A long 20 minutes in this mood. That’s how long the upload was supposed to take according to the Facebook estimate. I’m downtown. I figured I’d get a burger and a diet coke and upload some pictures from my leave to Florida for family to see. The city worker in the street is gonna have a heart attack. He can’t understand why nobody knows where to go. The traffic light is out and the truck in the middle of the intersection blocks the view of his hand signals on at least one side at a time. He starts to look like a dog chasing his tail. Above the truck, in the bucket, the other worker works on fixing the lights. I gotta piss again and I hate the sound of Harleys.The upload’s been over a half hour now and watching this hard hat’s frustration is killing me. Meanwhile, I’m not in the sun. I’m on the south side and the building on the deck alfresco. It’s blocking the cool breeze that beckoned me from my room over an hour ago. The fries and burger arrive. The only thing fresh about either is that they are freshly thawed. This is a good location to go for lunch downtown according to the local paper, but this is Fayetteville North Carolina, and for different reasons, maybe people here don’t know any better.
Almost 15 bucks. My mood worsens. I fail to take pleasure in the fact that I didn't just order a pitcher of beer. I had only one diet coke and it was .50 extra for the cheese on my already 10 dollar cheeseburger. Thanks to the glowing endorsement in the Record perhaps they get away with this. In Florida the restaurant business in tourist retiree and college areas is so intense Huske Hardware would be out of business in a month. But my fault I guess. I didn’t even look at the menu because of the delicious pictures of cold beer. The waitress asks me “how is everything,” and I say fine. That’s when I started writing this. I had to do something. I still gotta go piss, and I will. She came out with my refill minus the straw. One of the other Huske Hardware waitresses keeps looking out the window at me like I’m either someone important, or someone unwanted. I can’t tell, but I can say this: I’m Specialist Holden Caufield, all grown up, and always a beer or two from making it better. But one's too many and one-hundred's never enough.
I finished the upload. I took a leak. But there’s still something lodged in my teeth that my tongue can’t shake. I walked over to the library, and so I continue to write. Something put me in a horrible mood this morning and I know exactly what it was. For one thing I’m not in Gainesville anymore. While home on leave, mostly sober, and spending time with family, it was something I wanted and needed. Now I’m back at the joke also known as “the center of the military universe.” Seriously, on any given day you can wander around Fort Bragg and hear a high ranking army officer make this reference and say it with a straight face. It may even be true, but it’s just a horrible concept to me, and to think, that’s where I live. While I was on leave there were welfare inspections and walk-thrus in the barracks. A crack down you could say. From within, finally, there’s a growing unease with the increasing number of suicides in the military. In reality it’s the unease of having a much higher ranking soldier pushing his “…just fix it Sergeant!” down through the ranks to the individual. And in the usual “work harder not smarter” motif of the US Army, things like barracks inspections take place and increased hovering over troubled soldiers become clearly visible to the E-4s and below.
Effective? The poncho I hung up and used as a wall, that was my only physical separation from my roommate, a metaphor for my thin comfort of living in the barracks has been removed in my absence during the welfare crackdown. Meanwhile, the work order I submitted to fix the toilet two weeks ago, before I left, to the contracted civilians in charge of “barracks maintenance” has been ignored. I remember when I turned it in the woman behind the desk yelling at someone for not locking the door. It was my lunch break, also theirs, convenience for them, not for soldiers. As I left the contractor told me he would “submit a work order.” Funny thing is I was silly enough to think that that was what I was doing.
The other thing that’s under my skin, making it hard to not go have a drink in this hour: This morning I watched the movie my roommate suggested last night. He was asleep when I got up this morning so I crept around in stealth ninja mode making coffee and toast and slid it in the player but when he was still asleep at 10 this morning, when I finished “Get Him To The Greek” I gave up and gave chase to the my needy unknown on this truly pleasant fall day. The leaves are just starting to turn here in the piedmont but I couldn’t turn my head from the film until it ended, just as I wouldn’t be able turn from the sight of an aggravated city worker lose his cool in a mildly busy city intersection hours later.
“…The Greek,” a comedy that made me feel horrible, also made me feel like I’m either from another planet or should be. I'm a guy who enjoyed The Hangover which was well made. The Greek is no Hangover. The thin thread of a lesson to be learned coiled around an even thinner thread of humor wound me tighter and tighter as I watched, and as the script flopped back and forth on the theme of pros and cons of drug use, drunkenness, infidelity, talent, art, and integrity in the music industry. It was like watching some kind of godless blasphemy that both a theist or atheist could understand simultaneously. As an example, somehow , the film concludes that a song, “The Clap” (entendre singular – the STD), which is one of the “last real rock star” character’s older hits - is real rock, and a better choice to play live rather the recent flop of a single “African Child,” which was deemed racist within the film. The character played by Russell Brand makes a mockery of anything genuine in music (one of my genuine interests) and of drug and alcohol addiction and recovery. On film he drinks and takes drugs constantly, has random sex with strangers, and offers his advice and desperation to others while trying to save his marriage and keeping his clear, awake, and unslurred white eyed sobriety. Any real addict will call bullshit, and nothing can be funny along with this
This aspect may be the thing that really really got me. I’m in recovery and the whole drinking and drugging part of this film and its extremely shallow portrayal is the worst part, put in a comedic format, while pretending to maintain both sides of the coin, the cool high and the hot crash, at the same time. Since July I’ve been in the ASAP program (Army Substance Abuse Program). As are others very nearby, here in the barracks. For the month of August I was at Twelve Oaks, an institution in Pensacola where I began my recovery, paid for by the army. And honestly, as aggravating as it can be sometimes, being a soldier in the barracks (especially at my age), my chain of command has gone beyond my expectations in terms of my desire to stop drinking. I can only hope the same reception will be afforded to any other soldier who is willing to come forward to admit there is a problem. In fact, Fayetteville isn't so bad either, really. One should always look at the price they're gonna pay before they do, and be willing to speak up if something isn't right.
So now "the poncho wall" is gone, I’m broke because I bought a burger, I’m indoors making blog confessions when I should be outside enjoying the blue sky, and I’m still in the army instead of with family in Florida. It seems I'm in a better mood though, better than I was. I mean it. I got that movie out of my head by getting it off my chest. And I can for a second, snap out of it at least, and be thankful to a higher power that I’m stateside and out of a war zone, well fed, employed, able to go on leave and watch a movie, see and be loved by family, and most of all, be sober, one day at a time. If that last part fails, down goes the rest, and I know it. There but for the grace of God go I.
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