Confessions of a Starving Artist

Meditations on James Frey

I’m sure that you have all heard about this guy by now, some of you even have / had him on your blogs proclaiming the immensity of his work “A Million Little Pieces”.  I have not read the book, as I do not buy into much contemporary reading unless it is McCarthy or Harry Potter, and I certainly don’t go read something because of a book club no matter what the stature.  However, what I have gathered is that it is some sort of redemption story of a notorious drug runner, jail time, rehabilitation, yada yada yada.  Feel free to correct me if I’m leaving out a “yada”. 

Turns out this guy, to use the phrase that Oprah so poignantly used, “duped” Oprah and America in not only reading this book, but believing it!  As a strong portion of the contents of the work were over-stated, exacerbated, and at times just made up, it certainly does seem that ol’ Harpo Inc. and perhaps each and every reader has a little bit of a million pieces of egg on their faces.  This is not perhaps what bothers me.  Rather it is the fact that when cornered with this information that the majority of his book is at best a glaring lie, James Frey does nothing to defend himself.  He admits to the lie with a smile… and all the way to the bank I might add as thousands more jog to Barnes&Noble to get a copy to see what all the hype is about.  Here in is the rub - we shrug reluctantly and say, well shit, you got us.

Now there is the debate on whether or not this is the fault of The Oprah Book Club for not researching enough into this, but we all know that particular institution of publications promotions is more concerned with money and whom ever was promoting “A Million Little Pieces” more likely than not paid The OBC a truck load of money to get on the list.  Also one could argue that this is the fault of the editors for not solidifying whether or not this work should be put in the Biography section verse Fiction, at which point I do not think that we would be having this discussion, however; I do not think Mr. Frey would have been on Oprah for the entirety of a show either would this have been the case.  Regardless of who is to blame, in a post-modernist assessment of the work, I would have to argue that no matter what, fiction or fact, if this book is a success if without a media circus one can still say that the piece is worthy of praise.  But, if like many of us (Americans) have become enveloped into this pseudo-contemporary Christian conservative right wing blather, and are upset because our misconstrued review of a work that is part art, part salvation has suddenly become ripped at the seems by a clever con; well, you have no one to blame but yourself… and Jerry Falwell.

The fact of the matter is that Americans are at best dismissing this guy with a smile because he came clean and told the truth, and a worst they are clapping him on the back with hearty congrats at making a buck.  The latter is abhorred because to me that means that we are cool with any form of the media lying to us if it is in the name of making a dollar.  Hell, I think that CNN and FOX News are already testing the waters on this one.  What happens then when this happens, do we just smiles and say shit, Paula Zahn was just getting hers, it’s cool that we just went to war with another Middle Eastern country for reasons made-up and put out by the news?  I shiver as one of the lives that hang in that balance. 

On the other end of the spectrum, we have those who are satisfied that this guy told the truth.  So he told the truth about lying… that just confirms him as a liar.  And again, we’re pretty much fine with that.  No one is holding this man accountable for his actions, at least, not those who can and should.  I do not see large mega-stores (Hastings, Barnes&Noble, Boarders, Amazon.com, etc.) pulling this book from their shelves as retaliation for being “duped”.  Nor do I see readers boycotting it.  Just the opposite is occurring: the shelves are being stocked with this book and we are rushing out to read it.

Also, lets think about this too.  This is a story about a man, “an ego manic” as the Axe has put in (she read the book, so I’ll give it too her), who supposedly got clean.  Then he goes and pulls this stunt.  On Oprah Winfrey of all people, one of the few wealth people in the world who gives, promotes literature, goodwill, equality, etc.  He fucked Oprah.  I think that kinda shows that this guy is NOT recovered.

Personally, I have always thought that because I have never lied that I have always been truthful, and this is not the case.  I have always been confused that when I explain my perhaps ‘misleading’ actions in a truthful manner all is not forgiven, when I always thought that I would be resolved.  My fear is that we are becoming a nation of people who reward liars if they are truthful about it later.  That’s the rock bottom line.  In a related matter, I heard a radio station on Friday comparing this guy’s truth with that of Pres. Clinton’s.  As a person who believes and continues to believe that Clinton was an amazing president, I sincerely had to go back and rethink my stance on the matter at that time.  I will say it again; are we becoming a nation that rewards liars? 

I think that Oprah’s stance is the best one; she’s staying pissed.

Friendship Update

I have been home for less than an hour.  Really, these eleven hour work days have to stop.  I was told this course was going to be a good time to cool down from a deployment.  Honestly, while deployed I watched a complete season of something at least once a week.  Nowadays, I have to plan a week out to be able to stay up and watch The Daily Show. 

So work sucks.  My peers are proving to be just a bit inept.  I miss Laura.  And folks, it’s hard being good.  I mean, I’ve been “good” right now for probably the longest time in a long time, save Iraq.  She hasn’t called more than once, and while it was civil and went well… well… I don’t know.  I’m one of those people that just wants to kiss and make up and doesn’t think much short of a murder contract being taken out on my life would come between that.  So with days dragging by slowly and surely, I thought that I would share with you a K**l Tale from long ago, unrated and uncut, in it’s original sindicated mass email form.  Some of you may remember it and take a stroll down my memory’s twisted lane; other’s get to take that long strange trip for the first time. 

I was reading through this just a moment ago and got to thinking about how somethings change, and other’s stay the same.  You’ll see what I mean.  Anyway, with fond thoughts of yester-years and complete statisfaction of my current state, I give you…

Stardate 311200DEC03, Itaewon District, Seoul, People’s Republic of Korea.  Captain’s Log, Supplemental…

“First let’s make sure that everyone is clear on the terminology, eh?

The Kobiashi Maru is a military term, Japanese for you Asian buffs out there, which means, basically, ‘a no-win situation’.  For a better piece of trivia, on TV’s Star Trek, The Kobiashi Maru is the final exam that every Star Fleet officer must undergo before becoming an being allowed into command.  Only the illustrious Cpt. Kirk has every completed the exercise with success… until now…

So we begin the saga that is my New Year’s Eve…  roll the film please…

And begin…  Start at 1 pm.  December 31st.  It’s that glorious time of the month in our battalion referred to only by the notoriously savvy as ‘officer PT’ (physical training).  This Herculean task is assigned to a different company every month, and every month something more sadistic is thought up to smoke the Majors and Captains of the First of the Five-Oh-Third.  Last month was an urban assault course that included of crawling through sewage systems and completing a combined 200 reps of 135lbs on a flat bench among other unsavory events of muscular readiness exercises… however this month was to top it: have any of you heard of a “Hash Run”?

Let me explain.  A Hash Run consists of two main elements, a rabbit or rabbits, usually no more than two, and the rest of the pack.  The rabbit begins the run 10 minutes prior to the pack and takes off to a designated point - from there, the hunt begins.  The rabbit designs the course in a sort of follow-the-leader fashion by leaving directions in chalk, maps, clues, etc.  However, very often, and this is really the point of the run, the rabbit leaves large amounts of alcohol to be consumed at strategic points.  The Run is over when the rabbit is caught.  Now the point is not to catch the rabbit… not really… the point is to catch a buzz, or better.

Now, I won’t bore you with the details of the run, but rather the specifics.  The run lasted a total of 3.2 miles.  It took us 27.3 minutes.  And I drank the same as everyone else; 6 bottles of the champagne of beers: MGD.  Think about that for a moment.  Its not even one thirty on New Year’s Eve.

At the finish line, myself and several other LTs and a Major decide, in our infinite wisdom, to play a little round ball at an old banged up hoop.  We decided a game to eleven was in order and fairly achievable.  It took us two and a half hours.  After that, I was more than ready to go to Seoul.

Now a friend of my was heading down there with his girlfriend for the weekend (he was not on the Hash Run) so I hopped a ride.  After taking out approx. way-more-money-than-I-should-have from the ATM machine, I ask to be dropped off with my overnight bag somewhere (anywhere, I believe was my exact orders) along the bar district of Seoul .  Again folks, think of either the level of cockiness or stupidity that a man has to have to be discarded in the middle of a city in the middle of a country of which he speaks almost none of the language with about way-more-money-than-I-should-have on him in cash expecting full well to find a place to sleep simply out of the abilities of his own raw charisma.  The level was high… very high.

Time now in our tale is 6 pm.  I’m sober-er then I was, but not entirely by a long shot.  I had drank a flask of Southern Comfort on the way down to, quote, “stay so fresh and so clean, clean.”  And for the record I am dressed to kill.  I look more like a tragic rock star than any ass-neck hipster to grace the stage of the MTV music awards in the last 5 years.  I could have stopped traffic… and I did when I accidentally walked out into it at one point, Korean signs are very hard to read, take my word for it.

Okay, so I head to the first and only bar of the evening, Gecko’s Bar and Grill, a massive establishment on the third floor above the grotto of Itaewon.  Not too packed as of yet, and I begin to establish a rhythm about the barroom area seeing where I can be observed and where I can’t… this is important for those of you who don’t know, because you need to know when you can be spotted kissing or talking with someone by another whom you may also want to attempt to hook up with for the night.  Once a bar becomes crowded, you see, you can divide the floor and work up to three parties at once, that way if one decides she wants nothing to do with you, you can, as we say in Air Assault, ‘cut sling-load’ and go home with another, rather than starting over.  I learned this at Soupies [in college].  Moving on, class…

Three gin and tonics later it’s pushing 7 pm.  For the next hour I indulge in a liter or so of beer with this mother and daughter duo from the Seattle area.  After a hour of this I realize that there is no way that I am going to get the daughter away from the mother after midnight (or the mother from the daughter, for that matter) so my attempts to find a room for me to shag or sleep in are more or less futile with these two.  So I smile my goodbyes, and I do a lap.

No sooner do I enter the opposite end of the bar area when I am accosted by a Holy-Fucking-Christ hottie from (I won’t lie to any of you) .  She had legs up to her neck and eyes like the blue suede shoes of Jesus…  and she’s was talking to a flowery douche bag who looked so friggin’ “army” he might has well of had been wearing combat boots and been talking to her using proper radio calling procedures.  Somehow (you can call it shit luck, but I call it ‘trained hypnotic eye contact’) as I walked by I was immediately included into the conversation by the ever-so common question, “what about you, are you in the military?”

“me?  no.”

I proceeded to fill her with a level of crap so large that I get I hard-on from thinking I had somehow taken her to the men’s room for cheap sex.  I began some such fib about me being a writer with a trust fund, I was just here for several weeks, and oh yes, I was going to be in London in April if she would like to look me up when she got there to visit her folks, and no, I didn’t have a place in town, I was living like a bohemian staying with fellow artists and friends.  I have never completely stolen a women out of a man’s arms before that night, but I now can check that off the list.

But like any good GI, my adversary was persistent.  He refused to give up his six-foot blonde trophy, and I was not in the mood to compete… not tonight.  So I wrote down my number and email, blatantly in front of the young boy, she slipped it into her bra, and I figured that little thing was on ice for another weekend…. and I continued my lap around the bar.  I hadn’t gone to the last third of the bar when this Indian looking woman with a large beauty mark mouths the words to me from her table, “my friend thinks that you are hot!”  Cut to me coming hither.  I ask if I may sit, and of course, I am offered a seat.  Now, the friend is white, French Canadian from Nova Scotia ; cute as a button with tits as big as your head! Bobbed strawberry blonde hair, and as she later disclosed as she excused herself for the ladies room, the proprietor of a waist like a wine neck.  A size three to be exact.  And to top it off absolutely; she and her friend were amazingly intelligent… completely able to cut through any level of BS that I could think to send her way.  I didn’t have to or ever feel the need to lie.  Not once.

I talk and drink with these two until ten-thirty or so before I have to float myself away to use the men’s room, which is on the far end of the bar.  On my way out I run square into the deadly blue eyes of Katy, the girl from . (the names have not been changed to protect the damned)

“Where have you been, I have been looking all over for you?”  The accent alone is enough to make a man want to excrete seamen from every open pore in his body.  However, I am beginning to see in her manner of speech and the questions that she has already asked me twice (like, what’s your name again?  Where did you say you were from?  Oh, yeah, I asked that, hehe…) that she is somewhat of an idiot or a drunk.  So I explained patiently that I was talking with some old college buddies (notional buddies, in reality, of course) from and that I was obliged to return to them.  But she was as persistent as the GI she had obviously left somewhere near the exits, and in so she grabbed me, in a very personal way reserved for occasions such as this, and made out with me right there near the men’s room.  Classy, I know, but I was suddenly sure of this: I had a place to stay.

Excusing myself and promising to return, I, with all haste, return to Amy’s table (the Canadian), but she was gone for the moment.  I sat down, calm and as if I had not made out with anyone else moments prior.  However, literally moments after I noticed Amy coming back to the table, Katy spotted me, made her was over to me, and sat down in Amy’s seat!

I got up and eyed Amy to follow, much to the confusion of Katy and Amy, though the two had not noticed each other… yet.  Once in another part of the bar, I explained that I was sorry for that, to which Amy replied, why, I saw you give her your number earlier. Shocked to the bone doesn’t even begin to describe the level of drop in my jaw.  Okay, I can recover, I think; “so what?” I say innocently, it’s not like a I want to take her home.  Oh, really? - the response. Yes, I say, I would like to go home with you.  The playful argument over my truth and wooing begins and ends with Amy saying, “You know, why don’t you just do what you want to do?”  “Right now?” I ask. “Right Now!” the reply.  So I grab her and make out with her behind the DJ’s stand.  Boo-yahh…. write that one down, folks.

I disappear to the bathroom.  I need a moment.  Nothing you haven’t done before, old boy, I say to myself in the mirror, you can get out of this one on top.  Now, important information had been disclosed back there:  Amy is only going to be in for two and a half more months and she states very plainly that she will not go home with me tonight, but she does give me her phone number and email.  With that, I went back to see… Amy.  Why?  I wasn’t sure… but it seemed right.

As I sit down not paying attention.  Herein is The Kobiashi Maru.

It is 11:40pm.  As my lily white ass touches down into my overly comfortable seat to sip on my new glass of gin, I witness to a horror that rivals Leatherface with a John Deer lawn mower that seated to my left is Katy and two of her friends and two my right, you guessed it, is Amy and her friend.  I’m fucked.  Fucked like Jenna Jameson on roofies.

Status, Mr. Spock?  Bleak.  If I talk to Amy, I loose getting to fuck Katy who is already impatient with me, and I gain nothing, because Amy isn’t going to sleep with me tonight anyway… and I doubt that she will let a stranger crash at her place for no reason at all.  And I can’t talk to Katy in front of Amy because then I know that I will loose all rights to call Amy later; she’s didn’t seem like that kind, and anyway that would be far to bold - even for me.  And to make the matters on that end even worse, I’m beginning to think that this Amy girl is something worth pursuing in the long run, not that there is a long run because she leaves in three months, so I am not ready to abandon route either that.  Either way, I lose.  On one hand, I get to meet an interesting girl who may or may not turn out to be something worthwhile, but I get no play on New Year’s and that would mean I go to bed frustrated and annoyed… and we aren’t having that, not at this point.  There is no cold shower cold enough for that.  On the other hand, I lose a great deal of potential in exchange for cheap meaningless sex… and I go to bed frustrated and annoyed… only this time with myself.  How does the song go?  Oh yeah, “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day…”

Of course, I took the sex, who do you think that I am?

But I did it in a truly exceptional fashion.  Five minutes before the ball drop, I got up and left the bar.  I sat in the stairwell for New Year’s.  Why?  Well, if I would have stayed, one of them would have tried to make out with me, and we can’t have anyone making decisions for me, that’s why?  So yes, I did stay in control, but I failed The Kobiashi Maru… or did I?

I went back in to Gecko’s as the hallabaloo of the ball drop is dying away.  I grab up Katy as she is on her way wandering around amidst confetti and streamers.  I grab her and, after checking to make sure that her drunk-ass friend is okay, and by ‘okay’ I mean going home with some six-foot-ten GI monster who will no doubt date rape her, we are out like a queen at the Grenache Village New Year’s Celebration.  We kiss and become horribly engaged in PDA under a streetlamp among the rest of the partiers in Seoul.  Really, that in itself is a great image: two white Aryans drunk falling over each other and feeling each other up in a sea of Asian party goers in the wee first hours of the New Year.  However after, much to the wince of my pocketbook, she confesses that she lives far out of town and would just rather that we just got a hotel.  We find a rather seedy hotel and proceed to ring in the New Year like African jungle monkeys as a Cher Televised concert flickers in the background of our tiny six-by-ten room.

The next day, I head back home to [Camp] Casey.  She goes her way, I go mine. But I can’t help thinking that I fucked up and made the wrong choice. No.  In fact, I am sure that I have.  I refuse to think that I am going to spend another year like this, whoring out women and living a hollow sexual life.  Especially since Amy was so promising.  And funny.  And really great.

So I and an old friend, Tom Breslin, end up in Seoul three days later; completely unrelated trip as we were shopping for assault packs.  However, we decide to stay down for the night, and I break down and call Amy to ask her if she would like to meet us and some others for drinks?  She agrees…

I quickly explain the above story to Tom.  Tom and I have known each other for five frickin’ years.  I tell him, we need to put on a fucking show, not to get her to sleep with me, that would be too bold - even for me, but rather simply to give her the impression that I’m not a slime bag… which is what I felt like.  Tom understands, and we set out for one thing - for me to get a kiss goodnight.

She shows up and everything is going so sweet I swear honey bees were asking to get into the bar to get some of the action.  Tom and I are telling some of our best ‘true’ stories and finishing each other’s sentences we know them so well, which further adds volatility to them. Then the unthinkable happens:  I slip and call her Katy.

 I had told the story so many times that in the past few days (it honestly had weighed so on my heart and mind) that the names of the two had just run together.  Amy totally called me on it, “what did you just call me?”  Tom is such a fucking buddy he is already weaving a lie his bar stool (“no, Katy is my girlfriend from Boston who we were talking about earlier.  She’s an junior Olympic snowboarder… blah blah blah…”) which Amy dismissed within like two seconds.  She leans in and says, “its okay, I know a friend of Katy’s, we work together… I already know what happened.”  You could have heard my heart hit the floor.  Seriously, men, getting kicked in the nuts doesn’t even come close to describing the feeling that Amy’s smug smile did to me.  Up until this point, Amy had neglected a to buy a beer, but now with a heaving sigh of her massive chest, she claims, “I think I could use a drink…”  It goes without saying that I bought the round.

Now the remainder of the night I will do without explaining, but I will say that I dropped every amount of “game” that I had on the way back from the bar and decided to go straight from the heart.  And it worked!  I spent that night, one of the greatest nights I’ve had in the last, I dare say, year, in a large apartment complex, her tenth floor apartment to be exact, in a part very Korean part of Seoul; a part of Seoul that most GIs never would get a chance to see simply because they have no reason to.  I drank green tea on her balcony and watched the Seoul Tower appear in the mist.  We shared a shower and had a small breakfast before going back to bed.  And never once did she stop stimulating my intellect… as she continually did other things.

I left around noon, had to get back for work, but I have every intention of seeing her on Friday.  I am jovial and happy for the first time in a long time.  Ladies and Gents… K**l is perhaps in love.

So with that in mind, get the fuck out of my chair, Kirk… Mr. Sulu, warp 8… energize.  

K**l from Korea“  (Dated  January 9th, 2004)

“There is no motive for this crime, Jenny was a friend of mine…”  - The Killers

A stroke of genius.  Nothing short of a stroke of genius.  I thought of this idea while Laura was around, and I was goofing off in the playground of sheets after a morning romp.  The more and more that I thought about it, the more and more I realized just how incredibly brilliant this madcap scheme would be.  Before I reveal this course of action to you, I want you to give credibility to the operation, should it even come close to a potential level of fruition.  Think of the media, think of the money, think of the possibilities:  I am going to steal Angelina and Brad’s baby.

Now you may be saying, why Mr. G. Snake, why?  To what end?  Oh, the ends are endless.  First, even if the initial ransom and kidnapping fails, celebrity criminal status would be achieved for the rest of my natural born life.  Did you know that kidnapping can be down-graded to a misdemeanor if you voluntary return the victim, even if under duress… from oh say the LAPD?  It’s true!  But it won’t come to that because you know, just as well as I do, that Angelina is going to throw some smokescreen and have the baby in some weird third world country with a nomad goat-herder as a mid-wife and some sort of African shaman dancing for the rain god off on a cliff facing the western sun.  Because of this, the initial snatch-and-grab will be flawless.  Then no matter how hush-hush the poster children for the Fourth Reich keep the birthing place, the media will turn into a such a circus that Paula Zahn will be wearing clown shoes and a blinking red nose, and the US will lead the largest man-hunt in history… but I’ll be somewhere in Brazil where no one gives a shit and kidnappings fund the local economy.  Bully!

But it’s all good, because I’m going to give the kid back for relatively nothing, couple million, nada in the grand scheme of things.  Of course he’ll be shy a little DNA is all.

Cause that’s the real plan.  With the ransom money, I set up a cloning lab somewhere in Switzerland and clone Angelina and Brad’s baby and sell them off to extremely wealthy families who can’t conceive.  It will be the best child money can by.  Think of the underground advertising:  Now you too can have an Uber-Baby!  They would sell faster than I would be able to artificially grow them in a lab.  And they would see for millions of dollars a pop.  Oh, and even if the ransom didn’t pay out, think about how much some rich couple would pay for the original.  Booyah.

Here’s the best part.  In all the clones I implant a microchip.  Stay with me.  When they all reach their late twenties, I activate them… along with the small army of clones in Switzerland.  That’s right, I just created an army of completely trained, genetically perfect, optimally funded Storm Troopers.  And if I am feeling confident on world domination; I have them all kill their foster parents thus launching a pre-emptive strike on a large portion of the world’s most powerful.  If I’m looking just for mercenary work, well, then I may just leave my sleeper cells in place.  Ah, the rise of an empire from the unlikely womb of Hollywood, CA.  A real life “Attack of the Clones”.

The Axe has suggested that instead of a cash sum ransom that I rather ransom for Hollywood’s elite to do foolish things publicly.  Example:  Don Knots has to do a public service announcement about the dangers of crack dressed as Mr. Furly in his periwinkle blue leisure suit.  Other suggestions are Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, and Kate Holmes all have to spend three hours in a glass elevator on public access TV as well as Tenacious D has to put out another album within the month.  Just thoughts… I think this would just be the most lucrative way to be a celebrity ever… and the most fun.

Best of all.  I just read this morning from a very accurate source (The Star) that the impossible was true.  Angelina is with twins.  She is quote, “so filled with happiness…”   … so am I.

                  … I’m doing this for you…

What is it good for…

This is the question you really have to ask yourself when spending hours and hours needlessly surfing the net, answering annoying mass emails, blogging, searching out secret sites about 80’s sitcom stars.  Really though, is that what the internet is for?  Research and retail?  I have the answer…

Feeling better by the numbers…

I suppose that there is no reason to beat around the bush or give it any sort of flowery word-play:  Laura left me on Wednesday; drove home, possibly for good.  The crux of the matter is that she learned that before I had truly committed myself to the relationship (in such a manner that many of you who are old friends of mine would suspect that I am wholly incapable of) that I had been with other women.  She learned because she asked, and I told her.  First, and most frustrating, is that I completely understand where she is coming from.  Worse, I agree with her.  It is, without the aid of a defense lawyer, a breach of Trust.  I knew full well that she was in love with me well before I had come to realize that same thing, and while I have never lied to her (something that I hope she takes into consideration before she decides that she never wants to hear or see me again), I did, at the time, attempt to deceive… and I now see, too late, that this is just as bad.

Before you judge me, let me illustrate the situation a bit more with my point of view.  After I left that glorious rubén sandwich of a metro-plex, Colorado Springs, for this God-forsaken po’-boy of a town, I honestly had my doubts as to what was going to happen to the relationship… as much as I wanted it to continue.  So of course there were others; I am the guttersnake, for better or worse, and as much as I did care about Laura, there was Reality to contend with.  I was impossible to effect the space between us, and at the time there was no way that I could have asked her to leave her family, friends, and job to come down to, well, Lawton and me.  Doesn’t seem like a fair trade-off even to a couple married for a few years, let alone two who had only been dating a few months.  I was certain that like the at least twenty other women that I have left behind at various points along the way; that she, like all the the others, would gradually grow further and further from me until she just disappeared.  Though case studies have been 100% correct in this regard, this turned out to not be the case, but rather my assumption.  And as such, during the interim I acted accordingly to my nature.

But it does take a taste of the green apple to remind you just how good you have it.  The others where sour and not as sweet.  And though it took me too long (probably much too long) to realize what I had, I did eventually figure it out, and I not only told myself, but rather found it was very easily to be true to a woman who wasn’t right beside me.  Honestly, I was beginning to wonder if I was one of those sexually warped people who was unable to have a ‘normal’ monogamous relationship.  Laura awoke a part of me that I thought that Anna Yasuhara, aka Yoko Ono, had smashed into so many pieces back in that summer of 2000 that not one of the three CSI shows would be capable of figuring out just what the heck my heart originally was.  So I hope that admission counts for something with Karma or Kismet or whatever.

Regardless, I feel reborn and dead at the same time.  I miss Laura, understand her decision and need to figure things out, and yet as I accept blame, I do not feel guilty.  I feel numb.  So many counter-emotions have been hitting me since she left, I feel that perhaps I needed the space as much as she.  I do hope she realizes what she drew out of me, and that while from a standpoint that doesn’t know me and my history as first-hand as some of you, I also hope she appreciates just what she has of mine.  It’s hers to break.  But I know now, for the first time in seven years, that I can put it back together again. 

I promised that I would be true to her until she told me she was through with me… a phone call that I hope does not come.  She laughed in my face when I told her this, and rightly so as from her point of view, I wouldn’t trust me either.  Even so, I haven’t lied to her yet, and I’m not about to start now.  That said, I’m off, kids… to go bowling with the guys.

Ah, the calming effect of knowing that you are scheduled to fire the big gun…

The final test of Gunnery is over.  The last of the great math problems in my life; goodness I hope that it’s not downhill from here.  With any luck (and an approved branch transfer packet) it will be the last time I have to figure out the devilish computations concerning the effects of wind and humidity on projectiles or artillery smoke screens; the last time I have to be concerned with calibrating 155mm tubes with respect to muzzle velocity variations; the last time I have to draw a damn safety box ensuring a level of security for the surrounding community.  The last time… please, let it be the last time.

I am peaceful now, regardless of how hectic my week has been, how my dinner party last night was only slightly above awkward, or how my test results turn out.  I am listening to the Chieftains early recordings and enjoying a long and well-deserved lunch.  I’m not concerned with the fact that my sink is backed up and that my kitchen smells a bit of corn beef brisket, nor do I care that my front lock door lock is sticking, leaving the potential for me to be locked out of my own apartment at anytime.  I’m not terribly worried that I haven’t placed the alcohol order for the XUROTC traditional politically incorrect “Forty 40 oz. for MLK” party.  I’m not fretting that the outline for a major publication (major to me, anyway, regardless) is still on the worktable, and I’m not nearly as sourced as I would like to be. Why the sublime, the je ne ce que? 

It’s because Laura is going to be here on Saturday afternoon.  The Axe would say that “I’ve got it, bad”.  She may be right.  Rather than admit to that, however, I’ll simply say that it is and will be wonderful to keep the pressure off… so to speak.  I have maintained since college and beyond that a good relationship is symbiotic, a tag-team on the same consistent road-less-traveled.  And while Laura and I usually march on said road in different time zones, I would be remiss to say that I’m little less than gitty that she will be here for the next eight or nine days.  I’m sure there will be a weekend in OKC or somewhere out of town, some reason to get a motel room with a near certain chance of using it for what it was meant for.  Further it will mean drinking more than once a week, which is unfortunately what I’ve become reduced to out of a general fear (?) for the local populace.  Maybe I’m just concerned with contracting whatever makes these people, well, locals. 

At anyrate, I’m going to eat out for lunch.  Why not, it’s just days before pay day when I’m normally trying to scrimp and save.  I feel festive… and that means omelets with salsa.

Don’t waste my mother fucking time!!!

First off (because I’m sure that VWK will read this and undoubtedly comment), I do not know where the fault in this lies… but I get ahead of myself.  The subject of today’s rant is the massive amounts of what can only be referred to as foolishness that runs rampant in our medical facilities.  It’s not the personnel, as most of them are very nice people, accommodating, and above all, extremely proficient - provided that you get to see them.  It’s not the insurance company’s though they are a bit of a pain at times, after all, they are just paying out for what you are paying them for.  Nothing more, nothing less.  It is not the facilities, they are state of the art.  It is, I think, The System at large… and large is the problem.  Let me just tell you my story, and you decide if I’m screwy or what.

So before Christmas exodus, I went to the DenTac here at Ft. Sill, and I was told that due to the massive amount of personnel that they had to see for deployments and de-mobilizations, they could not see me until sometime in late March.  Now, for that same reason, I had not had a cleaning in the past two and a half years.  So when I was home in Maine on leave and my family dentist said that he could fit me in for a cleaning, I said sure.  I handed them my military ID, and figured that Tricare would take care of it.  Slow down.

I received a phone call from the dentist’s office saying that I was not “in the system”, which I thought was ridiculous.  I’m active duty military, I have full medical and dental.  Oh, was I mistaken.  Turns out, that while Tricare will cover all things ‘medical’ if you see an outside provider, the Tricare Dental is an entirely different monster… a monster that I do not have any affiliation with.  Rather, the military mandates that if I have any dental work done, it MUST be through a military dentist.  The only time you can go outside the system is with a military dentist’s written consult.  I have spoken with several ‘lifers’ all of whom were shocked to hear this.  Apparently, I’m an anomaly… and I’m used to that.  Still, service rendered - I am not one to skirt a debt.

Being said, I was told by a Tricare rep. that he sympathized with me, and that this was an Army wide problem with DenTacs being backed up and people just having to wait.  Mom suggested that I write my Senator, but that’s another story.  Long of it; I sucked it up, and paid my dental bill… all 150 bucks of it.  I am fucking stoked that I didn’t op to get the cavity they found filled while I was home to or I would be out close to a cool grand.

So today I find myself in need of an EKG.  Reason being, I need to complete a physical for an application packet for further military advancement.  Routine physical, right, Su Sponte and all that jazz.  I don’t have a heart condition, I just need a physical completed.  The lady at the EKG desk let me right in, no questions asked, stripped me down to my shorts, only to then to ask me where my referral was.  I said, no referral , just need to make an appointment to have one done.  She said I can’t do that with out a referral .

Wait.  If I want something checked out, why do I need this seconded by someone else who isn’t going to do it in the first place.  Nevertheless, start to get the run around of make an appointment with my family provider (another day in the waiting room), then he / she will make an appointment for an EKG (another day), and then I can come back and get the reading (yet another day).  I was not trying to hear that.  150 bucks lighter in the pocket will make one a bit more vocal to poor civilian workers who really have no effect on anything.  Regardless, it did attract the attention of a passing Major who heard my case (military doctors are typical more understanding of military workloads and how we just can’t leave work to got to an appointment, and further how our timelines for results are not always negotiatable.  The trade off for getting my EKG done today was that I have to come back and sit down with my family provider in order to make sure that I do not have any heart irregularities.  Trust me, when I get that woman in that room after wasting my afternoon in her lobby (I know she will, too), she will get an ear full.

There is no reason for that much rigmarole.  I need a service done.  Who ordered it?  I did, mother fucker, good enough?!  It’s like if I came in with a broken arm, would I need a referral?  Do I have to wait until I’m in shitty health in order to get a physical.  I’m trying to be proactive, and I’m getting my time wasted going between people who want just make sure … what?  that I’m not faking it?  No sir, I just like stripping naked to the waist and getting freezing cold suction cups stuck all over my nipples… Steve Brunner does, I know for a fact, but that’s neither here nor there.

Also, it’s not like I wasn’t already naked it the EKG room in the first place.  I was in a military hospital and in uniform so insurance is not even a question.  Honestly, what did the lady have to lose by just hooking me up as opposed to making me get dressed again, go run between stations for the next two hours, only to come back and get a fifteen second print out.  Between these two encounters, is it any wonder why when men get old they have bad knees, bad livers, bad lungs, bad hearts, bad bodies?  I am reminded after today why I don’t go to the hospitals unless I have visible lesions from the plague on my face. 

“Only those who can hack it, get to wear the Red Jacket” - Roddy, Head of Ski Patrol, Sugarloaf USA

As I pack up my shit to get ready to go back to the land of teenagers pushing strollers and Asian cars with visible evidence of fender-benders at every street light (which is every ten feet), I am perhaps a bit remised at my New Year’s. True, the price was right as my sister the proprietor ripped up my tab at the end of the night, but the essence of being surrounded by friends was both present and absent. The crowd was most definitely people with whom I considered fellow Mainers, though the term for me has become more and more foreign. Perhaps it is not being a Mainer that these people with whom I rang in 2006 most identify with, but rather these are the Local Ski Crowd, a sub-species, a tributary to a greater undercurrent. And I forgot just how loathsome the vast majority of those people are.

They aren’t all bad though, I was raised as one. I was brought up to believe that it was the people from ‘away’ that were the enemy when using our recreational facilities. After all, Sugarloaf USA is in our own backyard, and who are they to be the one’s who are entitled a first go at tracks on cordroy? Fair question at the time, but here is a fair and perhaps of late acquired answer: the one’s with money. They bought their place in line, and by God, I say let them have it. After all, their lift fees pay for us to eat; I’d say that’s a fair trade off. Regardless, these foreign people from Massachusetts are not all bad. They do usually leave on Monday.

Despite the differences, tourists at least have this going for them, and for once in my life I was able to relate with such a similarity - this mountain is not all that they have. For the locals, those with whom I was identifying with, this is not the case. The mountain is the end all for these people, and rightly so; as it is the economic force, the draw and the bread winner, the Steve Brunner in the Ice Age Food Chain. But it just so happens that because of this rift of a personality trait, I can no longer side with my Maine brethren, and rather, must now mingle with The Dark Side of The Force.

I will give you this though; I have never liked the ski bums. Very pretentious people, in there own right, much like a Paris Hilton if she was broke, lived in a three room Condo, and worked harder serving pizzas to loud-mouthed yuppies who wouldn’t drive a Mini-Van if they were faced with eternal damnation. But like any scene, in the fringe-crust there are internal associations, people who know people, and most importantly a way of dressing to which the casual observer would have no grasp. For most of us, a group of skiers dressed for a day on the slopes look generally the same, minus perhaps a color code. A trained ski bum, however, quickly sizes you up by the jacket name brand (and the year it was issued), the gloves that you wear, the goggles you sport, the sunglasses you relax with, and lest us not forget the boards on your feet, both in brand, size, shape, and whether or not there is or are one board, two, or if they detach at the heel. Very important stuff.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, and in my own defense, I admit to being a fashion aware person. But it’s more based upon the question, “do you look good?” vs. “did you really shop at The GAP?” It’s about style, not a guy’s name on your underpants. Further, when graduating to the category of athletics from mere lounging, I personally think you could be wearing something from the Goodwill grab bag and still look great provided you’re on your game and crushing the opposition. Which is part of the reason that I think these snow-bohemians take a bit much stock in such matters. I mean, the Greeks wore nothing when engaged in feats of skill, and they invented the Olympics, right?

All this to say that I felt a very cold shoulder from Mainers at my sister’s bar on New Year’s. No, I was not dressed like I had been skiing all day, nor as one who lives in the area - rightly so as I had not. But I felt being scoffed at because of it was unwarranted. If you open up an issue of Details or GQ, I can guarantee you that the individuals in the pictures look more I me that they look like do any of them… except for Seth Wescott, but that’s another story. Further, as one young woman pointed out, and I quote, “I love talking to out of State men; they smell better than the local women.” Not quite sure how to take that. Other great quotes from the night involved a misinformed lady from New York State (“Oh my goodness, are you in Chemotherapy?”) and a local snowmaker (“You are way too overdressed to be drinking at this bar!”). As irony would have it, I smelled that young fellow before I saw him; I had time to prepare a retort.

The last word in the matter is that disliked hanging out with, to use their words, real skiers just as much as I had before, because I felt like I was judged on what I wore and looked like (which is not much with that many layers) rather than who I was and how I rode. Now that I’m tailored to look nothing like them, I am met with the same looks of confusion and prejudice, which I’ll write off to jealously or a lack of breadth of palette with respect to class.

But I did get drunk and lucky, and that’s what matters, isn’t it?