by Matt Young
Out of the tub, skin steaming, noses full of potpourri and feminine soaps, we’ll stand in front of the fogged mirror, suck in slack hairy paunches, slap lobstered flesh, and remember when we could bench-press more than our own weight and run three miles in eighteen minutes.
We’ll remember the times we overpowered one another in the dirt after flak jacket runs and how we fireman-carried the weak during battalion hikes through sunbaked hills. We’ll think of the boy in basic training who pissed his trousers, and the stench of barracks rooms full of molded low-pile carpet and Pledge surface cleaner, and the hair dryer feeling of being in a Humvee turret behind an Abrams. Our faces will flush at the thought of our own disappointments, our own missed chances, our ignorance, our cruelty.
Then we’ll slide back into bed under our six-hundred-thread-count sheets and our floral print duvets next to whomever and stare at the ceiling hoping and praying that none of the dust remains, but also hoping we missed some crevice, some fold of skin. Thinking that maybe if we wash it all away we might finally be able to get a decent goddamn night of sleep, but afraid that if and when we do rid ourselves of the chaff that we might disappear ourselves, be washed down the drain, our skin and sinew and bones sliding into the blackness.
Self-Diagnosis: Sick of Running
How to Throw a Drunken Punch
Think about the twenty-seven bones that make up your hand. The phalanges, the metacarpals, the carpus—not to mention your radius and ulna, which, while bones technically making up your forearm, are impacted nonetheless by throwing a punch. And now think about a face. Fourteen bones—nasal bone, zygomatic bone, maxilla, mandible, what have you. You know the words because those are the bones that shattered in Keene Sherburne’s face in Iraq in 2006 when your Humvee rolled over a few hundred pounds of explosives packed into a drainage culvert. Remember the feel of Keene’s spongy rippling skin as the ocean of bone moved below. In any other world twenty-seven against fourteen are good odds. Not in the world of bones.
Now, think about your hand and where you want the punch to connect. See your target, then try to see through it to the dartboard or jukebox or whatever else is behind your target and visualize your punch driving through your target and hitting that thing. Your offhanded leg should be forward, your dominant leg back. So when you throw the punch it will birth itself at your strong heel. The labor should be forceful enough to send a wave of screaming, targeted energy through your body. The punch will shimmy its way on up through your strong leg. A leg that is powerful from running and humping the coastal hills of Camp Pendleton, through shit fields in the Euphrates River Valley, across endless deserts. This will happen like lightning; the delivery pains of the punch last fractions of seconds. It will travel through your lower back and up your latissimus dorsi and into your rear deltoids, and then it will slam itself from strong-side front deltoid to bicep, forcing the muscles to extend, turning your forearm into a whip-and-maul mechanism.
Your target is not the man; it is not even the thing behind the man. Your target is a feeling—of life of living of fear of control. How do you explain a feeling? You don’t know, except when you find it. And you’ve often found it through punching.
The punch connects.
But has it connected true? Have you followed the movements of throwing a punch? If so, see figure 1. However, if you’ve been drinking, which you have, see figures 2 and 3.
In all likelihood, you have not thought about the previous things because you are drunk. So the rules of throwing a punch are out. You have instead thrown a drunken punch—a punch that should have never been born, a punch that should have been aborted, and it makes its way into the world looking like something that has been. There are no rules for the drunken punch, only for the inevitable that follows.
The punch originated not in your heel, but in your mind. It looked fantastic and heroic and lovely and you imagined the blow jobs and fucking it would garner you. You picture women lined up around the globe in awe of your punching prowess, your compatriots hoisting you above their heads and praising you as their leader. In your mind you saw those things when you should have seen the target. And so this was the result of your punch:
Here we are again with bones. You’ve landed on the largest of his and the smallest of yours. It is a VW Beetle running headlong into a Mack truck. At the moment of impact your delusions burst into bone shards.
Now observe the sudden movement of your former target’s heel, the slight telegraphing of his fist, the pullback, which warns you you’re about to be punched. Know that this is good, the telegraphing, it takes away a few pounds of power behind the punch. Imagine all those women who will spit on you now instead of blowing you, and your friends who will leave you bloodied on the floor, and your family whom you’ve disappointed. Notice a slice of yellow incandescent light escaping the open entry, cutting a wedge onto the inky pavement in the Southern California darkness. Wish to be out there, beyond the light in a place where bones might not matter. Forget the pain in your hand and try not to think about the inevitable rain of blows to come.
Think about where this all went wrong.
Cause and Effect
Dear Past-me,
At this moment in time, August 2008, you are skidding off Cristianitos Road in the passenger seat of Chris’s Toyota Tacoma as you and Chris return from day drinking at San Onofre Beach so you can continue drinking at the barracks. The Tacoma is screeching to the north side of the road, but soon it will hit dirt and sand and rocks, in turn blowing out the passenger-side tires and causing the truck to barrel-roll—twice—as you’ll learn later from the friend (whose name you’ll not be able to recall six years from now) driving behind you.
You’ve been stateside from your second Iraq deployment for three months, and so it has been three months of nightly drinking: thirty-packs of Yellow Bellies, fifths of whiskey, bottles of red wine, Grey Goose vodka on the rocks, and then well vodka straight.
This day, of the ten or so people at the beach, six of you drank a half gallon of whiskey. You turned it into a game: Ring of Fire. The cap came off, got tossed in the flames, and everyone passed the bottle until the booze was gone. Willy T. finished off the last half inch in a single chug and retched into the fire, which ignited the alcohol vomit and turned Willy T. into a human flamethrower.
After that, Willy T. asked for a ride home.
People offered to drive you and Chris, but Chris said he was fine.
And now the crash is happening. The crash is happening not because you are both drunk, but because you decided to change shirts. A decision, which seemed logical at the time, because you’re going to hit the PX for more beer and 1) you don’t want to catch shit for wearing inappropriate clothing in the PX and 2) you’ve decided the cutoff shirt you’re currently wearing makes you look like a disgusting slob. A viewpoint, which can be traced to body dysmorphia established in your youth by bullying, poor diet, lack of exercise, etc., and is only made worse by the drinking. You change your shirt, unbuckling your seat belt to do so, and Chris decides to teach you a lesson in safety by swerving the wheel back and forth.
From here your lives will take different paths.
In the aftermath, Chris will get busted. He will not be allowed to deploy to Iraq as you had both volunteered to do. He’ll get an on-base DUI, which in the long run won’t matter because of the military sovereignty of Camp Pendleton. While you’re gone, he will get busted again, this time for possession of controlled substances—marijuana and anabolic steroids. He will do brig time and then later be restricted to his (your) barracks room. Later, he will work as a bouncer at bars in Dana Point and get offered a job working for a high-powered client. He will go on to make large sums of money and find a girl in Southern California. He will have business ideas about marketing survival gear to the unprepared. He will marry the girl from Southern California. He will style himself as an alternative personal trainer complete with his own brand of outdoors workout regimen. He will be successful and independent and
from time to time he will send you a text message if something in his life reminds him of you. He will make time to come to your wedding.
Meanwhile, you will still deploy, because Chris will save you. When the friend-whose-name-you-won’t-remember’s car stops, Chris will direct a dazed and drunken you into that car. You will not protest. Six years later you will not be sure of all these details. You will not be sure you were conscious the whole time, nor will you be sure of how you ended up in the space between dashboard and window. Or how you lived. But you will still deploy because you will not be in Chris’s truck when it shambles past the office of the officer on duty, and so Chris has saved you.
He will go on to continually save you. When you return from deployment, he will save you from bar fights and from choking on your own vomit as you sleep and from all the weakness and cowardice that lives inside of you, because he’s always been the strong one and you’ve always relied on him to buttress your fragility.
The truck has hit the sandy shoulder. It is flipping down an embankment into the wild fennel and scrub and loose sand. You are bouncing around the single cab of the Tacoma like so many lottery balls. Later you will think of Keene and the culvert bomb that wrecked his face and scrambled both your brains. This is like that except that it’s not. Not exactly.
In the moments after the crash, you will think everything will be fine. You will think that it’s a good time to stop drinking. You will think about calling your mother—your father, even. You will think that life is short and it is stupid to do things to make it shorter. You will think about atoning and healing and living a good life, how you could maybe start living a good life.
But of course you will do none of those things you think about, because you are weak, and you are a coward, and those are things Chris can’t control.
Past-me, I’m happy you can’t read this letter. Because if you could you might change. I’m glad not to be able to tell you to stand by your friend and deal with the consequences and not get in Friend-Whose-Name-I-Can’t-Remember’s car. If you were able to do that, you might avoid everything coming your way. And that wouldn’t be fair, because you deserve it all. You deserve the twisted metal and horrible aftermath. You deserve to tumble and twist through the air for eternity—one day you’ll see that.
Love,
Me
The Wizard
The Wizard is aware of his reputation. He knows what the young Marines ordered to see him think of him. He knows they call him the Wizard—a roundabout reference to needing a brain. He knows they think of him as the enemy, that they lie to him more often than tell the truth, that their senior enlisted commanders tell them if they fail a psych evaluation they’ll receive dishonorable discharges, be branded failures, cowards, be thrown in mental institutions.
How are things going back in Indiana? What does your family think of you volunteering to go back to Iraq? asks the Wizard, who smiles at the surprise on the Marine’s face at the word Indiana.
You know, not bad, says the Marine shifting his weight in the chair. They’re proud of me.
Not bad might be the most truthful statement he’ll get out of this Marine. The Wizard tries to decide what not bad might mean on a graded scale. Is it better than bad? Probably. But is it worse than good? Is it worse than okay? He decides it sits somewhere around the former.
The Marine’s name tape above his right breast pocket reads YOUNG. There is no irony in the name. The boy in front of the Wizard is twenty-two. He’s only been able to vote in one presidential election. He looks like he might need to shave every other day at most. Still, the Wizard knows twenty-two is ancient in the Marines. In the infantry the boy is dust.
How many drinks would you say you’ve had in the past week? None, one to two, three to five, six or more? the Wizard asks.
One. Maybe two, says the Marine.
The Wizard smells the yeasty booze stink from the previous night seeping from the Marine’s skin. There are mouth-shaped bruises low on his neck.
Have a girlfriend back in Indiana? asks the Wizard. It is not a question on the pre-deployment health assessment checklist, but he feels an opening after not bad and so tries his luck.
A fiancée, sir.
The Wizard flinches at sir. The Marine has doubled down, reset the boundaries between enlisted and officer. The Wizard nods, flips some pages in the Marine’s medical record—standard fare aside from an IED blast in 2006. There were most likely other unreported minor incidents as well. The Wizard knows that platoon corpsmen treat the Marines without entering information at the aid station—ingrown toenails, sicknesses, lacerations, contusions, minor concussions from things no one wants to explain. He knows the corpsmen give the Marines Ativan when they cannot sleep and he knows the corpsmen provide the Marines with intravenous saline when the Marines drink too much. This is standard practice to keep information out of medical records, to keep the Marines from being accused of malingering, to keep the Marines with their companies and platoons—their families. The Wizard knows this, but it does not make him happy.
Do you ever have lingering thoughts, dreams, or nightmares about your time in Iraq? asks the Wizard, changing the subject, trying to catch the Marine off guard.
Oh no, sir, says the Marine. No nightmares. Never, sir.
The Marine could be telling the truth. It is not out of the ordinary for Marines to not have nightmares. The Wizard knows there are other ways to treat trauma besides pills and therapy. He knows distance runners, statistically, experience trauma to a lesser degree than non-runners. This Marine does not look like a distance runner. This Marine looks bloated from alcohol and his fingers are stained yellow by nicotine. His eyes are bloodshot and his hair must be beyond the regulation three inches.
Do you use tobacco products—cigarettes, cigars, pipe, hookah, dip, chew, snuff—any of them? asks the Wizard.
I quit smoking after my second deployment, sir, says the Marine.
The Wizard’s eyes go to the rectangular outline of a cigarette pack in the Marine’s trousers pocket, and now he wants to jump from his chair and grab the Marine by his collar and scream in his face, I am trying to help you, asshole! Just tell me the truth!
The Wizard smiles. Good, he says. Very good.
He notices the Marine’s knuckles. They are scarred and scabbed, misshapen.
Do you ever feel yourself becoming angry for no reason? asks the Wizard.
No, sir, says the Marine.
He does not blame the Marine for lying. If the Marine were to confess his drinking habits and familial issues and nightmares and tell the stories of the road map of knuckle scars, the Wizard would not deem him fit for deployment. But if the Marine were to confess those things, the Wizard might be able to help—with the drinking the rage the compulsive lying.
One last question, says the Wizard. Why did you volunteer to return to Iraq?
The Marine pauses; perspiration pops on his forehead. The Wizard wills the Marine to tell him the truth, to spill his pickled guts all over the desk between them, to collapse in a sweaty tearful pile and beg for help. The Wizard would hold the Marine, he would stroke his hair and shush him and sing him lullabies. Tell me, thinks the Wizard. I know you want to, just do it, come on, tell me everything.
To defend my country and its people, sir, says the Marine.
The Wizard nods, the sound of his pen looping the arcs of his name as he signs his approval like nails on a chalkboard in his ears. He smiles at the Marine and hands over the paper.
Next! he calls, watching the Marine walk past a line of other Marines getting their stories square while they wait.
Third Time’s the Charm
In September 2008, we return to Iraq as volunteers to augment the regimental commander’s security detail. Instead of holes in the sand covered by camouflaged netting there are temperature-controlled trailers with bunk beds and mattresses. Instead of jerking off to the same cache of porn we have access to the Internet and the possibilities are endless. Instead of MREs or t
he occasional breakfast meal brought to a rooftop lookout by a hospitable farmer there’s a mess hall open from four in the morning until midnight. There’s a Burger King. A no-shit, real, honest-to-god Burger King that sells Whoppers. Instead of trash cans filled with sun-boiled giardia-filled water there’s an Olympic-sized pool spoken of in hushed tones, as if the acknowledgment of its existence might cause the water to spontaneously evaporate, leaving behind only chalky chlorine residue on Persian blue tile. Even as we buoy in the chemicals, red-rimmed eyes stinging, we wait for indirect fire or sniper potshots or to be called up for quick reaction force. Real gymnasiums replace the relics once created from tent poles and cinder blocks and sandbags at commandeered houses. Now the weights are made of iron and rubber and feel foreign in our callus-covered hands.
There are no more patrols, no more explosions, no more raids. There are police actions, there is winning hearts and minds, there is peacetime and domestication.
We try to resist domestication, hold to our unbroken stallion nature. But we’re really not much more than feral dogs at heart—swayed by the promise of sturdy roofs and hot chow.
There’s not much fight left in us.
There are no more tactical firing ranges, no more sun-bleached camouflage utilities, no bloodstains, no mud, no detainees. No more John Wayne.
Instead, we are taught sword manual and drill manual and even though we are deployed in a war zone our cammies stay stark and new and never fade. The bills of our covers parallel the bridges of our noses and our diaphragms work double time. We march one another back and forth across a sandy parade deck marked by engineer tape—the same way we used to mark out complex floor plans to teach impromptu classes on close quarters battle.
