{"id":29165,"date":"2010-09-26T18:56:06","date_gmt":"2010-09-26T23:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=29165"},"modified":"2010-09-26T18:56:06","modified_gmt":"2010-09-26T23:56:06","slug":"back-in-one-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/back-in-one-piece\/","title":{"rendered":"Back in One Piece"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Amanda Painter<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“So, do you have any idea what your post will be — what your duties will be when you get over there?”<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>
Amanda Painter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was sitting next to Ricky on a low bench, the club’s colored lights flashing and loud salsa music pulsing around us, couples twirling to the beat.<\/p>\n

“Yeah,” he said. “I jump out of a helicopter or airplane, kill people, get back into the helicopter or airplane, go back to the base and clean my weapon. Then I do it again.”<\/p>\n

“Oh.”<\/p>\n

The impact of that blunt simplicity reverberated to my core, which suddenly felt empty. I’ve known Ricky more than two and a half years; I’ve known he’s in the army since our first conversation on the dance floor. I knew he was being deployed from Maine to Afghanistan; that was the whole reason I’d come out of my informal salsa-dancing exile that night — to see him off. I should have known this could be the answer.<\/p>\n

“For some reason I thought you might have some cushy desk job over there.”<\/p>\n

“No — that’s what I had here since there’s nothing going on and they’re closing down the base.”<\/p>\n

“Oh.”<\/p>\n

I was not ignorant of the fact that Ricky’s seen combat before; I forget whether it was Iraq or Afghanistan. A year or two ago we were talking as he walked me to my car after dancing; I forget which summer. I think he wanted to get together, but I was too caught up in my own little emotional drama to be open to it. He recognized me as someone with a measure of awareness and intelligence in comparison to someone he was describing dating from the Boston salsa scene: the utter frustration — disgust even — of listening to her debate coffee-shop lattes with her friend. “I’ve seen my friend’s head get blown off,” he said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The remark had caught me off guard then. I think maybe I was a bit frightened by whatever hidden wounds of his it might allude to, whatever ways his psyche has found to cope with first-hand violence. Somehow it was easy to let it slip from my immediate consciousness. It was easier only to see Ricky on the dance floor: his tall, beautiful black body with its slim waist, muscular shoulders and relaxed, confident movements; easy to smile back at his warm, friendly, sincerely open smile; easy to relax into him when we danced close, the faux-sex of salsa safely contained in the framework of formal dance and my instinctual trust in his intentions and boundaries.<\/p>\n

I had set myself up for this collision with reality. The floor dropped away for a moment as we sat there in the club shouting in each other’s ears, the incongruity between the setting and the words exchanged a bit too much to reconcile.<\/p>\n

We danced twice, and at the end of the evening during a long hug I told him to come back in one piece. It was the best clich\u00e9 I could grab a hold of at the moment, as my mind tried to fit these pieces of Ricky together; the closest I could come to conveying my wish for his wholeness and healing and peace and my genuine love for his humanity. I hope somehow he could hear all of that through the conga drums and horns thumping through us both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Amanda Painter “So, do you have any idea what your post will be — what your duties will be when you get over there?” I was sitting next to Ricky on a low bench, the club’s colored lights flashing and loud salsa music pulsing around us, couples twirling to the beat. “Yeah,” he said. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}