sigh or swoon or feign affection. Love was the last thing she had to offer. Her coarse, blurred, sepulchral voice, just audible, rasped obscenities and spoke of the bargain she proposed to strike in the language she had used for a thousand years of warfare. The key words were
lust
and
blood
and
death
. She had been in business a long time. Her face was eroded by a millennium of whoring. The traffic around her lunging crotch had always been heavy, but the number of customers in this century had dwarfed all those before.
Abruptly she hoisted her skirt to her hips and spread her legs. My pulse was hammering, my sexual craving almost overwhelming. That was my moment of maximum temptation. For the first and only time in my life I understood rape. I have never been more ready. Then, from her sultry muttering, I learned her fee. I couldn't mount her here. She gestured toward the Japanese lines. I shrank back, shaking my head and whispering,
No, no I won't, no, no, NO
. Just then a random shell rustled over and landed a few yards away. In the flash she disappeared. But my yearning for sexual release remained. I unfastened my dungarees and touched myself. I came in less than five seconds. I was that close.
After crawling out of the hole I was, for the only time in combat, quite lost. It wasn't until the sky was lightening that I saw the hunchback of the ridge against the eastern sky and, taking bearings from it, crept slowly toward Fox Company's wire. My situation was still extremely perilous — Fowler had dug in for the inevitable counterattack. I was about five yards from safety when a deep voice with a Bronx accent challenged me, ordering me to halt. I gave the password. The voice said gently, “Come on in, Mac.” I reported to Fowler, omitting my vision. He grieved for his lost squad and asked anxiously, “Were you hurt?” I shook my head and said, “Not a scratch.” I believed it.
I leave Corregidor for Manila aboard a steamship, a rusting, lumbering vessel. As we pull away from the Rock's North Dock the captain tugs the whistle cord, and I am distracted by its lonely shriek, sadder than the wails of steam locomotives I remember from my boyhood. Seen from the second deck, where I perch in a plastic chair outside a plastic lounge, the water is calm and blue. Throughout
None of this sounds inviting, let alone seductive. But the shell which had wiped out my squad had barely missed me. So close a call with death is often followed by eroticism. It is characteristic of some creatures that they are often very productive before their death and, in some cases, appear to die in a frenzy of reproductive activity. Desire is the sequel to danger. That is the reason for the recruitment, in most of history's great armies, of camp followers. At a wink from the soiled Whore of Death I became semihard; she knew that and stretched herself, accentuating her bust and her slender waist and increasing my tumescence. I simultaneously loathed and craved her. She was an enchantress in an old tale whom men have loved to their destruction. She wouldn't sigh or swoon or feign affection. Love was the last thing she had to offer. Her coarse, blurred, sepulchral voice, just audible, rasped obscenities and spoke of the bargain she proposed to strike in the language she had used for a thousand years of warfare. The key words were
lust
and
blood
and
death
. She had been in business a long time. Her face was eroded by a millennium of whoring. The traffic around her lunging crotch had always been heavy, but the number of customers in this century had dwarfed all those before.
Abruptly she hoisted her skirt to her hips and spread her legs. My pulse was hammering, my sexual craving almost overwhelming. That was my moment of maximum temptation. For the first and only time in my life I understood rape. I have never been more ready. Then, from her sultry muttering, I learned her fee. I couldn't mount her here. She gestured toward the Japanese lines. I shrank back, shaking my head and whispering,
No, no I won't, no, no, NO
. Just then a random shell rustled over and landed a few yards away. In the flash she disappeared. But my yearning for sexual release remained. I unfastened my dungarees and touched myself. I came in less than five seconds. I was that close.
After crawling out of the hole I was, for the only time in combat, quite lost. It wasn't until the sky was lightening that I saw the hunchback of the ridge against the eastern sky and, taking bearings from it, crept slowly toward Fox Company's wire. My situation was still extremely perilous — Fowler had dug in for the inevitable counterattack. I was about five yards from safety when a deep voice with a Bronx accent challenged me, ordering me to halt. I gave the password. The voice said gently, “Come on in, Mac.” I reported to Fowler, omitting my vision. He grieved for his lost squad and asked anxiously, “Were you hurt?” I shook my head and said, “Not a scratch.” I believed it.
I leave Corregidor for Manila aboard a steamship, a rusting, lumbering vessel. As we pull away from the Rock's North Dock the captain tugs the whistle cord, and I am distracted by its lonely shriek, sadder than the wails of steam locomotives I remember from my boyhood. Seen from the second deck, where I perch in a plastic chair outside a plastic lounge, the water is calm and blue. Throughout
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