2012 Draws to a Close

Two human heads poked out of the sand in the distance. At least they looked like human heads – I was still over a hundred yards away, and I couldn't make out any fine details. As I drew closer, though, I realized that I was walking up to the heads of two humans about five feet apart – presumably men, owing to the short hairstyles and the deep voices that I heard coming from them. I was approaching them from the rear, and could not see their faces. They had no idea that I was there. I was about to call out to them and ask them if they needed some help in getting out of their predicament before the tide came back in, but held my tongue when I heard their conversation.

“Eating like a caveman is what you need – my dietary therapist has me on a paleo-diet,” said the one to the right. “I only eat things that are in accord with the diets of neanderthals and cro-magnons. Raw meat. Nuts. Fruits. Then I run after buses as though I were chasing woolly mammoths.”

“You're an idiot” contended the one to the left. “What you should be doing is concentrating on avoiding gluten. My crystal- and reiki-practitioner has me eating seventeen small gluten-free meals each day, followed by rubbing my each of my chakras with a rose quartz crystal. EACH of my chakras.”

“RAWWWWWWRRRR!!” cried the one to the right, craning his head back against the sand as far as he could. “That is a paleo-roar, and it releases my aggression so that it doesn't ball up in my small intestine and cause a blockage. I do that four times a day. Then I kill a small, furry mammal and eat it raw while squatting next to a fire while wearing a loin cloth. A Lycra loin cloth. One must make some concessions to modern conveniences, you know.”

“Gloo-pee-lee ommmm...” chanted the one to the left, swinging his head in a slight circle. “Gloo-pee-lee ommmm...”

“Idiot,” said the one to the right.

The tide was coming in, but the two didn't seem to care too much. I cleared my throat.

“Leave us the hell alone,” they said in unison. “We are discussing dietary habits.”

I pulled out my hip flask and took a long swallow of gin. I shoved the flask back into my hip pocket and started walking up the hill to the shore road. I could hear the tide coming in, and the sound of the two men arguing about complete proteins.

Happy fracking New Year. You'll never get it.

Perspective

Pete stretched his back against the inside of his T-shirt - he felt the fabric and the sweat and the sand kind of pull against his skin, and it felt good. Good the way that rubbing your eyes when they're tired feels good.  His back was a little tired and his skin felt chafed and his muscles just plain ached, but here he was, sitting in the sand on the outskirts of some nameless town.  It was late in 1990, the men of the First Marine Division were having a quiet moment, and Pete was writing a letter.

"Dear Tom,  Thanks for your letter.  Tell everyone I'm just fine.  The weather is pretty hot but not unbearable.  We're all ready for whatever is coming next, so don't worry.  I spend a lot of time with weapon maintenance and keeping things clean, so I try not to think about where I am too much."

This did not look anything like Chicago, Pete thought to himself - how can I not think about where I am?  That was dumb.  Nevermind.

"Days are pretty long and I never know what's coming next or where we'll be next so I just keep focused on what I'm doing today. It helps."

"Don't worry about sending any of the things you mentioned. I don't think we'll be here long enough for me to read them, and we could move anytime, anyway, so don't worry.  I'll just get home soon and read them when I get back. Thanks for thinking of me in the bookstore though - when I get back, remember me at J.R.'s Liquors, too, OK? Ha ha."

I would give my eye teeth to sit and relax with some of Yeats' poetry, Pete thought to himself.  I shoulda' said to send it. Oh. Nevermind.

"The Saudi sand is holy, so I am not allowed to send any to you, as you asked.  I will therefore discreetly drop the envelope alongside my boot before I seal it.  Anything that gets in and safely makes the trip home you must treat very carefully. Promise?"

"I miss you guys, but I know that I'm where I am supposed to be.  Keep us in your prayers, Tom, and tell everyone I'm fine.  Tell Moose he owes me a beer when I get back - I haven't seen any flying carpets. Write me again soon if you get the chance.  Your friend, Peter."

Pete discreetly dropped the envelope next to his boot.  As he reached for it, he pushed it along the ground a little way, allowing some of the holy sand of Saudi Arabia to get in.  He quickly picked it up and sealed it. Pete stood up next to his Humvee and stretched his arms out, feeling the hot sun on his dry skin.  He heard some Aerosmith coming from a tapedeck in the distance, and thought back to a party one night somewhere in the North Chicago suburbs.

Chicago seemed very far away, and the sand of Lakefront Beach in Evanston seemed infinitely holier.

A Tale of Two Jerries

When Mike Stencil was still in college - well before anyone had ever dreamed of calling him "Father" and a long time before he ever met Jerry O"Brien - there came a winter of confusion and a winter of sadness and a winter of wild introspection.  A small airplane with his brother at the controls and a lot of December winds took them south from Salt Lake City to a coastal town in southern Mexico, where Mike was able to stay up late listening to music in a hotel bar, drink cerveza before noon, stroll through a sleepy little village, write poetry in the afternoons and wish that he had studied Spanish in High School.  The better part of a month was spent in a Mexican haze, looking at people in the streets from behind his sunglasses and growing the first real beard of his life.

A wild New Year's Eve in a club brought many, many beers and an invitation to go sailing the next day - from another Jerry, fancy that, a Jerry much better off than the one who would enter Mike's life many years later on some dirty streets in a city in Upstate.  This Jerry sailed the coast, plying the beautiful waters of the Pacific, drinking beers and giving day trips to Americans he met in exchange for more beers.  "Come around noon," he told Mike, "we'll have something to eat and drink."

A sunburned afternoon of sailing and drinking left Mike woozy and probably staring too much at the young lady from NYU who also happened to be along for the ride.  "I'm Jewish," she kept telling him, cheerily, in different contexts.

"As if I care," thought Mike.

The afternoon lolled along with the waves, and the beer flowed freely.  Captain Jerry steered his gorgeous boat back to the tiny harbor from which they had begun and after swinging at anchor while the last of the beers were finished off, the captain and passengers watched the sun dip low in the western sky.

Suddenly the young Jewish girl sprang up. "Let's go," she cried, grabbing Mike's hand.  She hit the water before Mike really knew what was happening, and like a fool he followed after.  The rush of cool water brought him to his senses, and when he hit the surface he looked up to see Jerry smiling and waving adios.

Mike looked around while he treaded water, and saw the Jewish girl backstroking away from him, smiling and laughing.  "Who the hell is she, and what am I doing in the water swimming after her?" he thought to himself.  Having nowhere else to go, he began lazily paddling toward her and toward the shore, some 150 yards off.

Streaks of orange and yellow sunlight played over the top of the water all around him, the sounds of the tiny harbor bouncing around the inside of his head that was woozy and already hurting from too much beer, and the smell of the salt water and the diesel of distant boats filtered into his nostrils.  "Beautiful," Mike thought.  "Absolutely beautiful."  It was then that he saw the shark.

No, there was no shark in the water - this story does not end with a shark attack and missing limbs.  It ends with a young Mike Stencil asleep in a lounge chair on the veranda of his hotel, hours after swimming to shore in the midst of a panic attack over a non-existent shark.  It was a shark that he saw in his mind's eye - a shark that bared its hideous teeth and sank them deep into his legs and violently thrashed him about from side to side.  It was a shark that he then saw go and attack the young Jewish girl and rend her limb from limb.  It was a shark that had been in his sub-conscious all his life, perhaps.  It was the same shark that would haunt him all his life - those dead, black eyes staring at him whenever he felt insecure, whenever he felt the grip of self-doubt and failure seize him.  The shark that would surface and make a deadly bee-line for him whenever he was at his lowest - it would play upon all his fears and upon all of his insecurities.  Those sharks can be real bastards, and they don't care who they eat...who they dismember...who they leave washed up on life's beach.

Mike Stencil awoke with a pounding headache.  It was Sunday and church bells were ringing.  Fresh clothes and fried bread and a walk and some Kerouac read in the open air of the village square made him feel human again.  He swam no more for the rest of his time in sunny old Mexico.

The More Things Change...You Know the Rest

My friend Pete S. came back from Kuwait late in 1991, I think, and he was never quite the same.  A high school teacher who went to Kuwait with his Marine Reserve unit and came back a battle-hardened Marine.  He had a hard time putting the high school teacher part back into the equation.  It was hard to be a husband and father again, too.  He thought it had something to do with adrenalin addiction - he was forever craving the adrenalin high that he found in the desert and in Ras al-Khafji with Iraqi bullets whizzing past his ear.  The smell of burning petroleum, the darkened desert sky and the wild Humvee rides down some deserted highway with burnt-to-a-crisp Arab bodies littering the landscape.  You remember the photos.  You remember the boys who went and fought.  You remember the men who returned.  A fast war in a fast time for a generation that grew up fast and yet never grew up.  CNN covered it all.  You were there.

Pete wanted to teach history and he wound up making history - yet it was history that has been largely forgotten and eclipsed by "what came next."  Kind of like the veterans of the "Great War" - World War One - being ever in the shadow of "the Greatest Generation."  When I would ask my dad about my grandfather and his service in the US Army artillery back in 1918, there was never much to tell...Dad fought in "the Big One" and naturally that was where it was at - it was what he knew, and as far as his generation cared, it was the war that mattered.  Lots of parallels between those two sets of wars, in some ways.

Pete has disappeared.  I have no idea what happened to him.  He had a hard time getting his life together, and he drank a lot after the war.  He moved to Chicago with his marriage on the rocks, and I never heard from him again.  I have Googled him many a time, I have tried in vain to find him.  I guess in some ways that missing yet not forgotten friend is the converse of who he and his brothers in arms are and of the legacy they have left.  Still in the history books but largely forgotten.  Those men who raced across the desert listening to Jane's Addiction and Guns N' Roses and  raced into history and into a middle age that hit them with a nasty recession and a different world - a world framed by 9/11 and the hyper-connected society.  I pray that Pete broke free from the addiction and has kept whatever job he hopefully found.  I pray that his dreams gradually contained less and less images of sand and smoke and boys who quickly became men.