#dannygreen

It’s getting dark, just barely getting dark, you could be forgiven for just assuming it’s overcast if you didn’t have a watch. 

She does have a watch, but something has gone wrong inside it, some mote of dust jammed some tiny gear and now it won’t tick. It was a gift from her mother, the kind you nearly go through with returning. Ainsley had been able to ignore the watch jamming for a while, too preoccupied with other more important issues, all life and death in her mind. There were big glossy wall clocks everywhere, all ticking in strict military time, barring the one by the restroom in the rec hall. That thing ran two minutes fast, but nobody is in a hurry to fix a fast clock. 

It encourages punctuality, and when someone tells you that you’re two minutes early you can look down at your fast watch, incredulously declare that you sure are glad it wasn't two minutes behind. Though the misalignment was bound to make someone with a control issue and an ear to bend irritated eventually. One day it would be back to normal, and everyone accustomed to its fastness would be thrown off by the sudden unannounced change. 

Her watch was stuck at 2:35 AM, it had died in its sleep. Really a shame for such an expensive thing, so much so that she had gotten halfway through opening the door of the shop with the name on the sweet little bag it came in before she stopped and thought about it. About how her mother didn’t need to go to an establishment with lovely embossed thick paper gift bags to buy her a watch she really shouldn’t have. That one from a pawn, or an ugly toothless little foreign man on the street, or something of her fathers that lived at the back of a drawer all would have done the job just fine. That’s all you need a watch for, one job! tell time.

Gorchakov has a nice watch, it still works. She eyed it as it ticked seamlessly just the other day, puttering along like a sports car. The Cadillac Eldorado of watches. Gorgeous understated face on a brushed finish gold-filled saucer-like body, the numbers glowed radium green in the dark, even in overcast weather they had a hollow quality to them. It was a gift from his wife, which Ainsley is coming to understand that every thing the Mr. Gorchakov wears that she would ever want to mug him at gunpoint for was a gift from that same, thoughtful and tasteful, wife. It’s the kind of watch you would mug someone for. Not even to pawn, just to have. 

Mr. Gorchakov wouldn’t drive an Eldorado. He doesn’t, Ainsley had asked when they got to the point of their relationship where you launch random questions to try to glean some semblance of an understanding of the silhouette of the person you gaze across the canyon at. 

Her mother had bought her a nice watch, because to be engaged in serious business it helps to have a watch that people like to eye. It is not ideal to wear anything that would make any of your compatriots want to rob you.

He drives a Porsche 911 Lux.

When she thought of how her mother had gone out of her way to find her a watch, paid out of her budget to get a nice watch in a nice box, in a fancy paper bag with ribbon handles, she didn’t push open the door. In fact, she turned around and went back to her car (her mother’s car) and opened the box in the little bag, put on and wound the watch, and hasn’t taken it off since except to shower and do dishes.

It’s green, the Porsche. 

She hadn’t had time to dwell on the watch. Thinking she’d take it to be fixed when she met San Francisco again. Looking at it now, in the dying light its numbers are woefully dark. She feels a deep, implacable shame, burning a glowing green hole in her gut, as if she had jammed the springs herself in an act of petulant vandalism. She didn’t love it enough, perhaps that's why it died in its sleep. 

It's fast. He lisps around a cigarette, imminently lit. It’s two minutes fast. 

She’s long since exhausted every other conversation topic with him, they've both grown keenly aware of the fact that they have nothing else to talk about, and they won't until one of them goes to the mainland, or receives a phone call, maybe a letter. Asking about a watch, maybe.

It’s balmy, twilight humidity swelling, pooling under his fatigues. Uphill from some milling figures, short, fat, white males, something like that. That’s what good binocs were for, what man cannot make out under cover of dusk from 300 yards off.

Private Green is unhappy, up on his hill, because he is uncomfortable.

He has become intimately familiar with all possible forms of discomfort, of the physical and otherwise. 

Tell the nice doctor where it hurts.

A stomachache presented simply provides no path to resolution. The belly spans from sternum to asshole, there’s a lot of blood and guts packed in there, all ready to slide out and hit the concrete slab you stand and sweat like a pig on.

Show the nice doctor where it hurts.

He would argue that he has greater bodily awareness than the average man. To the degree where he can track his organs shifting inside him. Acidity, a sour stomach could be neutralized by water, he doesn’t drink enough sometimes, going days just licking the hard water from the shower off his lips before realizing he could just pour a cup of it to drink at dinner. All coffee and tomato paste burns you inside, up where your stomach actually sits, nearly in your chest. 

Bloat is bloat, reflux the same, Danny doesn’t cramp up like some of the other guys. That’s good, he worries about appendicitis. Subsequent sepsis killing a guy he knew from somewhere, somehow, jersey or wherever.

Imagine dying from appendicitis, at 18, probably before you ever tried anal. What a life.

Right now he’s bloated, whatever has decided to ferment in his stomach, the real one, making his breath hot. If he really cried about it to Jefferies he’d probably get portioned out some pepto bismol and sent to bed. Danny doesn’t want to go to bed, because his bed right now is a cot.

Being that they weren’t in fucking basic, and that they get beat like dogs, and shit on, and left out in the elements. He had assumed he could get away with an ugly bunk. So had Quincy and that stupid ginger faggot he forgot the name of, but Colonel Masters didn’t like watching anyone but him squirm, and thats all danny wants to think about that. It makes him uncomfortable. 

It’s roughly 18:00, so he needs to move. In the fifteen minutes he spent at the jeep barn he was meant to patrol it, point a flashlight in all the dusty corners. His flashlight is dead, and he’s not a security guard, he’s a fucking American soldier. 

There’s another kind of discomfort, milder on your stomach than most other ailments of the belly, little bit tougher on the head. He thinks about a pink bismuth salve, coating his brain with it, in a big syringe with a needle like a straw. Showing the doctor where it hurts. Some guys are so afraid of reliving their first examination that they sit and rot for days.

The guy died from sepsis in Khe Sanh. Not New Jersey, he wouldn’t see anyone in the hospital in Jersey after Nonna went. He wouldn’t see anyone in the hospitals in Chicago, cuz if he walked into one of those they wouldn’t let him out. Danny meanders away from the barn, out into the hot wet night. Mostly because he looked like he was stealing, all skinny and covered in pockets. The orderlies and paramedics didn’t know he didn’t like to steal, sneak around and shove needles in his jacket. They didn’t know he was more of a mugger, that he had a little mauser he couldn’t afford ammo for shoved between his belt and his gut, that he liked to point it at guys heads and watch them go to jelly. The money was a bonus, though at the time he didn’t see it as legal tender with great potential energy, a handful of cash became a ticket to ride. It was as worthless at the grocers as an arcade token off of coney island.

He trots down the driveway, looping around the long way to his next assignment, which is his last for tonight. Danny has to decide what to do with his free time now. The fat white American males have wandered off too, probably to go drink reasonably and go to bed at a normal time. He thinks he wants to lie down for a while, but the issue of the cot continues to prod at him with a hot iron. That’s the kind of discomfort that's harder on the mind than the body. The dying light casts everything in a dusty blue, even his own hands grow paler, then darker in the din. Other guys wouldn’t even think about going anywhere without a flashlight, half of them afraid of the dark now, like there’s slopes running around in fucking Alaska. You cannot reason with a scared G.I. in the dark, there's so much you both don’t know. Danny is more afraid to ask for a new battery than he is to walk out into the yawning night. Admit you don’t have one? Admit that yours died? And when he has that information about you what will he do with it? What will he make you do? What is danny willing to do for a battery, blowjob, klondike bar, mosquito net, hit, a good nights sleep, pepto-fuck-bismol-christ, whatever? He’d rather get reamed on a bayonet. In the dark.

He feels it, physically, turn his stomach over. Whipping himself hot and red for no reason at all in anticipation of humiliation that is not yet fated to grace him. Yet! Really, it did feel good to point a pistol up through a guy’s jaw, and slur, pretending to be inebriated, that he betterfucking get his goddamnwallet out of his pocket and pay him, Danny, for all his hard work. To smile, cheese through grinding teeth, laugh a little, it is a game after all. The gun isn’t loaded, it never is. Though, if his bluff was ever called, Danny had a six inch switchblade in his sock, the kind with a rose inlaid on its handle. They tended to flip out, try to calm him down, and when that didn’t work, cry. 

One time, and he told Kinsley this story, who thought it was funny, Danny really was high. His slurring and teeth grinding was authentic, and when the guy started to cry, a little black guy in a faggy yellow shirt, Danny started crying too. 

Mr. G didn’t like that story, he didn’t like hearing about Chicago, his face went all tight when Danny said “faggy” and “yellah.” He kicks a porous rock down the road. When he said that, that was sad, too. It was maybe because G didn’t want to hear about him crying, which is embarrassing. 

Now, it was too dark. The bulb of the lamplight whining above her pings and flickers, washing the blue ground with lemon yellow. Each paved road was set up with enormous floodlights on soaring black necks, but the generators that powered them were loud enough to feel and so none were installed anywhere near anyone trying to sleep. Every other woman traveled in packs, ran and shrank from the night. Ainsley thinks twice before stepping out of the ring of light, her flashlight weighs at least two kilos, her briefcase is steel. All is well, and she is not afraid of the dark.

You wanna hear something real funny? He had said it low and venomous, to put his hackles up. He had to be honest, he liked him better in a fear sweat, all bloodless and dilated. 

I could have afforded to load the damn thing.

What? He bears down hard on the H, it barely sounds like a word at all.

The mauser, the mauser I stole from the french guy who left it on a booth seat in a sticky bar in Brooklyn. Danny keeps going until his face changes, the one I told you I liked to mug people with.

I don’t think that’s funny.

I could have bought ammo for it, how many times I had to wrestle what I’m owed for out of some stinkin’ fence. A loaded gun would have been a blessing, man.

The coin of cold white light with the faded ring at the center, warped by the wave of the glass, behind which a hot bulb sits. You have to point it out in front of you, lighting your next three steps while your feet are always dark. Ainsley doesn’t mind the dark, so long as it’s a nice temperature and she has something in her hand, a beer bottle, maybe a brick if it was dire enough. Nobody bothers her, though, because they can’t get close enough in the low light to figure out that she isn’t a man. She thought, initially and stupidly, that being on a military base and all wouldn’t be so dire when the sun went down. Especially for how long the sun is down sometimes. 

I imagine it was difficult to get you to spend a dime on anything that wasn’t heroin, Daniel.

I wrote away for it twice, out of a catalogue. Twice, I filled out the form and the money, and I never sent either of them.

Because you couldn’t sit on cash for more than two hours, right? 

Because, and he points at Gorchakov from across the room, empty except for his body, which is also empty. Because I knew if I loaded that gun, I’d end up killing a man. It made it too fucking easy for me to kill some yellow shirted faggot just because I could, because he was already ready for me to do it. 

There is a long, ringing, pause. The empty room resonates.

It isn’t a long walk, and nobody has any reason to loiter outside in this weather, wet and hot. Ainsley begins to feel uncomfortable, shirt sticking to and irritating her sweat slicked back. Some unknown organ in her gut starts to ache. Something she would have to sleep on to decide if it was important enough to worry about. She would hate to be sick out here, trapped in her apartment for fear of the dark.

There is someone with a flashlight out here. Someone small. Without thinking about how or why, Danny pushes through the nighttime.

Ainsley can’t help but go cold and prickly when her flashlight passes over some big, clay stained american combat boots. He yelps when she points it directly in his fat, toothy face. The hand that shields his face casts everything past his nose in shadow, so much darker for it’s contrast to the gleam of sweat and stained enamel. 

Good evening, Private. He just laughs, and doesn’t reply, shouldering past her and disappearing into the dark, Ainsley hears him stumble, but doesn’t turn her flashlight around, he’d have to readjust to the dark. That was what she was worried about, skulking american dog-men without flashlights on paths designed for young intelligent women who wear skirts and tasteful kitten heels to follow to their homes. Hence the caution, out of habit, she checks her watch. Having to point her flashlight down, concentrate the beam onto one point, finally lighting up her own feet. It still reads 2:35 AM.

Ooh, he finally coos. Aren’t you such a big, scary, man?

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.

Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born.

Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.

All from Revelation 12.

Lots of fighting about what this shit even means, loosely it describes an eternal struggle between good and evil, contextually the woman is probably intended to refer to the people of Israel (Not literally the contemporary entity, but as a term for God's chosen people, the proverbial "Good" in the good vs evil thing. Though it is worth noting that Jan is Jewish.) The Dragon is satan and all his evil works, okay?

a common theme for Jan is how he frequently perceives himself to benefit from being isolationist. If he doesn't open some final door of intimacy, a meaningful bond cannot ever be formed, and when the inevitable horror comes he cannot have anything ripped out of him via that door. He is intensely emotionally shut off from everyone, while still being able to perform intimacy and empathy because he "holds the door shut", it's bordering on psychopathy.

Jan is positioned by the narrative as noble for this, his dignity and detachment from earthly concerns and passions are what would make him "worthy" of salvation from an outside perspective. He has an interesting relationship with Ulysses later on that compounds on this, because well, he isn't of saintlike devotion to God, he is just completely undevoted to anything else. His gentleness and occasional nurturing behavior are only extended to the disenfranchised, a result of his residual empathy for the passion of others, he knows angry, really outright angry, people are hurting in some way. He was, at one point, a very angry person.

He would have let Danny punch red in the face, had he witnessed that part, out of respect for his anger.

(TO BE CLEAR, EVERY OTHER CHARACTER IN OPNERO IS FULLY IN THE DARK ABOUT WHAT DANNY AND RED ARE EVEN DOING! THEY ARE REALLY GOOD AT PRETENDING NOT TO KNOW EACHOTHER)

he would even hesitate to stop him from beating the shit out of red, because Jan doesn't like him all that much anyways. but the second Danny seems to tip over into intent to kill, and his language starts getting delusional and sexually violent, he chooses to intervene. As opposed to Ainsley, who would litigate against Danny if he pinched red's arm.

Danny perceives himself as critically weakened in this moment, that as good as it feels to get this close to killing red the way he went about it was raw and embarrassing. Mostly because other people saw it and got to halt it, he hates Jan and very briefly he becomes his number one enemy that he avoids to prevent further conflict he knows isn't good for his reputation. in the same way that nothing can rattle or hurt Jan, nothing can dispel danny's grudges and satisfy him spiritually. I kind of think of him as a pit that hates consuming. Le Devil.

(Though, Danny also privately percieves of Red as the devil)

With regards to the parallels between the conflict between the woman and the dragon, I do kind of feel like this battle is an intimate one. surely the dragon could be a thoughtless force of destruction, but that is impossible to track onto an interpersonal relationship. I prefer to think of their fight being a misdirection of all the anger and disgust danny feels for red and for himself being involved with red onto Jan, who is simultaneously shut-off and perceptive and has the power (physically, in that moment) to pacify him, and make it clear to danny that he knows he is hurting about something. Which danny haaaaaates, mostly because he is, for obvious reasons, really sensitive about his relationship with red and scared about how red perceives him. It's like walking into a glass door with someone on the other side watching. embarrassing! Danny eventually gets distracted by other more antagonistic issues, leaving Jan to slip off into the background until he remembers he exists and remembers that he hates him.

comic about it, and about Jan's thoughts on it. He really doesn't know any details, because as close as he gets to red by professing empathy for him (he is under the impression that Danny is abusing Red, and red would like to think that he is a victim of Danny) he still isn't interested in actually talking about any of it, and Jan doesn't care to pry further than a kind of self-satisfied resolution that red was a lifelong rape victim all along, which makes his nastiness towards him a petulant emotional reaction and not true bigotry. like a "ohhh youre so fucked up in the head thats why youre transphobic <3" thing. which isn't really it... and kind of weird, Jan.

HISTORY:

Danny was born in Newark, New Jersey to Claretta Pazzini. He has one younger sister, Martina "Teeny" Green. His father, Russell Green, abandons his mother when Danny is six. Though no one would be able to confirm that Martina's birth is what caused him to walk out. He grew up resenting Martina for driving their father away, and while he no longer says that, he still harbors that sentiment. Russell Green is not found dead or alive anywhere in the state of New Jersey. Danny does not remember his father leaving, just that he was no longer there after a certain point. He does not see much of his father in himself and does not think about him fondly, but the blame for his absence always seems to fall on his mother and sister rather than on the man himself.

Danny grew up extremely poor. He has consistently done poorly in school, he abhors team sports and extracurriculars, and maintained few positive relationships with people his age. He began smoking and drinking at age twelve, he has fostered a nicotine addiction and a tendency to binge drink his entire life. He was introduced to cocaine and morphine in highschool, and subsequently dropped out in his junior year. From then (age 17) for the next three years was intoxicated waking nightmare, he abused every single girlfriend he acquired, was repeatedly arrested for assault, theft, various forms of sexual misbehavior, possession, etc. At age 19 Danny has a near death experience in Chicago, overdosing in a park. He dips from the hospital and immediately returns home to his mother to start an outpatient rehab program that he leaves prematurely to join the army.

His mother remarries when he is 18. He does not care about his step father, has very little relationship with him. He has battered him into allowing Danny the final say as the "man of the house" just as he has battered everyone else in his family. Danny is frequent in resorting to violence to get his way, he has attacked and berated both his mother and his sister. while he has never severely injured either and has gotten less physical over time, he does not think violent resolution is wrong, just that it probably shouldn't be done to women. His relationship with his sister is particularly poor, as he exerts an obnoxious amount of control over her life, having positioned himself as the closest thing their family has to a father figure. He is cruel to her under the guise of "tough love", and while he would lay down his life for hers, he still literally throws bricks at her boyfriends and is constantly calling her a whore for having them. His mother is exceptionally tolerant of him, and will never not welcome him back into their home no matter how much he makes her cry. She has always and will always take his side, but he has not told her that he is facing discharge or jail time yet. She is under the impression his relocation to Amchitka is an honor

He is 20 by the time he is deployed overseas in the midst of the vietnam war. His primary involvement was with Operation Cedar Falls. Danny enjoys destruction and always has. He is a cruel and bloodthirsty soldier who enjoyed exerting military power over a civilian population. He spends almost all his free time and money on weed and prostitutes, and his ability to behave with impunity worsens his behavior tenfold. All this is acceptable until his aggression is turned onto his immediate superiors. He had been repeatedly reprimanded for initiating brawls with other privates when he snaps and assaults his supervisor, the younger, frailer man holding even a marginal amount of authority over him was intolerable. He had spent months variably bullying and sexually harassing him, all of which only came to light after he nearly killed him. Danny was immediately suspended, spending several months in court marshal limbo before his transfer to Amchitka.

ON SEX:

Danny has an addictive personality and this extends to his relationship with sex. He experiences zero pain or fear in pursuit of his sexual conquests, and they are conquests. The amount that he respects any given woman is inversely correlated with how attractive he finds them. In a relationship he is a terror, exerting undue control over his girlfriends while refusing to commit to them at all. He is unhappy with the idea of fatherhood and has repeatedly harassed women into abortions and out of their misconceptions about the future of their relationship. He is possessive but fickle, and often rejects intimacy and avoids responsibility because he feels it undermines his persona and masculinity.

Danny is pretty staunchly heterosexual. But he is also a fetishist and a sex addict, so he has little issue with having sex with men under certain conditions. He enjoys being solicited for sex by men only on the condition that he gets to dominate them. In that way it is another form of violence he can enact on men who subsequently cannot challenge his position in the social hierarchy (because he's fucked them, feminized them, and defused them). He doesn't prefer doing this to sleeping with women, but it doesn't keep him up at night.

He is, if not actively doing heroin, frequently horny and irritable about it. He fosters violent sexual fantasies about people he dislikes, and has a hard time delineating between erotic and disgusting. It is unclear at what point in his life those wires got crossed.

ON DRUGS:

Danny loves drugs, especially the ones that get to work immediately. His use of narcotics is, in his mind, exclusively practical. He relies on sedatives and painkillers to put him down and stimulants to get him moving. He has better access to amphetamines and painkillers in the army than he does in new jersey, but his usage is far more limited because of the constant threat of death. Danny will do any drug he can get his hands on, but his one true love is opioids. He does not care how sick they make him and he does not care that being high makes him inert. He just wants to be in that state as often as possible. His relationship with addiction is one of partial denial, he does acknowledge the problem but is convinced it is a problem that can be resolved "later". He does not particularly like alcohol.

ON WAR:

War terrifies Danny. In a way his violent behavior is overcompensation for his fear. The army allows him to be as violent as he wants to people he faces no repercussions for tormenting and killing. He does not understand why the barbarity of combat doesn't define the entire military hierarchy, and why people are promoted based on merit rather than brute strength. He understands war as a way to protect his way of life.

ON RELIGION:

Danny was raised catholic and is fully confirmed. His patron saint is christopher, the dog headed saint and patron of travelers. He does not attend mass and does not have a relationship with religion. He is unconcerned with the mythos of the bible and only wears a medal of saint christopher as a good luck charm, genuinely believing in its protection.

FUNCTION:

Danny operates as an antagonist, but also a close friend of the main character of OPNERO. his presence on the island is as an extension of the arm of the military, and he acts to preserve its interests. He is used by the US government and he knows it, he only wishes they wouldn't abuse him so much.

RELATIONSHIPS:

RAJIVA PATEL

Rajiva is one of few people on Amchitka that Danny asserts "treats him like a human being". He thinks, privately, that Raj is strange. Queer, eccentric, stuck-up racial other. He would never organically find himself interacting with someone like this in a friendly way, but because Rajiva is explicitly willing to empower Danny through their relationship, he sticks to him. He does sincerely like him, in a way. It helps that he is entirely non-threatening.

VSEVOLOD GORCHAKOV

Danny is extremely uneasy about Red. It is only via gossiping with Rajiva that he feels comfortable speaking to him. It is his desire to get red to traffic drugs to the island for him, as he has free access to the mainland and does not stay on Amchitka full time initially. However, because Danny is essentially prison labor he does not get paid for his work and cannot consistently offer red anything of monetary value in exchange for his drugs. (not that red would have any use for his money, nor would he be willing to risk his career for it). In an appeal to his homosexual nature Danny offers to trade sex for heroin. Which does work, just not in the way he wants it to. He does not like the sex he has with red most of the time and he does not like that he has to have sex with red to get heroin. Recognizing himself as a prostitute makes Danny extremely agitated. He wants to kill red, but if he didn't they'd probably get along fine.

AINSLEY DOHERTY

Danny is conflicted on how he feels about Ainsley. He has difficulty earnestly sexually harassing her because her gender presentation confuses him. He does not like that she has an issue with him, a bone to pick. He would probably really like her if she was a man because of their similar backgrounds, but her reaches for power just infuriate him. He sees her as acting above her station.

JAN KOSACKI

He does not know much about Jan. Just that he looks and acts like a woman. He shies away from Jan because something about him repels Danny, he finds him intimidating in a way he sees no value in challenging. Jan's authority exists outside of the framework that Danny lives in. Otherwise he feels very neutrally about Jan, only mildly jealous of his relationship with Raj, who he fears could be turned against him.

GERALD MASTERS