#rat kiley

[writer-of-various]

Bro, I'm not even fucking joking, why the fuck am I obsessed with medics?! Specifically WW2 medics. I'm something else, thanks for coming to my rant.

[slutabed]

idk why I get so fixated on particular niche stories of men and masculinities and male friendships that are never quite spoken of as romantic or homoerotic but bridge that gap without saying it.. but I am back on my the things they carried rat kiley/curt lemon bullshit because oh my god. oh my god I need a minute rat poured his heart out in a letter to curt’s sister and the dumb [expletive] never wrote back

[rambling-rodentia]

Happy independence day americans!!!!!!! Wow! 250th!I just made some bs

(poorly drawn implied gore it is really nothing i did this in MS paint but warning anyways I guess)

Please read The Things they Carried by Tim O'Brien (and spoilers I GUESS but personally I don't think it matters much for a book like this.)

rereading this on 4th of July weekend got me feeling like a patriot and a Man 🔥🔥🔥🔥🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[exserpentine]

Sometimes I'm having a good day and then I remember that Rat Kiley was only 19

[opalescnt]

i literally love him for no good reason I just always fall in love with the medic characters like??? he killed a baby buffalo and shot himself in the foot but I forgive him,

[sirgnomethegiant]

Anyway, the guys try to be cool. They just lie there and groove, but after a while they start hearing - you won't believe this - they hear chamber music. They hear violins and cellos. They hear this terrific mama-san soprano. Then after a while they hear gook opera and a glee club and the Haiphong Boys Choir and a barbershop quartet and all kinds of funky chanting and Buddha-Buddha stuff. And the whole time, in the background, there's still that cocktail party going on. All these different voices. Not human voices, though. Because it's the mountains. Follow me? The rock - its talking. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks. It talks. Understand? Nam - it truly talks.

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

[nightwingdingss]

Mosquitoes

I've been bitten by so many mosquitoes here in Vietnam that I've become paranoid. Now I constantly feel an itch on legs (the part of my body the attack the most often) and have to keep slapping imaginary mosquitoes. I'm slowly becoming Rat Kiley o.o

[ohwhat-anight]

Anyway, it's a terrific letter, very personal and touching. Rat almost bawls writing it. He gets all teary telling about the good times they had together...And then the letter gets very sad and serious. Rat pours his heart out. He says he loved the guy. He says the guy was his best friend in the world. They were like soul mates, he says, like twins or something, they had a whole lot in common.

--Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"

Veterans Day 2013.