Rituals

It is dark and cold.  The mission brief ended ten minutes ago.  All artificial light has been cut off.  We will not see one another’s face till daybreak. The gentle rumbling of eleven diesel engines at idle and the smell of burning trash fill the air.  The ambient starlight barely penetrates through the canopy of palm leaves above my truck.  I lift my groin guard to piss on the front right tire of my truck, a tradition Ingram started that I continue because I convinced myself this small ritual brings me good luck. 

“MOUNT UP” Pinkham shouts from the back of the column.  Pinkham the platoon sergeant, a man covered eclectic tattoos, a man I feared and loved, a man who had cursed me out countless times, a man I would follow to my demise.  A low grumble of “FUCK,” “SHIT,” and “HERE WE GO AGAIN” carries through the dark.  I can discern Dana’s voice among the low grumble, synonymous with “HERE WE GO AGAIN”; I look back and see his lanky silhouette atop his HMMWV, the bright moon in the sky behind him.  He slumps into his turret from the roof of his truck with a cigarette hanging from his lips glowing in the dark as he takes a long drag.  Ingram finds me half way between my truck and his, but it’s too dark to identify faces—no matter, we know one another’s silhouette by heart.  Ingram has been my roommate for the past two years due to alphabetical default.  Our bond grew out of mutual disdain for the stupidity that was grunt life.  He embraces me with his massive arms.

“Ok Salt, Ill see you on the other side of the river,”  Ingram says as he always does before we move out. 

“I’ll be waiting,” I reply as I always do.  As the embrace breaks, I touch my left breast pocket; simultaneously Ingram does the same, a gesture that indicates we both carry proper fare for the boatman.  We vowed to never let the other cross over without sufficient funds to get to the other side of the river Styx.  Although only two coins were required we both carried four.  One of us would wait for the other no matter how long it took to ensure the guaranteed passage. 

     I contort my legs and torso to fill the small space I am to occupy in my truck.  My body already aches from the seventy pounds of gear I recently donned.  This cumbersome gear is meant to keep me alive, but gear I loath just the same.  My helmet is on, night vision down, and the familiar green fills my right eye.  Everything is a shade of green or black, and these are the colors I will later dream in.  I fumble in my pocket looking for my lighter and hear a faint radio call:

“Victor 1; Victor 1; radio check over”.  I grab the mike and hook it to my chinstrap.

“Roger Lima Charlie,” I reply loudly.  I announce to the column

“Oscar Mike,” indicating we are on the move.  As my truck slithers through the serpentine of concrete barriers set up to protect us from vehicle-born IED’s, the tires kick up the moon dust that covers the landscape, creating a green haze we must navigate through.   I light the first cigarette of the mission, filling the cab with smoke and making it even more difficult to navigate through the dark.  Lorton shouts out “FUCK HOLLIDAY the dust is bad enough now I gotta deal with your BULLSHIT CIGARETTE SMOKE”.  “SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DRIVE ASSHOLE” I reply.  Lorton responds indignantly “ROGER THAT”.  A trick I had taught him months earlier.  I know Lorton’s pissed.  I reach into my cargo pocket, the same one in which I was fumbling for my lighter.  I pull out a Mountain Dew I had stolen from the supply tent and hand it to him, a silent apology.  This discourse had diverted me from my routine actions.  I felt naked and quickly stumbled to tuck my groin guard under my balls, as I always did.  I knew the thin layers of Kevlar wouldn’t keep them safe if I was hit, but is yet another ritual I must complete.  

The Cliff

Sucking down a shitty bloody at an even shittier airport bar.  A man loudly asks for a Sam Adams; he repeats the request even louder while pointing at the tap. As if to imply the cute Spanish bird tending bar doesn’t speak English.  Cowboy boots and a NASCAR t-shirt tucked into his blue jeans.  There is a Copenhagen ring in his back pocket. I fucking hate him.  I’m not actually at a shitty airport bar.  I’m 7 feet under water.  I just fell.  I was climbing up a jagged cliff and have been for some time.  For years my arms and legs worked together to scale that magnificent cliff.  When one set of instruments became tired the other bore the burden of the load.  This went on in perfect harmony for years.  Recently my legs became unable to find their footing in the jagged rocks. Leaving only my slender arms to maneuver that cliff.  With only one set of tools to use, reaching the top became a grueling endeavor.  My arms fatigued.  My hands and fingers burned from the task.  The blisters burst, leaving exposed skin to the ravages of the sharp rock and dirt.  My fingertips bled.  The strain became too much to bear.  With a quick rip and tear I lose two fingernails off my right hand.  I tried to look for something to grab, but all I could see was the gray rock passing rapidly in front of my eyes.  I felt weightless, mentally free but sick to my stomach due to the sudden change in vertical position.  The cold hug that embraced me forced me to expel the air in my lungs.   I find my self glaring up at a ray of light through the murky blue water.  A distant but bright light.  My legs begin to kick fiercely as my lungs yearn for air.  My arms too fatigued to thrust.   Every drink I take, whether it be a shitty bloody or a scotch on the rocks, is like a breath from an oxygen tank.  The breathe sustains me for a minute; I must take another one. The only problem is that the tank will eventually run out.  I know I must convince my arms and legs to work in harmony or there will be nothing to save me from myself.  The stakes are much higher than the cliff.   

The plan

Hold Fast: Come or be in close contact with; stick or hold together and resist separation; maintain ones current coarse of action regardless of peril. 

Ducks tormenting party

On the wall in my bathroom just about eye level is an evil painting, flanking that painting posed as an innocent shower curtain is a myriad of rubber ducks tormenting me.  Sometimes I am smiling when walk in my bathroom to take a piss.  As the light turns on and I lift the toilet seat the smile immediately fades into sobering reality.  The evil painting stares at me reminding me of my current state of affairs.  The evil painting is nothing more than a few ducks, a rainbow, some water, a mess of paint in the upper left corner and a child’s fantastic signature.  The most bothersome part of the painting is the signature.  It reminds me of the girl who painted it, not the girl today but the girl as a child.  I immediately recall a photograph that was sent to me in an email.  It’s of the artist as a child in Grampy’s arms.  Grampy has the smile of a proud content grandfather holding his beautiful freckle faced granddaughter.  The photograph came to me right after Grampy passed away. I had never met him.  I am not sure of the age she was in that photograph or the age she painted the evil painting. She told me once but I was drunk and didn’t fucking care.   The curtain is of my own doing.  My toilet overflowed one day and left an inch of shitty water. I went to the home goods store nine blocks away where the thick Latina chick hit on me relentlessly one day.  I bought a mop, bucket, pinesol, can opener, bath mat and what would later become a myriad of rubber ducks tormenting me.  I did it to complement the evil painting.  Every time I shower I see theses fucking ducks looking at me reminding me of the evil painting I see every time I piss and the signature on that painting reminding me of the photograph of the artist as a child in Grampy’s arms.  My roommate offered to take them down.  “I said no”.  I want them there as a silent reminder of the anger and alcohol that led me to my current state of affairs. 

Can an Alligator and a Fireman live in harmony?

The Fireman is the deep seated internal desire to keep ones environment safe including the people, infrastructure and ideologies.  He wears protective clothing that taxes his body in order to run into danger.  He endures great mental and physical hardships to accomplish his mission.  He will be subject to psychological and bodily injuries that may never heal.

The Alligator is a prehistoric animal relatively unchanged since the first time the hard backed reptile walked out of the ocean onto dry land.  The Alligator is the internal degenerate, ones primal instinct.  The Alligator does not plan for the future he is simply perpetually seeking his next meal.  The alligator is the 3 am slice of pizza, unprotected sex with a stranger -- your immediate satisfiable desire.

Can we juggle and live with both man and beast?

Brought to you by coyote blood and scotch

Arced Glass

Everything looks different from this view

The world is strange and distant

Distorted

I spend my days looking through arced glass

I only see my feet

My back is bent

Neck is arched

The proper way to look through the bottom of this bottle

Coyote Blood grabs my chin

Lifts with the might of a Titan

Struggling to raise my face

Minor success

As the encounter ends

My head along with my soul slumps yet again

My shoes appear in my vision once more

They comfort me

The familiar blurred truth stairs back at me

I try to cry

Emotions of greatness have abandoned me

I race to make the Arced glass clear

First Edition

When I was a little kid my pops asks me "what do you wanna be when you grow up" my response "either an Alligator or Fireman".  Well, I turned out to be neither.  Instead I became a drunk degenerate unemployed in New York City.  A bit bitter, a touch jaded and a hot mess in general!  At the Age of 17 I enlisted in the Marine Corps out of spite, in 2006 I reenlisted in the Marine Corps out of spite, in 2010 I left the Marine Corps for a broad.  Tale's of an Alligator is an attempt to record and share the otherwise uneventful activities, ramblings and recipes of the drunk guy stumbling down the street at 4 am.