Billy Black-Ops: That Dog Won't Hunt

I heard from Billy Black-Ops the other day, breaking something like 10 months of silence between us.

Billy Black-Ops is someone I've known since my days of sharing the Billymore rowhouse with Tony - and an incommunicado stretch of this length isn't exactly unheard-of between us, over the last decade or so. He's deployed out-of-country for plainclothes-type military stuff almost as often as he's stateside, and for all of that time, his location is a mystery - so he submerges and resurfaces on my horizon fairly regularly.

Billy Black-Ops and I actually first crossed paths when I was a young, teenaged Private Solo marching around in really horribly-shined boots over the godforsaken red West Texas dustbowl. (True story -  a drill sergeant once made me drop and do about ten thousand pushups for suggesting, apparently at an unfortunate volume, that another soldier's boots appeared to have been  "polished with a turd," while the bad-boots-having offender was allowed to continue on his merry shit-shined way. The lesson I learned from this was that while snark is not rewarded in the world, neither is investing precious time in spit-shined toecaps or most other inane kiss-ass overachievements a valuable life-skill. And between the two, one of these things makes awesome people laugh, while the other sort of universally induces hatred. Life-goals trajectory permanently altered right there.)

(You think I'm fucking around right meow?)

I don't actually know how Billy Black-Ops knew who I was at that time, but one evening shortly after he arrived on-station, he knocked on my barracks door and asked where I would suggest to go hiking around the area.

OK, let me explain the place we were stationed:

No, fuck it. Let me just skip to the answer of the question, which is: No. Not here in Hell West Texas. Are you fucking kidding me? I think this was pretty much my response at the time, which left him a little stunned and awkward, standing on the second-floor walkway outside my door.

(Nothing grows you up fast like a stint in the good old United States Army!)

A few years later, Billy Black-Ops and I both found ourselves stationed outside of Billymore, and ended up hanging out a lot because he was one of Tony's better friends. In a little additional Vonnegut-ian random braiding-together of lives, it turns out that one of Billy Black-Ops' other best friends was a guy named Ryan from my hometown, Billyville, who I had actually been put into contact with by my recruiter to ask questions before I essentially signed my early twenties over to Uncle Sam.

So anyway, Billy Black-Ops and I have a long history, mostly made up of a handful of climbing road trips, a shit-ton of concerts and festivals (because Billy Black-Ops will pay out the nose for attendance-for-two on a cross-country saga to see the right headliner at Coachella or Bonnaroo or wherever), some camping-type adventures, a smattering of trail-running where I'm way too out of breath just trying to keep up with his ass to even crack jokes, a handful of people in common, and maybe one accidental drunken trip to the Billymore gay district involving hilarious fetish-shop accesory try-ons followed by a makeout (ahh ze gays, they're so enabling!), but overall, we're pretty platonic.

So usually when we catch up, conversations revolve around me trying to get him to leak some crucial information about where he's just been for the last six months, which he's infuriatingly good at dodging. This time was really no different, except that along the way it dawned on me that for all intents and purposes, Billy Black-Ops is living, basically, a part-time life (since he can't share the what/where/why of his absences with anyone, and he's gone six or so months out of every average year).

I realized this because Billy Black-Ops was openly pining for a dog.

But, being a semi-responsible non-shithead, he admitted there was no way he could program one into his current, constantly-here-and-gone life. And naturally, since my dog has been by far my steadiest and most unquestioningly-loving relationship for 14 years and counting and even that one I've probably come close to fucking up, I started to wonder: if he can't even maintain a dog, how does being gone so much affect Billy Black-Ops' dating arena? I mean, I'm here floundering around my own ridiculous "love" life full-time and then some, and it's still sometimes difficult to invest enough quality time with a Billy to keep his coat sleek and lustrous, so to speak (to use a thinly-veiled "dog" metaphor that is in no way a dig on the string of balding Billys I've somehow recently managed to date... except wait yeah, it kind of is).

(I'd have maybe spent more time on us if your pelt was fuller, Jean-Luc.)

Suddenly, while he was yapping on and on about a coonhound-mix or, come to think of it, maybe his latest international assignment which he'd finally decided to divulge or something, my brain became a goldfish, stuck swimming in tiny circles, fixated on the fact that in all the time I've known Billy Black-Ops - over a decade now - I have yet to meet one single girlfriend of his.

Not one.

Whatever he was yammering about at that point - clandestine air-assault operations on South American narcotics rings or funneling taxpayer slush-funds to southeast-Asian anti-Commie guerrillas or infiltrating former Soviet-bloc arms-dealing networks or somesuch, STOPTHECONVERSATION! STOPSTOPSTOPSHUTUP. I have unanswered private sex-life inquiries, Billy.

So, because I'm a terrible friend, I asked. And because he's a trusting guy, he answered. And, because I am an awful person, I'm blogging it:

Not only has Billy Black-Ops not really significantly dated anyone for nine years now, but he hasn't been laid at all in that time. 

Nine years. 

Not once.

(Ref: Sex Rulebook, p. 1,844; para. 4; Sec. 5.1.4: Virginity, Technical Regaining of)

I was floored. I might have dropped the phone. I think I blacked out there for a second. NINE YEARS?

Granted, it's not like when I'm single I'm out tomcatting (queencatting?) the town every night or anything. We all have spells where we play solitaire, I suppose (which is where having a dog to spoon comes in handy). But between relationships, I start to find my own Billyless eras comical-to-annoying maybe a few months in. Billy Black-Ops' streak? I can't even imagine. Not even hardcore Republican celibacy proponents go, y'know, without the hardcore for that long. He's almost a goddamned monk by now! How do you even go about getting back on the game-trail, at that point?

I'd like to say I handled this revelation delicately, but I believe I already mentioned that I'm a somewhat terrible friend. Billy Black-Ops explained a little (he's looking for the real deal, has not found it, and just doesn't want to do the disingenuous fling-scene thing EVEN AS A STOPGAP, WTF??), then clammed up, leaving me with no choice but to imagine (out loud to him over the phone) how terrible he's going to be at this when he finally gets hungry enough to hunt again. Seriously, people, you have to keep that skillset tuned up. Am I wrong?

(Insert your hunting/moneyshot metaphor here.)

I can't figure it out. The thing is, Billy Black-Ops is in his prime. He isn't a bad-looking guy. He's smart and well-read and pretty funny, once you get to know him. He has an 8-pack, for fuck's sake. How is he not sleeping with anyone, like, ever? All I can come up with is: gay, eunuch, Catholic issues like whoah!, or full of shit.

Considering guys with puppies and babies have no trouble meeting ladies at Any Park, USA, and considering Billy Black-Ops is nowhere near conjuring a baby any time soon, I think I might just get him a preemptive dog. Because otherwise I fear he's clearly on the path to owning a dozen cats. And besides, since he's gone so much, I'm sure his dog would have awful manners and run off after any and everything it wanted to with wild abandon... so maybe it could remind him how much fun the chase can be.