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a glorious smile and a strange, confident ease after complimenting me. Her black hair fluttered across her white moonlit cheek. That wonderful moment will always be captured in my mind.
    She seemed so unfazed by my attraction to her yet welcomed my advances with what felt like advances of her own. It felt right to shoot her a smooth, silent head shake and the most perfect wink and smile combination. James Dean himself couldn’t have done it better. The actor would have been proud of my single-handed flick of the cigarette into the darkness. Shit, all I needed was a leather jacket, another cigarette in my mouth, a tree to lean against with one leg up, and she would have been at my feet, begging me to change her mind. It was legendary.
     
    Replacing being gay with confident assurance in bisexuality worked for me around the time of Rachel and the lesbian. They didn’t want me, and I didn’t fit their established roles. I was attracted to guys, the boyish ones with hairless faces and big eyes. I liked the flirtation and ran with it, becoming promiscuous. It was fun to have so much power as a woman in a man’s world. Girls were attractive but not as sexy as Rachel, straight or otherwise. Every opportunity to make her blush was taken, then retracted, only when it seemed to make her uncomfortable. After awhile it became expected of me to flirt. We both understood it was genuine yet subdued out of respect.
    It started during our smoke breaks, and eventually smoking became our tradition, our common ground and excuse to bat eyes at each other. While I endlessly patted my pockets down for a lighter that always seemed to be missing, we spent the time talking about various things.
    Eventually the months grew colder, and even with jackets it was too frigid to stand around for an hour enjoying our cigarettes. We stopped our rendezvous all together, until one day she pulled me into the bathroom stall as I headed to my room. She must have been watching for me because it was perfectly timed.
    As I stumbled into the common bathroom with laughter, she whispered in excitement, “Come smoke with me; look there is a vent in this one,” pointing to the top of the wall in the far stall. It took her beautiful brown eyes a few flutters with a bit of begging before I agreed. We giggled as we squished into the stall, lit our cigarettes, and tried to blow our exhales into the slats as quickly as we could so we wouldn’t get caught.
    Suddenly someone flushed a toilet, and fear drained the color from both of our faces. The sound echoed through the stalls and tiled walls. In a panic we rid ourselves of the evidence and walked out to the sinks as if two girls coming out of a stall were normal. The lesbian was there, squishing soap in her hands with a smile from ear to ear while she remarked, “Don’t worry ladies, that’s where I go,” and nonchalantly rinsed.
    This time we were safe from the wrath of the drill sergeants, but we cleared ourselves from the latrine just the same. We understood with words unspoken that this was our new designated smoking area, and the routine resumed in the warmth of the stall. It was also my overdue fix to see Rachel, but it ended too quickly. So off I went to have sex in the woods with an equestrian boy from Ohio.
    It took about a week before Rachel and I stopped blowing the smoke into the slats, figuring it didn’t make a difference as long as the girls continued to bitch about the odor.
    Since no one could be pinpointed as the culprit, all the smokers became careless. What would “they” do anyway? Kick us out of the army for smoking? We laughed at our rebellious actions. Rachel was the minx who brought up that fact.
    Our routine made me happy, but it also led me to my most uncomfortable situation with Rachel. The smoking tradition was as follows; we met, checked the latrine, smoked and talked, washed our hands, and left. It was perfectly timed to coincide with the absence of other soldiers and drill sergeants.