Pillow Talk

"I know the devices of a demon. I was taught as a child about the demon lover. I was told about a beautiful temptress who came to a young man's room. And he, if he were wise, would demand that she turn around, because demons and witches have no backs, only what they wish to present to you. What had I done? What animal had I delivered into her? I had been speaking to her I think for over an hour. Had I been her demon lover?"

-- The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje

I used to share what I think of as my strange thoughts with the woman I was engaged to. I had never had someone to talk about them with. I hadn't trusted many people before.

She was the sort of woman who is constantly surrounded by suitors disguised as shining knights. She knew the gnawing pain that comes with the constant discovery and rediscovery of her friends as mere competitors in what could be considered a game for her romantic affection; of catching nearly all she knew in lie after desperate lie. Many women lead such lives -- some crave the attention, others may be oblivious to it, and many more, I suspect despise it.

I don't know if I was really any different from the suitors at my core, but she chose me, surprising myself and others; perhaps even surprising herself. As an oddity among my peers, I appeal to a certain type of mind. I was also prudish, tended towards blunt honesty, and was perhaps a touch more naive than the average 20-year-old, which some may consider charming. I accidentally met a criteria she had independently developed for the perfect mate -- he had to possess musical ability, speak three languages, and to look dignified while brushing his teeth (she called it 'looking sexy' but it's hard to believe someone could ascribe that to me).

I loved her because of her flaws. She seemed more human than human to me. She had a very ungraceful gait due to over-sized feet, and was easy to talk to. She was not afraid to shave her head -- to cast off the traditional gender logic. She appreciated art and music as voraciously as I, although our tastes were markedly different -- that was okay. Such subtle differences serve to broaden horizons. It is good to spend time with people who are not like yourself. Better still to fall in love with such people. At least, that's the way I used to see it.

She also said the damnedest things. The damnedest things any woman had ever told me before.

She said that when she imagined her guy friends jerking off to pictures of her that she felt disgusted, but not when she imagined me doing it. That was her way of letting me know she was interested in me.

She invited me to watch animal sex specials on television when we were alone in our hotel room, which, back then, merely served to make me blush and unable to speak.

She said once that Wayne Coyne's beard reminded her of ass-hair.

She was incredibly candid -- which was alluring to me. She was ridiculous as she was flattering. New and refreshing. Her attitude made my negative self-perception melt away. She was also funny, smart, and thoughtful. And despite her awkwardness, very pretty.

As is traditional with an isolated Christian upbringing, I had denied my sexuality pretty thoroughly, with but a handful of lapses, and it had never even occurred to me that women could enjoy sex until my conversations with her seemed to indicate otherwise. I had that Victorian, or perhaps, neo-puritan notion of sex as some kind of chore -- one which women begrudgingly obliged their lovers for the sake of a relationship or to produce children. It's an old notion; an oft-harmful one, but it is ingrained into thousands of minds every day. Loneliness produced a false confirmation bias in myself. I suppose I thought that women would be more overt if they actually enjoyed male (re: my) company, and since they weren't, it seemed to me they didn't.

It's embarrassing to admit, but I have often resorted to faith in order to reverse this Victorian conditioning. It is hypocritical -- for an atheist to deny his nagging suspicion that he is a hideous unlovable creature merely because people say he is not -- to pretend to believe that his loneliness is somehow his own fault. That he sabotages his own life and doesn't realize it -- a self-fulfilling prophesy; a demon all over again; hideous and unlovable -- apparently only to himself. And yet he does love himself. It is the others who give him a wide berth. Why?

We shared many places, her and I. It was a long-distance relationship. She lived successively in Wisconsin, China & Chicago; I, in California, Texas & Hawaii. We talked on the phone, we IM'ed, wrote thousands of emails, texted, and planned romantic liaisons around my leave times and long weekends. We never had a house or apartment of our own. Instead, we had hotel rooms; guest bedrooms; diners in towns neither of us knew. Rented or borrowed cars. Our entire relationship had the auspice of impermanence. It loomed on the horizon as a raincloud does. We clutched together for as long as we could bear the pain of the distance. Being less skilled in the art of loneliness, she couldn't last as long as I. It is not an intentionally practiced skill. Not typically. Particularly among the young.

But I especially appreciated how readily she accepted and respected my mind. My thoughts. In hindsight I realize she regarded me as something like a work of art. My friends and family have said that she would constantly steal glances at me when I wasn't looking, as if to confirm that I was really there. She told me that I became more and more beautiful to her. She had an overwhelmingly positive effect on me. She quelled the hatred I felt as a teenager. Snuffed it right out like a candle. She knew just what to do -- as if to arrive and simply ask, "no one's done anything about this burning fire here?" And then swallowed it whole. She softened me forever, an effect which lasted even after we stopped communicating. I would probably have not become a Pacifist if it weren't for her influence -- ironic because she did not believe in Pacifism herself. Her influence on me may have even made us less compatible in the long run. I believe she liked the angry me.

Regardless, we were engaged. When she returned from China she brought me two gifts -- a tiny jade mouse and a wedding band. Since we didn't know my size I sent her a piece of string that I had tied around my ring finger. She, then, stuck a rolled piece of paper through the hoop of string and used it as a guide for the jeweler.

And I used to share my strange thoughts with her.

Spending listless hours together, as I believe most couples do, we bathed in each other's warmth against the night air, sharing quirks or personal revelations, nude or near nude, half in dream. We helped one another understand those threads of humanity; how they interweave, unravel, or sometimes cut and fray. We laughed. We enjoyed each other's company. Inspired one another. Critiqued one another's work, ideas, and philosophies.

She once told me about a theory she developed, wherein the sum of one's personality could be described in terms of three colors; no more, no less. I was blue, green and brown -- the colors of a forest meadow; she, yellow, white and green -- perhaps with some red, but that would have violated the 'three' rule. I had a similar habit of assigning colors to people but I usually just chose one per person. I have found that some of my friends do the same. Do you, reader?

I described to her a feeling I would sometimes get whenever a stranger flashed me a knowing smile. I tended (or perhaps, pretended) to wonder if the person was really a time-traveler from the future, desirous of catching a glimpse of me from the era before I became...whatever it is I thought I would become. A rock star, I suppose. I suppressed such thoughts, meaning that I did not act on them or acknowledge them publicly when they arose, but they arose. A kind of delusion of grandeur -- as if I thought I were a temporal tourist destination.

I described how it was becoming harder and harder for me to believe in free will. I didn't understand how a future could exist without the present - its past -- being as unchangeable as our own past. I often felt distracted by how each of my actions were limited by their preceding moments and constricted to their future ones; how everything I did was already being done as I was doing it. My prophetic deja vus complicated this; when I tried to change the events of my dreams as I re-lived them I found myself merely confirming the dream-wherein-I-tried-to-change-the-dream, remembering the attempt itself, feeling tricked by my apparently (and uselessly) psychic subconscious, not quite believing what I was experiencing.

I described how I sometimes pretended that eye-contact caused people to suddenly and instantly switch souls.

Strolling down a corridor at work, I might accidentally catch someone's eye. I might wonder to myself what their life might be like compared to mine, and I'd pretend our eye-contact provided an answer. I used to avoid unnecessary eye-contact. I still avoid smelling people I don't enjoy talking to.

"Wouldn't you remember if you switched bodies with people all the time?" she asked. Everyone asks. Her smile and her eyes suggested the words, 'you silly, silly man.' I loved that expression of hers.

But see, my crazy hat is just as smart as the rest of me; it knows that memories are stored in the body, not the soul. The switch is so instantaneous and complete that you do not even notice. At most you feel a slight rush of excitement, of fear, or anxiety. Eye contact can cause funny behavior in people. Why should that be so? Some people are a joy to make eye contact with; others, not so much. Friends and lovers, making eye-contact often, feel intimate and at home with one another. Some people never make eye-contact with you. You can tell from a distance that you do not want them to.

Such thoughts led to others.

Considering the atrocities in Rwanda I had heard about -- was it Rwanda? I cannot remember. Abstracting the concept of the soul. I didn't know if I believed in heaven or hell anymore. My Christianity was a tattered rag, though the phrase 'God is dead and no one cares' could still make my stomach turn, depending on my mood (or how 'screwed' I was feeling). I was specifically concerned with hell. I hadn't pondered eternity often, but I couldn't believe that any punishment could deservingly last forever. If Hitler, to beat a dead metaphor, suffered 15 million lifetimes of torment for his crimes, that would not have put a dent on eternity, and I could not believe in a God that would condemn any thinking entity to such a place. It was literally the most brutal act I could imagine. I would have rather gone to hell myself than exist in heaven with such a monster.

But did that make me more forgiving than God? Me, the lethargic wraith? The demon in human clothing? The man whose brain chemistry locked him in Dante's outermost layer of sombre, tranquil hell? The one reserved for philosophers? Diet hell? Hell lite?

I couldn't get a certain image out of my mind.

I'm beginning to realize that we -- humans that is -- tend to use self-delusion to reconcile our ideals to the apparent reality of our world. I, for instance (and I suspect that I'm not alone in this) hold an ideal that most people are gentle-natured, fair, rational in their own way, and diplomatic. Even people who espouse violence as a solution to their lives' problems are violent only seldomly. When exceptions arise, they are punished with zeal. When they can't be, it seems people hope that someone, or something else, will do it for them.

Being no exception then, I taxed my mind in the following way: I wanted to rationalize my desire for an alternative to hell as a means for 'cosmic justice' while at the same time accounting for the brutal stories one inevitably hears of -- of genocide, of serial murder, of mass rape; forms of coercion -- or in the cases I'd been hearing about, all of the above -- of guerrilla soldiers descending upon villages in the night and mutilating those they find, stripping them of the flesh in their breast; cutting their faces, genitals, I mean, what was the point? They were irrevocably disturbed! Such soldiers are often drugged against their will and conscripted into military service as children. Did they believe they were punishing these innocents for the crime of escaping guerrilla servitude? Where do the madmen come from who create such armies, and what made them mad?

Why did I find it necessary to create a concept of cosmic justice? To cope with feelings of powerlessness, perhaps? Impotence to rid the world of wrong? Of unnecessary suffering? I don't know. I still felt that no one deserved hell, not even the very worst of us. Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden, etc. Charles Manson.

You get the idea.

But what could people accept in hell's place? What could I accept in hell's place? These paragraphs crossed my mind one spent night.

I considered reincarnation. In the past I had pondered reincarnation as a possible explanation for my sadness. I wondered if I were being punished for a forgotten misdeed from a past life, or, perhaps, an accumulation of past lives. I often asked myself what sort of action would deserve such an all-pervading malaise. I really had no gauge for comparison. A recollection of the misdeed may have helped but I considered that part of the 'punishment', may in fact have been an oblivious nature to the scope of my deeds in the first place.

I also considered my confusion about time and free will. It is widely accepted, for instance, that time is non-linear. Past doesn't necessarily come before present, which doesn't necessarily come before future. Could reincarnations also be non-linear, I wondered? Could a person live a life into the future, then the past, then the present -- or for that matter, multiple lives at the same time?

My thoughts were still with the village women; the maimed victims left for dead, and of their mind-altered attackers. And of non-linear reincarnation. I thought, in that instance, that a fair justice would be for the attacker to reincarnate as his own victim -- or victims, one at a time -- after his death. And after that thought, it was only a small stretch to consider another and ancient thought; a vastly popular thought, but as alien a one to me at the time: What if there was only one consciousness? What if this consciousness lived every single life that has ever lived? Experienced every pain, every sorrow; perpetuated every crime and suffered as every victim? But more than that -- experienced every joy, wrote every song, sang it, sold it, bought it, experienced it anew time and time again (perhaps even remembering, in some mysterious way) -- and every book, every painting, every meal, every conversation, every single idea -- buildings, humans, animals, insects, rocks, gems, dirt, trees, water, air -- every aspect of the cosmos -- everything would be accounted for by such experience.

It was God's own worldview.

Was that what the soul truly was? God's direct experience of human life? Of any life? Fractions of God's awareness? Now there was a heretical idea. It reminded me of what I had heard about Eastern religion -- not that I had heard much -- and the doors to my mind felt blown right off their hinges.

It was different from any religious idea I'd ever encountered. It made the whole concept of heaven and hell seem like a children's game. For a few moments I didn't quite realize what I was suggesting to myself. A kind of justice that wasn't just balanced, but which had a kind of beauty. It had always seemed somewhat aloof to me that God would make all of these creatures and allow such strange and horrible things to happen to them -- then blame it on ancestral sin, greater purposes; what have you.

But if the 'witness' -- the me that experiences myself, the you that experiences yourself -- was not really "us" at all; but something altogether different...if God himself personally witnessed and experienced every life that ever happened, he'd be paying for his own mistakes, so to speak. That was much more sacrificial than anything Jesus purportedly did -- or was it the same story? The same ideology?

And as an omniscient mind, he would necessarily know what he was getting into. Did that void the sacrificial aspect? Perhaps the victim reincarnated as her attacker -- was that how God learned to forgive...himself? I liked that idea. Did he intentionally forget in order to re-learn? Did the joy of discovery serve a greater function than the discovery itself? Was that part of the mystery of life?

I conceived an entirely different mental image of God from the one I had always known. I saw a vast intelligence - unmatched, unparallelled - and completely alone. I could see him traveling backwards, forwards, even 'sideways' in time in order to interact with himself. Could he cut himself into pieces? Divide infinity in half and you have two measures of infinity. Could he do that infinite times? Would he wipe his own memory, reprogram himself -- what would such a thing even spend its time doing?

Would he spend an eternity in hell to prove a point? Would he role-play as the devil to give himself something to do? I shared these ideas with her as well.

It's sort of sad -- I really liked those ideas of mine, but eventually I decided they were mad. Christians don't want to hear them, atheists didn't want to hear them, and agnostics liked them but could only shrug their shoulders at them. And that was it. Life moved on. I had more pressing concerns.

I considered that I might have the sort of mind that could start a cult -- and I feared myself. Cult leaders have always been madmen. Horrible, corrupted, manipulators of the lost. A part of me felt like it could be easy to do. Somehow this shifted my perspective on religion. I felt like I had gained a profound insight into what God might really be -- and I could see pieces of it in other religions. These are the aspects which coerce people into behaving in ways they might never otherwise behave. The corrupted aspects, the hypocritical aspects. The power-hungry aspects.

And I learned to hate power. To hate coercion. To hate deception.

I thought, perhaps, that this inner voice of mine was a shadow of my paternal grandmother's schizophrenia. It was a relief to feel like I could brush it aside. Dismiss it. Keep from publicly acknowledging it.

Lava cools and creates a surface shell. It is safe to touch. Inside is another story.

Thought - Spirit of Nonconvention

A year and a month (and a day and an hour) before I was sentenced, the fates, as I have termed them, told me that I was a spirit of nonconvention. They gave my life a grade: C+. Sometime later that night, I died in my car. Later still, a convulsion revived me. I could tell by Orion's new position in the sky that between 2 and 3 hours had passed since I'd last closed my eyes.

52 Reasons to Buy My Music - #s 5, 6 and 7

5. Ghandi probably would have bought my music.

6. My best friend is gay and we totally got trashed at a gay bar the night before I went away. It'd be sort of cool if gay bars nationwide picked one of my songs and closed the night with it every July 30th.

7. I really wish I could participate in some way towards making Denver a greater cultural contributor -- it needs bolder and more eccentric artists of every variety.

Thought

It's been almost two years since I've stopped smoking. I haven't thought of cigarettes for a while, but I think I'd smoke one now if I had one. It's hard to say. I wish there were reasons other than my health not to smoke.

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.