Stoic Soldier: Inspired by Jamie’s Daydreams by Kevin Atwater
Music has always been a huge literary inspiration for me, often creating playlists for projects I am working on. This gives me a sort of time capsule for that moment in my life that I can look back on.
In Kevin Atwater’s 2025 debut album, Achilles, the track list moves through a young Kevin’s experiences in expressing his queerness, often in unsafe or damaging ways.
The track Jamie’s Daydreams on the album impacted me immediately upon first listen, and the more I dug, the more I fell in love with this piece. When Kevin announced a literary competition where people can write their own stories based on Achilles, it was like my bat signal up in the air, and I knew I had to write something.
Stoic Soldier takes us into the moment we do not see in the song, and explores the intense, visceral emotions people go through when they begin expressing their sexuality dangerously, as many young gay men do.
————————————————————————
Stoic Soldier
I never wanted to be one of those people who relied on sleeping with people for any sort of validation, but it was a trap I fell into unknowingly. The strangling restriction around lust throughout my life, exploding like fireworks for better or for worse. It’d be late; in that silence, even the faintest whisper could feel like the loudest scream. That voice in my head that had a gag in his mouth all these years, could not sit idly by anymore. I don’t think that part of me is wrong or bad, just desperate. Desperate to feel wanted, desperate to be touched, desperate for the adrenaline rush of a late night drive to an unknown destination. Desperate to feel that danger that intrigued me ever since I was little. To not be treated like a delicate flower, or something that has to be protected, but instead like my your favorite journal- the pages ripped, the pages stained, the poems written. Beauty in the destruction.
As I pull up and the sound of my truck lulls to a stop, and my keys jingle like wind chimes as I step out onto the dirt road. My heart beats in double time as I move towards the door, my boots sinking into the muddy earth, that mud taking ownership of the tread of my shoes.
One
Two
Three
Three steps up to the front door, old, worn, and dilapidated in perfect harmony with the rest of the house.
Two knocks.
Silence.
Two more.
The metronomic steps from inside the house inch closer to the door, then stop. He is on the other side of the door, watching. Maybe seeing if I am worth it? I am, right?
The door creaks open and a face I can never remember greets me and orders my shoes off as he stands over me like a soldier, watching. I can feel his eyes on me, but he can’t know that. I can’t ruin the game we are playing. A chilling embrace meets my feet as they step on the wooden floorboards. He tries to play nice, but we both know how this is going to end. But we can’t ruin the game we are playing. I know what I’m doing is wrong. But I can’t ruin the game we are playing. And he is still, just, watching. I can’t bring myself to meet his gaze.
Maybe that danger is a part of the attraction, proving to ourselves that we don’t need saving, ever. An older man knows how to dream the most vivid, colorful dreams, but they live in the darkest, coldest of nightmares. Every guy who comes over gets drawn in by the dreams, only to learn that dreams do not come true. But by that time, you’re already engulfed in the nightmare with no escape. No way through but out. Even if it hurts. Even if there’s blood, I will be okay. I always am.
When he’s done, I lie. I tell him it was good for me too. Anything so that I can sleep in my bed, away from the stoic soldier lying on top of me.
Finally, the front door opens like the gates of heaven, or maybe the other side of the gates of hell. I drive home in silence, and when I take off my shoes, I see the dark mud that has tainted them, and I am reminded of the moment that earth was under my feet at his house in the middle of nowhere.
