Absolutely Nuthin'

Saturday, Mar. 22, 2003 -
Ap�sl�min ida corbalanyrtne 'ls�o rohl'daathi�m v� nen�a iroyss�rd.

"The surrendering soldiers were not the elite Republican Guard which anchors Saddam's defense. They appeared to be underfed, ragtag fighters, many of them draftees in T-shirts."

When I heard yesterday about the surrender of Iraq's 51rst Division, I was surprised to feel tears in my eyes. Eight thousand men who would not have to die. Eight thousand men we would not have to kill.

And then I thought, who's we, paleface?

~

I don't have anybody enlisted in this war. No friends, no family members, no family members of friends. I'm pretty sure that my brother has fought (in his own way) The War On Terrorism, but that was long before Bush the Younger was elected. The day before yesterday, the bro had lunch with my eldest sister (who's living in Annapolis for the nonce) but otherwise I don't know where my brother is. I have a phone number I can call that will get a message to him. SOP. I can't tell you what my brother does for a living, partly because I know very little about what he does for a living, and the little I do know... Well, I guess I can tell you that he works in a gray area between the private sector and public service, and it's a very, very private sector that he works for. Clear as tapioca, eh?

Anyway, he's not risking his life in this war. He's too old for that shit, he sez, in his best Danny Glover imitation. I'm hoping I can believe him. He's 12 years older than me. He'll nudge past forty this year. I'd like him to continue as my brother for at least another forty. Yeah, tha's a good plan.

~

This happened a long time ago:

A few days after I got out of prison, my parole officer called to remind me that I needed to register again for Selective Service. I thanked him for the heads-up, and then we chatted a bit before we said our good-byes.

(My parole agent - I'll call him Charlie - was a good guy; he was one of the few bright spots in the awful legal morass I fell into when one night I chose to practice my scintillating but caustic wit on a clumsy drunken brute whose favorite weapon of choice was an aluminum baseball bat.*)

I remember that after I hung up the phone, I stood there for a blas� moment, wool-gathering, then a surge of pure rage welled up inside me. I felt like a hollow receptacle filling fast to the brim. The sensation seemed to start in my feet, then flowed up my legs, then my balls, ass and cock were quivering from the force of it. I felt like a flood was pushing my stomach up into my lungs, my chest was tight, bile rose in my throat, I could taste it, I was nauseous, my head was pounding... I stood there for long moments with this tide of fury brimming in me. I struggled silently with it, then gave up.

I roared.

I let this huge indescribable sound come tearing out of my mouth. I had never made a sound like that in my life. All this anger-pain poured out through my mouth, I could actually feel it flowing up and out of my body. After it was all out, and the sound had faded away, I was wobbly and faint. Aching and weary.

And empty. Absolutely empty.

Since then, once in a while, I've used roaring as a cathartic release, and it's done me some good. Seems to flush out the poisoned residue that accumulates in the psyche. But nothing since that first roar has felt as immense and wild as the thing that came out of me on that day. I've tried to analyze the whats and the whys and the wherefores of that first roar, but I feel it must have come out of one of those human places that have nothing to do with language. Trying to explain it in words is like trying to write it down with chalk on a swimming whale.

The next day, I filled out my Selective Service registration form and mailed it in. No worries, right? Even in the unlikeliest worst-case scenario, which would have been the re-establishment of the draft during a war, the armed forces of the United States would never have allowed a faggot ex-con to serve his country.

~

* The short version: Defending my life, I tackled the clumsy drunken brute as he was trying to brain me with his baseball bat, and on our way down to the pavement, the clumsy drunken brute broke his head on the edge of a low brick wall surrounding a planting of rosemary. Boom, into a coma for him, and I was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, with the option to upgrade to second-degree murder if the now comatose drunken brute died. Only one person claimed to be a witness to the event, a friend of the comatose drunken brute, and the prosecutor encouraged the friend to perjure himself and tell the court that the baseball bat was my weapon. There was also much general incompetence all around, including my attorney and the ME who couldn't tell the difference between an injury made by a blunt baseball bat and one made by the sharp edge of a brick. A felony conviction was the upshot. I went to prison. I borrowed a lot of money from friends, hired a supra-competent law firm, fought for an appeal, which we eventually won. Yay, great. Except I had served my sentence and had been out of prison for two years before my conviction was overturned. The long version is very long indeed, full of all sorts of dreary legal convolutions, ad nauseam, and if I wrote it all down for you I'd have to puke.

<~>
Ap�sl�min ida corbalan� 'lse nesgla ugar�-cham sa cru ogrulho bat�oltha al�mv�sde.

last eleven: