I write the same way I feel. I get the information I can and only afterwards -- feel it. I thought I did this by choice or maturity, but looking back it seems an inherent part of me. I didn’t feel things I couldn’t wrap my brain around, like when I was boy.
I wondered if I would’ve made these gains if I was not deployed. Probably not. In the states I had my ways of keeping to myself, staying out of the fray, keeping away from triggers. High risk, high gain, I guess; I just hope the gains are real.
I got stuck at the neighboring FOB for the day. My work there was done by mid morning, but our convoy wouldn’t leave for our home FOB until that evening.
I hung out with W___s, a guy I barely know, but he always acts like we’re good friends. He was a kind of a dork, a big gamer, but he was someone to play ping pong with, and he showed me how to play a WWF game on play station.
I humored him, because I had little in common with him, and in that way was condescending to him, though I don’t think he noticed, and I thought of K___.
When K___ and I reach a solidity in our friendship, the broken record starts up again. Actually my friendship with K___ is the most common trigger of the broken record. When I see him humoring others, I think, Does he humor me? It’s like I have this sensitivity concerning my value, that shows up the most in relationships.
When I got back to mine and K___’s room, I remained conscious of these tendencies. I trusted myself to talk more freely, more confidently.
K___ responded well and we sat outside and talked for about an hour over cigarettes and soda. He asked me if I wanted to play ping pong. I played exceptionally well that night, even beating K___ twice. K___ usually beats most people at ping pong while those same people usually beat me.
Meanwhile, to K__‘s chagrin, I can beat him regularly. I thought that by allowing my alpha males qualities to show, I was exposing myself, and my shameful qualities, which would push people away. But actually the opposite is true.
K__ and I sat outside talking again after we came back from the MWR’s ping pong table. He told me about the town he was moving to when he got home, so he could go to school. He told me of how when we get back from deployment me and him are going to get baked regularly.
He acted like we’d still be friends well after the deployment was over. I didn’t expect that, figuring it would be like that trip I took to New York, where all the people you meet and hang out with during an event simply say good bye and disappear forever after the event concluded.
Last night, as K___ and I walked up from a ping pong tournament, we met Mace__, our neighbor and my old work partner, drunk on our bench.
He made drinks for us out of the bit he had left. He hung out in our room awhile, and after K__ went to use the phones, he showed himself to be a sentimental drunk.
As he swayed and laughed and leaned against unstable things in mine and K___’s room, he kept trying to explain something to me.
_Chuck,_ he said. _When we get home, you can call me anytime, just to hang out, or hit the town, or whatever. You and K___ -- are two of the few people around here who are real. I mean, godda-mn, Chuck, I’ll say this about you, it doesn’t matter what rank -- I mean -- you’ll say whatever needs to be said. I remember when the first sergeant was getting on you for something -- that wasn’t your responsibility! -- and you told him you didn’t give a f-ck._
He gave extra emphasis to that last word and starts laughing. _And look at you now, Chuck. Got it made. I don’t think I could’ve done it. That’s probably why I’m still stuck in that section with those as-holes._
Then Mace__ said, proudly, with a child’s look on his face, _I’ve got to go smoke -- a Cig-a-rette. I’ll be back._
After he closed the door I heard the familiar sound of a stocky hundred and sixty pounds tumbling into rocks and gravel, and the careful scuffing as it tried to get back up.
I think about my first six months in the military. For some reason the drill sergeants saw something in me. Our platoon guide -- a basic training private who is chosen to be in charge and lead the platoon of privates -- was gone, and I worried that I might be chosen to replace him.
For some reason I was the soldier the drill sergeants didn’t mind dealing with. When a situation would arise, and it was decided that someone would have to go into the drill sergeants lair to deal with them, I would be elected -- against my will -- and everything would go fine.
It was like I was under a different set of rules than the other privates. I could feel the drill sergeants attention on me during training, etc. The reason I was wary of being chosen was because I knew I was a mess, with problems I had yet to wrap my brain around. I also understood it all had to with underlying qualities of mine that were shameful.
The drill sergeants chose someone else as PG, a guy who had recently arrived and would be there awhile. The years after my flight home from initial entry training were full of struggle and hardship. When I think of this, I expect to feel angry, that I could have grown up to be a different person, with a different, more glamorous career in the military.
But I wasn’t angry, because the career is material, and so too all the other successes I could have had along the way -- in the school I never went to, in the life I never lived. The fact that I’m that guy, and always was -- that’s real.
___________
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