3

In Basic I would have the same dream over and over again. It wasn’t really a dream, it was just what I always saw on the back of my eyelids.
A brunette in a one piece bathing suit, exiting a pool, over and over. I slept in a mud puddle once with that same ten second dream on a reel.
During Advanced Individual Training (AIT) I agreed to be a friend of mine’s battle buddy to Lutheran service at the Chapel on Sunday mornings, despite not being remotely religious. (We weren’t allowed to go anywhere alone.)
At first I didn’t want to but then I got a look at the preacher’s daughter. Every Sunday for two months, halfway through the service, just after the chanting and catechisms, I would exit from my pew and go to the latrine to jerk off. Then I would quietly enter again, just in time to get in line for the ironically sobering communion.
Through laughter K___ says I’m going to hell for it, but it’s in testament to our friendship that despite his excited pleading he’s never repeated the story.
Maybe.

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While I was in the hospital I finished Bill Bryson’s memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. It is set in the 1950s.
At one point he talks about how as a boy he was always daydreaming about superheroes and westerns and movies. I used to admonish myself for such behavior -- to act like that amidst all that was going on back then. I guess it was normal to be so immature when I was a little boy.
When I was a kid I read Toni Morrison, holocaust memoirs and slave narratives, because I absolutely needed to. As an adult I am drawn to the Wonder Years and memoirs of normal childhoods.
While in the hospital bed I watched a lot of movies from their collection. I only seem to watch comedies now, especially featuring Paul Rudd.
I can’t muster the energy or desire for Drama, even ones involving beautiful women. I guess I’ve been provoked into thought enough by my own life.

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I overheard two nurses talking, near my hospital bed.
_He sleeps so much, like most of the day and night. But he seems okay otherwise._
_Where does he come from?_
_FOB ____._
_God knows what he’s sleeping off._

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_You can’t be in infantry, Chuck, you’re too nice,_ Rod___ said.
It hurt with a pang. I know my voice isn’t my voice, only when I‘m Him does it go back to true.
Otherwise it’s overly polite and almost apologetic sounding.
I remember that I didn’t start talking till I was sixteen, and how it was forced upon me because I was working a job where I had to deal with customers.

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Just before I left for the hospital, K___ had given me a folder off his hard drive, full of the very first Nintendo games. They have been triggering memories as I‘ve played them.
With each memory I can feel the atrocity of such a childhood inflicted on a boy. At the same time I can feel the sweetness of childhood, of being a small boy, playing outside in the seasons, coming inside from the rain or heat to play Super Mario Bros, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

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I have a violence inside me, and a numbness inside of me, that is not of me and is not mine. It’s mostly all I’ve known. I have a Toughness that is mine. It’s all I’ve had to sustain me.
It’s like a risen chest, a straightened posture, limbs relaxed. stomach flexed, shoulders unbowed, eyes, unbat, so I can hold on, and not cringe or flinch, or go numb, or lose myself in inner violence.
So that my life is still mine, though what happens to it out of my control. So that my moments are still my moments, still my time, though what happens within them only chance can know.
The heartbeat like a loud secret, as I hold on, and withstand each storm. and I withstand the violence, and the numbness, All I have been is Toughness.
I know it’s inherently brave. I know this is difficult, (honorable). I know the world is my lover, with her richness of curves and milk and honey. I know she wants me, though all I am is Toughness, the rest hidden or carried off by storms.
The skills to reckon with those who are more than Toughness, are difficult (honorable) to come by.
The skills to laugh and make laugh, The skills to listen easy, to tell hard, (honorable), even just to try.
It is difficult (honorable) for me to be appropriate, for me to be in the moment genuinely; social awkwardness can plague me.
My friends are the opposite. They can make me laugh, though I rarely them. They can tell a good story, while mine fall flat, I’m amazed by their loyalty, when their light shines and I figured mine dim.
I can be taken aback by their effortlessness, and I become the guy who feels behind, instead of the guy who is behind. It is sheer Toughness that decides the difference.
For them there are only two words, black and white, insecure and confident, they have no use for the Grey, and the assumed attitude required when in the Grey: Toughness.
The repression required back then to get me thru, afterwards became resistance to being alive, became numbness that showed up out of the blue, and an inner violence that makes me writhe.
Insecurity, Aggression, Volatility, can be my shadow, the Toughness ensuring me despite their blow, as I experience myself out of control, destroying this, destroying that, impulsive, living unconscious but for the Toughness, holding on thru each low.
I catch myself in the mirror and stun myself with how young I am .. after all this .. the muscles ripe, the skin still fresh. It is difficult, (honorable), for me to feel as alive as I am.
Still all that remains of me is Toughness. I have done what had to be done,
Though it was inhuman to choose so young,
Though all hopes of normal life or recovery be gone from me.
Despite all the storms, despite All the loss. All the loss, All the loss, All the loss, I will do what has to be done, and I will not be stopped, though all that is left of mine is the Toughness, though all the rest is not of me and is not mine. Even if all I know is the moment in time.
I know the world is my wife, with her richness of curves and milk and honey; I know she wants me though all that’s mine is me. Will I ever be Raw? Will I ever take her like she wants me to? Unceasingly ravaging her back to Life.
It’s how you clean up a mess, or a train wreck -- you’re Tough enough not to cringe or flinch at all the broken pieces; Tough enough to pick them up. Seems like I can be so Toughened I can’t feel anymore.
I’ve fallen back on the Toughness in order to get me through. The Toughness says, The world is Hard, you have to take more than you thought. I fall back on it when I can’t feel the Rawness, so they seem to work against each other.
One, familiar, solid, stable, the other -- Alive.
The Toughness and Normalcy seem connected. As if the Rawness can be volatile, and when it doesn’t fall within the calm maturity of the Toughness it can spiral out of control.
The Toughness is in my head, insisting self love. It’s not mental noise, it’s not intellectualism. The Rawness is what I feel when I’m open to feeling in the moment, without any Toughness to regulate me, repressing and writing down later. The Rawness feels Natural.
When I feel the Rawness, I feel the Pain. When I feel the Pain I feel the Value. When I feel the Value, I feel the Anger. When I feel the Anger, I feel the Power. I can feel the diamonds between my legs, I can feel Alive. Rawness is where my sex, violence, and Soul is.
It wasn’t the Toughness that showed up on June 1^st. I’ve always had that and it matured over the years. It was the Rawness I became conscious of.

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