“Okay, I am starting to get this,” I said. “What happened on this mission and what you observed of the Special Forces at this time was all you knew about them. You had no other information?”

“That’s right.”

“Well this matters because I had different information than you. Very different. So tell me what impressed you?” I asked. “What was impressive about the Special Forces?”

(swearing below the break)

“All of it. The whole thing impressed me. Speedy and I wanted to go to war! We wanted to go to war with Iran over those hostages but here were these guys going to surgically extract these people… no war. It was amazing. I was amazed. And the Special Forces themselves - they were just so professional. I swear to God, P, I never saw anything so impressive in my life. It was like a religious experience or something. I just had to join them. I just knew I had to go and be one of them.”

“What did Speedy think?”

“Speedy never got to Iran. He was on a different plane. He’d have come in the next day.”

“Oh. Well, if you were going by this story, judging the Special Forces by this story… well they are very heroic. This was a heroic thing to do. The book is titled correctly, The Guts To Try. Everyone involved was freakishly brave,” I said.

“Yeah. Yes, they were brave and heroic. They were heroic as hell.”

“Well I didn’t know any of this. No one told me Special Forces was heroic. Fuck no, that’s not what I heard. Want to know what I heard?” I asked.

“What did you hear?”

“Well I heard about the throat cutting, obviously and with no further information. I was told graphically about cutting throats (by a retired SF guy) and I was told you would come home to me after cutting someone’s throat and put your bloody hands all over me.”

No comment.

“I was told you would never be able to get the blood off your hands and it was just as well because you would be psychologically ruined anyway. There would be nothing left of you by the time they were done with you. They. They, the Special Forces, who are monsters.”

No comment.

“Yeah, you would be killed most likely and if so, this would be for the best considering your future should you survive.”

“My future?”

“Yeah. If you did survive, you would be ruined. No one would want to be around you and no one would hire you because no one would want to work with you or be your friend or any other thing. You would be completely repulsive to society. You would be shunned forever.”

No comment.

“It’s a different story, isn’t it? And then came the worst of it.”

“What? Tell me the worst of it,” he said.

“Well I was supposed to save you. If I was any kind of girlfriend at all I should go home and do everything I could to stop you from going into SF. Beg and plead for sure, but whatever means whatever, doesn’t it? I should stop you from doing this at all costs to me or to you. I should threaten, get pregnant, whatever I could possibly do to affect your decision and derail you from your course. And that right there fucked me up bad.”

“Why?”

“Well you notice I didn’t do anything to stop you.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Well I couldn’t because it was against my beliefs. I was expressly taught by Henry that you have no right to run another person’s life or to try to control them in anyway. So here I am told in this drastic manner that you, who I love is going to do something that can only be devastating to you and that if I loved you at all I would take all kinds of action that I simply could not take because I had these principles which I truly believed were correct.”

“I see.”

“Yeah. So if left me to stand there and watch you go off towards the devastating end of your life. Live or die I was told very clearly it would make no difference so I just had to stand there and watch you go and let my heart break right in half.”

“I’m sorry, P.”

“It’s not your fault. I am just trying to get you to see the other side of this. Because when I did try to broach this topic, well you know what happened. There was no information from you to refute anything he said.”

No comment.

“And a lot of what he said was true. Except where he said you would be ruined. You were not ruined in the least. I mean, you are trained, that’s for sure. But your character between now and then has not changed one iota. You are the same man without a doubt.”

“Thanks, P.”

“Well it’s true. But my point is no one ever told me there was anything heroic about any of this. That was never mentioned by anyone, anywhere. All you said was that you were going in so what am I supposed to do?”

“I didn’t know anything else I could tell you. You know what I thought?” he asked.

“What?”

“I thought I could join Special Forces and go on secret missions like the one I just went on and then come home to you, put on some slippers, sit on the couch and be happy.”"You thought that?”

“I thought that.”

“Well after listening to this I can see why you thought that.”

Skip to Part 9 - The Conclusion