Fuck Music
Brian O’Hare
We’re sitting in a pit. It’s deep, well above our heads—a half-finished bunker, really, begun in the heady days when imagined snipers lurked behind every dune, when the sky itself inspired fear. But that was months ago—the war’s over and we’re now merely bored. There’s five of us: Montague, from a suburb outside Pittsburgh, reading aloud from Richard Wright’s Native Son; Travis, one of the cooks, laughing his smokey laugh at something Gibbs said about his South Carolina hometown, ‘where the owls fuck the chickens’. Harris, with his sleepy smile and forever unlit king-sized cigarette, plays DJ on a knockoff Walkman while cheffing chicken a la king, boiling in a canteen cup above an invisible flame.
Besides me—Francis Keane, Travis is the only white guy in the pit. He wants to hear Garth Brooks’ ‘Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)’—which could be any one of our theme songs. But Montague, not even looking up from his book, announces matter-of-factly: “Ain’t nobody wanna hear Garth Brooks.” Everyone laughs, even Travis. And that’s that.
As Lieutenant, I’m allegedly in charge. I use this bit of leverage to hand Harris a mix-tape from Norma, my jewelry designer girlfriend back in Honolulu. Harris reads Norma’s title aloud, written in ball point pen on the cassette: Fuck Music. He smiles, shaking his head appreciatively, holding the cassette for everyone to see, like a trophy. Harris pops the cassette, hits ‘play’; dashes Tabasco from a small bottle onto his dinner. Horns cut the shit-talking—clean, like a blow from a butcher’s cleaver. They herald the arrival of something serious, a ’72 Lincoln Mark IV barreling down the Dan Ryan expressway at 3am maybe; something undeniably American. We go silent as James Carr’s ‘These Ain’t Raindrops’ fills our gut with bottomless longing. We’re suddenly transported, far from this hole in the Saudi desert, following an ancient, yet familiar map of heartbreak. Around us, the desert night closes with startling finality, like curtains after a show. The song slowly fades. Travis’ cigarette glows orange, making a small hiss as it burns; Harris’ canteen cup bubbles contentedly. After a long moment, Harris breaks the silence, almost like an accusation:
“Damn, Lieutenant.”
Brian O’Hare is a graduate of the US Naval Academy, former Marine Corps officer and Gulf War veteran. His career began in a Baltimore bar, where legendary director John Waters cast him as a convict in Cry Baby. Currently, he’s an award-winning writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in War, Literature and the Arts, Hobart, Electric Literature and others. Most recently, National Book Award winner (and Marine) Phil Klay awarded Brian Syracuse University Press’ 2021 Veterans Writing Award for Surrender—his book of short stories published in November 2022 by Syracuse University Press. He was named a Writing Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and served as Visiting Writer at CUNY/Kingsborough in Brooklyn. In March 2023, along with literary and veteran icons Tobias Wolff, Tim O’Brien and Richard Bausch, Brian’s book Surrender was read as part of a WORDTheatre (Los Angeles) event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war. He’s at work on his debut novel, A Gathering of Vultures.
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