Mammoth Christmas Party 1956: From Left to Right (Part 1)

THE SOLDIER

Seven faces.

Well, six and a half faces. Four women -- three men. A couple partially empty bottles of champagne, pearl necklaces, and an empty chair in the foreground.

The couple on the left is the purest. They are truly in love and produce envy from onlookers because of their natural displays of affection. He looks off into the distance. He's the only one looking somewhere else. Ignoring the photograph being taken, he stares at a memory -- a memory of a past lover. Her face appears on another woman's body. The intriguing host of the past lover's ghost moves her hips in the same way. Her lips are soft and without lipstick. He likes that -- always has. He believes in a woman's true natural beauty.

He's been married five years and never once has been unfaithful. But he remembers. It's not uncommon for him to take mental voyages to the past. Back when he would dance and drink and watch the sunrise while holding his lover doused in sweat and champagne. Those days are now gone for him. He loves his wife but his heart is segmented. The smell of the expensive perfume on his wife's neck is not enough to make him return. The beat of her heart through her back is not enough. The sparkle of her pearl earring makes him think about the soft white flesh on his lover's hips. Her body may be dead but she lives on in the eyes of this distracted man.

Before he met his wife and even before he met his lover, he was in The War. He was a man hunter and one of the best. Upon capturing one of his enemies, his eyes would burn red as foreign blood spilled to the ground and stained his uniform that was already covered in dark brown splatters. With those piercing blue eyes, he'd slice a man's throat with a steady hand. That was his favorite method of killing. He even had his own special ritual. When the enemy was most vulnerable and looking certain death in the eye, their pleas would be silenced. The man would tell a dark secret to the enemy and then slice their throat. That way, someone would know what needed to come from his lips but they would never be able to repeat it. His secrets were varied and raw. He would tell crying soldiers that he had lusted for his mother, that he used to slowly torture and kill birds, that he had once been with a man, and that he raped a girl when he was only thirteen so that he could lose his virginity. Then he would smoothly drag his sharpened blade across the dirt-smeared skin on their neck, sending blood to the ground along with their last words and his secrets.

After the war, he came to know many women. No one, however, could compare with his lover. He was able to tell her all his secrets -- the same secrets he told dead men. She loved his clandestine past; loved that he had killed so many and made sure that his deeply guarded sins were the last thoughts in his enemy's mind. Although it pleased him to have this companion, he knew she was disturbed. She hated finer things and refused to bring herself past mediocrity. She had secrets of her own but never shared them. He would beg her and she would concoct an imaginative tale to satisfy his heart but he knew. It didn't pain her to lie and that hurt him the most.

One day, the man came home to an empty house. He called for his lover. She walked in from the kitchen, wielding a butcher's knife. He asked what she was doing. She looked him straight in the eyes and said, "I never loved you." Then she cut her own throat and fell to the ground.

He met his wife years later after a long stretch of solitary. After two months, they were married. He loved that she had an affinity for the finer things in life. She had no dirty secrets to tell. She was everything his lover was not. The past five years have been the best of his life but he is still haunted by the ghost of his lover. Even his wife's soft red hair rubbing ever so gently against his forehead is not enough to break his lover's stranglehold. For she was the last one to ever hear his secrets.