Thank You for My Service - Mat Best Page 0,71
with that depiction. His arms weren’t nearly that long.
Fortunately for us, girls that hang out at bars like this one aren’t usually looking to hook up with guys who are built like a cement mixer. They much prefer guys like my crew—strong, agile operators who can fill a room with laughter and a cargo van with urine. When we walked in, all the single ladies looked at us like a batch of fresh meat in a town filled with zombie dicks, and they were starving.
Two girls who seemed as morally casual as they were fancily dressed (especially for a weekday) approached me and my Ranger buddy Lennon right away.
“Who are you guys?” one of them asked, all flirty.
“We’re foreign aid workers,” Lennon said. Okay, I can work with that.
“We’re in town working on a well-drilling project to bring drinking water to starving African kids. It’s all about the kids.”
“Maybe you’ve heard of us,” my buddy continued, “we’re part of that clean water organization that Matt Damon founded.”
“OhmigodIloveMattDamonhessoamazingohmigod,” the other girl said without stopping to breathe. “Courage Under Fire is like my favorite E-VUH-ERR!”
The girls immediately hooked their arms in ours and led us out of the bar. It was like that scene in Love Actually when the goofy British ginger walks into some dive bar in Wisconsin and three hot chicks who love British accents surround him, take him to one of their houses, and basically rape him. Except in this case, instead of accents, it’s military guys; and instead of taking us to their house, they led us across the parking lot to our hotel.
When we busted through the hotel door, they started screaming for us to take our shirts off. We obliged and they jumped on us, making out with us like the secret to happiness was at the bottom of our esophagus and the only way to get it was to fish it out with their tongues. We were well on our way to a winner-take-all pants-off dance-off when we heard a knock at the door.
“Hey, you guys!” said someone in a slow, half-joking manner.
It was Oxen.
I got up and opened the door.
“Oh shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you guys were with girls,” he said as he peeked into the room.
“No worries. What’s up dude?”
“Nothing, I’m going down the street to get some beers at the store. You guys want anything?” Oxen asked.
“Naw, man. I’m all tapped out. I’m good,” I said. “Lennon?”
“Yeah, man, tapped out here too.”
“All right, cool. I’ll get enough beers for everyone, anyway,” he said as he bumped my fist and walked away down the hall.
“We’ll hit you up later.”
As the door shut, the girls began making out with us again, except now something felt sort of off about it, like they were just going through the motions, putting on a show. Suddenly, they jumped up.
“Hey guys, we’re going to go to the vending machine to get some sodas, do you want anything?”
“No, I think we’re good,” I said. “We could go get soft drinks for you if you’d like? There’s no need for you guys to go.” I’m such a gentleman.
“No, it’s okay,” the girl said, looking over at her friend. “We don’t know what we want yet, we’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” I said, like a scorned lover in a Lifetime movie.
They got up quickly and left, pulling the door shut behind them. My buddy and I tried to assess the situation. Something was up, but…what? We were former Rangers and soon-to-be ████████████████. Surely we had enough investigative chops between us to figure this shit out. On the other hand, we also had enough beer in us to drown triplets in a bathtub. So we waited. Five minutes went by. Then ten. I looked at my friend and turned off the television.
“Yo man, something is off here,” I said, Sherlocking the shit out of our situation. All I needed was a cape and a cocaine addiction and I’d be ready to solve all sorts of crimes.
“You want to go look for them?” he said. “Their purses are here, so they definitely didn’t leave.”
“Yeah, let’s do a little recon mission.”
We threw on our shirts and bounced out of the room. The first stop was the vending machines. Nothing. Then we walked back across the parking lot to the bar. Nada. We wandered the halls of the hotel aimlessly, searching for our soulmates the way only two young drunk dudes on the precipice of pussy could. Empty-handed after like twenty