No Hero: Part 2

When I was a soldier, I soldiered for the wrong reasons. After a time I figured out exactly what it was I had immersed myself in. I had played a game of cat and mouse with my future after high school. I could see the way things operated, how the whole system rolled around on its own form of propulsion, but I closed my eyes and fabricated my own theories. I had notions of honor and so did the Army, and in the end I came to see things their way. That was five years ago, and even now with my ground pounding days far behind me, it can keep me from an honest nights rest.

Christ, how I loved the business of soldiering! How I called out in ecstasy for the roar of massed gunfire, awakening in the still of an early morning sweating my delight! The stressful quiet before the first shot, how that first crack made every nerve just under the skin leap, but how following that shot, finger squeezing delicately the elegant mechanism of death, the process became infinitely easier. I can remember the punch of the stock against my shoulder, the way the sand shimmered from the impact, how I never could keep myself from closing my eyes when the round discharged, how I never seemed to miss, regardless of my poor discipline. My training in the industry of organized murder was extensive, and though I wish I could articulate what it was like to work with disgust, as opposed to our regular posturing, my ache for the work makes my recollection feel vaguely pornographic and not necessarily true in a sense I’d like to convey. I’ll leave it for the record.

When it came to choosing when I joined and when I quit, I was in control both times. I was blessed both times, first as a rebellious avenue to manhood that led me from the sheltering skirts of my home and my family, and at last when an error in my initial contract allowed me an exit that was timed to coincide with what might have otherwise become a breakdown. When I joined up, I was ready to fight, and when I mustered out, the fight had long since been taken out of me.

When I was a civilian for all intents and purposes, I still felt as though I were a part of the vast bureaucratic machinery that I had managed to manipulate a time or two. The two systems are eerily similar, and some stunts I had arranged with military paperwork found success with the corporate. In the end both machineries found ways of making my life difficult, handled by operators far more skilled than I in the art of clandestine assaults on character. What talent I have in the planning of such assaults is ultimately failed by a lack of conviction, or I am simply not built for retribution. Machismo is what I call it in either case, or perhaps delusional grandeur. I let the coals stoke themselves so hot that competition became inevitable, confrontation unavoidable, and my utter pacification undeniable.

I was made to suffer, and on some level I think that I welcomed the punishment; it was a validation of what I saw as my own personal failings, and as such the heaped dog pile of problems I attempted to shoulder alone became proof positive that my worth was not so high as I had previously led myself to believe. I don’t know what you know, so maybe that doesn’t sound as bad to you as it has to me. I repeat it, even now after I’ve written it, with an emotion that resembles awe, but causes the inside of my ribcage to ache. I can see the faces of the guys I served with, the hardasses and the slackers. I can see friends and I can see people whose untimely death I would pay to be present for. I can feel my body, exhausted after a tortuous run, filthy and prone in the Korean sludge, jogging on a broken leg under the 250-foot tower I just dove from. I can feel the shadow of the clusterfuck that’s been my experience; the shadow falls over everything, it makes everything lose a little of its luster. Goddamn, if it doesn’t feel a little cooler, a little more detached here in the shade.

Goddamn, if I don’t fucking love it.

Maybe you think you know a little bit of the human condition, and I’m sure you’ve got a story to tell. I’ve got fifteen hundred, and then some of my own. I climbed down a ladder into shit every day, and when the day was over, sometimes a little bit of the shit I’d been up to my neck in all day stuck. A little bit of the blood and the cum and the rot that seemed to permeate everything I could lay my eyes on, not to mention everything I touched. The fights in the barracks, the guy who had his face hammered into oblivion by the impossibly tough Samoan dude who’d had too much to drink, the photos of the woman who had her head nearly sawed off after six days of unbearable torture by a crazed man who heard voices; the child rapes, the gaping knife wounds, the murderers and the victims all dancing a little jig before my eyes when they closed and not quite fading out when they opened, each blink leaving a little more of them on my retinas to confuse me. The crippling depression, the real shit that makes you wonder whether you might be better off fucking dead than alive. The guys who tried to kill themselves with pills, the guys who tried to kill themselves with booze and women. The guy whose whore gave him pink eye so bad that both of his eyes were soldered shut with mucous; the guy who sucked off an inmate for the promise of a million dollars, the chick that did it for love or fun or some damn fool reason. All ruined, and all down in that shit hole with me, and I’m struggling just to stay afloat in the muck, nose and mouth clear of the waste that threatened to drown with each new addition, and overwhelm with each new disturbance. How’s that for pornographic?

Ask me why I relish the thought of society collapsing to the ground, and I’ll tell you that I want you to experience just a little bit of some of the shit I’ve experienced. I’m not stingy with what I’ve picked up; I’d like to share it with everyone. Ruin all your little flower fantasies of some quiet little house in a suburb with kids and a white picket fence. God, I’d love to hold you head first in the shit, let you swallow a little of it, just to get the texture, and let you up. Maybe a little wiser, maybe fucking hooked on the shit, maybe can’t get enough of that garbage; maybe wishing it would drown you cause it feels so goddamn good. Well, fuck you, fuck me, fuck all the little Betties and their white cotton dresses and their pigtails, and fuck Jody in all his incarnations. Fucking fuck it all. Fuck it all to eternity, to that great candy eye in the sky, that portal to some Ever-Loving Being that just don’t give a Flying Fuck. Fuck it all to hell in the ass.