diggin out some old stuff I found

I woke up in the early afternoon once the house had finally warmed up. The house was always uncomfortably cold. With only one of us working, another living on an inheritance, and myself squatting, we had very little money for the amenities of heat. I had grown accustomed to the thermostat being set at fifty degrees. It was set at this frigid temperature just to keep the pipes from freezing. We became acclimated rather quickly. We had to. We lived there. Our many houseguests would always complain until one of our usual parties was in full swing with bodies packed wall to wall. Everyone was drinking massive amounts alcohol. We just thought of it as putting on our liquid jackets. Mind you, we did not have the creature comforts most people had such as a phone or cable. We sacrificed these things for booze and drugs.

We opened our house to anyone who wanted to have a good time, mainly to keep the house heated. When no partygoers were there; I would smoke a bowl in the garage, cook up some ramen noodles, and play video games with Owen or work on music with Mark. We watched the same movies everyday. We would watch American History X, Boyz n the Hood, or any war movie we could get our hands on. We had watched these movies so many times that we had memorized the full script. We would even turn the volume off and narrate the movies ourselves. We were the antithesis of every contributing human being on the planet.

Parties would usually start up unannounced. Random people would just show up to drink, smoke weed, or anything else they had felt like doing. Usually two or three good close friends would stop by and bring a few cases of beer and a bottle of whiskey or two. I would start cleaning the glasses for people to mix drinks because I had not done the dishes since the last party. Someone would start drying and putting them back into the cupboard. Then people just started billowing in like the immigrants on Ellis Island, looking for a good time instead of shelter and a job. I would usually reside in the garage most of the night smoking weed or opium until I did not know what was real. Then I would wander back into the house and play some hackeysack, wrestle with Mark or play drinking games until five in the morning. From there I would pass out and wake up when the house was warm enough.

Out of that comfortable monotony I went nowhere. I had quit school, been fired from my job, and had been unemployed for four months or so. All I did was get drunk, get high and sit in the Dairymart parking lot passing time when I wasn’t at the house. I would go out and drive for hours for something to do. I was making a sad attempt to escape from the black hole I was living in. It was the most fun I’d ever had, but it was my personal hell. I would conjure up images of doing something awesome by definition. I wanted to do something people would be scared of, embrace, reject, or stand against. I wanted to lead a revolution. Whether it was my own internal revolution against my current beliefs or a full militaristic revolution, I would be leading. I always backed down because, like all human beings, I was afraid of change.

However, one day I got the gall to change what I was doing. I went job hunting. I applied almost everywhere in the county, including every temporary employment agency. I shaved, cut my hair, went on a stint of total sobriety except for my daily caffeine and nicotine binges. I did everything imaginable to get a job. I would have tap danced naked on a table for senior citizens if they would have paid me. I wanted something to do. After two months, I came to the grim realization that no one wanted to hire an unskilled nineteen-year-old man. I realized this after I was checking up with one of the temporary employment agencies. They told me this and I caved. I left the building, got into my car and lit up a cigarette. While I was driving away I noticed the one place that would hire me. The Armed Forces Recruitment Center.

Still in a half daze from the news the temporary agency had given me, I went to see the Navy recruiter. They’d gone home for the night; it was relatively late in the evening. Therefore, I took my Father’s advice, “Fight from far away”. I went down the hall and talked to the Air Force recruiter. They gave me the ASVAB pretest. They were amazed by my high scores, which I thought were just above average. The test seemed simple to me, so I figured many people had scores as high as mine. What I’d found out was that with my scores I was qualified for any job in the United States military. So, I signed on the dotted line, ready to start a new life.

I went straight to my parents’ house to tell them the news; they were scared and excited for me. My dad reminded me I was enlisting during a time of war. My mother just hugged me. I sat down and had dinner with them. Then I returned home. I was reluctant to tell my friends and roommates, but I had to. They were the people closest to me. I’d saved Mark’s life during his two overdoses. I at least owed it to him to let him know I wouldn’t be there to save him much longer. They were more shocked than my parents. They were almost appalled; but they all agreed I had to do something with my life and that this place was just bringing me down.

For the next week, I was anxious, in the true sense of the word. I was suffering from anxiety. I was excited and incredibly nervous all at the same time. I was leaving this place, which is why I was excited. I was afraid of that at the same time because I was leaving what I knew best. However, the lure of traveling to exotic places, meeting exotic people, and killing them was too much to keep me down. Everyone promised to send me letters of encouragement while I was in Basic Training, but I disregarded their gestures. I knew that they did not possess the motivation to get my address from my parents. I said my goodbyes and severed my ties with what I knew. I hated severing the ties, but I knew that if I did not it would make the transition to a new life much harder.

The day I left, my father drove me to the recruiter’s office, shook my hand, and saw me off. It was very painful because at that moment I knew my father loved me and finally viewed me as an adult. We both kept from crying, said goodbye, and I watched him drive away. My recruiter drove me to Cleveland where I was put up in a very nice hotel with many other recruits leaving the same time I was. All we did was sit around, attempt to finish our packs of cigarettes and converse about what our futures may hold. We spoke of things like where we would like to be stationed, our biggest fears, what lies ahead of us, and our backgrounds to try and relate to one another. I made some good friends, some of whom I was able to see at Basic training graduation and while on leave since they live just an hour from my home.

The next morning we went to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and waited at the USO. My new friend Bekah and I decided to share our meal vouchers so that we could eat both in Cleveland and once we got to San Antonio. We ended up sitting next to each other on all of the flights down to San Antonio and would either play cards or sleep as if we would never be able to sleep again. Once we arrived in San Antonio, we were herded onto buses. Next, we were shipped off to the Lackland Air Force Base. Everyone was nervous, terrified, and trying to make small talk. I used my nervousness to crack jokes and rile up some laughs among my newfound comrades from across the country. Then we pulled through the gate.

Everyone fell silent. We pulled up next to a building at one in the morning. There, we were quickly ripped into, as if we were a new kill on the Savannah. The instructors terrorized our herd as if they were a pack of wolves. Picking at us one by one, and then addressing the whole group. We were shuffled into the processing center where we sat silently and were heckled by passing instructors waiting to get us into their clutches. I was nowhere near ready for this on a personal level, even though I had watched Full Metal Jacket everyday for the past two weeks. Finally, a moment of peace was brought upon us. We marched in a sloppy, oafish formation to our new home. My new home was the 320^th Training Squadron, section 3, barracks 11A, Bay B, Bunk 5. We were calmly told what was expected of us. We were told the basic rules of the base and what to do during emergencies. Then we were left to sleep. Some people were too nervous to sleep, and others viewed the 3 hours of sleep we were going to get as pointless and stayed awake either quietly talking to one another or staring at the ceiling contemplating what they had gotten themselves into. I realized my new best friend was my bunk so I got very acquainted with it and went right to sleep.

Sleeping, I had forgotten I had left home. I was awakened by what I thought were my roommates pulling my mattress out from underneath of me. I uttered “What the fuck Mark?!” and opened my eyes to find a wool blanket draping me and my bunk flipped over with a man’s face hovering three inches over me screaming:

“My name is not Mark! My name is Technical Sergeant Johnson! Get the fuck up! Welcome to Hell!” and all I could do was think about what I had gotten myself into.