James Russel

The Gay Bomb

I am the world’s most want­ed ter­ror­ist. Today’s events make me an infi­del to Islam; a pari­ah to the West. I am Jordanian by birth, though I grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland. I attend­ed Frederick Douglass High School, where the teach­ers were more con­cerned with feel­ings than author­i­ty. I lost my vir­gin­i­ty to a cheer­leader. I went to an Ivy League uni­ver­si­ty where I went to the gym every oth­er day, got drunk on the week­ends, and nev­er missed a class. I snort­ed cocaine with a future U.S. Senator. I speak per­fect Farsi and English.

An Ivy League school is a won­der­ful place to net­work. That’s what they call it in the states: net­work­ing. It means mak­ing friends that can do you favors. The West runs on favors; the East on fear. This is the only dif­fer­ence I have identified.

A career as a mil­i­tary inter­preter fol­lowed. The west­ern gen­er­als and the Saudi roy­als do vast amounts of busi­ness involv­ing oil, guns, and bombs. Being well liked by both sides, I quick­ly ascend­ed through the ranks.

In the West, deci­sions are made by gen­er­als in war rooms of pol­ished oak, full of cig­ar smoke and cognac. As my career sta­tus improved, I was allowed in these rooms more and more, to give the gen­er­als an east­ern per­spec­tive. They asked me questions.

The one with the most patched and met­al-encrust­ed ever­green jack­et would ask me things like this: “Hey Ahkmed, should we bring King So-and-So American pros­ti­tutes as a gift?” My name is not Ahkmed. The King is not named So-and-So. The pros­ti­tutes went over fine. I told him to lie and say that the pros­ti­tutes were vir­gins. Muslim men, kings in par­tic­u­lar, like to believe they are the first to enter paradise.

In war rooms, gen­er­als decide whom to bomb, whom to bribe. On spe­cial days, they improve their meth­ods. They laugh, rough and man­ly, and clink their cognac glass­es under a cloud of cig­ar smoke. A toast to napalm, to preda­tor drones, to the gay bomb.

The idea of the gay bomb was sim­ple enough. Detonate an explo­sive, an aerosol deliv­ery device packed with chem­i­cal pheromones, in an ene­my encamp­ment and spike their hor­mone lev­els to an obscene degree. The inspi­ra­tion for it was the admis­sion, after a lot of cognac was downed, that most of the top brass had did­dled about with oth­er gen­tle­men in their for­ma­tive years. Nothing up the ass, mind you. Just jerk­ing off together—maybe accept­ing a help­ing hand. One of the four-star gen­er­als, a man whose rank placed him far above shame, even admit­ted to accept­ing a blowjob. None admit­ted to giv­ing one.

Of course, none of them were gay. They were mar­ried and had chil­dren, after all. So the pre­vail­ing thought was that the ele­vat­ed hor­mone lev­els of puber­ty were to blame. Then some­one had a bright idea.

Being that we were at war with Muslim fun­da­men­tal­ists, who are by and large homo­pho­bic, what if we could det­o­nate a hor­mone bomb in their midst, a weapon that would send them into an ass-fuck­ing, cock-slob­ber­ing fren­zy? How could they look at their com­pa­tri­ots after they had giv­en in to sav­age man-love, to car­nal lust? What could be more demor­al­iz­ing?

The idea to broad­cast the pro­ceed­ings was mine.

Beyond dis­com­fort­ing the high­est lev­els of ter­ror­ist lead­er­ship, broad­cast­ing the sodomy fes­ti­val on Al Jazeera, for exam­ple, would inevitably dis­gust those most like­ly to fol­low the bin Ladens of the world. According to the plan, these would-be rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies would return to their caves and huts, dis­il­lu­sioned as the fat­test American non-voter.

Naturally, there were many chal­lenges. High-lev­el ter­ror­ists of the Al Qaeda strain tend to live in caves in north­west­ern Pakistan, for fear of American satel­lites and mis­siles. We have attempt­ed to infil­trate their orga­ni­za­tions with many embar­rass­ing fail­ures and far more casu­al­ties than we care to admit.

That was why they sent me. In my rat­ty head wrap­pings they nest­ed the lat­est in micro technology—a dig­i­tal video recorder the size of a fin­ger­nail clipping.

Perhaps the rea­son why I suc­ceed­ed where so many oth­ers failed is that I have for­mal the­ater expe­ri­ence. I believe in the immer­sion method, where one becomes their char­ac­ter. When I played Ahkmed the Jordanian goat herder, whose fam­i­ly had been killed by refugees leav­ing U.S.-occupied Iraq, they believed me. Social climber that I am, I soon found my way to bin Laden’s inner sanctum.

How dis­ap­point­ing it was. Perhaps it’s my American side, but I’d always pic­tured his cave being more like a Bond villain’s lair—a secret escape tun­nel, a world map with the cities most ripe for attack pin­point­ed, at least a tiny lake filled with piran­ha, to dis­pose of oper­a­tives who had failed in their assigned mis­sion. It was mere­ly a slit in a north­west­ern Pakistani moun­tain filled with canned goods, bul­lets and mat­tress­es. The video equip­ment was the most excit­ing thing there.

One thing I do have to give Osama is he eats and sleeps with his troops. He is no arm­chair gen­er­al. Despite all wealth, he is “one of the boys” as they say in the U.S. He plays soc­cer with them in a lit­tle rock crevasse some­times, just out­side of the main bunker. Afterward, every­one is pant­i­ng and they drink water in our makeshift com­mon room. There they were: fifty high-lev­el Al Qaeda oper­a­tives drink­ing water and pant­i­ng, some­times giv­ing play­ful, con­grat­u­la­to­ry butt-slaps, all in a room slight­ly larg­er than a mid­dle-class American base­ment. The per­fect time and place for the bomb. There was no fire, just a pop, a hiss, and a cool mist per­vad­ing the air.

It was as bad as the American lead­er­ship hoped it would be. Lovemaking is love­mak­ing, even if you find the idea of men mak­ing love with each oth­er dis­taste­ful. This was fuck­ing. It start­ed with the kind of pow­er-strip­ping that pre­cedes fuck­ing. The speed and feroc­i­ty of it makes it seem as though cloth­ing itself is a vio­la­tion. The men were so eager to be free of their rai­ment, one would have thought they were on fire. Every time a man dis­robed, a turgid erec­tion popped up at a forty-five-degree angle.

This was not love­mak­ing. It was more like every­one had to come—now. Cocks were rammed down will­ing throats. The small­er ones were made women straight away, though the big ones didn’t real­ly have to chase them down to sub­ju­gate them. The bomb had made them coquet­tish, eager for dick. At one point, a fist entered bin Laden’s dilat­ed brown anus.

I was ter­ri­fied by the sheer pow­er of it. In the fren­zy fol­low­ing the det­o­na­tion, I pulled on my gas mask and hid behind some crates of canned peach­es with a grin­ning car­toon sun on the label. I tried to keep my eyes on him, mis­ter hap­py fruit sun, but my focus was drawn back to the grind­ing, heav­ing hor­mon­al chore­og­ra­phy of sub­mis­sion and dom­i­na­tion, the lean bare chests and legs, the dicks, dicks, dicks. Thankfully, it was over in less than five min­utes. Afterwards, cum cov­ered every­thing. The image of bin Laden, pant­i­ng and exhaust­ed with a half-inch semen worm dry­ing in his beard, that was what the gen­er­als had paid for. That was their mon­ey shot. No preda­tor drone could have accom­plished what that image has.

The video went viral despite noto­ri­ous­ly tight con­trol of inter­net in the Middle East. What could they do? Execute everyone?

The gen­er­als had been watch­ing the stream live, back in their hand­some oak war room. I timed the sec­ond device to go off three min­utes after the one I det­o­nat­ed in Pakistan. I had count­ed on the fact that the gen­er­als would be con­grat­u­lat­ing one anoth­er with play­ful butt slaps.

I’m not entire­ly sure why I did it to them, or why I had plant­ed a sec­ond live-stream­ing web­cam. Maybe I nev­er was as American as I thought. The gen­er­als cer­tain­ly nev­er saw me as one.

Personally, I found the American video more dis­taste­ful— mid­dle-aged men with pota­to-white flesh and blub­bery thighs. Plus, a gen­er­al in the states dis­plays his rank by grow­ing an awful mous­tache. The ter­ror­ists had at least been shaved and fit, young and brown.

The ini­tial reac­tions dis­played the cul­tur­al divide. In the East, to react to geopo­lit­i­cal tremors, they often fire guns in the streets and set flags on fire. Having no flag to burn in this case, the mobs sim­ply flood­ed the streets and fired guns. Then again, they do the same when an east­ern nation gets to the World Cup finals. As usu­al, America was more emo­tion­al in its ini­tial reac­tion. On all the cable talk shows, filmed on sets like odd shad­ows of oak war rooms, Religious con­ser­v­a­tives sobbed and prayed. Then they called for an end to all fed­er­al fund­ing of the Pentagon. No one saw that com­ing, so to speak.

My motives still baf­fle me. Something about this war exhaust­ed me in a way I still don’t ful­ly under­stand. Maybe the fact that it was such an amor­phous thing—a coun­try fight­ing a gang; a mech­a­nized army in coun­tries with­out roads. Maybe it was the way no one knew or cared to know what vic­to­ry looked like. It could have been the obscene wealth it cre­at­ed for some and how naked­ly gid­dy they were about it, even as the corpses piled up, reek­ing in the deserts of the world.

I liked World War II—there were coun­tries and prop­er armies. The car­nage pro­duced no mil­lion­aires; every­one agreed it shouldn’t. There were capi­tols and defined vic­to­ry. There were timeta­bles and an end­ing, even if it involved a mush­room cloud massacre—there was an end to it.

So I’ve revealed to every out-of-work red­neck and every madrasah fire­brand that their lead­ers are a bunch of cock­suck­ers and ass­fuck­ers. I have tak­en their raw obscen­i­ty and broad­cast it to the world.

My boyfriend, Oscar, is the cheer­leader I lost my vir­gin­i­ty to. He is a tiny blond thing and I am a great dark man. I do not think our sex is obscene. I think it’s very pret­ty, and on occa­sion, when we’ve invit­ed guests into our bed­room, they have not behaved as though they found it obscene. Perhaps you find it dis­taste­ful. In my opin­ion, obscene is a descrip­tor best reserved for the vio­lent acts of sav­age men. Obscene is a strange word to describe any act of love­mak­ing, or at least, any act of love­mak­ing not caused by a bomb.

We are leav­ing now, Oscar and I; fugi­tives with far too many ene­mies. I do not expect to live to see my for­ti­eth birth­day. Nonetheless, I have made my mark on his­to­ry, so I am con­tent. I don’t know if my actions will lead to world peace or world war. I don’t know if there will be a stam­pede of the pro­le­tari­at, fol­lowed by the top­pling of dense gold­en thrones. There may mere­ly be the qui­et sheath­ing of swords. Regardless, I have pre­sent­ed you your lead­ers, fuck­ing one anoth­er up the ass. What hap­pens next is entire­ly up to you.