Exodus II

My non-judicial hearing occurred September 11, 2003; no mere coincidence. The acting CO for the 1st Radio Battalion made every effort he could to insinuate that the money I'd spent acquiring marijuana had fallen directly into terrorist hands. I didn't feel the need to point out how stupid that sounded considering the facts; after all, I had heard dumber things fall out of the mouths of officers (as they tend to), and I wanted to play up the perception of my captors. I thought it would increase my likelihood for a successful expulsion.

I had turned myself in for drug abuse two months prior. After a weekend pot-binge, I asked to speak privately with my platoon Sergeant. We went outside to a stairwell which served a dual purpose as a smoking area. I lit a cigarette and pondered how I should begin to unravel my career as a Marine linguist. I still had a chance to take the easy way out. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut and nothing would happen; I was certain of that -- in two and a half years I had only been drug tested once. A knot of anticipation grew in my stomach. I had to say something. Why was I so afraid of freedom? Was it because I couldn't believe it was actually within my grasp?

Fortunately, he broke the silence first. That made it easier.

"So, Day. What's up?"

I'd actually known the guy for a long time. He learned Persian-Farsi at the same language school I learned Arabic, the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. He was in charge of my platoon then, as well. We'd seen each other drunk, played guitar together. He organized a few parties that would have gotten a lot of people in trouble if it weren't for "unit cohesion." I'd been drinking at his house only weeks prior, met his wife, played The Rain Song for the two of them on his guitar. That made it easier, too. Coincidences, right?

"I've been smoking pot." I told him. I said it. Now, things could never be the same, or so I thought.

"Oh," he said. Or would they? "What do you want me to do about it?" The lines between coworker, boss, and friend are confusing at times. I must have thought; god damn it, I have the only cool Sergeant in the whole damn battalion.

I answered with a question of my own. "Well, what are you supposed to do about it?"

He replied with a grin, "tell someone, I guess."

"Do that. Please."

There was an awkward period of silence. It wasn't painfully awkward; maybe a few seconds passed while he processed what I was asking him to do. "You're serious? You're really doing this?" I think I smiled. He and I had had many heated debates over my growing inability to perform military duties, my disenfranchisement, my disbelief in the war, the disgust I felt towards some of my peers' vehement enthusiasm for "killing ragheads," not to mention my growing belief in Pacifism, which he insisted was only an act due to my lack of religious conviction.

Suddenly he said, "well, I'll miss 'ya." Then we shook hands. "This is going to cause a shitstorm. You're serious about this?"

"Yes," I told him. It was nice having someone who understood me nearby, then. I think I thanked him. I can't remember.

He walked down the stairwell and I watched as he crossed a large, grassy field, then disappeared into a building 200 yards away. I lazily finished my cigarette. Afterwards, I sat in his office, waiting for the phone call I knew would arrive at any minute. When it did, I was calm, ready, collected. I stayed that way till I left.

The hearing really was a strange affair. Without intending to, I had picked the perfect time to turn myself in, as my battalion was in the midst of a change of command. In the interim period, my platoon Sergeant was the acting platoon commander, the platoon commander was the acting company 1st Sergeant, and the company 1st Sergeant was the acting Battalion Sergeant Major. To the layperson: my immediate supervisors were filling in for their bosses' jobs in the short period that existed between the old bosses leaving and the new bosses arriving. I don't think it's usually done that way but it worked to my advantage.

Here's how: marijuana use isn't considered as serious a deal as it used to be, mainly because too many people are caught using it -- it would affect troop strength too significantly to kick out everyone who used it. In my case, my supervisors all knew, more or less tacitly, my situation and why I wanted out of the military. I believe they did everything in their ability to help me get out (either that or they really thought I was bad for the Corps; in either case I agree with their judgment). This suspicion of mine is due, in part to the fact that the base drug and alcohol counselors had never heard of me and hinted at an "under-the-table" process when I talked to them (whatever that could mean), and because, compared to other drug offenders, my status remained relatively high among staff until I was discharged. While never publicly acknowledged, I detected an air of respect from my supervisors. (It's mutual.) I even stole a portrait of my company 1st Sergeant (and named a song after him) in order to remember my gratitude.

The hearing was strange because the new command was all in place by the time it occurred. The Sergeant Major that presided was a gigantic black man with arms the size of thighs. He was a whole head shorter than me but could have probably thrown me twenty feet if he felt so inclined. The commanding officer who acted as a judge-of-sorts, was old, grey, and inexplicably snakelike. There were six or seven others in the room; four I had never seen before, all high ranking, and 2 or 3 from my own command. I don't remember many details. Long paragraphs were read aloud, and I felt simultaneously eager and bored. I also remember having to fart, a most untimely predicament for such environments. That made me seem impatient when I really wasn't.

The new guard seemed to have the impression that I had smoked the pot for its own sake, so they made a big deal about lost futures and missed opportunities, all for the sake of a moment's high. It suddenly dawned on me that this may have been an image concocted by my superiors in order to facilitate a speedier discharge. They remained silent throughout the proceeding. Finally the officer/judge-faker asked me if the pot had been any good.

I thought; what a weird question to ask. Inappropriate, even.

I had smoked it at a beach on base. MCBH (Marine Corps Base Hawaii) has a host of wonderful beaches that I used to explore. If you stand still for a few minutes, huge crabs emerge from nooks and crannies in rock formations. I would swim for hours, gloomily, chasing my own fear and pushing myself further and further out to sea. I had once found a Connecticut coin from the 18th century hidden in a crevasse of lava-rock, only to lose it when I slipped on another formation on the beach. Coral structures have claimed small pieces of my thumb and back. I chased fish, and found myself surrounded by schools of them at times. The waters have both coddled me and dragged me over rocks. The ocean seems to have its own personality at times. The beach became my friend. I never saw any sharks, dolphins, whales, or sea turtles; or anything larger than a foot, but they may have been nearby. While swimming, I always felt as if observed.

That evening, I didn't swim. I smoked as much as I thought I would need to in order to inundate my system, then felt surprise at just how potent the stuff was. Oh, it was potent. I don't actually enjoy pot very much, but the body high soon gave way to that hazy dopey-ness and a mild cheer. My eye-lids grew heavy although I wasn't tired, and each time I blinked my perception of the world became as one giant, real-life cartoon. It was so unusual that I felt compelled to observe the effect more, and, as a consequence, I ended up walking around with my eyes closed more than open.

When I observed my own body with eyes closed, I became a pudgy, cartoon Hawaiian girl in a purple tube top, yellow flower-print shorts, and sandals. That was also quite unusual. Eyes open; tall thin marine. Eyes closed; short pudgy girl. Eyes open; a night-time stroll through a street on base. Eyes closed; a day-time stroll through cartoon Hawaii. The cartoonyness lasted about half an hour. The man-girl duality lasted several more.

About halfway to my barracks I noticed a group of leaves following me. It was really quite bizarre; they were dry, fall leaves which I could hear dragging in the wind behind me. When I stopped to turn and catch them in the act they would slow to a stop. Resuming my walk, they picked up after me. It really was something out of Alice in Wonderland. I felt ridiculous; I knew full well the leaves couldn't possibly be following me, and yet they persisted. It was too silly. Start, stop. Start, stop. I varied the pattern of my steps to thwart the apparent causality and each time it thwarted me back. What stupidity; I was beside myself with dualistic fantasy. But it was also fun. It was as if I were playing with nature itself, stupid as that may sound to the reader.

In a last ditch effort to shake the leaves from my trail, I burst into a run. The wind picked up in that exact moment, chasing after me with several fists full of leaves. I almost panicked, but I had a smirk on my face the whole time. After a hundred yards or so I stopped on a dime and turned to fact what I was beginning to perceive as a kind of ghost. The leaves tumbled to a stop (they really did), and I stared into the void, slightly bewildered. I couldn't see anything to account for the movement, except the pile of leaves itself. I was a little carried away -- I made a menacing stomp, and some of the leaves bounded backwards, as if startled. I giggled to myself. I was seriously high and it dawned on me then; and not for the first time that evening.

So when the commanding officer of my battalion asked me that day if the pot had been any good, I couldn't exactly lie to him. They had a field day with my answer. They hated me for that. The Sergeant Major's composure completely unraveled. My command was sweating and fidgeting. The room palpably darkened. I guess they thought I wouldn't answer. So why did he ask? What a creepy man.

I was demoted, twice, and given something like 3 months of extra duty with restriction. I was the lowest ranking person on Oahu. I took a sort of pride in that. My coworkers loved me; some nights they smuggled me off base, took me to beach parties or strip clubs, and always had me back in time to report for more extra duty, which included lawn mowing, bathroom cleaning, garbage sorting, weed pulling, shrubbery-cutting, sprinkler repair, dusting, mopping, and I can't even remember what else. I had 12 hour workdays, was only allowed to wear my camouflage uniform, and had a rigid check-in schedule.

But I was also given unique and unprecedented privileges. I reported directly to our new company first Sergeant, which meant I didn't really have anyone watching over me all day. I was exempted from almost all of my daily duties, having lost my security clearance and no longer being a training priority (although a loophole made me have to spend a week re-qualifying on the rifle range, anyway). And rather than being in a traditional platoon, I was attached to a strange squad of Sergeants and Staff-Sergeants, which somehow ended up being a much more relaxed environment than it sounds.

Usually, I was on phone-watch duty, which meant I sat by the phone in case someone important called, surfing the Internet.

Two days before Thanksgiving, I was called into the First Sergeant's office. A respectable Gunnery Sergeant was holding the job; I really liked the guy. "Day," he said. "I just got a phone call. You're really going to like this." I thought I might, but I didn't know what he was going to say; and I didn't know how much I would until he actually said it. "We have 48 hours to get you the fuck out of the Marine Corps." He said it exactly like that. And he was smiling.

It was one of those moments; I was excited, he knew I was excited. I knew he knew I was excited, he knew I knew that, etc.

I almost kissed the girl, the married, Mormon girl that I'd been harboring a crush on, in the hallway just outside his office.

Somewhere in the Marine Corps files is an order stating that I can never set foot on MCBH again. I'll never find that coin. Fair enough.

Thought

People like to say that men think about sex a lot. Sex is great and all, but I fantasize about other things more often; things that other people would probably consider incredibly boring, like sharing naps on the carpet in an window's sunlight, folding clothes that aren't mine, the silence of a shared chore; the sound of someone sleeping next to me. Moments such as these are much harder to come by than sex is. I have longed for them since childhood. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one; but with as many people as there are that's a laughable thought. Where are the others? My loneliness caused me unbearable pain. But society's message is clear as day: I deserve not love, but Prozac. At least Prozac comes in daily increments.

Exodus I

I've mentioned it in a few places; I got kicked out of the marines for smoking pot. I put off canceling my contract in such a manner for a very, very long time, considering the measure as a drastic, last of last resorts. I kept hoping that another opportunity would present itself, and it never did. I wanted out the day I found out I wouldn't learn the language of my choice. I had entertained notions at first that I had a sort of dual intention of serving the country and of learning Japanese, but the disappointment revealed to me, quite clearly, that I had never had an interest in being a marine for its own sake or in fulfilling any perceived duty. For me, the marine corps was a means to an end.

I think, perhaps, that in studying another foreign language I was trying to increase my options for successfully leaving the country and starting a life somewhere new after an honest go at the rock star dream. I entertained notions of returning to Germany but my language and education had atrophied (plus I was broke). I always find myself thinking of my disillusionment with the U.S. as a new phenomenon, brought about by new facts or situations, but no matter how far back I remember, the disillusionment remains. Perhaps I was also giving the marine corps a chance to prove my perceptions wrong.

I also never quite understood college in America; it's financial and scholastic requisites were unavailable to me, and I could never figure out how a person could be expected to work full time while going to school full time -- especially when jobs for high school graduates scarcely paid for housing and food. Presumably I would have had to work several jobs while going to school. I was already drowning in lethargy, existential crises, cruel depression and suicidal urge as a high school student; I honestly thought college might kill me.

While most consider the marine corps to be a tough gig, it's actually pretty simple, and my expectations in day-to-day living were accurate. The rules are easy; you don't have to worry about money or paperwork, and the American school system teaches the basics exhaustively: 1) pretend you are stupid, 2) do what you are told, whether it makes sense or not, 3) observe others and do not stand out, 4) appeal to the perceptions of those in authority, and 5) demonstrate physical prowess (a basic physical regimen will assure you do not make a fool of yourself).

While the prospect of subjecting myself to those rules for another five years was not particularly appealing (the length of the language school required an extra year of service), the disciplinary lifestyle appealed to me somewhat, and I liked the idea of leaving the marines in shape, debt free, and tri-lingual in English, German and Japanese. I knew adults who had gone to college to study Germany who were not a match for my childhood vocabulary so I figured that by the time I was finished, my experience would speak for itself and I wouldn't need a degree.

As for wanting to be a rock star, you don't need a degree for that either (and Weezer isn't a good band).

So those are a few more of my motivations for joining. At times a reader may find herself asking, "why did he join, again?" Or himself wondering, "what was he thinking?" Well, there you go. I was 17 when I pledged to join. What sort of life-altering decisions did you make in high school?

But I'm glad they kicked me out for pot. I feared I might have had to find something more dangerous, like coke or heroin. I took a gamble on pot and it paid off. I don't know why service members can't just cancel their enlistments at will. Presumably the logistical challenges of treating service members fairly, honestly, and with dignity is insurmountable, and the risk of losing our armed forces in the face of an unwise or unpopular attack would be pretty high. But is that so horrible? Isn't that exactly the way it should be in a free society?

I felt at the end of my rope. I had orders to Iraq. My ex-fiancee had left me. I was losing my mind and had been demonizing my peers and superiors for years. I didn't like where my mind was going. I have dozens of anecdotal military stories which document a steady decline in my fitness to serve. I was not the only one. There are countless anti-hero circles in the armed services. Their members are ticking time bombs. They have temporarily forgotten who they are, what they want in life, how to get it; what right and wrong even mean to them; and I was stuck right there with them.

I suppose I'm giving mixed reviews of my military experience. When I say that the "gig" of being a marine was easy, I mean that ironing, shaving, cleanliness, fitness, drill, uniform maintenance and marksmanship are all easy enough to maintain to a point, even if I don't prefer much of that in my personal life. I might have even toughed-out my contract if it weren't for the invasion of Iraq. When the U.S. went ahead without support from France, or more importantly to me, Germany, my heart told me that something was drastically wrong. I trusted Germany, having spent my entire childhood there. I felt despicably dirty; morally compelled not to participate the day the first invasion began. I started working up the courage to do something about my supposed involvement, although I wasn't sure what.

A comical role-reversal provided my key to escape while assigned to Hawaii.

I had been on a personal mission all afternoon. It isn't easy for an obvious square, out of his element, to find drugs; of any variety, but I thought I knew the sort of person I was looking for. In high school, everyone I knew smoked pot. Some even did LSD, mushrooms, ecstasy, cocaine, and amphetamines. I was at a local mall, stalking the halls, keeping an eye out for the oft-parodied, proverbial, cool kid.

People dress differently in Hawaii than they do in Colorado, so I had to rely on more subtle clues, such as age, level of hygiene, a certain kind of confidence, and a bravado that personally irritated me but seemed par for coolness. What I found were doughy, middle-aged, depressed white tourists and tired, defeated-looking Hawaiians (snapshots of America can be quite revealing), peppered with Chinese and Japanese retirees. I walked in circles for close to an hour and a half, even stopped by the guitar shop (there's always a pot-head -- although of a different variety than the cool kid -- at a guitar shop), with no luck. I became depressed, which prompted a retreat to one of my favorite creature comforts at the time; my ritual cigarette break.

Soon I was standing mere paces away from a bench outside, staring into the distance, gently rolling my lit cigarette in my right hand. The weather in Hawaii is really something. The wind is just right, there are never any bugs or mosquitoes hitting you, and two-to-three minute rain showers arrive like clockwork every 25 minutes or so. The tap water is the best in the nation. It's becoming a big, sprawling suburb, though. Sad, really.

I pondered giving up my search, or at least waiting til the following Friday to try again. I knew pot was everywhere; that was the frustrating part. Chances were all those fat, middle-aged people I'd been overlooking were higher than I'd ever been or would ever be. Pot is everyone's secret. Children smoke it behind their parent's backs and parents do it behind their childrens'. I pondered that, too. Maybe I could ask another marine, I thought. I decided I would keep looking until the mall closed.

Before I finished my break and began my resolve anew, a small voice encroached upon mine ears. A young girl, who had been sitting at the bench, watching me, asked if I would bum her a smoke. She spoke in that pigeon-y Hawaiian accent. I can't do it justice in writing so I must ask you to use your imagination. She was obviously too young to be smoking, looking anywhere between 12 and 15 years old, but as I'd just been looking to score all afternoon I figured I shouldn't play morality police. I gave her a cigarette and walked away without saying much. Teenage girls put me off somewhat; they're adult enough to flirt at me sometimes and for a weird tension to permeate the air, but too childish all the same. I'm beginning to feel the same way about women in their early twenties. I suppose there could be exceptions but in the former case they're illegal and in the latter, well, they seem to prefer men who are richer than me, older than me, or parodies of masculinity. It drives me nuts sometimes.

As I walked away, an even smaller voice spoke to me. It was my conscience, my spirit guide, Belfast, fate -- something; that part of me that is more fleeting than the rest -- that told me that she could be the person I'd been looking for all afternoon. I had been flipping coins since the breakup with my fiancee to help combat indecisiveness, and I consulted one then. It bolstered my decision, and I turned to re-approach the girl, at which point she asked if she could borrow my lighter.

That made me feel even less comfortable -- smokers generally carry their own lighting utensils, and a suspicion that she had only bummed the smoke as a pretense for talking to me began to boil in my mind. Then again, she might have taken me for some sort of teen-chasing creep -- an easy target for a young girl bent on finding cigarettes, alcohol, whatever. Or she might have just wanted a cigarette and needed a lighter. My mind often races with plots and suspicions, much less so these days, but especially when under stress. I inherited that from my dad's side of the family. A frustrating thing about my father was that his suspicions were always startlingly accurate without the slightest bit of proof to back them up. My difficulty lies in discerning between dozens of contradictory suspicions, a decidedly less useful skill.

But I pushed all that aside. I had more pressing issues -- my life, sanity, and livelihood were in serious danger. The pulse of the nation was becoming very weird and disturbing to me. I felt it was making me weird and disturbing. I swallowed my neurosis and asked, calmly, as she lit the cigarette I'd given her, whether she knew where I could find some pot.

Her reaction was endearing; she almost, *almost* looked like she might choke as she inhaled the first drag. My question had caught her off guard. Then she looked right-to-left, as if to check for eavesdroppers, leaned toward me, and whispered, "follow me."

She let me to some of her friends, and they sold me pot. They were all 14 years old; I don't remember asking their ages, I was so happy I gave them a hundred dollars. This role reversal of children selling pot to an adult (a marine, no less) is really an indicator for the parody the was on drugs has become. America is the poster child for aspiring laughing stocks the world over. Waste of time and money.

But it worked. By goodness, it worked. Those kids may have saved my life. They were greater heroes and national treasures to me than my own peers. I hope their futures are bright.

Observations

Writing takes goddamn forever without a computer. If inmates had access to computers, laptops, or even just word processors of their own, the world would be flooded with inmate literature. It might not be worth reading in most instances, but I think the inmates would be better off for the experience.

My self imposed quota of "one-large-blog-entry-per-month" takes so much damn work! How did the greats of old do it? By the time I've written three words my thoughts have raced to the end of the paragraph and I forget what I was trying to say. I then must retrace my previous sentences and attempt to weave the tapestry anew.

I am far less subtle with a pencil than I am with a word processor and it drives me somewhat nuts. What takes half an hour to type and fly-edit takes a week to do by hand. These few paragraphs are a perfect example. Would you believe it has taken me an hour to write this? An hour! And to think that business and government used to be conducted this way.

Who am I kidding, much of business and government is still run at this snail's pathetic, whimpering pace of a crawl.

I digress. I'm experiencing a bit of writer's block and I was hoping that this small rant would help to dispel it.

How have you all been?

1. I am working on my prison album.
2. I am happier than I've been in a long time and that sort of weirds me out; it makes me wonder about the line between healthy contentedness and institutionalization -- which isn't to say I think I've become institutionalized, but I suspect I could be given enough time.
3. My cellmate is super depressed because his family has completely abandoned him -- so he spends half the day sleeping and the other half watching television. I'd complain, but as that's the biggest problem in my life I've actually got it pretty good.
4. The situation in Japan is very sad. I've always had an inexplicable fondness for the Japanese. I wonder if, had I been allowed to learn Japanese after high school, would I be dead today? Have I already lived that life? Did I want to try something more difficult this time around?
5. It seems to me that Libya differs from Iraq in more than a few ways. But I don't know. I only have CNN and Jon Stewart for news sources. I wonder how I would feel if I were in the marines today rather than in 2003. I can't wrap my head around all the nuances. I'm a Pacifist because you can't know it all, and if you did you probably wouldn't feel much like fighting anyway.
6. There was one more thing but I forgot it already.

That was two hours by pencil. if this were a larger entry I would have typed it with my typewriter for a second draft (hey look, that's exactly what I did), then re-written and expanded for a third. I'd repeat that process once more, expanding and reading for flow. Usually I'll find the paragraph order unbearable and I'll try assigning different number orders until it sounds right. Then I have to re-write it again.

But it might be the Prozac that's making it harder too. I'm not ready to go back to pre-Prozac existence. Even just the memory of how I used to feel is too heavy to think about for very long. I'm still unsure as to whether it fixes a problem or just a natural reaction to a cultural disease.

-B

P.S. The writer's block is fixed.

Thought

My first lunch at Bent County [Correctional Facility in Las Animas] I sat next to a guy serving 12 years for standing in someone's backyard. Trespassing, I think it's called. Short, wiry fellow. Fantastic artist. Waste of your tax dollars. But you don't care. His first words to me were, "I hear you set your old lady's house on fire."

I would have to get used to this, I thought. I had never heard the worst horror of my life more succinctly portrayed. No embellishments, no buts, no reasons; just the unmitigated horror. "Yeah," was about all I could say.

Then he said something sort of funny. He said, "I can respect that." The silence that followed made it even [more surreal].

Prisoners are some of the least judgmental people in the world. That's the appeal of the bad boy that I never used to understand. I get it now. It doesn't mean we can't be pricks sometimes, but I'll be less likely to judge a lady by her past going forward.