"Heh theah, Timmuh?" came the heavy Southern drawl with a light dusting of Western added to it. What he said was, "Hey there, Timmy?" and I won't do the spelling on you again, so long as you remember he sounded like that.
"Yeah, Alan?" I said as I looked up from my bunk. I was taking a nap, middle of the afternoon, but I had pulled a middle-of-night sentry shift and was needing the Z's.
"I need a favor from you tonight, if you don't mind." To look at Alan's face was to look into his soul. You never met a guy who was so damned open and honest and straightforward with you. I always figured if I wanted to keep a secret, I'd better never tell Alan. But if I needed help, he'd be the first one I called on. His broad, plain but regular face held startlingly blue eyes, a wide rack of teeth set in a perpetual, genial smile, his close-cropped hair fit his head like it belonged that way, as opposed to being a form of rape-with-violence the way it was with so many other servicemen. You could see this broad, solid body as it plowed the fields, fed the cattle, helped a horse to foal. The only time his hands looked out of place was holding a rifle, you just didn't connect that face to the acts of war. But he was a good soldier, I don't doubt that if we'd ever been in real combat together that he wouldn't have been a hell of a reliable man to have at your side. So when he approached me for a favor, I was smiling where I wouldn't with a lot of guys.
"That depends." I said. Alan was a friend of mine, but if he wanted me to stand his sentry shift or something, the answer would be no. Still, Alan was a good guy, if he had a good reason, I'd get out there and keep this part of South Korea safe for democracy for him. The North Koreans were quiet, but the truce negotiations hadn't been going for long and we had no guarantees about any part of this cease-fire holding, which is why we were still playing a game of "camping tonight" through another miserable Korean winter, not too bad yet but heading there. "What do you need?"
"I don't know just how to ask this..."
I was used to his hesitations, Alan was an old country boy from a town called Eagletown, Oklahoma (which is down in the very southeast corner of the state if you want to hunt for it, which explains his Southern accent), he was polite to the point of being a bit annoying. "Come on, just spit it out." I encouraged him.
"Will you marry me?"
Now THAT I wasn't expecting! "Will I what?" I said.
"What the hell?" Alan and I weren't alone in that tent, it held eight cots and three of those were hosting a four-man poker game. He distracted the players with that comment, as you can imagine.
"You boys aren't going queer on us, now, are you?" another one hooted.
"I'm sure not!" I said. "Alan, would you say that again, and slower this time?"
"Will you marry me? Help me marry my girl by marrying me, that is." Alan said. "It's called a marriage by proxy, it lets two people get hitched when they ain't anywhere close to each other."
"Marriage by proxy?" I asked. "So what would I do?"
"You stand in for Mary Sue at the wedding, and play her part." Alan went on. "It ought to be a girl, but hell, I don't want to bring in no Korean woman to play Mary Sue, she might think I really was marrying her. The whole ceremony is gone through just like a regular wedding, only the preacher would call you Mary Sue and you would answer for her during the ceremony. Back in Eagletown, Mary Sue will do the same thing at about the same time, which for her will be this morning." We were across the International Date Line, and it was true, our evening was the USA's morning. "The wedding will make her legally my wife. Of course, when I get back to Oklahoma, we have to do the whole marriage all over again, but at least Mary Sue can be known as my wife."
"And why can't she wait until you get home for a leave?" I wanted to know.
Alan looked abashed. "Well, the fact is, she can't wait."
"She's pregnant." I jumped right to the point.
"Over six months gone." Alan affirmed. "But that won't matter if she's married to me when the baby comes along."
"So you have to get married by long distance." I agreed.
"We're going to try to fix up a telephone line to her for tonight." Alan agreed. "Maybe she can be the one who says I do. If not, would you stand there and say it for her?"
I considered this, then carefully kept my face straight, nodded and said, "but on one condition."
"And what's that?" Alan wanted to know.
"You got to get down on one knee and ask me real pretty like." I said.
I could go on and on about the rest of that day, but you can guess what it was like, a camp of some two hundred lonesome, horny Army guys who set out to give one of their own (two of their own) a proper wedding. Someone actually managed to find for me some white lace (probably absconded from some Korean whore's lingerie) and made me a veil to wear. Paper flowers were available made out of toilet paper and someone with a knack for making them (the talents of some soldiers will surprise you, toilet-paper roses!), and everyone sang out "Here Comes the Bride" as I sashayed down the aisle with a walk that would make any hooker blush, I swung my hips back and forth and blew kisses at everyone and so on. Rice was being thrown, far too early, but they had the rice and didn't want to wait.
Our chaplain was there for the ceremony and playing his part with a combination of good humor and attention to the ritual. After all, this WAS a real marriage Alan and I were going through, we were just serving up a ringer for the bride with me playing her part. Sergeant McGiven was there with a field telephone and while Mary Sue was on the line for the beginning of the ceremony, we lost her in only about thirty seconds. Enough to let her assure the chaplain that she did in fact want to marry Alan, and Alan to tell Reverend William Running Elk the same, so that made it A-OK with the good reverend to plow on with the show.
I was called "Mary Sue Whittaker" throughout the thing and everything got a little more solemn after a while, after hearing Alan's girl's voice on the speaker wired into the telephone. Alan didn't smile at all as he repeated after the reverend, "I, Alan, take thee, Mary Sue, to be my lawful wedded wife."
Then it was my turn. "I, Mary Sue, take thee, Alan, to be my lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold."
And the giggles started in, but Alan turned around and the stern dignity on his face baffled it all the way down again. The only difference in the ceremony I saw was that the ring ceremony was only one ring, the one for Alan. I slid it onto his finger while pronouncing Mary Sue's commitment vow of "with this ring, I thee wed."
We got total, respectful silence all the way up until, "I now pronounce you man and wife."
The chaplain left out the last line, but I said, "Now pucker up and kiss me, you big lug! I'm all yours, now!"
And Alan grinned and everyone howled and even the chaplain laughed, and Alan took me in his arms and threw me back Hollywood-movie style and laid a big wet one on me! I mock-clawed at his back first in panic then in passion, and everyone was laughing, there was a freaking rice blizzard going on (I think some guys were scooping it up off the floor and throwing it at us, rice, dirt and all.)
The only way to handle all the well-wishers was to form up a quickie receiving line which kept us from being squashed to death but had the downside of everyone wanting to "kiss the bride." I kept up my spirits and playfulness long as I could, but it got tiresome after a while. I was relieved to finally go over and "cut the cake" which had been made by the mess-crew and wasn't half bad. They'd even made a sort of frosting with whipped sugar and spice-candies were made into the groom-and-groom atop it.
After that it was cake and beer. Lots of beer. And some wine. And some brandy. And some rum. And some...well, you get the idea. It got very drunk out that night and if the North Koreans had come around, they could have taken us all out cheap. I hear the local whorehouse did a stellar business and a lot of love letters got written with beer-flavored tears dotting the paper from those who had wives, sweethearts or mothers to write to back home.
By about one in the morning, I was sitting with a group of guys, the jokes had run out and we were talking about military things when Colonel Esthemen came over and said, "Private Smith, you have a job to do."
I looked up and said, "Now, Colonel, you can't expect a guy to work on his wedding night!"
The Colonel laughed a little (the jokes were getting old by then, I said) and he went on, "Actually, that's what you need to do. You need to take your husband home with you and get him in bed before I have to put him on report."
I looked and saw Alan and he was alternately bellowing and...was that crying? "Yes, sir." I said. Looked at my buddies, "Sorry, fellows, but I got to go lose my cherry tonight if Alan is still up to it."
Everyone laughed (a little, again) and I went over and said, "Alan? Alan?"
"Uh? Hey, Timmuh?" The sound was different somehow, this time he did say "Timmuh" and mean it, not just a drawl on my second syllable.
"Let's go."
"Go where?"
"Go to bed, you and me." I said. "We got married tonight, remember? Our honeymoon suite is waiting for us." We had been given a small, square tent about eight foot on a side, the perfect size for two men, it was one of the wedding gifts from the men. I didn't know about Alan, but I planned to try to keep this gift! Sleeping days while others played poker near your bunk was no fun at all!
That set off his tears again, Alan was crying because his new wife was a half world away and he had just gotten married and who knew when his real wedding night would be coming? I had picked up before that he had only had sex with this girl one time, and that was just before he shipped out to here, back in mid-July. And now she was knocked up from that one time, and he'd be going home to a baby, maybe even a toddler, and maybe that was more than a little frightening to him as well. I know the thought of it scared me shitless! If I'd had a girlfriend before shipping out and knocked her up, she would have been mother to a bastard and maybe I'd marry her after I got back...if I wanted to!
"Come on, loverboy." I said as I steered him with my shoulders under one arm and out the door, stopped to wave good-night to everyone, and then out into the cold winter air. No snow yet, but I knew Korea well enough to know it could freeze your balls off without half trying. The local habit of sleeping on their oven at night wasn't such a bad idea. They did, they had this long low oven in the middle of their room and on cold nights, they'd build a fire under it, and everyone would climb on top and sleep there. Blankets underneath and a knack for building the right-sized fire made it a lot better than piling on cold quilts until you were smothering like we Americans did.
"Threshold." Alan said when we got to the tent. "Got to carry my wife...over the threshold."
"Not tonight, husband of mine." I said. "Save it for Oklahoma and Mary Sue. You and me are walking in."
Damned if the big lug didn't insist on trying to carry me over the threshold! He did it, sort of, if you call dropping me right after we got inside being carried over the threshold. I guess lots of grooms do about the same after a wedding reception with a lot of drinking. I was just glad to be inside. Someone had even built us a fire in the tent and all I had to do was stoke it up and add some fuel. Only problem was the guys had carried the joke too far, instead of two cots, they had dug up one of those travel beds and put it in there. A couple could sleep on it if they didn't mind touching. Perfect for a young married couple. Let the guys have their joke, and tomorrow, I'd get another cot put in here. Maybe Alan and I could flip for the bed, or take turns on it, or maybe just say to hell with it and share the bed, I slept days mostly and Alan's duties was usually during the day, we could "hot-bed" the bunk and only use one.
I turned from the now-building fire, and looked at Alan sitting on the bed. "Okay, loverboy, time for you and me to get to bed." I said. "No flimsy nightgown for me and no nookie for you. Just strip and get."
The wind whipped up and I went "Br-r-r-r-r! I think I'm keeping my clothes on tonight." I settled for taking off my shoes and belt, and unbuttoning my shirt and pants but leaving them otherwise on me. They might twist on me and slip off a bit, but I preferred that to the binding and pinching I got if I kept them all done up.
"Come on." I said to Alan again as he sat there, watching me through a veil of beery tears. "I'm married." he said like it was a wonder for the ages.
"Yeah, you're married." I agreed. "That's why we got the honeymoon suite here." I said. "Man, I hope we get to keep this. That bunkroom-tent is driving me out of my gourd. They ought to put all the night-shift guards together or something."
"We got married." Alan proclaimed.
"Huh? Yeah, sort of." I agreed. "You got married to Mary Sue, and I agree to play her for the ceremony. I will admit you were a hell of a good kisser there." and I grinned at Alan.
He grinned back. "You're a good friend, Timmy." He said to me. "The best friend I ever had. I knew, when I had to get someone to marry me, you were to be the one. If you had said no, I don't know if I could have done it."
"Not sure you should have." I said.
"Huh?"
"I mean, how well do you know Mary Sue?" I said. "She's having your baby, okay, but a marriage takes more than that to survive. The kid will have your name, but you could have done that by an adoption proceeding when you got back. Now you can't even go to the local whorehouse and get your pipes cleaned now and then without cheating on Mary Sue."
Alan considered that as he shucked his own shoes and undid his shirt and even took off his pants. His worry about shivering, not mine. He slid into bed beside me and said again, "You're a good friend, Timmy. The best friend I have." He snuggled up next to me, but I'd shared a bed growing up as a kid, it was a cold night, snuggling didn't mean anything. Or didn't have to.
"Nobody else would have gone through what I did tonight." I agreed. "Man, I'm beat."
"You and me got married tonight." His arm came over my chest, again, a close but not impossibly friendly gesture.
"Yeah, yeah." I was getting sleepier by the minute. "I'm a real great guy, I know. Went down the aisle. Stood by you. Put the ring on your finger. Spoke the vows, and gave you a kiss at the end. Yep, I married you all damned right, the whole damned way."
"Yeah." Alan said. "You're my wife, Timmy." And now a leg of his went in between mine as he rolled partly on top of me and that drunken lout was trying to kiss me! Kiss me again, that is! I mean, really kiss me! Aw, hell, guys, you know the difference...he kissed me!
When he let go, his breath was filled with stale alcohol and knocked me back. "Alan, you're drunk." I said.
"Yeah, I'm drunk." Alan said to me. "And I'm married. If'n I could get to my wife, I'd be with her right now. 'Stead of that, I'm with you. You, my best friend." And he kissed me again.
Now maybe I'd been drinking too much. And maybe that ceremony had gotten to me a bit as well. I mean, the marriage had been word-for-word like the regular wedding. I had spoken up and said all the words, "I, Mary Sue, take thee Alan, to be my lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward." I wasn't Mary Sue...but that was a difference that my subconscious didn't seem to pick up too well.
So when Alan began to hunch at my crotch with his, his hard cock ended up brushing over my hard cock. You can't lie about something like that, Alan felt it and he groaned and he hunched even more.
"God, Alan!" I breathed huskily. Shit, I was getting so damned turned on! That wedding...it had done something to my brain! I'd said all the words you say when you get married, I'd done all the things you do when you get married, I'd slipped a ring onto Alan's finger, I'd kissed him at the end, I'd stood in line with him, I'd cut cake with him, I'd...Jesus! I FELT married to Alan!
"Married, oh, God!" I sighed as he kissed my neck. God, I wanted to throw my legs wide and let him slide that hard cock of his right into my pussy...but I didn't have one!
So I grabbed hold of this big Oklahoman country stud and I held him tight while I moaned and thrust upwards against him. I think if we'd kept that up, I could have come, just like that, from the feel of my husband (husband!) on top of me!
But as I held onto him, my hands worked their way down that arching, active back and I found myself at the bottom of the rib cage, below the rib cage, holding onto the small of the back, below the small of the back, against the elastic band of his boxers.
I could feel those glutes of his clenching, and they begged me to dig in after them, and I got those paired orbs one in each hand and I clutched the sweet bulbs of Alan's ass and wished I could have more of them. "More, more." I murmured.
"Ah, shit, yeah." Alan said hoarsely. "Get them off of you, shit fire!" And Alan got off of me, and his hands caught my pants and boxers and he skinned them down my body like he was skinning a squirrel he'd shot like in his stories of back home in Oklahoma.
God, it felt so right, having Alan pulling my clothes from me, baring my lower body for him to use and to love! My cock was a raging pillar of fire at my groin, I moaned and hunched upwards into the air as he came back and Alan smiled that so-friendly smile and he caught hold of my dong and he said, "Time for us to get some loving done." That was Alan, an obvious statement but in his mouth it was fresh and clean and...appropriate, kind of.
I fumbled for Alan's crotch but it was out of range, I ended up having my cock jacked by Alan hard and fast and me lying under that flailing hand, moaning, at times remembering how many other men were very close around us, other times just giving in and letting my lust roar out as it would.
"Ah, damn but you're hot." Alan said. "I bet you're about to come now, aren't you?"
"Yeah, aw, yeah." I guttered.
"Then I reckon I'd better stop doing this." Alan let go of my cock. He let go! He let go!
My groans of protest were ignored by my new husband. "We going to do this up right." He said to me. "I got to get my head wet enough so it don't tear you up, just give me a moment here."
And he so kindly hawked and spit on his glans until it shone in the lights that were all around us (you don't darken an army camp, not entirely, you have to see where you're going and what's happening, even after midnight), shone like the silver-white moon.
"That ought to do it." Alan said practically.
I gasped as that huge globe swung at my ass and contacted. Hell, I'd never been fucked before! Ever! Not even thought about it! And yet, tonight, the thought of denying Alan anything didn't seem to cross my mind! All I thought was how to do this.
With Alan's cooperation and a bit of try-and-fail-and-try-again, we got that dong's dinger into my butt and with the head fully inserted, the rest was a matter of gentle pressure from Alan. I looked up into his face, furrowed with concentration but nothing angry about it even with the lines between his eyebrows prominently showing and the eyes narrowed and the mouth open. He looked up at me then and his mouth formed a smile and I had to match it.
Slowly, Alan possessed me more and more until finally he pushed the last section in and I could feel that his body was now chock-a-block up against my buttocks, I had the whole length of him inside me.
"You got my cherry." I breathed. "All of it, yours."
Alan grinned and he slowly began to move himself on top of me. I don't know where he found the self-control to do it this way, maybe the alcohol inhibited him where it had removed all of mine (if that was the case). I just know that he carefully and gently worked himself until his cock had stretched me all the way and he could move without fear of hurting me, and then, and only then, did he let his hips take on full power and ram forcefully into me!
And with the power came the passion and with the passion came the surging emotion that made me cling to Alan even more! My husband, my man, my only love! Him, only him, take me, my love, take all of me and give yourself to me to fill my empty vessel with your love, for with your love, I shall feast and never languish again! Some poet or other had said something like that, I think, but I didn't recall who, but they were my words now, mine, mine!
Alan was making rapid husky breathing sounds, like his entire life was taken up with this motion, like he was now entirely making love to me, forgetting anything and everything else in this moment, belonging to me! His cock was a steel rod pounding into my body, driving the blood in my veins to throb throughout my body and pummel my temple, and the blood then rushed from there into my cock and tried to burst it from within, I was so hard then that I couldn't bear it, I grabbed hold of my dong and I pumped it and I yelped and I came, just like that.
Alan was peppered with my come as he drove himself in and out of me, my come flew and splattered his chest, his stomach, it rained down on me from there like rain that has permeated a tent roof and can now pester the inhabitants with impunity, along with the sperm was the sweat, Alan's sweat that now beaded his beautiful body all over, turning him into something both more and less than a man, he was the primal beast that is driven by the hindmost part of our brain, he was the rage that burns within our souls when we argue, when we triumph, when we create, he was the total and raw essence of man in that he was doing the one thing that is uniquely a man's, he was loving his partner and he was sharing his body with me, he could be all of mankind in this moment, him the Adam and me the Eve (by dint of Adam's graceful invitation), and the two of us would make our Paradise together!
As I sank into the delightful languidness of post-ejaculation bliss, Alan groaned more and more and I realized and roused myself and clung to him again, looking earnestly into his eyes, watching him as he reached his peak, watching that face as it was devoured by desire, punished by passion, livid with lust and his mouth opened slowly wider and wider until it could have enveloped and swallowed the universe, and as he reached that widest extension, out of his throat came a long, sighing groan that, once it had been born, grew into a giant and it roared and I felt then Alan's spunk as it gushed into my bowels and I felt then something better than orgasm as I won Alan's delight for him and wrung from it my trophy in the form of his jizz filling my insides.
Alan was as rigid as a rendering by Rodin, all human but unmoving, and then he fractured and the shards of his body fell upon me, soft and warm and pliable once more, and I patted the sweat-dappled flanks and I soothed him like a rider soothes a nervous stallion he has ridden hard, and then I felt the night air nibble at my flanks and I pulled the covers up over the both of us once again. Alan slipped out of me as he slipped back onto the bed and I warmed myself by his arms and I felt myself comforted and protected and married and loved.
The Army doesn't believe in letting people sleep in. We'd been given the night off by a doting Colonel, but that didn't mean we could skip mess call unless we wanted to go hungry. So we got dressed and, grinning rather sheepishly at each other, went off to get breakfast.
The jokes had revived somewhat, and I took them in as good part as I could. Alan found himself fielding questions about Mary Sue and where they'd live when he got back and so on.
That afternoon, I was napping because I had a sizeable chunk of night duty ahead when Alan came into our tent. "Timmy, can I talk with you?"
"What's on your mind?" I roused up.
"I married Mary Sue." he began.
"Yes." My heart sank. Was he about to throw me out, not want to speak to me again?
"Do you really think I made a mistake?"
"The time for cold feet is before you get married." I pointed out. "Well, if you have, you have to go home and face it." I said. "You have a child to think about if nothing else. Even if you and Mary Sue get a divorce, or an annulment may be better, I suspect, you need to be there for that child and take care of him or her."
"Yeah." Alan said. "You're right, Timmy. You always take care of me, you know?"
"Hey, why else would I have married you?" I dared joke. Well, daring wasn't all of it. If this was going to end, badly or otherwise, I'd rather it ended now.
But Alan showed his heart was as clean as it always was. He reached forward and said, "It sure is good that you did." He said.
"Does this mean we get to stay in this cozy love nest we got?" I pressed.
Alan just nodded. "I reckon so. Until they make us give it back, anyhow. You'd better get back to sleep now. You got duty tonight."
"I know. Jesus, midnight to eight o'clock." I moaned. "In winter, that's horrible."
"I'll be sure to warm you up special before you go." Alan said, smiled at me and left, and with that smile shining like the Cheshire Cat's in the air after he'd gone, I was alone to sleep the day away, warmed in its mystical glow.
While Alan and I got to keep our private tent, I know the Army didn't consider the two of us to be married. Come the next June, two interesting things happened at nearly the same time. One was that I got transferred back to the States. The other one is that Mary Sue was delivered of her child at last. Seeing as how Alan came over here in July of the prior year...well, you do the math and see if you get the same answer I got.
So I'm at a Stateside base working out the last of my enrollment. Alan ought to be rotated here in the next few months and we're trying to make sure he gets transferred to this base. My CO has requested it for me; partly because I caught him with his orderly at a bar that had a lot of drinking, a lot of dancing, a lot of hugging and kissing...but no women. So he's willing to help a married guy out.
Oh, as for Alan's marriage by proxy? An interesting thing about that. If the two DON'T get together and marry each other all over again properly just as quickly as they can, the marriage is automatically considered null and void, like it never happened. So that eleven-month gestation of Mary Sue may lead her into a precariously preposterous position.
Can't you just imagine the look on the judge's face when Mary Sue tries to get child support on a two-months-late baby conceived during a marriage that never happened?