MILF

by Robert Lubrican

zbookstore.com Edition

Copyright 2019 Robert Lubrican

Second edition 2026

License Notes

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Rights to use cover art purchased from iStock.com

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Table of Contents

Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve

Chapter One

You have already started this book with an erroneous assumption. That's because you think MILF stands for "Mother-I'd-like-to-fuck." That falls in the category of close, but no cigar. Technically, I suppose it's really close, so maybe I should offer you a cigarette instead of a cigar.

I know, I'm babbling. You'd probably babble too if you were in my circumstances.

You see, I'm the MILF. That's right. I'm a guy, and I'm a MILF.

In my case, it stands for "Mother-in-law-fucker."

See why you get the cigarette? She is a mother and I did fuck her, so she's a MILF. But because I'm her son-in-law that makes me a MILF too.

What? You think that's splitting hairs? Semantics? I don't think so. Go ahead. Do a poll of a thousand guys. Ask them if "MILF" includes their mother-in-law. And before you throw the results of that in my face, I'll argue that the two percent of guys who say, "Hell yeah, my mother-in-law is hot! I'd do her," are what they call a "statistical anomaly." They land squarely in the 'abnormal' part of the data set.

The average guy just doesn't want to fuck his mother-in-law.

But I did.

And this book is about the story of how that happened.

******

First, some background on me. It's necessary because it's a huge part of the story.

I'm a normal guy. There's nothing special about me at all, with maybe one exception. I'll get to that in a second. I'm average height, with brown hair. I wear glasses. The only reason you might pick me out of a crowd is that I walk a little differently. That's because both of my legs, below the knee, are man-made, rather than flesh and bone. I got them after a devastating injury. I had to learn to walk again. Think of it like a bicycle. Replace the normal wheels with big, round wooden ones. It still goes ... but it goes in a slightly different manner.

How I got those legs is also important. I did three tours in Afghanistan. I lost both feet and ankles in an ambush.

I'll skip over the first five days after I got shot, during which doctors argued about how much of the legs to save. My life had already been saved, by then, but the future was unalterably changed. If you're thinking that kind of medical problem was life-changing in the first place, you're correct. But it didn't just change my life. It changed the lives of my wife, and of another important woman in my little world.

Which brings me to Valerie. We met in college. She was from Arizona, which was out of state, but she had a full ride four year scholarship that included room and board, as long as she maintained a 3.75 GPA.

I was getting basic subjects out of the way and trying to decide what to do with my life. I was interested in philosophy, but pretty sure a degree in that would lead nowhere, in terms of the job market. She was enrolled in the pre-law track. We met in biology class, when we were assigned to be lab partners. It was love at first sight. Well ... it was love at first sight for me. I was devastated, robbed of any interest in other girls. All I could think about was her.

"Hi. My name is Bob. Will you go out with me?" I asked, breathlessly. It was the first thing I said to her when the professor gave us five minutes to exchange information.

"I can't. We're lab partners," she said. "It's against the rules."

"What rules?" I said. "There are no rules about lab partners."

"Of course there are," she said. "It's a conflict of interests."

"You're crazy."

"And you're a masher."

"A what?"

"A masher," she said, looking me in the eyes. "A man who makes unwelcome sexual advances to women. My mother warned me about men like you."

"Now wait just a frickin' second," I said. "Nobody said anything about sex. I just asked if you wanted to go out."

"Answer me this," she said. "And tell me the truth. Isn't it true that what you really want is for me to go out with you so you can eventually have sex with me?"

I said I was interested in philosophy. That's because I like to think about things on a deeper level than most people. Like, for instance, those commercials where they flash words on the screen that say "Real people/customer/whatever, not actors." That's supposed to make you feel like whatever they say must be true because they're not "actors." But if you think about that on a deeper level, you realize that somebody screened the potential participants for this commercial. They chose people who looked like what they wanted, and spoke like they wanted. Somebody directed the making of that commercial, and somebody decided what the people were going to wear. And it has to be scripted, because otherwise who knows what "real people" would say. You know they rehearsed it. Maybe they had to do four or five takes before that director was satisfied. And did these "real people" do it for nothing? Did they volunteer to do all that work for free? Wasn't there at least "reimbursement for expenses"?

What it boils down to is that, in reality, this whole shell game is merely the process by which some "real people" became actors. This was simply their first acting gig.

If you do this kind of thinking a lot, your brain gets used to the fleeting nature of such thoughts, and learns to process them very quickly. All that I just said about those commercials might take a whopping five or ten seconds to play out in my mind. I came to that conclusion before the commercial was even over.

So, when Val proposed her theory of my intentions, I spent a good ten seconds thinking about that on a really deep level. I came to the conclusion that, if you strip away all the politics and posturing, she was probably right.

"I'm simply following the biological imperative for our species," I said.

"Not with me, you're not," she replied.

That was my introduction to the woman I eventually married.

What changed her mind would be a book within itself. To summarize, my basic mindset was like that kid who knows he wants to be a fireman when he grows up, and he doesn't think about any other possibility. And when he does become a fireman, it just seems like it was fated from the very beginning; meant to be. I thought about Val that way. She was going to be mine some day. She didn't know it yet, but that's how it would be. She gave me not a single reason to believe that, but I took it on faith. The universe couldn't be so cruel as to deny me the only woman I'd ever felt like I was willing to die for. If necessary, I mean. If it was absolutely required to save her or something.

On her side, she was confronted with a polite, helpful, somewhat goofy guy who was obviously smitten with her. There was more there, but I wouldn't find out about that for more than a year. My continued "Want to go for coffee?" kind of comments after we finished working on something were always rebuffed. I acted like it was no big deal. I never took any other girls out or pursued any kind of relationship with a woman other than as a simple acquaintance. Why would I do that? I was saving myself for Valerie. I did spend a lot of my free time shooting pool at the union. That was cheap entertainment. Eventually it got me a reputation as being a guy who was really hard to beat, which was good for my self-esteem while Valerie chipped away at it.

What seemed odd to me was that Val didn't go out with guys, either. At least I never got any information that suggested she dated. It didn't matter what day or time I suggested working on our term project. She was always free. I didn't get that. She was cute as a button, not a raving beauty, or supermodel material, but definitely good looking. She wore regular clothes, which sometimes displayed her physical charms, and sometimes didn't. Those charms consisted of medium size breasts and an ass to die for. I know guys hit on her, but she turned them all away.

Anyway, we worked well together and after that semester, and our project was over, my suggestion of, "We work well together. We should study together sometimes," was met with, "Okay. That might work." You could have knocked me over with a feather, but thankfully there were no feathers around. I just stood there looking goofy.

"These won't be dates," she said, her voice even.

"Of course not," I said. "I might make coffee, though. But you don't have to drink any."

"I drink tea," she said.

"I'll get some," I said.

This was much more complicated than it looks like from reviewing that simple negotiation. We had always met in the library, or in the lab, or some other public place, but now it was assumed - without negotiation - that we would be studying at my apartment. The reason for that was less complicated. She lived in the dorm. I didn't.

I'd played football in high school, and I'd had enough of the locker room and testosterone-filled atmospheres. I went to college to learn, not party. So I got my parents to spring for rent, with the provision that a GPA below 3 would make that money dry up. I got a smallish apartment in a complex about a mile from campus. I usually jogged to class, or wherever I needed to go. I had a car, but my insurance capped the mileage at 5,000 miles per year. If I went over that, the premiums tripled. Five thousand sounds like a lot, but the average driver goes 15,000 per year. So think of everywhere you drive, and then cut out two thirds of those trips. This was also why I didn't go home a lot. Home was 327 miles away.

Okay, so after knowing me for one semester, she started coming to my apartment to study. And that's all we did for two more semesters. She had to compete hard to get into law school, and she took her studies very seriously. She wanted that four-point-oh GPA and she was willing to work for it.

Of course we didn't just study and say nothing to each other. You have to take breaks or your concentration suffers. You need to do other things. What I did was play Xbox. I liked Call of Duty - WWII. She liked to stretch. She watched me play as she stretched, folding her body into impossible shapes that made me wince sometimes. Then one night she asked if two could play.

"Sure," I said. "You want to?"

"Gee, do you think I asked that just for fun?"

So I taught her how to play. Her hand-eye coordination was phenomenal and she quickly became a "brother" in arms who saved my bacon repeatedly. I didn't play the game to win. I just liked shooting bad guys. If I lost, I just started over. Val really resented dying, and she worked as hard at mastering the game as she did on her homework.

Are you getting the picture? It's true that opposites attract. We had very little in common. She came from a big city. I came from Podunk, Iowa. She was an only child. I was the youngest of five kids. She was going for a high-powered law career and I was just exploring the world.

She says I snuck in under her radar. I say she got to know me and found out I was a great guy.

That was something pivotal in her life. It was her background that instilled in her the belief that men - all men - were trouble. I found that out one night when I stood up from seeing the numbers on the problem I was trying to work start dancing on the page.

"So why law?" I asked. It came out of the blue. We'd never really talked about our dreams and aspirations at that point.

She paused just long enough that I wondered if she was going to answer. Then she said, "Because of my mother."

"Does she need a lawyer?" I joked.

"She did twenty-five years ago," said Val, ignoring my jest.

"Okay," I said. I had no idea what was going on. I had learned, though, that if you wanted Valerie to speak, you had to shut up and give her time to do that.

Again, there was a long pause, during which Val just looked at me. It might have made most guys nervous, but I was used to it. She had a direct gaze that made you feel like you were a specimen on a microscope slide. She was going to slay them in the court room, some day.

"My mom had me when she was fourteen," she said.

I thought, "Wow!" but I said nothing. I just looked at her.

"A boy she trusted seduced her. He was three years older and she was too young to know all he wanted was sex."

"That's awful," I said, finally breaking my silence.

"It was awful. The guy denied everything and his parents threatened to sue her parents if she accused him again. Then he moved away. My grandparents didn't know what to do, but their priest insisted she have the baby ... me. They could have used a good lawyer, but they didn't know how to find one. Mom says they couldn't have afforded one anyway."

"That must have been hard for them," I said.

"It was bad. If my grandmother and grandfather hadn't been there, she'd never have made it. Neither would I. But she's Irish and stubborn. She finished school and even went to college. She's a nurse."

"Wow!" Now I did say it aloud.

"That's why I have to ace all this," she said. "I can't let all her sacrifices, and my grandma and grandpa's sacrifices, be wasted. They gave up so much for me. I want to be there for them."

"So they're still alive?" I asked.

"My grandpa died two years ago. He worked himself to death. That's my opinion. Grandma is kicking up her heels in a retirement center. My mom's fine, but someday she'll need to retire and who knows if she'll have the money to do that. I think she's helping to pay for Grandma's placement, though I know Medicaid is involved. Anyway, I want to be able to help my mom when she finally gets a chance to rest."

"So you're going for the big bucks," I said.

"That's not a crime," she replied.

"I didn't say it was," I said. "But you said your mom and grandparents could have used a good lawyer back then, and that kind of lawyer doesn't usually make tons of money ... right?"

"I don't know," she said, dismissively. "All I know is that people need help sometimes, and can suffer terribly if they don't get it. I'm going to make sure somebody gets help."

I didn't know much about lawyers. What I thought about was the fact that, in general, the concept of "Lawyer" has an approval rating with the common man that's roughly equivalent to that of having an STD. I mean getting the STD is fun, but then there's the STD, you know? Lawyers help people, but then ... they're lawyers. That's why there are so many lawyer jokes out there.

I did not say anything about this reflection, however. This was the first time Valerie had opened up and told me anything personal.

"Well, their sacrifices paid off. They did a bang-up job of raising you," I said.

Instead of saying "Thank you," or some such thing, she tilted her head and looked through the microscope at the slide I was smeared on.

"Why do you continue to invite me over here?"

My philosophical mind spent five seconds examining this possible trick question.

"To study?" I posited.

"We rarely study the same thing," she said.

"Yes, but you really help me when I'm getting ready for a test," I said.

"Anybody could ask you questions and tell you if you're right or not," she observed.

I was thinking, 'Anybody isn't as much fun to look at as you are,' but what I said was, "Anybody isn't as ... um ... interesting to be with as you are,"

"You don't hit on me like other guys do," she said.

"You're attractive to guys," I said.

"But not to you?"

"Who said that?"

"You don't hit on me," she reminded me.

"As I recall, you told me that kind of attention wasn't invited. I'm trying to reform my mashing ways," I said.

"You remember that?" We were now in our third semester together. The last (only) time she'd called me a masher had been roughly eighteen months ago.

"It's not often a girl accuses you of being a masher, these days," I said.

"Well you're not," she said. "Not really."

"Thank you. Does that mean you'll finally go out with me?"

She stared at me for what seemed like two minutes, though I'm sure it was shorter than that.

"What would we do?" she asked.

"What do you like to do?" I responded.

"I don't know. I've never been on a date before."

I was speechless. I mean literally speechless. It was as if someone had said, "Show you my cellular? What's a cellular? I've never heard of that. What's it for?"

"My mother didn't trust men," said Valerie. "I sort of picked that up from her. She said I could go on dates, but I knew she'd worry constantly if I was out with a boy. So I just didn't go out with any boys."

"Did you want to?" I asked. I'll be honest. At this point I thought any girl who made those kinds of decisions must be a lesbian.

"I was curious, of course," she said. "But it wasn't worth making my mother worry."

I tried to imagine growing up without being with a girl ... without making out ... without trying to sneak a feel of a breast. I'd have gone stir-crazy.

"So ... and I don't mean to be indelicate, here ... didn't you have ... um ... feelings?"

"What kind of feelings?"

"Biological imperative feelings?" I suggested.

"You mean did I get horny?"

Again, I was speechless. It must have shown.

"Of course I get horny," she said. "I'm just as human as anybody else."

"No you're not." It came out of me in a burst. One time, when I was a kid, I got car sick. I didn't tell my dad, who was driving. I just tried to stop from throwing up. Then it was suddenly too much and it just came. I mean one second I wasn't throwing up and the next second I was. It came out like when Mt. St. Helens blew up, fast and violently. What I'd just said was like that, except it was words instead of my stomach contents.

"Of course I am. What do you mean? What's wrong with me?"

She was visibly upset now. I'd never seen her display a lot of emotion. In fact, the most fired up I ever saw her up to that point was when she was playing Call of Duty. It suddenly looked like she was going to cry.

"Nothing's wrong with you," I said, my voice urgent. "You're just a unicorn." Don't ask me where that came from. It just surged out of me, too.

"Unicorn? What do you mean, Bob? Why'd you say that?"

I held up my hands in the universal 'time out' signal, making a T.

"Sit down," I said. "Calm down."

I could actually see tears in her eyes now. They hadn't overflowed, but it looked like they would any second, now. I got up and went to her. I took her hand and led her to the couch. As odd as it sounds, this was the first time I'd ever touched her. We'd spent hours and hours together, but always in different parts of the room, or across the table from each other. We'd walked together and sat side-by-side on the infrequent occasions I'd driven us somewhere. But I'd never held her hand, or hugged her or anything like that.

I was a little light-headed at the feel of her soft hand in mine, but it was fleeting. I was terrified that, if she cried, she'd run away and I'd never see her again.

"Calm down," I said again as I coaxed her onto the couch.

"Why did you call me a unicorn?" Her voice was soft, but firm.

"I don't know. Because you're rare and precious?"

She looked at me and blinked. I sat down beside her and reluctantly let go of her hand. She wasn't about to cry anymore. Now she was examining me again. I had let my mouth run away with me and tried to rein it in.

"I'm sorry I poked into your life," I said, trying to change the subject.

"Why am I so rare and precious?" she asked, her voice stronger.

"Um ..." My mind went blank. I felt her take my hand.

"Bob," she said. "Are you gay? I mean it's okay if you are. I'm not judging you."

Mind lockup solved.

Chapter Two

"No, I am not gay!" I yelped, jerking my hand out of hers. "I am not gay!" I repeated.

"Oh. Okay. That's good, I guess."

"Good you guess?" I squealed.

Now she was the one calming me down. She patted my knee. and muttered that everything was okay.

"Why do you think I'm gay?" I asked.

"Because you don't act like other guys," she said. "Like a regular guy," she added, as if that would make more sense.

"Well, you don't act like other girls. Are you a lesbian?" I croaked.

She laughed. She actually laughed. Then she calmed down.

"No. I'm not interested in girls that way."

"Well, I am," I said. "I'm definitely interested in girls that way. I'm not gay."

"I know that now," she said. "Calm down."

"Gay!" I muttered. "I go through all this just to be near you and you think I'm gay."

"All what?" she asked.

"I'd been in college for two whole weeks when you called me a masher. You were disgusted with me. I couldn't stand the thought of the girl I was all gaga for being disgusted with me. And I also couldn't stand the thought of not being around you. I needed to see you every day. I needed to hear your voice. It was an addiction. I was a junkie and you were my heroin. But I didn't want to kick the habit, and I didn't want you to kick the habit for me, either. So I just tried to be non-disgusting and happy with what I could get."

I slumped. I'd tossed my verbal cookies again. This girl was punching every button I had.

"So, all this time, you never made a move on me because you thought I'd be disgusted?"

"Well, sure," I said. "I mean every time I even offered to buy you a cup of coffee you acted like I was talking about going out and finding a puppy to kick."

She covered her eyes with one hand.

"Shit," she said, softly. I'd never heard her even say "darn" before, much less something hard.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"I've just been really stupid, that's all," she sighed.

"You're the smartest girl I know," I said.

"Not when it comes to men," she said.

"Well, you're obviously a virgin," I said. "Why would you expect to know all about men?"

I winced. I needed to just sew my mouth closed.

She didn't yell at me, though.

"I'm not a virgin by choice," she said. "Not exactly. I'm a virgin because I'm terrified of sex."

"Everybody's nervous about it in the beginning," I said.

"I'm not nervous. I'm terrified. Sex ruined my mother's life."

"Did she tell you that?"

"No, but it was obvious. She never had a boyfriend after she had me. She never even went on a date. She absolutely refused to talk about my father, except to say he was a deadbeat who used her. She showed no interest in men whatsoever. What was I supposed to think?"

"So you were terrified to go out with me because of my terrible masher ways," I said.

"No."

"No?"

"I liked you. I've always liked you."

"They why wouldn't you go out with me?"

She put her hand over her eyes again.

"Do you remember Marsha, my roommate that first semester?"

"No."

"Well, she met this guy the first day she was here. She said he kept pestering her to go out with him, but promised nothing would happen. It turned out he was gay. He wanted her to be his beard. Have you ever heard of that?"

"Beard?"

"It makes people think he's straight because he's going out with a woman. But it's just camouflage."

"Why didn't he just come out?" I asked.

"Who knows? Embarrassment, maybe. Or maybe his parents didn't know and he couldn't tell them."

"And you thought I wanted you to be my beard?"

"Something like that."

"I looked gay to you?" I asked, getting upset.

"Bob, no," she said, reaching to touch my knee again. "I didn't know anything. I was afraid of everything. She was all excited about what this guy wanted her to do. Marsha was a real save-the-whales type. I turned you down that first time because of my mom. But then, later, when I only saw you hanging out with guys at the Union, I started to think you might be gay. I mean you never went out with any girls."

"And you never went out with any guys," I pointed out.

"I was just used to living like that," she said. "It was no big deal."

"It was a big deal. It made us both believe things that turned out to be wrong," I said.

"I guess that's true. Anyway, I didn't want to be some gay boy's beard, even if I thought the boy was sweet. So that's why I wouldn't go have coffee with you."

"Man," I said. I'm sure I sounded disgusted.

"It's also why I agreed to be your study partner after first semester was over. I thought if you were gay, I was safe being around you."

"You were safe being around me," I growled. "I'm not a caveman."

"I know that now," she moaned. "I'm sorry I wasted your time."

I blinked.

"You didn't waste my time," I said.

"I didn't?"

"I got my fix on a regular basis. Granted, I'd have acted a lot more masher-like if I'd known you thought I was gay." I frowned. That hadn't come out quite right. "I mean I'd have acted more masher-like if I'd known you weren't a lesbian." That wasn't right, either.

She laughed and her hand squeezed my knee.

"Can I do something I've wanted to do a long time?" she asked.

"Sure," I said, happy that I didn't have to talk.

That's when she leaned over and kissed me on the lips.

******

You know those supercars that can go from zero to sixty miles per hour in 2.3 seconds? I never thought about that much, probably because I'll never be able to afford one and nobody's going to just let me try that for fun. And where could you drive one like that anyway?

But think about it. Close your eyes, seeing the world as it is, static and unmoving, and then mutter, "one thousand one, one thousand two, one-" and imagine when you open your eyes the world is flashing past you at sixty MPH. Oh, and the G forces involved make it impossible to lean forward while you count. Even a little bit!

That kiss was like that. One second I was with Valerie, my study partner and sometimes jerk-off fantasy, and two point three seconds later I was in the middle of a hurricane. Maybe it was a blizzard, because I was frozen so solid I couldn't even purse my lips to return the kiss. But only for 2.3 seconds. Then I could move again. Nature can be as fast as a super car, and I kissed her back.

This was no friendly, gee-I-guess-I-never-kissed-you-so-maybe-I-should-try-that kiss. This kiss communicated hunger on a level I'd never experienced before. I'd made out with girls plenty of times, and some of those kisses had gotten steamy as hell, but they paled to the level of "Night-night, sleep tight" things, when compared to kissing Valerie.

And, in this world of 80 MPH Interstates (or hundred MPH autobahns) you might tend to think that's not all that fast. But that's because you're used to looking in front of the car, where parallax or some other scientific word allows your eyes to compensate for the movement and make sense of things. But turn your head sometime (when you're a passenger, please) and look at the ground beside the car you're riding in. When you do that, ten MPH is dizzying. At sixty, you can't distinguish anything at all.

Have I conveyed the degree to which this kiss disoriented, even devastated me? I was completely helpless to engage the world in any meaningful way. The only thing I could concentrate on was the feel of those hungry lips. She might have been a virgin, but she'd kissed lots of relatives. Of course it wasn't in a sexual way, but even when Uncle Joe kisses you on the cheek or forehead, you can tell the difference between a perfunctory peck and warm, soft lips saying "I like you a lot."

So she knew that she wanted this kiss to be done with warm, loose lips. I'm pretty sure she didn't intend it to become French, but when it did, she adapted faster than I did.

She broke the kiss and pulled back long enough to say, "Thank you. I was curious. That wasn't at all what I expected." It was the eye of the storm. Then she leaned in and pressed her lips against mine and it started all over again.

I have no idea how long that second kiss went on. At one point, though, I heard her moan, a simple little whimper of need, and suddenly both her hands and mine were raising the hem of her T shirt up, exposing her trim, smooth belly, and then her utilitarian white, cotton bra. We had to break the kiss to get the material past our lips, and I remember both of us gasping, drawing in huge breaths into our oxygen-starved lungs. Our eyes met for less than a second, and we were kissing again.

One of her hands went to the back of my head, her fingers entwined in my hair, and the other snaked behind her back and undid her bra in that magical way women can do that. She shrugged out of one side of it and whimpered again as she pressed one naked breast against my shirt.

That second moan unfroze my brain, and I looked ahead of the car again, able to see what was (or might be) down the road. I pulled back from those luscious lips and said, "Val ..."

"Shut up," she gasped. "Please, just shut up."

And then she commenced to make herself naked. She got there before I did, both because she was ahead at the start, and because I wanted to watch her more than I wanted to pay attention to undoing my own buttons and belt. My shoes didn't even get untied. I just heeled them off and kicked. One of them flew ten feet, into the living room.

The second I stood up from pushing my jeans down, now dressed only in socks, she was there, in front of me, too close to gaze at. Her arms went around me and flesh that felt like it must be three hundred degrees scorched my chest. Her lips came up for another kiss and we sort of writhed against each other as that kiss went on and on.

Valerie would always love kissing me, and I think that's because those initial kisses, each one maybe five minutes long, so captured her that she wasn't willing to stop them to do anything else unless it was absolutely required by the laws of physics. Like when we had to get her shirt past our heads. She'd had all the normal hormones in her body, growing up. She'd heard other girls talk about kissing ... and other things. She'd felt the same things that other girls called "horny". But she had never acted on any of those urges because she was afraid. Like people are warned not to try crack cocaine, even once, because it will ruin your life, she had abstained from anything sexual with a boy.

Now that she'd inhaled from the crack pipe that was Bob Graves, she was instantly addicted.

We made tiny baby steps, almost dancing in a way, as I edged her toward the living room, as if my shoe had yelled, "Follow me, men! Into the breach!"

Why the living room? Because the couch was in there, that's why. And the bedroom was much farther, down a hall and seemed like it was in another county. Plus, it was a mess.

This is why Valerie O'Malley lost her virginity on my couch, instead of in a bed, as would have been both more proper and romantic.

On the other hand, every new couch we've bought over the years was tested out by my wife first who, without any shame whatsoever, lay back on them and hooked one leg on the back, while putting her other heel on the floor. Then she wiggled around, moving her hips to see if it's comfortable in that position. It has caused no little furor on occasion. At least she always wears jeans when she knows we're going furniture shopping.

Why so many couches over the years?

Did you know it's usually cheaper to buy new furniture, rather than pay a moving company to pack up and move the stuff you already own? And if you don't take the big furniture, you can pack a hell of a lot into a U-Haul.

But I digress.

Not one word was spoken as Valerie joined the ranks of women who have had a stiff prick filling them while they had an orgasm. To her, it was that routine. I know this flies in the face of the picture I painted of her, the picture of a distant, hung up, conservative woman who might be looking for some kind of Puritanical mate.

But Valerie was also extremely intelligent. She knew about the big, bad world, and, to some degree, about the big bad wolves (men) in it. She had girlfriends, who had boyfriends. She'd heard them both praise and complain about boys. It's true that she was entirely inexperienced in making out, or petting or anything of that ilk. But you were once entirely inexperienced in what it was like to eat a steak, or have Indian Curry, or a chocolate milkshake. If you enjoyed that first experience, either of a taste, or feel or whatever, then it didn't take years of training to decide to either keep eating, or do whatever it was again.

Now, if we'd both been virgins, it might have gone very differently. I know that sounds like I'm tooting my own prong - er, horn - but I'm not. What made that first coupling an unmitigated success was two-pronged. Pun accidental. One part was that I knew just enough to know what to do in terms of good sexual mechanics. That means I didn't just think about me. The more important prong was that I was still so overwhelmed with the unexpectedness and speed of events, that I didn't spew the second I slid into her. I liken it to someone handing you the last egg on Earth, and saying, "Here it is. This is it. No more eggs after this one. Enjoy your breakfast." You don't want to drop that egg as you go somewhere to cook it. It's one of the most precious things in the world, and breaking it would ruin everything.

Okay, so maybe it's not the best analogy in the world, but you get my meaning. This situation was precious to me and I wanted to do everything possible to make her glad she'd decided to do this.

I've asked her a hundred times, "Why then?" but all she ever does is smile. And kiss me.

My theory is that it took those eighteen months for her to decide that my adoration was genuine, that my patience was grounded in that adoration, and that I really did care what she thought, and how she felt. She wasn't an unfeeling witch-hunting zealot, bound and determined to root out perversions such as "sex just for fun." I also believe she was confused about what love was, and that it took some time away from the influence of her mother to be able to explore that prickly concept and decide how it applied to her.

Oh, and it took that long for her to find out I wasn't gay.

In the end, I think I might have been the first person Val had a crush on. Because she had that first crush as an adult, she got to follow it to its logical conclusion. Normally, we can't do that.

But Val could ... and so she did.

This was important for reasons other than that I finally got what I had wanted ever since I laid eyes on her. I'm not talking about the sex. I'm talking about her becoming my mate.

On the other hand, the sex has always been unimaginably fantastic.

Okay, so an hour later there we were, comfortable only because she was lying on top of me, having crawled there after I cried like a baby as I jetted into her scorching depths. Thank goodness it wasn't chilly. It wasn't awkward. She had graduated to multiple kisses, rather than one long one.

Ever practical, she said, "I'm glad we did that."

"You're glad?" I sighed. "Girl, you have no idea."

"I told you this was what you wanted," she said.

"I didn't believe I'd ever get it," I said.

"I know. Thank you for being patient with me."

"Sweetheart, remind me to always be patient with you." I smiled.

"Am I your sweetheart? Nobody but my mother ever called me that."

"Does it bother you when I say that?"

"No. It just sounds odd in my ears, that's all."

"I'll probably call you Honey, too," I said. "And Darling. Maybe Lover."

She closed her eyes.

"I have a lover," she whispered.

"Only one," I said. "Only one is allowed, and I'm it."

She opened her eyes, but didn't say a word. She kissed me one last time and got off of me to stand beside the couch. It was the first time I'd gotten to pay attention to her whole, naked body.

"I'm all icky between my legs," she said. "I need a shower."

"Want me to come with you?" I offered.

"I think I can manage a shower," she said.

"Ohhh-kaay," I said, trying to sound disappointed.

She stood there looking at me. Her eyes ranged all over my body.

"We'll do this again, Bob," she said, her voice calm. "But I need time to process how this made me feel ... okay?"

"I'm here to talk to whenever you need me," I said.

"I know that." She leaned down to kiss my forehead. "I'm glad about that," she added.

Then she went to take her shower.

Valerie did not have clothes at my house, of course. Our newfound 'closeness', however, let her feel comfortable dressing in some of my clothes after she took her shower. She did that on her own, without asking. Apparently the mess didn't horrify her. She chose a button-down checkered work shirt, and a pair of my running shorts. She looked delicious when she appeared in the kitchen, where I was cooking hamburger/potato/cream of mushroom soup hash.

"Where are my clothes?" she asked.

I turned around. I had gotten dressed in the clothes I'd taken off an hour and a half earlier.

"I want to say something, but I don't want you to take it the wrong way," I said.

"Okay."

"I can't tell you how many times I've dreamed of hearing you say that."

"You mean, asking where my clothes are?"

"Uh huh."

"Men are so strange," she said.

"I folded them up. They're on the couch."

"Thank you."

She went there and I watched her pick up the little pile of clothes she'd taken off an hour and a half previously. She stood, looking at the couch.

"You can't even tell we did it," she said.

"I can remember that we did it," I said.

She came back into the kitchen, holding her clothes.

"I felt icky when I got into the shower, but now I don't feel clean."

"You didn't do anything wrong, Val," I said, instantly worried.

"That's not what I mean. I didn't say it well." She frowned. "What I mean is that I washed you off of me, but now I wish I hadn't. It felt wrong getting you off my body. I don't feel like I got clean. I feel like I lost something instead."

I went to her and held both sides of her head. I kissed both her cheeks, and her forehead. Her hair was still damp and I kissed it. Finally I kissed her lips.

"There. I got myself all over you again," I said.

"That's not what I mean, Bob. We did something incredibly important and I just flushed it all down the drain like it was nothing."

"I know it's too soon to say this," I said, "but I love you. I thought I'd be terrified to say that to you some day, but I'm not terrified at all. I do love you. I think I've loved you for a while now. And all you did was pursue reasonable personal hygiene. I don't feel like you flushed me away."

I blinked.

"Speaking of which, are you on birth control?"

"Of course not. I thought you knew me better than that."

"I know you as a study partner. I never thought about my study partner's personal habits in quite that way," I said.

"Well, why would I need to be on birth control? I was a virgin. I wasn't having sex with anybody and I didn't plan to have sex with anybody."

"And yet, you did," I said.

"Do you have a condom?" she asked, her voice sounding dangerous, somehow.

"I wasn't planning on having sex with anybody, either," I said.

Her eyes softened.

"I need to go," she said.

"I'm making hash," I said.

"No, I need to go."

"Come on, it's only eight o'clock."

"Bob, if I don't go, I'm going to end up on that couch again."

"Oh. Is that a bad thing?" I'd been caught off guard.

"I need to think about all this. I didn't plan for it to happen."

"Okay. I get that. I'll save you some hash. It'll be in the fridge the next time you get hungry."

She stared at me.

"I really have to go," she said.

She did. She was so agitated that she left still dressed in my shirt and shorts. I was standing there, still staring at the door, when it opened and she came back in.

"It's freezing out there," she gasped.

Then she got naked again, handing me my clothes, while she put her own back on. She got her coat off the coat tree by the door, where she'd completely forgotten it before, and, without a word, left again.

I stared at the door.

And realized I had a magnificent boner in my pants.

Chapter Three

As I said, Valerie was (and is) an intelligent woman. She's also very pragmatic. I saw her the next day outside the student union and waved. She was with two other girls and waved back like nothing was wrong. She cupped her hands and yelled, "Study tonight?" I yelled back "Yes!" instinctively and we went on about our business.

I decided to cook again. This time I made goulash, which is ground beef, macaroni, diced tomatoes (canned), mushrooms (also canned), and a hazardous mix of spices that's never the same from one making to the next. One time I put jalapeños in it, which was a big mistake.

I was pacing by six, afraid she wasn't coming after all, when she opened the door and breezed in. She dropped her book bag on the recliner and came straight to me before she took off her coat. She stared into my eyes for five or six heartbeats.

"This is serious, Bob," she said.

"I agree," I replied.

"I've never done this," she said.

"Be serious?" I asked, carefully. She could be talking about any number of things.

"Yes," she said.

I realized I was holding my breath and let it out.

"I've had crushes before," I said. "I mean I know now that they were crushes. And I know it because of how I feel about you." I blinked, but held her stare. "Val, the thought of trying to live without you terrifies me."

"That's what I'm talking about," she said, letting go of me and stepping back. She started taking off her coat. "I have all these feelings and you say things like that, and it makes me feel like I stepped through a rift in the universe, into a world where I don't know what to do."

"Of course you feel that way," I said. "Most girls get to process things slowly by dating in high school. You never did that. This has to be like learning a foreign language for you."

"That's close," she said, putting her coat on the coat tree. "But I know what it's like to be horny. I just don't know how to handle all these feelings about you."

"What's to handle?"

"You said you couldn't live without me. That's sweet, but it's also terrifying. I've never meant that much to anybody besides my mother."

"It's just how I feel."

She paced. Then she stopped and faced me.

"I had a dream last night. In it you were kissing some girl. I can't remember where. But in this dream, I suddenly had a gun in my hand and I wanted to shoot that girl."

"That's simple jealousy," I said.

"I've never been jealous before," she groaned. "This is all new to me. I'm a stranger in a strange land. Did you ever read that book, Bob?"

"Sure," I said. "It had lots of sex in it."

She stared at me.

"Is sex all men think about?"

"Not all men," I said. "At least when you aren't around."

"Ha - ha," she said.

"Look," I said. "I'm different in the sense that I've loved you from afar for a long time. I never thought anything would happen between us, but I kept hoping, dreaming that it would. And that dream was enough. But then things changed and it's not enough anymore. Am I making sense?"

"Yes," she said. "I get that. I never intended to have sex with you, but now that I have, I think about it a lot. I think that's what makes me so nervous. I never wanted to run to some man and let him do that to me."

"And now you do?" I asked, hopefully.

She came and invaded my personal space.

"I had a very good time last night," she said, softly.

I beamed.

"I tried to make it good," I said, proudly.

"It wasn't the sex," she said.

My ego deflated.

"It was because I finally felt like I could trust you with something that intimate."

My philosophical mind translated that to: "I finally met the man I wanted to give my virginity to."

Ego re-inflated.

"Well, last night was the best night of my entire life," I said.

Her hands snaked around my waist and she pressed her body against me. Her lips came up for a kiss.

"Surely we can have better nights. Don't they say practice makes perfect?"

******

We went to bed - a real bed - and we got no studying done that night. That sounds idyllic, but it glosses over all the emotion and fears and hopes of the two people involved. Sex is easy while you're actually engaged in it. It's either good sex, or merely okay sex, but it's generally pretty automatic. It's the before and after that gets complicated. Lots of animals handle that by the process of being in heat. When the female isn't in heat, there's no sex. When she is in heat, she lets some male breed her and then she just walks away. There are no complications, no recriminations, no social games.

But that kind of sex is also joyless. You have to stick your neck out to wring something more from the sexual act. Procreation is fine, but humans try to add other layers into it.

Then again, as I spend thirty seconds thinking about it, it's entirely possible that when a male turtle, or lizard, or lion fertilizes his mate, that orgasm is just as intense and satisfying as a human male feels. We don't know. And some animals do mate for life.

Anyway, my point is that the earthquake that was our sexual awakening did have aftershocks.

One of those was when I proposed to her. It was during the sex act, which one of my brothers told me you're not supposed to do. After those two first tumultuous nights, we more or less forced ourselves to moderate the 'fucking like bunnies' thing. Part of that was because we still weren't using protection. Valerie had been raised Catholic. She wasn't a 'practicing' Catholic, but that didn't mean some of what she'd been taught hadn't stuck with her.

It was, in fact, two months after we began making love before I asked her to marry me.

She said, "Yes!" (which my brother warned me about) and I went a little bonkers. I always ejaculated in her. I couldn't resist. I think it was in my genes. But it felt completely different this time. This time there was no hint of shame that I might be putting this woman at risk of having a child she might not be happy about.

The aftershock part was afterwards, when the import of what had happened so quickly began to sink in. I had proposed, and she had accepted. Both of us knew that it had been an emotional decision, rather than one which was thought out with the seriousness it deserved.

It took another week for the aftershock to settle down, and then we were fine. That means we were on the same level as any other couple that had decided to get married.

And that was when I met Aoibheann O'Malley, Valerie's mother and my future mother-in-law.

I may as well stop and answer the question I know you're asking. Who the hell names a little girl Aoibheann? Well, if you're from Ireland, maybe you know. It's an old Irish name, pronounced Eve-een. It means "little Eve" or "pleasant, beautiful sheen, of radiant beauty." She represented both meanings very well. The first refers back to the original mother of us all, with all the baggage that tows along. It was Eve that messed things up and got us kicked out of paradise. That Eve was stubborn, willful, mischievous, and a rule-breaker. On the other hand, Aoibheann O'Malley was one of those women who draw the eyes of both men and women with frank appreciation. She had the mature beauty of a Cindy Crawford, with a smile that brightened up the room with its beautiful sheen.

Of course I didn't know all that when I met her. She went by Eve to most people, and when she met me, she made it crystal clear that I had a long row to hoe before I earned her approval and acceptance. She was mistrustful of men in general, and me in particular. Val told me to shrug it off, that her mother would come around, eventually.

"If you can get past my defenses, you can get past hers," she said.

It was crazy for two students to get married. Neither of us could support the other. We were doing okay in terms of supporting ourselves, but if you'll recall, my parents were helping with my rent. When I introduced Valerie to them and said, "We're engaged!" I learned a little about the politics of giving your parents some warning. It helps if they know you have a girlfriend, for example, before you tell them you're going to marry said girlfriend. For some reason, mothers want to meet the girl long before an engagement is announced.

Both my folks and her mother tried to talk us out of getting married. We didn't listen. And unhappy parents don't go overboard to help the newlyweds. My folks' attitude would change, but at that time they got obstinate. Parents always think they know what's best. They decided that if I was 'grown up' enough to get married under circumstances that seemed foolish to them, then I didn't need their financial help.

This is how a vicious cycle gets started. By withdrawing their financial (and moral) support, it strained the marriage. They didn't intend for it to hurt us, but it couldn't help but cause problems. Neither did any of the parents feel like helping plan a foolish wedding.

So Valerie and I got married in the chapel of the ecumenical campus ministry building on campus. It was a non-denominational wedding. It wasn't Catholic, nor was it Presbyterian.

All the parents were furious about it when we told them.

So ... what do you do when you're bucking the system because love demands it? What do you do when there's no money coming in, or at least not enough to live on after you start your new, (and supposedly) joyous life as newlyweds?

Well ... there's one outfit that has job openings all the time, 365 days a year. They're always hiring. And they offer a wide variety of kinds of work.

After that semester was finished, I joined the Army.

******

It was not an easy decision. We'd just gotten married and that particular profession is known for taking the service member away from his or her family both on a regular basis and for extended periods of time. But it's a steady paycheck, and the benefits can't be beat. As soon as I joined, both Val and I had great health care coverage. My paycheck was enough to keep Val in school and the Army clothed and fed me. I had a roof over my head. Granted, at times that roof was made of canvas, or was the roof of a vehicle, but I had what I needed to survive.

It had the added benefit of getting me into the GI Bill, which meant when I got out, I could go back to school and there'd be serious financial help. And by then, Valerie would have finished her law degree anyway. Even starting wages for a lawyer are pretty decent.

So while it meant some sacrifice, initially, it would be good for us in the long run. And we were looking at the long haul.

It also got the attention of my parents, and Valerie's mother. It got their attention in the same way a late-night call from the police does, asking if you are so and so, the parent of so and so. My parents were terrified for me, and Eve was terrified for her daughter.

Most people don't pay that much attention to members of our armed forces. The people who constitute the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and coastguardsmen only represent 0.4% of the American population. That's the ones on active duty, the ones actually in the line of fire. The number of vets not on active duty is larger, but even if you add them in that only comes out to 1.3% of the population. Maybe you want to add in all the vets who served fewer than enough tours to retire and got out. If you do that, you get 7.3%, according to the VA. That means on an ordinary day, if you're in a room with 99 other people, maybe seven of them are vets of one kind or another. As such, there are millions and millions of Americans who don't know anybody on active duty, and may not know a vet. You could work with a vet for years and not know he or she served.

So when those people see something on the news about the war in the middle east, they have no skin in the game. It's just information. It doesn't really mean anything to them on a personal level.

If your child is in the Army, though, and may be sent to the middle east, suddenly it matters. Likewise, if your offspring is married to a soldier, you understand what the stakes are if things go to shit.

Eve understood better than most, but I would not know that until things did, in fact, go to shit.

******

I went to the recruiter's office on a Thursday. Four days later I was in St. Louis, Missouri, going through the all-day-long induction process. Following the recommendations of Staff Sergeant Tory Wilkins, my recruiter, I took with me the clothes on my back and a bag with some books in it. He said they'd give me everything I needed.

He was right about that. We got issued uniforms the same day we arrived at Fort Leonard Wood, also in Missouri. I had decided to be an engineer. They call them combat engineers, but I doubted seriously that they did much engineering during actual combat. Turned out I was wrong about that, but that's another story. I was twenty, but was still the oldest trainee in my company.

The next day we took tests for most of the day. I got called into the senior drill sergeant's office about three in the afternoon. I was afraid I'd done something wrong.

"You killed your tests," he said, without fanfare. "Did you ever think about being an officer?"

"This whole thing was kind of unplanned, and off the cuff," I said.

"What? Did you get drunk and go join the Army?" he asked.

"No. I got married and needed a job fast."

"Just as bad," he sighed. "So. If you do well in basic training and want to go to officer's candidate school I can send you there."

"What does an officer do?" I asked.

"Usually, fuck things up," he said, calmly. "There are a few good ones out there, though."

"I mean what would I do on a day-to-day basis?" I asked.

"Make decisions, lead soldiers, plan operations. That sort of thing."

"Isn't that what you do?" I suggested.

"I execute the plans the officers make," he said. "We're not here to have a tea party and chat, Private. I have work to do. Do you want to go to OCS or not?"

"Why not?" I asked.

"I will expect great things from you, Graves. I'm not going to let them make you a butter bar if I think you'll get your troops killed. Understand?"

I had no idea what a butter bar was, but instinctively I knew that this interview was unusual. By that, I mean he wasn't going to extend this invitation to all of us. Later I would understand he was choosing his trainee leadership. He did later recommend me for OCS, but that wasn't his intent during that interview.

They made me what's called a platoon guide. It's an actual position in the Marine Corps, but I didn't do what the real ones do. It was merely a title, meant to make me feel important and 'require' that the other trainees do what I told them to do. It turned out, the evaluation they did of me at the end of basic training was heavily on the side of, "Did he lead soldiers or not?"

The Army (and I'm sure the other services are the same) is one of those out of the frying pan and into the fire kinds of operations. They don't pull you along gently, giving you ample time to learn and adjust and "get it." From day one, they treat you like real soldiers, hoping that's what you'll turn into. Most do okay with that. I think it's because the type of person who decides to go that direction already has the mind-set for it. A few people couldn't handle it and washed out, but out of a company of 109 who started, 105 graduated. Of the four who didn't, two washed out, one got injured and had to heal before he could start again, and one was just a fuck-up. He couldn't shoot to save his ass (which is the whole point) and he couldn't pass a PT test. He was also overweight. He got re-cycled with the injured guy.

Anyway, this isn't a treatise on joining the Army. I'll summarize. Understand, though, this is the life I lived for five years, so I might summarize a little verbosely.

In boot camp I had four squad leaders under me, and each of them had seven or eight squad members. The drill sergeants told me what they wanted. I told the squad leaders what we needed to do to make the drill sergeants happy, and they got their squad members to actually do it. It's called the chain of command.

I loved it. I had never done anything even remotely like what we did in basic. I went from having to make hundreds of decisions a day, to almost none. I didn't have to decide when to get up. I didn't have to decide what to wear. I didn't decide how I was going to spend my day. About the only decision I did make each day was what to eat in the cafeteria. When we were in the field, I didn't even have to decide that. I ate whatever MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat) that I grabbed out of the box. I loved the challenge of doing the physical things we had to do. I loved running. I loved the stupid cadences we sang as we ran. I even loved the classroom work, which wasn't like either high school or college at all. It was all new and strange to me.

At the same time, I had no freedom at all. I missed Val with a pain in my heart that made me almost angry. I knew I was doing what had to be done, but it was very difficult, sometimes. I wrote her long letters, telling her what my day had been like and wishing on paper that I could be there with her. I got mail every day at mail call, which got me a reputation, and the nickname "Lover Boy" with the drill sergeants.

Then I got called to the senior drill sergeant's office again. This time the XO (executive officer – second in command) was there. His name was Lieutenant Dodd (something I had to know the second day I was there) and while I had seen him, occasionally, in the company area, I had never spoken to him. He was lounging against one wall with his arms folded. Senior Drill Sergeant Ainsworth looked up when I reported to him. He ignored Lt. Dodd completely.

"Remember when I talked to you about OCS?" he asked.

"Yes, Drill Sergeant," I barked, at the best position of parade rest I could manage.

"Turns out the NCOs think you just might have the barest potential to be an officer."

"Thank you Drill Sergeant!" I yelled.

"Loo-tennent Dodd, however," he drawled, "has some concerns."

I was at a loss. How did one respond to that kind of comment, in this kind of situation?

"I'm sorry to hear that, Drill Sergeant?" I said, at the kind of volume that usually got me a, "I can't hear you, Private!"

Sergeant Ainsworth looked over at Lt. Dodd.

"You made him sorry, Sir."

Lt. Dodd grinned, somewhat insolently, I thought. He still didn't say anything.

"Loo-tennant Dodd tells me he heard a rumor that you have a pencil dick," said SFC Ainsworth, calmly. "He is concerned that your dick is not impressive enough to be the dick of an officer."

My jaw fell open. I closed my mouth, thinking furiously. What was going on here? I wasn't so brain-washed by things military that I accepted this kind of thing as normal. Not from these people in this office. In the platoon area my peers might say something like that ... but not these men. This had to be some kind of test. The problem was, I hadn't studied for this test, and I had no idea what the right answer was. I stared at the wall above and behind SFC Ainsworth's desk and took a breath.

"My wife disagrees with the Lieutenant, Drill Sergeant!" I bellowed.

"Is your wife an officer?" asked Lt. Dodd, speaking for the first time.

"No sir," I yelled, still staring straight ahead. "She's in college, Sir. She's going to be a lawyer, Sir."

"At ease, Private," said Lt. Dodd.

I relaxed a little, but this was freaking me out. Dodd came over and stood next to me.

"If you become an officer, you're going to be responsible for the lives of your men. That makes you responsible to their wives, and children, and parents. It is entirely likely that you'll lose one or more of your men, and when you do, it will be your job to explain how that happened to their wife, or children, or parents. Can you do that, Private Graves? It is a heavy burden."

His voice was deadly serious. The joking was over. I didn't think the test was over, though. How I responded to his comments would be important. The silence got longer and louder. I had not been asked a question. I had not been told to speak. Philosophy, however, told me this was a conversation, a two-sided one.

"Sir," I said, my voice at a normal, conversational level, "if I don't do it, somebody else will. What if that person isn't any good at it, Sir? What if he loses somebody I might have been able to keep safe? I'm not sure I want to be an officer, but I know I can do it. Shouldn't I give the Army my very best?"

Dodd looked at me for what seemed like a long time. Then he said, "You are dismissed, Private."

I did all the things I knew I was supposed to do to be dismissed properly and left the office.

Four days later I finally got to see Valerie again, when she came to our graduation. I was hugging her when Lt. Dodd approached us. He held up a hand and said, "Do not salute me, Private Graves." He looked at Valerie. "I assume you are Mrs. Graves?"

"Yes," said Val, not letting go of me.

"Your husband tells me you think I'm full of shit."

I felt Val tense, and squeezed her before relaxing. I was trying to tell her not to worry about this.

"Well, I've never met you," she said. "I don't know your name. But based on the crude nature of your substandard introduction, I think it is entirely possible you are full of shit."

He looked at me and smiled.

"Sounds like she'll make a good lawyer."

"Yes, Sir," I said. "I have no doubts about that."

"She might even be tough enough to be an officer's wife," he said.

Those were prophetic words.

Chapter Four

Just a little more Army stuff and we'll get back to the point of this story. It's necessary, and you'll understand that in this chapter.

While my peers went on to advanced training in whatever MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) they had signed up for, I was sent to Fort Benning, in Georgia. I stayed there for twelve weeks that were remarkably like basic training, except this time I wasn't in a position of student leadership and we learned different things. With the exception of field artillery, all officers are trained in the same way. They may be assigned to a branch after they are commissioned, such as Military Police, or Armor, or Transportation, or Logistics, but they're all trained to be infantry officers. My enlisted peers went to school to learn how to be engineers, and actually use the equipment and do the tasks combat engineers to. But I was not going to be doing the "grunt work". I was going to be leading them. I would learn a lot about engineering when was in an active duty engineering company, but I could just as easily have been assigned to be a platoon leader in an armor company, or any other kind of unit in the Army.

So that's what they taught us to do: Be flexible, but never compromise standards, whatever kind of unit you were in.

It doesn't matter to the telling of this tale what units I was in. The bottom line is that, roughly four and a half years after I joined the U.S. Army, and while I was on my third tour in the middle east, I was, in fact, a platoon leader in a combat engineer company in Iraq, when we were called out to deal with a suspected IED. I was no longer a Butter Bar (Second Lieutenant) and now wore the single silver or black bar of a first lieutenant on my uniform. My platoon was down four men so I went with my platoon sergeant to act in a support role, handling commo. The suspected IED was in the middle of nowhere, a dusty, trackless series of low hills the road went through. The convoy commander was anxious about being ambushed and asked us to hurry up.

You don't hurry up when dealing with an IED. Not if you want to stay alive.

Long story short, the "IED" was an empty one gallon detergent container with some wires attached to it. The ambush, however, was very real.

I took a round from a NSV 12.7 X 108mm heavy machine gun that went through both lower legs. The round, quite similar to the US .50 caliber bullet, was probably armor piercing, and had been moving so fast that it basically amputated both legs in a fraction of a second. One of my men said I did a complete 360 degree flip before landing in a heap. I'm told they found my boots, with some leg left in each of them, but I never saw them again. Thanks to modern battlefield medicine, they controlled the bleeding and a dustoff chopper got me to a field hospital still alive.

The combat support hospital, what used to be called a M.A.S.H., cleaned up the ends of the bone and cut off the torn flesh and sent me on to Germany. I stayed in Germany only long enough for them to determine that the shock of the bullet had also damaged the tendons in both my hips and knees. My knees had been stressed, too. The ball of my right femur had been pulled out of the socket, and they put that back where it belonged.

Then it was on to the Brooke Army Medical Center, commonly referred to as BAMC, pronounced "Bam-see," in San Antonio, Texas. I was drugged up for most of that time, and it was like a very long, very bad dream.

I'm making this sound simple, but it wasn't. It involved multiple surgeries because lots of blood vessels and other damage had to be repaired. I had a vague idea of what had happened to me, both the cause of the injury and what they had been doing about it, but all I knew was that they were getting my legs ready for prosthetics. I hadn't made any medical decisions, up to that point. Anyway, to keep things moving, let's skip to after the last surgery, when I finally woke up enough to interact with the world around me. Valerie was there. She was curled up in a chair beside my bed, reading a magazine.

I had seen her several times since arriving back in America. I'd been wacked out on drugs each time, but I remember thinking that everything would be okay, because she was there, kissing me. That's about all I remembered, though. When I realized she was there again, I tried to sit up. I was groggy, but it didn't feel like it had in the past, when the world drifted in and out and I felt like I was trapped in a dark room.

It turned out that trying to sit up was a bad idea. Everything on my body hurt when I moved. I decided to talk, instead.

"Hey," I croaked. My mouth was dry.

"You're awake!" she yipped. She reached for something and I saw a nurse's call thingy in her hand. She pushed the button. "How do you feel?"

"I did feel like shit, if you want the truth," I said. "But it's all better now. You make it all better."

She was kissing me when the nurse came in.

That nurse was none other than Aoibheann O'Malley, my mother-in-law. She was also the charge nurse on the ward I would call home for the foreseeable future.

I had known Eve was a nurse. I had not known she worked for the Army. I'm not sure Valerie knew that either, at least not before I got hurt. All she knew was that, after we got married, her mother moved to San Antonio and was a nurse, there.

"How do you feel?" asked Eve, looking at machines and poking and prodding me.

"Like a Terrier ran over me," I said. She looked confused, so I added, "The vehicle, not the dog." She still didn't know what I was talking about, but "vehicle" was enough. It occurs to me as I write this that the reader might be confused, too. A Terrier is sort of a tank with a bucket and a digging arm on it. If you Google "Army Terrier" you can see a picture of it.

"You've been through hell," said Eve.

"How are my legs?" I tried to lift my head, but was too weak to do so.

"Healing." She fussed with my blanket. "How much do you remember?"

Before I could answer her a doctor breezed in, trailed by two residents. They poked me and prodded me and looked at X-Rays.

"You're looking good," said the doctor, with a patently false smile. "We'll get you started on physical therapy and as soon as the stumps heal enough, we'll see about some starting prosthetics."

"Oh boy!" I said, with patently false enthusiasm.

"You're lucky. Both amputations were below the knee, and in six months nobody will be able to tell you're wearing prosthetics unless you wear shorts."

"I sort of doubt there are lots of shorts in my future," I said.

"That's up to you," said the doctor. He had other things to show his residents, so he smiled at me and left.

He hadn't said a word to either Eve or Valerie.

I didn't care, though, because as soon as he left, Val basically tried to crawl in bed with me. Her mother put a stop to that, and she had to settle for giving me about a hundred kisses, all over my face.

"That's enough for now," said my nurse, who fussed with tubes and checked screens and such.

"Mom, you can talk to him anytime you want to," said Val, gently shoving her mother aside. "I can stay another day, but I have to get back. I'm scheduled to take the bar exam next week."

"Then that is what you must do," I said. "If anybody understands that you need to go off and do something important, I do."