In the Belly of the World

2011-08-14T01:06:00.001-04:00

www.piratevandal.tumblr.com

A Scratch

2010-08-09T20:03:00.003-04:00

If ever there was a way to form an understatement: it's been quite a while since I've posted here, is a good way to start after two years without a tippy-type from yours truly.
It has been a while and not until I looked upon the date of my last post did I realize how much time had bested me.
I keep asking myself 'what happened and where did you go'.
My brain used to arrange my thoughts into poetry now he's a garbage man.
Today.
There was no garbage.

Untitled

2010-07-29T23:23:00.002-04:00

Hide your sympathy
From my trouble
It craves attentions
Indecent foibles
Bring the car around
So we can cover
Our hidden melodies
From the faithful
Choirs watching
As they decipher
Our hidden melodies
Unlocking pity not understanding
Struggle in the misdiagnosis as I'm holding your hand.

Parched and Heated Already

2008-06-21T09:18:00.005-04:00

Orders from Central Command:
Get your shit in order son.
Report to Iraq.
Report to Iraq soon.

Since receiving this news, I've had a constant hard on. It's become a bit bothersome. Don't get the wrong idea, Tricky Dick's not some relentless trunk of wood, he's just a very light, very restless sleeper.

My tastes have gone from refined to having ankles turn me on. Any flash of flesh and hint of eyeball will suffice. Slender thigh meat makes me salivate. Ass cheeks can't be too big or too bony for my fascination. All I see is the sexual nature of all women who pass within my vision.

Women with babies, born and unborn, athletic women, wheelchair women, noneck women, tired women, put upon women, chirpy women, savage women, ditzy women, pale, dark, yellow, spotted, giraffe-like, chipmunk tail, women of all shapes all ages and all sizes constantly call out for my attention, as long as the woman has some redeeming attractive quality, my dick is game.

She could be picket fence toothed and silverbacked but if she's got creamy long legs-Wood.

Long neck with an ET forehead and skis for feet but her eyes are amber jewels perched atop pillowy DSL's-Wood.

Man hands and Popeye legs but a slender waist peppered with freckles topped with floating milk bags-Woooooood.

As you can see, even horrid women garner my attention. Put a dime piece at my nose and watch me soar like a rocket tied to two useless flaps of flesh.

My perceptual awareness is also under constant barrage. I say thank you to someone who replies "Anytime" and that word stretches out into a loaded and bloated mass of innuendo sodden with all types of dirty endless possibilities. Every mouth is an invitation. Smiles are dark and sensuous. Hellos are insistent demands for the vigor of my stroke. Even inattention is nothing more than a furtive demand of “grab a handful of my hair and take me! Who cares if I've got three kids I'm screaming at and I'm trying to argue with the post office lady. I can see you out of the corner of my eye and its taking all my will power not to rip off my clothes. Take me! Take me! I need a roll of Forever Stamps!”

Don’t even think to ask what my dreams are like.

I’ll let you know when or if this new reality subsides.

A Twisted bit of Political Whateva

2008-04-16T16:47:00.006-04:00

It's been said by some close to Hillary Clinton that she truly believes Obama cannot win the election come November.
That may be more true now than ever but not for the reasons she states. She argues he is the weaker candidate and that he cannont win even though he has won more states and more of the popular vote and more superdelegates have declared for him since super Tuesday.
If she were to follow her own logic, then why wouldn't she be trying harder (as in nicer) to get the Veep spot, ensuring Democratic victory? If she is truly the strongest between them, knowing she can't make the nomination (as she surely realizes), shouldn't she be fighting to form the winning ticket? I see in the Clintons, the spirit of winning at all cost, which is evident in how easily lies flow from out their mouths, even their daughter has begun earning her namesake.
Clinton mouths are blackholes where truth gets sucked in and cannot escape.
No, instead she is knee capping her opponent, doing her damnedest to ensure he can't win in November. One can only suppose her behavior is geared for an opening to run next election cycle. It is also possible that there is no next time for her. She may feel this is make or break and she must exhaust all measures.
I think the most ridiculous attacks against the Democratic front runner come straight out of the Clinton camp. When they are called out about their harsh intraparty attacks, their standard response is "well if Obama can't take attacks in the Primary, just wait for what the Republicans will do". The unspoken proposition in that refrain is -Our attacks are just as vitriolic as the Republicans-.
Perfect example is this latest episode of how McCain AND Shrillary are both echoing the same attacks against Obama. Bittergate.
I would be lying if I didn't write that this whole ordeal between Obama and BitchFaceWhoreMouth doesn't bode well for McCain. Simply because Clinton's ability to draw Obama into petty arguments diminishes his original appeal. She has taken his shine and covered it with her own purient shit so that now he appears less dignified than McCain.
McCain now looks presidential, until you watch him speak (I mean read his lines) or until you see him try to raise his arms above armpit level. Sad puppet.
My ORF (One Republican Friend) is now more confident than ever that the R's will take back the houses and the Presidency.
My ORF, coincidentally is also my One Retarded Friend.

From on High

2008-04-12T09:22:00.002-04:00

Time for another deployment.
Still not positive but was told, "be ready."

Butthole Whores Articulate Something Momentous

2008-02-02T04:46:00.000-05:00

What I am about to write is purely unscientific speculation but I will type on none the less.
My conjecture is that porn is shifting and sorting due in part to the internet. I know, way to go out on a limb there on that speculation, says you.
Read on.
The internet is not the reason, yet merely a tool turning the brush of desire against the engine, transforming it with every touch of every perverted and covetous click of a mouse. The reason has more to do with people using the internet as a medium, a means of mass communication.
Porn used to be a semi-one way street with the peddlers fashioning the latest craze and waiting to see what people would buy. People are now driving attention and $$$$ to websites, creating markets out of what used to be niche or fetish, relentlessly changing the shape of the animal with the curiosity of their desires in the form of mouse clicks.
The advent of real-core is a straightforward manifestation of that which I speak. When web cams and amateur vids found their way onto the net, guerilla style, their popularity had the porn industry scrambling at ways to profit. The porn industry sought to manufacture real-core material, manufacture being the operative word.
Real-core paysites popped up all over. Web cam barely legal girls looked amazingly familiar, as if they’d been seen in 20 or 30 other paysites and maybe they appeared more used and abused than fresh from the farm. Butthole virgins amazingly took big pole monsters quite well for their supposed rookie status to their anal adventures.
Another example would be that of the tattooed variety. Somewhere along the line, an interest was shown in women that had a different look and then, all of a sudden, you couldn’t click through the net without seeing Suicide Girls, Tattooed Cum Sluts, Alternateens or anything of the like. Even Vivid assembled VividAlt, an arm of the studio dedicated to creating alternative porn.
I believe the studios have it wrong. They still operate on the assumption of craze and fad. They misinterpret the need expressed in the various morphing of their chosen market. When VividAlt was born, one could almost imagine someone at Vivid saying “this is the new thing—this is what they want now. Why doesn't that bitch have a clit ring? Can't we find a cum drinker with a 666 tatted on her guzzler?”
The various ventures of Real-core, Gangbang, Ass To Mouth, B&D, S& M, Web-cam, Amateurism, Barely Legal, Cutie Cutters and not least, other Fetish types, as well as the obvious rejection of plastic tits, rubber faces, fake orgasms, contrived situations and just flat out phony people give us something to ponder.
Coursing through all of the varieties of smut I just named are moments like the bent awkward look, a genuinely pained face, an actually perky mound of flesh, visible and believable enjoyment in the filmed action—the crucial component is the pure experience of authenticity.
The rejection of the fake and disingenuous is a rallying cry “give us something real”. This, I believe, is what people are after.
I also believe this craving for authenticity is behind the shifting tides of mostly every aspect of society in relation to mass media.
That's why Hillary Clinton, with her fake crying and her contrived life, will never ever win my vote.
OBAMA!

Crabby Bitch Face Whore Mouth

2008-01-29T02:19:00.000-05:00

There is this girl at work.
She is a married, mother of a one year old daughter.
Crabby Bitch Face Whore Mouth is what I call her if she doesn’t gets her cool-aid.
Her cool-aid usually comes in the form of any stimulant whether it be coffee, nicotine or a fat pig-snort of cocaine off a baby’s back. She is so dependant on stimulants that anytime she is not taking the nerve altering substances down her gullet, she throws up hate on everything and everyone.
Sometimes I wonder about her.
She can be as bright and dark as a razor.
Speaking of, the other day, she took a subtle interest in a conversation about Cutters. I asked her what she thought about it. The red face told me all I needed to know. Now, I tease her every chance I get. I turn every conversation back to the Cut.
"Can you pass me a pen" she'll ask.
To which I reply, "Sorry, but how bout this razor. We'll just make your skin my notepad today."
"Why are people such idiots" she'll scream.
"Does that make you want to cut" I'll needle.
"Hey fucktard, what are you eating today"
"I was thinking of ordering some Razor Whore Salad"
After much ball-busting, she finally admitted that she thinks about it sometimes. It was a real conversation. Neither of us held back.
Now, everyday, I obsess about violating her.

The Wild

2008-01-29T01:41:00.000-05:00

I’ve been sleepless.
The sun goes up and down, leaving no tracks in the sky.
I glance at a window and feel little whether it’s bathed in light or deepened by night.
I’ve been hollow.
There was a time when I couldn’t contain myself.
Calm days were so few.
In the combustion of youth, my will was a tangle of strings holding back a woodland thing.
Then, the liberation which led to days without any sleep.
Came a time, it didn’t return.
Now I’m somehow lost without that noise in my ears.
Sitting in my car, driving home, staring out the window, searching.

Tubes of a Leviathan

2008-01-09T17:27:00.000-05:00

Something terrible is stirring in the dark heart of everywhere.
I cringe to think that I may be eternally plugged in.
Tapping into a source that feeds back into me.
It takes even more than it gives.
I am a slave to it.
I belong to it.
I felt myself to be the master.
Now everyday it feeds on my mind.
Everyday I grow a little more insubstantial.
I'll save you a seat.

Just Killing My Ideas

2007-05-03T22:36:00.000-04:00

Say something to yourself in the quiet light
Tell a tale ten times of unrepentant boredom.

Someone says in words typed out on paper . . .
go to Washington, D.C.

Shit.

Vespers

2006-08-19T02:26:00.001-04:00

I make my way down the broken path
Blackened rough and ragged
Stretched out like a dried out
Magma River

An amber flash beams my wants to attention
And I obey
Turning my rocket mind
Inside out

The Avatar beckons
And I obey

Approaching the Temple
A wary sinner
I unscrew open

Metal and plastic place of prayer
My choices three
A trinity of divinity pouring

As a spider weaves her silk across
She freezes at my finger

I press a Premium button

The Temple words flash
"Begin Pumping"
"Begin Pumping"
"Begin Pumping"
And I obey

Filled up,
Driving away,
I am at peace.

Sort-of Typing

2006-07-16T23:55:00.000-04:00

When writing, the most trouble I've ever had is finding a way to hold back or not to hold back.

How much is too much?

Am I revealing too much about myself?

Am I being too honest?

Not honest enough?

Should I even be writing?

Will these words hurt someone close to me?

Mostly, it's an inner conflict between the athletic, slutty, asshole I'm known as and the poet no one reads (my own damned fault because I show NO ONE my poetry).

I remember submitting an application for mail clerk, to my hometown newspaper, hoping I'd wedge my way into a staff writer position.

Until I met actual writers.

Most of the journalists and editors at my hometown paper were a stiff kick in the nads of my romantic self-image of the rebel writer-not at all how I viewed my favorite authors or myself.

These guys were pallid, balding and trollish in their appearance and just as unappealing in their manner. Most didn't have time for a young kid curious about the inner workings of creativity in regards to keeping the flow of words an irresistible feast or, at least, an appealing snack, for the brain.

One of those guys told me "there's no such thing as becoming a writer, you either are or you're not. After that, it's practice".

Back then, I was as serious about my writing as I was about pussy, risk-taking and living free of regret. Standing in the newsroom, looking at that sad handful of professional writers, I realized how little any of my interests were represented at that paper. As I figured that a town's newspaper is a reflection of it consumers (my hometown), I realized I was pondering a cross section that did not bode well for my future.

I never became a professional writer, in the sense of receipt of pay for tip-tap-typing away all day and part of the reason has to do with my experience on that day; A moment in time when I was blessed with a view of what lay years ahead on one possible tangent of my future. Another reason is that I was restless in that tiny town and wanted to see the world (I've seen pieces of it).

Since then, I've always wrestled with a way to integrate my personal self-image with the literary track I've chosen. At the times when this contest is at its most tense, I find it hard to write about any thing. Then, at some impasse, the impregnation of ideas and voices I've been holding back reaches a crescendo and I will not stop my fingers from the tip-tap-typing.

I will continue to write.

Thanks to RC and Boris for the encouragement. It means too much to me.

Back in Black

2006-05-31T22:58:00.000-04:00

I recently returned from deployment in Kuwait.
My best friend Tom recently deployed to Iraq.

I recently spent a lot of money on a brand new black Honda Accord.
An old friend keeps asking for money—not everyday, but often enough that I feel like shit every time I say no.

I recently started to feel very distracted by so many things.
It’s hard to find time to write anything about anything.

In time, I hope that I find a way out of this literary malaise because I recently pulled a muscle from masturbating too hard.

Now it hurts to type.

Back in Chicago

2006-04-24T23:15:00.000-04:00

My apologies for the lack of updates lately. Sex and good food, I confess, have been my downfall.

I've been enjoying this homecoming and now my leave is over and I am back in the Chicago area.

It's taken some effort to get used to the day to day and I've needed some time to process everything in order to create some palatable prose for you.

Please, accept my apologies and I will repay you all very soon.

Fajitas in Eden

2006-04-12T17:12:00.000-04:00

Hello to all of my tiny readership from the Land of Sweat and Skintight Everything . . .

That's corecto, I am finally back in the States from a grueling, yet, easy Middle Eastern deployment.

It's time for some Chicago Stories and goooooood food and sex and more sex and possibly, some chafing. Let the flood gates of distraction open!

Stay tuned for some Return to Eden type postings . . .

For now, some fajita tacos are calling out my name.

TCN of The Wheel

2006-04-06T21:50:00.000-04:00

A heart attack. A humvee. A string tied to a trigger. An improvised explosive device.

A bus ride.

Take a plane into a warzone and drop like a ball onto a roulette wheel. As it spins, you will acclimate to its revolutions. The acclimation will take so well that the spinning stops altogether though it never really does. The feeling gets lost around about the same time the food looses its flavor.

A bus ride.

Bounce-Bounce over a suicide.

Rolling and rolling over the numberless days of boredom—another bounce.

A bus ride.

Is the wheel speeding up or are you going so slow that your mind is compensating by compressing time though the smaller neural spaces like high pressure. A thumb somewhere in there presses on a nozzle and seconds spray high speed.

That day, the ball landed on a bus ride.

The unit was a small National Guard component from Colorado and they were being bussed from one camp to another where they were to board a plane headed into Iraq. The plane was to deliver more soldiers to yet another wheel.

Third Country Nationals (TCN’s) are a huge labor force in Kuwait. They hail from far off and close enough to provide a cheap workforce to one of the world’s oil-richest nations. They make little in wages but when compared to the trifles of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Egypt the distance means little next to the care what little compensation provides their families.

TCN’s do excellent work whenever shit is involved. If someone finger-brushed Fuck The Army with fecal paints of many different colors, a TCN will be there to make it so that shit graffiti never happened at all.

TCN’s are great with other people’s shit.

A TCN drove that day. He took to the road with a heavy foot. The turn before the camp is a sharpened elbow of pavement and he took it with a heavy foot.

There was a swerve and a thunderous pop as the bus skid and skipped the bend. The huge vehicle fell to its side, the windows popped and the soldiers inside became people falling on top of each other screaming. A young man fell through the broken window on the bus’s first bounce. The bus fell back on the soldier on the second and third bounce and dragged him the rest of the way. As the road whipped by like a belt sander at the opened windows, people piled on and drove those at the bottom grinding into the grating path. Flack and Kevlar protected many at the bottom from scraping, serious injury.

When my team and I reported as emergency personnel, I saw pieces of the wheel and I knew that I was still on it. Spinning.

The New Guy is Going to Pop

2006-03-26T07:18:00.000-05:00

We recently recieved a new addition to the team going by the name J. Milky (close enough). Milky is a good kid from Nebraska with the attention span of a gnat and all the subtlety of a stop sign. I wanted to write about something else today but that post will have to wait because three roundhouse kicks was all it took to change the nature of this weeks post. Enjoy and welcome . . .

Welcome to ADD Theatre
A J. Milky Production
Brought to you in Vivid Realified Words by
BellyoftheWorld
in assosiation with
Ensephalo-Herps Studios

The following is based on actual events and unlike Hollywood “based on”, I mean this shit really happened and I saw it with my own two eyes—heard it with both ears.

SIGNS & SYMPTOMS THAT MILKY WILL HAVE A BREAKDOWN SOON . . . OR AT LEAST POP . . .

Statements Milky has made since arriving:

"I taught myself three things. Tae-kwan-do, Spanish and how to kick asses." said with a seriously serious face. He then proceeds to pluck away at his guitar which he does not know how to tune or play. Sweet sounds of my very own Audio Ghraib.

"I really could kick your ass. Why are you laughing? I really could." after performing three wild roundhouse kicks that shook the whole building with his overweight ass.

"I wasn't a borderline personality disorder until I met her. Before her, I was an Antisocial personality disorder."

"Are you going to do that To-morning Morrow?" when he gets overly excited, he mixes words. I've heard some great ones but I can only remember this one because there are too many.

"I've hung out with Mexicans since I was a kid"

"I was a boxer."

"I was in Prison."

“I’ve been stabbed.”

“I’ve been shot at.”

“I was in a gang. The cops still got me on a list for gang affiliation.”

"Why are you laughing" I’ve heard him ask this one about a hundred times.

"I've punched a patient before but I respected his right to privacy."

"I was ADHD until I was a Junior in high school, then I took myself off the meds and I'm so much better without them. A lot of great people were ADHD you know."

"Why?" about a hundred times.

"That's stupid." after every answer to why.

"Fuck that shit." after every reasonable answer to that's stupid.

"Fuck that shit." muttered under his breath after every answer to fuck that shit.

"That hurt my feelings bro." more times than I can count.

Things that have happened to Milky since arriving:

His "fucking wallet" was "stolen" his first day here. He had to cancel all his credit and ATM cards and request "all new shit!" Then someone found his wallet on the bus he'd been riding and turned it in to the Navy peeps at the hospital. "So you lost your wallet" I accused. His reply, "it was stolen until that guy found it."

He was kicked out of the Troop Medical Clinic because no doctors knew of him. It was one of the things that "hurt my feelings bro".

When he was told that he was being reassigned to an outer camp away from the main hub (where the pools and women are located), he asked "Why" and replied to the reply "that's stupid" and the cycle began anew.

His Mutual Funds account was accidentally wiped out and is now in the process of being located. It is lost somewhere in the digital muck of the super dependable internet highway.

The only email address which contains documents of his mutual funds account is bogged down by slow servers. When he finally got his account displayed, it was locked out.

Things I've seen Milky Do:

Fucking round house kicks!

His eyes cross when he gets frustrated, which is a lot.

He's lost his keys, wallet, ID, cigarettes and coffee at least twice everyday.

Toilet OCD. He must use the same toilet after every meal. No other will do. Don't ask.

Significance in a Sign Shop

2006-03-19T13:38:00.000-05:00

Here is a pit. A gash, paralleling the Iraqi border as far as I can see both ways east and west. Jumping across the pit looks about as easy as kicking yourself in the nuts which is as hard as finding something to juxtapose against the previous comparison. Our mission? Throwing things at poor, Iraqi children. They’re supposed to catch it—even if with their face.

We drive down several kilometers with our treats bouncing around in the rear compartment. The desert is never a smooth ride. The desert is anything except comfortable.

Several mud huts pocking the landscape on the other side remind me how far from home I’ve ventured today. Gardens and goats hug close against the desiccated homes. The winds and the rains have stopped. The dryness of the sand, indicative of how the weather may not have deigned to slum upon this peasant soil. Weather, she can be a haughty bitch sometimes.

The children spot our sandy plume and I can see them running for dear life on an intercept course. We stop the SUV and whip out the treats. The kids skid to a stop at the lip of the manmade canyon.

The yells of the sandy ones are shrill and immediate and incomprehensible. I don’t speak the language but my own anthropologic studies suggest a possible translation, “Gimmegimmegimmegimmmegimme
OVERHEREgimmegimmegimmeoverhere
gimme!”

We pitch our charity skyward. Our charity is made up of hard things like Gatorade, candy, soda, toys and whatever else we could grab—stuff no one should have to catch. We underhand throw our American products across the barrier to the poor desert children on the other side who ran out of dried mud for anything we care to give.

I wonder if maybe I smacked a little girl with a Tropical Punch Gatorade tossed about twenty feet across to clear the gap. It may have ricocheted off her face. She smiles as she picks her prize off the sand and jumps up and down yelling for me to toss her another one. She’s a tough one.

A couple of adventurous catchers almost fall over the edge trying to get at something thrown too short. Someone in our group gasps loudly.

“Do they even like any of this stuff?” I ask the Kuwaiti Sergeant who just pulled his Army vehicle up behind us to see what’s going on.

“They will not keep any of it” he replies with a smile, “They will sell it all and bring the dinars back their family. Look, that little one is asking for your watch—oh now they all want a watch.”

Look back and every one of the children is pointing to their wrist. More gimme.

Feeling like a Good Samaritan yet guilty for not bringing more, I drive away back through the border purgatory to get back to base. My mind should rest in an ease of post altruistic harmony but I can’t help but wonder what those friendly little kids will grow up into. Will their adult forms hate America? Will tossed M&M’s be the catalyst that creates the next Iraqi I-Atota-Li Hay’t am-Erican or will that yellow bag be an emissary of good will that grows into a Sheikh of benevolent import, halting the measures of the Antichrist as he sews his seeds throughout this sandy region in search of a Revelation? Will they inherit or make more mud huts and be happy enough?

As we drive past, the shitty parking lot remains still and another fly lands on my lips.

This time, I really want that fucker off my face. I strike fast and hard. I wince. It retreats. I pursue. It must die. The parking lot gone past, my mind still on the pest and the desert encroaching, I want only for the death of this tiny life.

Squash.

It’s done.

Driving back to our encampment, I feel heady from the day. I’ve seen too much today my brain whispers. Then I spot the camel laying a few feet from the road. She’s on her side and a brand new baby camel tries rising to her feet. Mommy camel looks wiped out with a trail behind her. Did she drag herself or did someone drag her to that spot?

Now you’ve really seen too much today shouts my brain. It’s just way too close to be shouting that way.

I drive away from the scene with death and rebirth and politics and symbolism and life and cyclical forces spinning up dust in my mind and bug guts still stuck to the palms of my hands.

There’s an epiphany out here somewhere for anyone with enough energy to go hunting. Right now, I’m way too self-absorbed for that kind of thought.

Sympathy From the Desert

2006-03-13T04:42:00.000-05:00

I speed along on 80.

80 is referred to, by many, as the Highway of Death. There are two such roads with the same moniker. Iraqis stopped up this main artery recoiling from American/Coalition Forces during Desert Storm. They knew retreat was their only option left. So they did. Announcing their intentions to comply with UN Resolution 660, they abandoned Kuwait and clogged up two of the only roads back the way they invaded. Filling all available lanes, they jammed upon each other and waited in their vehicles like commuters in morning traffic. Someone cursed a last breath as the missiles shot into the jam and burned them all silent.

Two thousand people incinerated as they waited and waited for someone to get out of the way.

Tanks, supply trucks, tactical, non-tactical vehicles alike and even civilian cars formed burnt out husks littering the landscape after the jets flew away from their devastation. Smoke, wispily waving after their delivery boys like the passage of so many souls rose into the wind.

The Highways of Death are now immaculate, with hardly a scar of their namesakes as I break speed limits toward our next mission.

Raindrops make slapping sounds of clashing against our windshield and run in rivulets away from the wind. The wet weather is an abrupt change from the sandstorm that tried to tear our paper quarters apart last night and for the past two days.

Sympathy from the desert. From the sand. From the dying.

A fly, trapped in my vehicle all morning lands on my hair. I slap the top of my head like I’m special. I miss.

The radio stations are still playing in a state of mourning for the Emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah who died just weeks ago. With an I-pod radio transmitter plugged into my PDA, we avoid the country’s radioed self condolence with The Mars Volta, Wolf Parade, Mattoid and a bit of the Sufjan. But I know that beneath Take the Veil, Fancy Claps, Rat Poison and John Wayne Gacy, someone is singing a song of sorrow in honor of Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah.

My Commander sits uncomfortably silent through the tunes. I know he dislikes my music which puts a slight dent in my enjoyment but not much. Led Zeppelin’s No Quarter is much better than suffering through his eclectic schizo-mix of Beach Boy pop between Gloria Estefan’s Greatest Hits and Bette Midler’s Biggest Shits.

At the encampment we work through patient after patient and after we’re done, the Commander says he wants to visit the border. He’s nervous. I can see his hesitation and hear the fear in his voice. The Iraqi border looms just beyond the concertina-wired sand berms and at night, gunfire picks different angles from which to snap and the occasional mortars booming through the tents, shaking in sympathetic vibration scare the shit out of skittish soldiers.

“We don’t have to go if you don’t feel like it” he suggests.

“I don’t mind going back there, sir” I reply, studying my Commander’s nervousness.

He looks uncomfortable in his Battle Rattle (flack jacket and Kevlar).

The zone between the two countries is a purgatory of Customs officials and various military authorities that one should expect to see in a place such as this. I drive slowly. We stop at the desert’s shitiest parking lot and the sailors I’ve brought with me dig out their digital cameras. The parking lot is a holding station for wreckage coming out of battle that must first clear customs through whatever paperwork tanks and humvees are supposed to have after they’ve been IED’d to shreds. The shit part of this lot is what we’re about to see.

Our escort, a Lieutenant Colonel, tells us where these vehicles have been and how long they’ve been waiting to enter the country.

“Seven days” he says in a deep military tone of disgust.

A fly lands on my face as his friend buzzes the tower. This isn’t altogether unusual considering the closer we get to Iraq, the more flies we meet. They bunch together in clouds and the atmosphere here becomes cloudier by the minute. I’m reminded of starving Ethiopians with dead, asking eyes on TV. A narrator admonishes me for my money as obese flies treat the bony faces of Nun’Knu and SeSay La’ki like pedestrian walkways while I search desperately for the remote. I shoo the flies away with a swipe of the hand.

“These six vehicles here are so tore up and melted shut that there are still pieces of people stuck to the floors in there” says the LTCOL in a resounding voice. The presence of my friendly fliers makes more sense now. So does the smell.

More wrecked humvees, tanks, trailers and trucks and it’s time to get out of there.

It was time to go the minute we arrived.

Next Piece is . . .Significance

The Cheater

2006-03-05T10:38:00.000-05:00

The role of the senior ranking member on a military team is to dictate the manner in which his team executes its mission.

“Hernandez! Take your team and cover me and the others from that sand dune two clicks due east. It’s the one with all the sand on it—you can’t miss it. We will engage the target, kick rocks and blaze forward . . . then we will all reconnoiter for scallops on the other side!”

Since our senior ranking official happens to be of the pudgy, food lusting variety, our missions sometimes fall in line with steak and lobster night at the nearest DFAC (dining facility for the acronym ignorant).

When on deployment, the best use of time, sometimes, is routine. Condense a day into a string of units of time that force one to follow the other in rapid succession. Your fully automatic, machine gun day is one of the better weapons to use against yourself and days with the potential to last years.

Example:
1630, End of the day reports are in, well now it’s fucking party time!

1631, Realize the serious lack of alcohol or any abusive substance and serious sausage saturation of the military, call party time over and now it’s time to get ready for working out.

1700, Arrive at the gym and wonder for five more minutes why . . . fucking why?!

1800, Stop the workout, survey the area for those two barrel-chested women, the Wundertwins, who put you to shame everyday, marvel at their masculinity and wonder which one wears the strap-on or if maybe they throw in change ups on Wild Wacky Wednesdays with a “My turn bitch!”

. . . And so on and so forth until it’s time to hit the rack, making the days wiz by until the beads are no more, signifying your last day of deployment.

Of course, this only works for so long before the monotony drives you to do something psychotic.

That something may take the shape of wearing only a gas mask and boxers, running around the barracks, knocking on people’s doors while banging empty water bottles against empty pizza boxes, yelling “GAS! GAS! GAS!” as friends run after, calling “He’s got the gas! It’s coming out his ass!!”

You know it’s spreading when people answer the door already wearing their own mask.

There’s much worse. I’ll save those stories for another day.

These routines were on my mind as I made my way back from Germany. With my patient escorting duties over (schizophrenia is the best reason to party), after being gone for a week of cheating on my deployment with drink, beautiful women and the real world of using the television to prophesize weather, it was time to get back to my Navy/Army world in the desert.

As the snow storms railed on, getting worse, laying down more snow and shutting down roads like the Autobahn, I contemplated the intelligence behind choosing the last flight out of Frankfurt on a night during one of Germany’s worst days this winter.

Northern European weather shat all over my itinerary.

The plane lifted itself from Frankfurt pavement an hour late and touched down in Qatar just as my plane to Kuwait left the tarmac. I added myself to the mob at the Transfers Desk looking left and right like a hunted animal desperate for a way out. This is going to take too long I told myself. Then I noticed a quiet little Middle Eastern woman off to the side trying to look busy by doing what front desk people do when they want to look busy—stare down at a computer and whatever happens, never look up and definitely never lock eyes with anyone.

I hurdled the ribbons placed there to signify Not This Way, ignored the angry stares from jealous mobgoers and plopped my ticket on the counter directly level with her face. She never looked up at me as she grabbed the ticket but I heard her sigh heavily as others lined up behind me while she loudly, rapidly typed.

I heard people crying, expressing shock at their airport fate. Managers came to my receptionist’s aid but no one spoke to me until it was time for me to “have a nice day, sir” in a very hurried 7-11 accent.

“Just so I’m sure. I missed my flight?”

“Yes sir, that is your new boarding pass and present that at the next airport for you next boarding pass.”

Then, I waited.

I slept sitting down, leaning on my sport bag like a school desk, which contained my laptop and survival gear (M&M’s and my PDA).

When I nodded off the first time, I was surrounded by Japanese business men. I woke up later in a gaggle of Egyptians and fell back asleep wondering about the science behind severing your sense of smell for certain situations. When next I woke up, I was surrounded by so many Pakistanis that I fought hard to contain my surprise at how many of them crowded my space. Most sat three to a chair and others filled the available air around the seating by standing in a gentle mosh-pit of Pakistani closeness. If only I had money to invest in that sensory manipulation thing, I’d make a fortune, I thought to myself before I made a hasty escape.

Two flights, much bull shit and seven hours later, once again in Kuwait trying to figure out a way back to my command. Eventually, I found and convinced some government spooks to lend me their cell phone so I could find a ride back to my encampment out in the desert, neighborhood of nowhere. Those guys are too easy to find.

I dialed the emergency cell, “What the shit? It’s me. I’m back and I need a ride out of here. Now would be good.”

“Ooooooo, sorry dude, we can’t get out there. Commander has the car and he’s at the HQ, Dining In ceremony.”

“Are you fucking serious?” I spat angrily, startling the government contractors standing close by. “You mean to tell me that after twenty six straight fucking hours of miserable travel through two different seasons and so many fucking languages, I’ve got to sit here and wait some more while Commander fills his fucking belly with food?!”

Once again, I was cast adrift by the winds of my Commander’s imperious appetite.
“Sorry man, but you know how the CDR gets when it’s catered Middle Eastern.”

“Fuck you! You guys knew I was coming. Don’t be around when I get back or I will piss in your eyes fuckface!” Sometimes, this exact eloquence of communication is reason enough to like the military.

“Well, did you at least have a good time? Did you get drunk for us all?”

“I could wait here in this airport for another week with Kuwaitis spitting on me and it would still be worth it. See you when I get back shitstain.”

It was all worth it and now that I’m back, I can’t wait for this deployment to be over and done. I’ve cheated on my deployment with the real world. Just a taste was enough to enlighten me of my addiction to everything civilian life has to offer.
I can’t wait to get home.

German Cliffhanger

2006-02-28T08:30:00.000-05:00

Being a Navy medic allows for few benifits

one of the best, being the Patient Escort.

Lucky me.

So I am currently in Germany freezing my balls off waiting for my flight back.

When I tell the airport personnel that I want their soonest flight to back to hell they pretend to have no idea as to where I am referring.

I intend to undo my compiled list of deprivation TONIGHT.

Sorry about the cliffhanger of suspense there but I will fill you in at the conclusion of my German episode.

Military Time

2006-02-23T14:32:00.000-05:00

0300, Wednesday morning.
Sleep.
She is the womb of wombs.

Once you’ve entered her dark belly, it is very hard to tear away from such dark happiness. However, if you’ve recently found evidence that your wife may be cheating on you . . . sleep is a razor studded djinn supplanting your stasis with visions that gouge into your soul with lightning sharp brutality.

2300, the previous night.
You can’t shake the feeling. It’s something you haven’t felt in years since that one girlfriend, who had a knack for blow jobs, slept with that fuckhead while you sat in jail wondering where she was with that food she promised to bring by.

That feeling should be a foreigner in your domesticated brain but Mrs. Suspicion enters sudden, as though she’d never been gone, making her house a comfortable palace of intrigue.

You always struggle to remember your own passwords to private accounts and hers are even harder to remember.

Back in the states, it was “Well I’m going to get on the internet to see what the show times are for that movie . . . even though I know it’s gonna suck.”

“Can you check my email babe” she asks from the bathroom mirror.

“What’s your password again?”

“You know my fucking code you shit” water is running and she pokes her head around the corner to taunt you with a lone boob pointing at you accusingly.

“It’s so complicated. Why do you make your codes so complex? It’s just email. I can never remember your passwords.”

This time, in Kuwait, on desert deployment, is different.

This time, you need information. This time you need piece of mind.

Yesterday’s conversation threw up flags. Alarms screeched, tumbling your insides out and now your synaptic fires gleam white hot in a storm of precision and calling up her codes becomes effortless.

The day before
“Do you think we’re compatible” she asks out of the blue.

Quickly, you raise defensive “of course I think we’re compatible, we wouldn’t be married if I thought otherwise. Would we?”

“I know but sometimes I feel like you need someone more intelligent who can handle conversations with you. Sometimes I feel so stupid around you. Even though you’re not trying to make me feel that way, I do. Maybe you need someone on your level.”

Later in the conversation and equally out of the blue “How do you do it?”

“Do what” you ask.

“Go so long without acting on your attractions to the females around you? I wouldn’t know it if you did do something.”

“I’m surrounded by Army. There are no attractions out here for me.”

“Don’t lie to me. Even if it’s true, there is this way about you that good looking women flock to. I know Army women aren’t the best but if there’s only one model there, she’s a friend of yours.”

For a strange reason, these two questions ring alarm bells.

You need to know the flags were only flukes.

First you try her yahoo. You rifle through her account with the abandon of a desperate thief. Nothing.

Then you try her myspace account. You type in the password.

A small piece of time, waiting for the screen to load on your slow military computer elongates into a humble moment of what the fuck is wrong with you? Stop overreacting. You’re being childish.

There we go. You check her inbox, searching a few pages of messages but nothing stands out shiny with that stink you’re looking for.

You drag the cursor over the sign out link as you register the sent and trash. Don’t forget the sent and trash you tell yourself.

Sent is nada city.

Opening the trash you see a black metropolis of stank. Adrenalin waves break against the shores of your eyes.

Your heartbeat reverberates through your rib cage, your finger bones, your eyes pound—you vibrate a bit.

Opening up the nearest message of six, from a guy in oversized shades by the name Tino, you hope you are wrong.

Not wrong.

The vibrations turn to unfettered mini convulsions threatening to undo something as you read the message written in special-illiterate, myspace cheater’s font . . .

Well i think its awsome that we are hooking up. and i promise that i will behave, or try to. I enjoy the times we have spent talking on the phone, and hope that you never forget my number. I cant wait to see those pretty lips of yours, and your sexy eyes. I am sure it will bring one of those smiles to my face the first time i see you again. Stacy, I know the situation that you are in, and i respect that, but one thing you need to know, is that im here when you need someone to talk to. I have always had a thing for you, and you never were forgotten. Its been a long time, and im like you, I really cant wait to see you again. Take care..........mmmmmuuuuuuuuuuuaa
aaaaa aaaahhhhhhhhh
hhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Over and over you read the message aiming to unlock its secrets. Are you being too hasty? Maybe there’s less here than you are actually seeing.

What does he mean by hooking up?

Who the fuck is this guy and why is there no apparent flirtation limitation even though they’ve been talking on the phone? Why does he feel free to speak that way to my wife?

Can’t call her now. She’s at work and she never answers the phone at work. Besides, you want to use volume and language not conducive to the office environment.

Somehow you manage to sleep through the adrenalin, heart bleats and the sound of your marriage cracking open.

Wednesday Morning

WAKE THE FUCK UP screams your body at 0400 on the dark dot.

Time to call the wife. . .

The Mexican's Weapon

2006-02-18T02:54:00.000-05:00

"OH MY GOD!! I can't believe you just said that to me!"

That piercing shriek you hear is Robison and it raises the hairs at the nape of the neck and makes you want to turn around but she's got the keys to the gun locker and you need to get your guns so you can leave.

So you plunge head long into her domain of attention seeking histrionics called The Front Desk.

She swivels her chair, looks you provacatively in the eyes (as always) and says, "Can you believe what that guy just said to me?" She points to a drooling soldier blushing behind the raised counter of The Front Desk.

It seems obvious what's going on here. Robison is a very attractive woman. Attractive women are rare creatures in the world of the military. In the canon of military beauty the different branches fall into, a strictly adhered to, order; Air Force is the pantheon of hotness, Navy/Marines are tied for a distant silver medal and last, finishing weeks after the race was called off on a count of fugly-the Army.

So where ever you find a cute mamasita, you're bound to see the vultures circling. This soldier looks like a buzzard caught in the crosshairs after trying to pick at something more alive than he expected.

The soldier stands motionless under the point of her accusing finger.

"What did he do to you?" you ask, not really wanting to know the answer.

"He called me a Mexican" she spits out every single word as though each is shaped by it's own level of elevating disgust. She's a Puerto Rican Princessa and you don't even have to ask. You can see it all around her.

"That's quite a fucking insult" you say, holding back a smile.

"For real! I mean it's the same as . . . like . . . well, what race are you?" everyone asks because they can never tell.

"Mexican. I'm a dirty, greazy Mexican."

Her eyes and mouth stand open and motionless for several, long, drawn out seconds.

"Can I get my guns now?"

Laid Back Attack

2006-02-11T05:38:00.000-05:00

So many people describe themselves as laid back when this is simply. Not. So.

I know this because most people think I'm laid back.

They think this because I tell them "I'm very laid back."

I’ve been a surfer for years thinking this afforded me a certain bankroll of laidbackness—a sort of superiority of ‘this shit doesn’t affect me’.

I’ve realized as I’ve become an older man, that I am probably the opposite. Silly, tiny, almost laughable things have a way of neutralizing my mental processes, igniting them a burning anathema.

As I sit and write this, an overweight Commander sits to my left chewing with his mouth open, smack smack smacking his existence into my thirst for revenge. This small habit has always been something that liquefies my eyeballs into mental magma. Not only is my tubby superior not using his mouth considerately, he has opted to gorge on single kernels of popcorn at a time thus actively protracting the flood drowning my body in serious amounts of cortisol.

This post was supposed to be about something different, meaningful and poignant maybe. Now all I can think about is chubby cheeks and pudgy fingers and insistent chomping.

If I was laid back, I wouldn’t care about his eating habits. If I was laid back, I’d say to myself ‘Hey, its only food. Even fat people have to eat. Who cares if it’s an incredibly annoying way to masticate?’

Yet, instead of thinking these carefree thoughts, I’m stewing in blood soaked words.

‘Fucking tubby buttplugger! Eat like a normal person or grab some handfuls like a real man and take control of that Goddamned bag. Fucking eat already! Jesus Christ on a Fucking Cracker with cheese! Didn’t some wild west outlaw Killy the Shit put a bullet through someone for eating like that? Or was it snoring? Why did the military give me a gun and then stick me with this flatulent turder? Fuck a gun. I want to slap. I wish to issue an open hand whack of retribution upon the maws of infidels insistent upon annoying mouth misuse!’

Unlocking the Brain Fart

2006-01-29T06:47:00.000-05:00

A smell lifts into the morning air, a dispersal of particles, the most potent of which fight their way into the limited convolution of your gray matter. You breathe in deep. Sound waves bounce off someone’s voice traversing the rills of your hearing. The sunlight hits your eyes as a key swinging blithely seeking a doorway. Trip goes the trigger, the door swings open and you are in the desert but you can definitely smell your grandmother’s tortillas.

She’s flipping them on the comal. You hear the sounds of her rough fingers sliding against the hot iron as she flips the crisping flatbread alternating with the sound of the rolling pin as she prepares another for the tacos everyone is going to eat before David the Alone drinks all the milk from the fridge that stood guard the night Grandpa drunk himself stupid and blamed your cousins for the death of his firstborn son Manuel who drowned a year before you were born in the ocean you first learned to surf. South Padre is a curtain unfurled, releasing hot dogs and junkies and spring breakers and nights in Mexico where preppy college kids are talking to you in slowly improvised garbles, that could pass for Spanish if you were a retard, asking you to “por favor, watcha my caro?” and which bars are better so you point in the direction of another fight where Teri ripped off Mari’s shirt and all the guys wrestled for a view of the ruins of the Roman landscape on your 25th birthday candles you lit the fires down the alley you took for a shortcut every morning that you had the munchies so you ate Vela’s gross tacos because they were the only taqueria open 24 years until the sand leaves your system. It clogs up everything inside.

Another deep breath.

Fucking sand.

You ask your buddies if they smell that.

"I just farted" Steve confesses with a smirk.

Fucking asshole.

Karma Debt Collection and Receipt

2006-01-25T13:53:00.000-05:00

There is a thinking among more and more doctors and scientists that depression is related to your ability to remember. The clearer and more distinct the memories filling the spaces behind your eyes and ears become, the harder to carry on with the rest of the memories sure to be made along the way.

“Let’s have another round of shots for that guy!”

“Dude! That was crazy! You’re so fucking crazy!”

“Bartender! Mas, por favor!”

That’s David and Stephen. We went to High School together and they and others constantly conjure days I’d like to lose.

It was Christmas and that meant the college brats were back in town. That meant all of those guys were back in town reminding me of what I had and had not done with my life.

Everything happened so fast. Shots and women made towers of pleasure in my mind and pants and before I knew it, I was throwing up blood, laughing at a man who clearly punched like a girl—like the girl he was pounding my skull about.

I couldn’t feel a thing.

With blood and bone, I was paying a karma debt collector for every punch that ever missed me, every one I ever knocked unconscious, every lie I ever got away with, every rank and sour deed I was ever responsible for in a town too small for sins that big.

FWAP! That struck for that time I slept with the bride on the night before her wedding.

FWOP! Another for promises that spun out empty.

PLAP-TAPF!! Two for taking best friends to the same bed.

PFT! And that’s for stealing my girl!

Bled some more for those ribs I broke, that nose I cracked, that scar I made, those wounds I reopened and there’s a scar of my own just for being born.

I was still laughing when he walked away exhausted. That punishment was payment but the collector never stops until he’s paid in full. Now there is a debt owed me.

I have the scar to prove it. I see it every time I look at my reflection. The memory stays alive that way. It keeps me going.

I am not depressed. I am alive.

Lack of Retribution

2006-01-23T13:08:00.000-05:00

The streets shook beneath a hail of body parts and the dust of toppled towers buried our nation beneath a new layer of fear. Since that day in September, our balding Eagle has suffered a partially self-inflicted tail spin from which it has yet, to fully recover.

Time and again, when not the victims of an actual terrorist attack, we are relentlessly bombarded by the word Terror.

Press release upon press release, our color-coded-scare-system works as though designed by that little boy with shark-toothed wolves on his brand new little brain.

Whatever happened to that little boy?

The next attack could be executed by anyone—a neighbor, a best friend or that lurking little sister—how well does one really know those people? The threat of emmiment danger hovers just out of eye and earshot.

Did you hear something?

Caught in the crossfire of a Ratings War between media Titans bilking the PR for the Almighty Bottom Line, we linger in distraction while habeas corpus hangs gutted by a PATRIOT Act.

With cameras penetrating our privacy and technology suiting up into thought-police uniform, no sideshow could eclipse the recent growth-spurt of Big Brother who looks like he’s got much growing left.

QUESTION.
CONSPIRE.
RESIST.
REVOLT.

Jesus and His Napkins

2006-01-22T13:04:00.000-05:00

My brother Sam is one of the funniest guys to be around.

He’s my antithesis.

Where I am the fucked up, impulsive, oscillating, bumps-in-any-road, always seeking out the most thoroughly damaged woman in the room I can non-commit to kind of guy, Sam kept the same girlfriend from eighth grade till after he graduated FROM COLLEGE. The fact that my brother got all the way through college whereas I chose world travel says a lot. I remember going through high school together, we’re only separated by a year, one month and three weeks, whenever the subject of my brother came up, I’d invariably hear the same things, “He’s such a sweet guy. He and Lisa are really great together. He’s your brother? But you’re such an asshole. Did you grow up in the same house? You guys must have different fathers-you look Asian and he doesn’t.”

Yup, even by appearance, we are hard to reconcile—he’s tall, I’m short, he’s a wide eyed curly haired thin man who can’t gain muscle no matter how hard he works at it. I’m the one who Vietnamese try speaking to in native dialect, in supermarkets, with an innate ability to gain muscles just by lifting groceries. If you put me in front of a weight set after years of lazy-couch-meal-inactivity, I’m carved from wood in days.

You get the idea.

No matter how different we are, everything we’ve experienced growing up in the same house is so thoroughly twisted into our neural fibers that we know each other even when we’re far apart. We like the same music, movies and humor. I could listen to him laugh all day long. We’ve never been in a major disagreement but if we ever did, I’m sure it would be my fault.

The same bible stories and scriptures drilled into my head as a child, reside also in the brain of this blasphemous birthday boy. Just ask him if he knows what the Breastplate of Righteousness and the Helmet of Salvation are and he could tell you the same stories I remember. You will laugh so hard you may see Jesus and he may ask you if you need a napkin.

He’s the reason I want a pair of kids and not a solitary, sisterless or brotherless child. I don’t know what the world would be like if I didn’t have Sam’s laughter echoing in my head when I’ve done something clever or stupid.

In the private audience I keep locked up in the grand theatre of my mind, he’s got a front row seat.

Brain Asthma

2006-01-19T13:44:00.000-05:00

If you step outside of the boundary, the dogs will get you. The dogs roam the wire, wild and hungry waiting for you to step outside.

If you flick into the film strip of your memory, there is a frog, pretending he’s a lion, waiting with a gun filled with his own self loathing, for you to cross him. He calls himself Frogger and he went to get a gun because Albert can’t help but laugh. Albert would laugh if spooks were threatening to chop off his thumb, he’d laugh even—especially if his life depended on it.

Where was Ugly David with his lopsided head when we needed him?

Slide back into the belly of the whale where you belong. It’s warm in here and all the friends you had, way back when, are there tap tap tapping at memory precursors, a bundle of neurons you made to evoke this episode. A small meter of blips in twos and threes, awkward silence, adrenalin butterflying throughout your belly, or pictures of reptiles having sex, they’re picking through the tumblers of your braindrum.

The first notes transfix the particular axon and then . . . do you hear music?
"Here come dee Hotsteppa! Word-a-rah! I’m a lyrical Gangsta! Word-a-rah!" Where did that come from? Buried with the sins of your collective, are treasures of stupendous uselessness next to that time your teacher let you look down her shirt, leaning against scorpions you caught in New Mexico while a preacher commands you, “Leviticus Ch. 24, verse 20, SAY IT” and you fucking spit it out into a jar of Friday night football games played by every one you’ve ever slept with, dancing on a tapestry depicting Mild Mingo dancing for pussy that whispers sweetly, “You will be Great. You will do Great Things. God told me and I Believe it”. If she hadn’t said that, where would you be right now?

Jonah was swallowed by a whale and spit out 3 days later. What does a Mariner trapped in a whale do to find the blowhole? No candles in the whale.

If you step out of the boundary, the dogs will thrash you to bits. Chase the dogs to the border. There are packs of wild dogs roaming the desert waiting for me to stumble out of the gates—I spit them out through my blowhole.

I do this string-of-thought thing when I get a cramp of writer's block. Consider me unblocked.

Ambrosia, AKA Stripper Logic

2006-01-16T03:49:00.000-05:00

It probably happens to a lot of people. Sitting at the coffee table in whatever Starbucks or Applebee’s you and your friends happen to trip into, you start to catch up on old and current friends. Things take their natural course of thought, strung together on the last bead of information just released, “. . . OH! Speaking of heroin, did you hear that Allison’s a stripper now?” or, “. . . yeah, I hate when I wake up in a back alley gutter with my pants around my ankles, too. The blood’s always a bitch to get out. So speaking of first times, did you hear about Allison stripping at La Kolita now?” Everyone has that someone who either used to be a stripper or tried to do it once, they can bring into the conversation.

Women can be very cruel when it comes to this subject. When someone the group barely knows ventures into the fringes of unforgivable sin, women can be rabid but when it’s one of their very own, well, the silence is akin to that which precedes desolation.

I’ve never been much for strip clubs even though I’ve known and probably slept with quite a few lappers. I’ve even paid for a dance or three or ten but to leave the club empty handed was always a revelation. There’s an air of desperation to both sides of the equation known to fit under Stripper Logic. Men and some women, paying for the right to look at a woman who feels compelled to expose herself in order to feel power has always struck me as wasted effort and slightly desperate. I’m not judging here, far from it. I believe anyone can do with their life what they feel, especially if the only person they may hurt is themselves. My penis, weighing in on the matter, is all for women who can dance and get naked all at once and my business mind is definitely down for the entrepreneurial spirit behind making easy money off of jerks who could definitely get it for free if they only applied themselves in the proper manner—albeit some peoples are just born unluckily fugly and need a place like La Kolita to exist.

The trouble comes into play when someone, who may be part of a group which may not be as open-minded or non-judgmental as they profess or hope to be, endeavors into the land of The Pole. There’s no telling why some women chose this lifestyle even when they are the ones spilling their reasons to you. People lie, so deeply, even to themselves.

The usual clichés come to mind: she’s paying for her addiction, she’s seeking the attention Daddy never gave, she’s writing a book about being bad, she’s always been fucking nuts and the ever-classic, she’s paying for college. There’s always going to be the outcast no matter how hard we aim toward the contrary. Some people, even with a load of friends they’ve had for years just feel like the odd outsider. Allison may have felt like the oddball of the clique every time she made an inappropriately dirty joke or did something crazy that made every one of her friends scoff loud enough to elicit her “Sorry” as if she was apologizing not just for her own behavior but for being herself.

Then again, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar . . .
the shortest distance between two points is a straight line . . .
the simplest explanation is usually the correct one . . . and ho’s will be ho’s.

Grounds for feeding the beast

2006-01-15T08:38:00.000-05:00

Wake up and eat sand. You hack and cough and struggle against the inevitable, still you swallow. It’s pouring down your gullet. You feel it inside you. There is something sinister about this sand and now it’s inside you. Your mouth is grainy and your voice is gravel. There is going to be a severe comeuppance later down the line and you know it. This is the reason your kids will suffer some agonizing soul atrophy affecting everyone around them with thought radiation.
OOMPH!
Mortars make waves in the dusty morning air causing your nutsack to tickle. Nothing to worry about, just practice rounds, you tell yourself. Practice rounds, out here, sound like real rounds coz they are real rounds.
OOMPH!
Rattle go your sleeping quarters coz it’s made of paper. Shit, shower and shine and it’s time to start another day. On your way to breakfast, kicking up clouds of dust, you notice a dragonfly stationed on a paper wall. You’re a snake and you catch the dragon with hammers for hands. Its iridescent wings mesmerize by reflecting many colors of dawn. Royal purple, rusty reds, electric blues and the clarity of beauty flick slowly in the dragonfly wings as you pull one, two, three off her thorax. You put the one-wing dragon in your pocket and hold the leftovers in your hand up to your face entertaining yourself with colors. You’ll feed the dragon to the scorpion later. Waffles loves dragonflies. She’s such a greedy little devil. Let the wings go into a cloud of dust.
OOMPH!

The Teeth of Another Day

2006-01-15T08:18:00.000-05:00

Army teeth are some of the dirtiest, butter-looking teeth I’ve ever seen.
Just so you get the idea, I originally joined the Navy thinking how fucking great it would be to travel the world and meet different people and cultures. I thought it would be coochie-peachy to find myself in the middle of an endless ocean screaming “Batten down the hatches! Hoist the yardarm! She’s blowing something fierce” in the middle of some sea storm that I’d never walk away the same from. The last statement was the only one I’ve ever been able to use.

I thought about joining the other services and they all let me down in one fashion or another. To prove my manliness, I sought out the Marines. I did the regular “thanks, I’ll think about it” routine that you give to anyone who’s overselling something and met an overwhelming force of machismo before I could vacate the premises. I was talked to by my recruiter’s superior and then his superior and then the highest ranking official sat down—I mean over me and asked me what made me a man. He asked if I had balls. All I could muster was "of course, I have balls". To which he made a cupping motion with his hand while gnashing his teeth as my brain processed his actual words apart from his body language, "THEN REACH DOWN LIKE YOU GOT A PAIR AND MAKE A DECISION LIKE A REAL MAN". I told him in the nicest possible manner, a marine could understand, that he could go fuck himself if he wanted to start insinuating I was any less of a man than he, due to the fact that I stubbornly insisted on shopping around.

The Air Force wanted to make me a cook or a mechanic even though I scored higher than 91% of the population on their aptitude and intel tests. Fuck you very much for aiming high but no.

I never even considered the Army—sleeping in tents, eating shit meals, filling sandbags and digging trenches was and is not my forte.

The Navy was perfect for me. The Big Blue offered me a great job, 3 hot meals daily, a roof over my head and the world travel, of which, I was in great need. So now, in my fourth year gone Navy, I find myself not on any great hunk of floating steel but on a hot patch of dried out desert surrounded by nothing but Army. I’ve done a lot of tent living and many shit-meal eating and learned all about what I missed by not joining the Army.

Why am I wasting your time with this meandering account of woe? I just felt like posting something but had nothing vaguely interesting to post and the Army has been frustrating the fuck out of my feeble brain. I’ve met many strange Army folk with many a strange Army way. If you know anyone in the Army, don’t ask them why they do it, as I feel like doing daily, instead, shake their hand or buy them a pint of good beer and let that be your thanks coz these guys go through a heavy dose of shit for the right to go off to some hairy patch of dried out earth to possible death. They’re dying out here and if they’re not dying, they’re returning home maimed beyond repair. That’s what I think about every time I meet a less than intelligent soldier who’s memorized all the stats of his favorite football/baseball team and stories of NASCAR heavyweights—this kid could be dead next week and I dare to sit here wondering “when was the last time he brushed his teeth”.