Spent Shell Casings

by David Rose

  The cleanup went something like this: debris loaded by crane at ground zero to flatbed semi-trucks, the trucks drove to the west Manhattan pier, a crane unloaded the truck and placed the debris into a barge. Once full, tugboats towed the barge to the landfill site. We did this for months, around the clock; listening to sirens and the growls of crane-hearts from up past the water’s edge.

  I was strikingly younger than anyone working for the tug company. “Kid” or “Cat Boy” were my titles. These guys in many regards were the closest thing to modern-day pirates, outside an African coast. The tattoos, criminal records, muscle mass, scars, beards, drunken brawls—you name it. I came to those boats very much a naive little boy, but I left them something quite different. I got to see shades of violence that I had never seen before, a dispute resolution system that would make an ISO 9000 organizer jump out of a window. These men also introduced me to strip clubs, prostitutes, and the shifting politics of a dodgy bar.

  “I will be right here. Right outside” said my captain once, as paternal as if he were talking to his daughter about her first attempt to tinkle like a big girl.

  “Come on, baby,” the Newark street walker said as she wrapped her arms around me and shut the door to my captain’s S10.

  These men were certainly my presenters of the world. The underbelly of the world, which by the standards of some circles—artistic or otherwise—is the world. But it wasn’t all booze and broads, however. They could redefine the term work ethic, and among other things showed me how to power through being hungover or seasick. On those boats, there was little room for weakness, and I’m thankful that that group of crusty, quirky men took me under their wing the way they did. It prepared me for the Marine Corps, if it did nothing else.

  Tug-work eventually ended for me; too young some would say. But it wasn’t that. Hardly aware of it at the time, I was trying to find something, something I couldn’t name. I moved back to Florida and made money by painting houses with my cousin’s crew. The job had some good times and now fond memories, but after not long at all a terrible restlessness scratched at the inside of my eyes. I wanted so much more. I wanted things to fall from the sky and burst out of the earth. I wanted things to rival the Greek epics. I felt there was so much more; yet was reminded daily that I had no idea how to obtain it. At particular lows I’d lay in the complete darkness of an attic I was living in and question whether such things even existed.

  Now an angry painter, I resorted to binge drinking, extraordinary long walks at night, and the occasional bouts of vandalism. I was a powder keg. The restlessness was excruciating, and when not panting and pacing, waiting for the Great Something to happen, black blankets of depression would warmly come over me.

  So, to chase the dragon’s tail, came the pilgrimage to California. As was to be expected, the same monkey was on the same back. Restless, lost, and feeling trapped, I had a dream one night that I was looking at a tombstone, and on it read “Until I Have Reached Nowhere To Go.” A few tiny details later, I enlisted in the USMC.

  I wanted to go fight, and a piece of me wanted to die in the process. I wanted it to somehow blast down an industrial stamp of legitimacy on a life that I quite simply didn’t understand. Dating, even speaking, you name it. . . the rule books were apparently not given to me. And it wasn’t just about women, God no; it was about everything. Someone laughing in that passing car must be laughing at me. Countless hours spent staring in the mirror, trying to find that thing that was wrong. Others saw it, yet somehow it always evaded me.

  So yes, I wanted the violence and death. So did others. I may have been lost, but I was a hard lost, and that was far from common. I wanted to be tested, as did others. And if I did survive, I wanted to know the things only a survivor of such chaos could know. So did the others.

  At nineteen, and finally with some semblance of purpose, I didn’t care if the US was fighting Canada. I was an electric socket with a hard dick and a penchant for dying, and I don’t know if a better or more honest assessment of a good ground-combat hopeful will ever be written.

  Of course we weren’t fighting Canada, we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Once I decided to join, those places became some otherworldly utopia for me. Those were the places that held my glorious gunfights in welcoming arms, the places that contained the larger than life experiences I was to ingest and never breathe out. I expected it to be monumental, some demarcation to enlightenment on tap.

  In reality, it was no such thing. I was not spared from the world and its ways I desperately wished to escape. The enlightenment was that no such enlightenment existed. Going to combat was not the remedy for all my shortcomings, as I had hilariously and bravely thought it would be. It bore fruit. It was beneficial. It was a learning experience, but certainly not what I had hoped for.

  A few gunfights, countless mortars, inopportune IEDs, an old-fashion beat-down of the occupants of an entire house, a dozen or so large-scale operations, foot and vehicle patrols that bled into the other as one odd, long dream—all had their lessons to teach.

  A decade later, looking down at the rifles tattooed on my forearm, I smile. The rifles crossed and the ink already beginning to fade. The arm it’s on; some arms did more, a lot more arms did less. Yes, there were lessons learned; lessons about the self, the friend, the enemy and the world they all occupy.

  No greater lesson can be taught, though, than that of the rifle itself.

  It is somewhat ironic too, if one stops and inventories all the energy spent moving away from the boot camp jargon. All the clichés about the fanatical importance of the rifle, and in the right company it almost takes a religious, metaphysical zeal. How if in far off years spacecraft located and flew to the center of the universe, there would be—stuck barrel down in eternal, motionless space rock—a polished M16. Yet, there proved to be something real in all the bells and whistles. The cheesy hype held a nugget of rugged truth all along.

  The interplay between the thing that shoots bullets and the thing that makes it so has been long expressed in a somewhat romantic tradition. Although I personally never knew a single soul who did it, tradition asks when you’re issued your iron, you give it a girl’s name—maybe after the one back home, or that other one, or the one that got away. It speaks accurate enough about this truth-nugget, but the saccharin, Nicholas Sparks delivery of it all misses the mark in a big way. They only get the male/female thing half-right. Sexual, Okay yeah; a form of codependency even, yeah that too—but the ultimate state of the relationship isn’t longing stares and kisses on the napes of necks. It is a lust. A power play. A lover’s tumble where both need the other to awaken the fire within.

  Make no mistake about it, the relationship of the shooter and the rifle is one of switch BDSM—or switch domination and submission to the leather-wearing stickler with an eye for exactness.

  Grueling. The long hours of repetition, aching muscles, and a sore back—laden with a full combat load, swinging the barrel upward from the alert to on-target for a count innumerable—the rifle is the cruelest of mistresses. Seeing the perfection that can be attained, yet falling short, over and over again, by seconds and inches. Whilst incurring a worthwhile shooting package, getting up at sunrise and having shot a thousand rounds by lunch. Good days, bad days, a round that you can’t believe you let go so carelessly and then a course of fire so key-holed that all things in the outside world dissipate as something moves in your pants.

  The smack of a bullet against a steel plate, controlled pairs in the black, and transition drills—all begin to lose their luster at some point to each shooter, with reference to their own diminishing marginal utility. One must fight the urge to loath the process of weapons cleaning, to be done. . . yet again. Throw in some rather annoying and patronizing range safety rules, a sunburn and a blister from a piece of hot brass that somehow wedged itself in your collar, the range and the rifle itself becomes far less sexy than a gunslinger on average would readily admit.

  However, after all the br
ass has been police called, and the clowns have all gone to bed, the skillsets earned through concentration and pain sink all the way to the marrow. Muscle twitches with a new electricity. Vision sharpened, reaction time honed, the trained shooter is a weapon wielding weapons.

  For the lucky few, those who get to execute their training into the soft flesh of their target, they experience. . . the switch. The rifle delivers their will out into the world. It works for them—extension of their will, manifest into hot flying metal.

  27

  AMPHIBIOUS, AND SOMETHING ELSE

  WINTER 2004

  Little Creek, Virginia. Cold as Hell.

  Slaps from camouflage-blouse laden arms echo and bang up in the pool’s rafters. Out of the water, feet soak a pair of socks then force themselves into awaiting running shoes. A trail of water goes from the pool deck through an open door and out into the darkness of the morning.

  Run Swim Runs were always great for equalizing people. Strengths and weaknesses clearly came out, and all too easily. Catching up in the water or on the land, someone in the lead at the beginning could be damn near in the back of the pack by the end.

  It was so cold, your frozen, tiny, tater-tot dick rubbing against your UDT79 shorts was torture.

  The senses of satisfaction, of pride, an absolute certainty that we were harder and better than. . . well, everyone was at their height when the personnel on base would drive by us, in their cars with the heater on, while we flew past them cold, wet, and half-crazed. The young men pale and thin, like some spread-out herd of deer on an acid trip, were embodiments of a certain, ancient determination. A determination given impetus by the blatant fact that we wanted the work, the lifestyle, the challenge, the brush with death, and the title that once given couldn’t be chiseled off with a jackhammer.

  The year I got out of the Marine Corps was a big year for MMA. Matt Hughes was reigning supreme, Chuck Liddell’s KO of Renato “Babalu” Sobral I must have replayed a dozen times. I missed the old tournament-based, style vs. style UFC. Too barbaric, too unorthodox, and occupied by men on the outskirts of an unpleasant reality, the original UFC morphed into a version more akin to professional boxing standards. Though I was reluctant at first to accept the change, slowly but surely the new version was winning me over.

  Then it happened: I started to notice the gargantuan tumor in the fan base.

  A generation of men growing up during the highly televised Global War on Terror, mixed with the explosion of MMA and cinematic landmarks such as 300; an aggregate, loud-mouthed, self-inflated monster was created. Leave it to the identity-less void of American white suburbia to once again facilitate cultural trend. In the ’90s it was the drug-addiction-like consumption of gangster rap, resulting in armies of white kids who trash-canned the Airwalks, skateboards, and Our Lady Peace cassettes to come to the first day of school adorned in both the urban regalia and harsh dialect that was to only be found in the most hard and tested African American neighborhoods. After a brief settling of time, the next crop are seen with heads shaven, beards to make a Tier 1 operator and/or an Octagon veteran jealous, toe-showed and competing ferociously in races with words like Spartan and Tough sloshed in there.

  Fashionable beards, camouflage T-shirts with kettle bells—and the walk of a blind rooster. It wasn’t originally very fashionable, though, none of it, not in the traditional sense anyhow. What motivated many men to enlist after 9/11 was perfectly spent of the things that motivated the masculine-identity addled to grow out their beards and don their TapouT shirts in the lingered wake of it all.

  The energetically lost of Generation Y. Yet out of it emerged what I like to call Generation Why Not, the makeup of mavericks and warriors who congregated in places like the infantry and Special Operations elements.

  This is the same generation that suffered such events as the communist regimes’ takeover of public school field day. Stripping the placement ribbons and replacing them with a uniform “participatory” ribbon, things like first and second place had disappeared into the wind, and trailing not far behind was their significance.

  Merging back into the swarm of participatory ribbon-wears is a violent and nauseous act, a perceived retrograde, yet necessary. With it comes some rather interesting encounters.

  Orlando, Florida. A decade later. Humid and heavy, at a rooftop bar.

  When these kids touch my hand, they have no idea the conduction that takes place. She is but one. Found her in an art class.

  You beautiful rose, long and lean in prowess. . . building your body and art as one thing. Good on you, darling. Stare into my eyes. I heard them whisper about us. I saw your eyes scanning the scars and ink on my arms. Still young enough for it all to look so thrilling, yet old enough to take you to a different world. . . once you have peered into my eyes. Yes. . . and there you are.

  What are those things? Oh, only cassette tapes. Why are you crying? It’s no matter now. Ride the wind and the black to the next gruesome exhibit. Hold close, honey, I won’t let these things harm you the way they did me. But? Ah yes, it is the paradox of the Wild One. . . these adversities have made me strong, strong enough to shield you from their very presence, and only these bad things had made me. But they have no power, below us, as we throttle past.

  Looking down she sees the addicted, loveless sex. The pointless drunkenness, the violence, both within the heart and spilled out onto faces, teeth, and the hood of a parked car.

  Coming back, and coming to. She awakes, her hand in mind. After a long pause, “You’re an amazing guy.” Some rain now. She smiles faintly. Her hand retracts out of mine and is placed onto her purse. “My boyfriend is probably worried. I think I should better get going. See you in class, David.”

  28

  THERE AND BACK AGAIN

  Key West has always been a blast. Whether on a lone fishing trip, or with a girl, or with a rowdy group of Marines, the historic and occasionally hedonistic island will never disappoint.

  Bused onto the tarmac, my ARS class said good-bye to the bitterly cold intersection of Virginia’s winter and spring. We were heading down to Key West to complete the Amphibious Phase of ARS, and needless to say we were not upset. The fact that our time down there was during the civilian world’s spring break only heightened the high-octane aura surrounding our group as we boarded the C13080.

  Zodiacs, maps, and gradient reels. Fin time against the ocean current and lots of humidity-blanketed runs. Running twice a day dealing with the heat, sweating, and then drying off, than sweating again, to end the day by sleeping in a GP tent right out of M.A.S.H. Recon, the undisputed bastard children of all Spec Ops; our tent was planted in the middle of an obstacle course for Army Special Forces.

  It was actually beyond enjoyable; it was in many respects the essence of masculine youth: in incredible shape, with your tribe, unaffected by the elements—alive. It was strange being in Florida with my military brothers. America’s shlong was then a different plane of existence, bereft of the frustrations.

  A month later I would be five hours north of Key West, on leave, and for me at least, going back in brief intervals to the part of the civilian world in which I emerged, it was impossible for me not to be readjusted to one foul ass mood.

  The yaw of being in a place like Camp Lejeune one day and then my hometown the next was pure schizophrenia. Jumping out of helicopters into the ocean on Monday, on Thursday driving past the Dumpster at my old middle school where I would hide behind and cry, calling my mother, from a now removed payphone, begging her to drop everything and come pick me up.

  A barracks party full of tattoos, sweating muscle, and promises to kill, then plummeted into a timid horde moving permanently in first gear.

  If I didn’t head back to Camp Lejeune after four or five days, misanthropy would start to wall me in; brick, by cold analytic brick. After a week I saw roaches with social security numbers. The worst at the time were the proud new breeders.

  They’d reach the ripe ole age of twenty-three and conc
lude that all the parties, trivial sex, and beach weekends were the pinnacle of single adulthood. They worked so valiantly to grow up fast, jettison from the parental nest, and experience the world. And indeed they did; but their world was only cheap, superficial feed, slopped into the trough from the same sociological powerhouses that dictated them still.

  They’d have children too early, rack up excessive and unnecessary debt, then want to bay about the system somehow being slated against them. Well, they were partly right, but for the wrong reasons.

  A decade or more later, however, the observations chalked up originally as developmental angst haven’t blown away. The families and the debt and the excuses are all still there. Maybe in the aggressive, jungle-vine logic that gave them no quarter there’d always been some cold, hard truth.

  I watch too many bloated, pathetic families, resembling some slow-moving herd of beast, or a robust bottom-feeding fish colony, limping from place to place. Mothers, grandmothers—a matriarchal elephant herd of sexless Americana, and pitiful only second to their men.

  Having jammed a square peg in a round hole on the atomic level, the subjugated, pot-gut male drifts at the back of the pack.

  A night of heavy drinking, years after getting out, stubble on the chin having tortured every lip on the nameless woman asleep in my bed, “tortured genius” is vomited out; a necessary pressure release valve. Written on different loose pieces of paper, likely grabbed as if they were trying to run away like filthy little animals (indicated by the forceful crumpling). As an aggregate, the words somehow tell a story: