My time left as a civilian measures in hours.  A year ago I made the decision to put my entire life behind me and join the Army.  If I had chosen to go Enlisted, all I would have had to do was hand over a copy of my DD-214.  The Army would have rubber-stamped me and stuck me on a bus.  That would have been fine if I was looking for a job.  I walked into the recruiting office, ID card in hand, and told them I wanted to be an Infantry Officer.

The last year has been a difficult one.  The lengthy vetting process included the obligatory trip to MEPS.  I stood in my underwear while a smarmy physician documented my tattoos.  I have had ten years to collect them, and my markings are numerous.  The doctor lectured me about my decision making, talking about safety and regret.

Considering the career move I was making, I had to laugh at the irony.

Officers are high-value targets.  As such, Infantry Officers are responsible for training all of their soldiers to be Platoon Leaders.  Combat doesn’t stop because LT is dying from a sucking chest wound.  The word “lieutenant” means placeholder.

Some people read Officer and think privilege, but that isn’t the case.  Officers show up early and leave late.  They don’t sleep until their boys are sorted out.  They do paperwork while the platoon smokes cigarettes.

Officers eat last.

Alcohol – specifically my consumption of it – is a running theme here.  I have decided to quantify my drinking habits to put them into perspective.  I have been drinking alcohol since I was 15 – roughly 12 years – but for the sake of the math I will be focusing specifically on the last 5 years. Read more

Dear Readers,

I owe you a debt of gratitude.  Your attention this past year has been invaluable to me.  These last twelve months have been very difficult for me.  The things I have shared with you are the result of a great deal of soul-searching.  Knowing that someone is reading, no matter what they think of me, has allowed me to look into myself to examine my actions and motivation.  My next journey I take with all the gravity due it.

However long or brief, what comes next shall be the defining moments of my life.

The details are spare for many reasons.  PERSEC/INFOSEC is a concern – I value my security clearance and my career – and thus I cannot tell you many things.  The stories I have shared with you are relatively tame.  Some things are simply personal – the kind of things I share with friends over a drink – or cannot be shared for legal reasons.

There are some things that I simply do not know how to express.  I cannot tell you how beautiful my ex looked, smiling into the distance with a flower tucked in her hair.  I can’t tell you what it felt like to lay beside her at night, curled together.  I can’t explain to you what that means to me.

I can tell you what it feels like to hate.  I can tell you what it feels like to cut the blood flow to someone’s brain.  I like it.

I can tell you that I am a lousy brother, and a lousy son and grandson.  I have neglected my family at points when they needed my attention, so wrapped up in my own problems that I failed to nurture those relationships most important to me.  I can tell you that I am an awful jackass.  I can tell you that you don’t want to know me.

I believe that my failures as a person will serve me well as a soldier.  I refuse to qualify that statement.

I make no guarantees about how much longer I will maintain this site.

Thanks,

Max

Mr. Black was at the apartment, sitting on the couch.  He had two female guests and the apartment to himself.  One was the lead singer of a local band, the other her friend.  Things were rapidly escalating things toward sex when he got my text message.  Judging by the speed of his arrival, the ensuing conversation could not have been more complicated than You bitches gotta go.

The street was jammed.  Cabs and cops crawled back and forth between the bars.  Sport bikes trolled down the street, blipping their engines in the slow traffic.  More bikes lined the curb, their riders standing in groups.  Guidos and club girls thronged the sidewalks.  Street lamps and neon signs cast a false twilight over the whole scene.

The Black Man wedged the Abrams into a spot up the block.  If he was displeased, he didn’t show it.  Mr. Black compartmentalizes stress for a living.  Extricating Willy Pete was Priority One – he could knock me upside the head later.

Willy Pete was just one drunk in a teeming mass of drunks.  Left on his own, in his current condition, trouble was inevitable.  My blood alcohol level had dropped over the last hour, and my frustration was mounting.  This was all my fault. Read more

Memorial Day weekend I noticed that I had difficulty running.  It began with stiffness in my left leg, which I credit to a particularly difficult road march.  Old boots caused severe blisters, which changed my gait.  This led to a stiffening of my iliotibial band, a strip of semi-tendonous tissue on the outside of the thigh.  I have had occasional pain in one knee or the other.  Generally I blame it on old shoes, or difficult leg workouts.  However, this knee ache was different.  Then it metastasized up my leg into my hip.

Shogun Marcus’ wife is a massage therapist.  She informed me that my ITB was tight enough to shoot arrows with, and that it was the likely culprit of my symptoms.  After almost two weeks with hardly a spot of cardio and no leg workouts, I am finally back to normal.  IT Band Syndrome is a common runner’s ailment, and with nothing more than ibuprofen and thorough stretching, I was able to rehab my leg.  My cardio does not seem to have fallen off much, but any time not going forward is time falling back.

Otherwise, things are plodding along. Read more

Bedpan had just finished an overnight shift at the hospital when he found me. I was sprawled out on the couch.  My boots were still on, hat rested over my eyes.  An empty bottle of Evan Williams set on the floor next to me.  My .45 was disassembled neatly on the coffee table, eight Federal hollow points standing in a row beside it.

Read more

My computer has been smacked with a virus.  I will be operational again soon.

I have a bad temper.  Anger has lead me to do awful things.  I am candid about my anger – and my compulsivity – but I am not flippant about them.  What was once “Boys will be boys” is now Felony behavior.  I have come away unscathed, but not uninformed.

Anger isn’t a raised pulse or a histrionic fit.  Anger is a gate-way drug to rage and hatred.  Anger is poisonous and intoxicating.  Anger is not an aphrodisiac.  When I read Roosh’s article about anger as a female turn-on, I understood exactly why he said it.

But I disagree with what he said. Read more

I try to hide by burying my head under a mountain of pillows.  Hide from the noise.  Hide from the dull gray light filtering through the blinds.  Then I realize that I desperately have to piss.  I swing my feet to the floor in irritation.  My dehydrated joints snap and grind in protest as I shuffle to the bathroom.

I make one more attempt at sleep, eeking out a precious half an hour, before more noise jolts me out of bed.  Persistent, aggravating noise.  My response borders on panic for a moment until silence is restored.  Fully awake now, I realize that I have been robbed once again of a full night’s sleep.

How I long for that drowsy pleasure.

As if by some limbic macro, I slap a pan on the stove and shovel espresso into the coffee maker.  I gain height slowly as I arch my back, my spine popping like pine boughs on a cold morning.  I bend one knee, then the other.  The stiffness in the left leg, where the therapist thumbed and prodded my irritated fascia, seems to have abated.  I choke down breakfast, tasting only coffee and hot sauce.

Time for CNN.  Outside noise.  Move with a purpose.

Every heterosexual male has a system for rating women.  More often than not, it is the Base 10 system, or some variation of it.  It is difficult to innovate over the Base 10 because it is simple and functional.  The existence of Hot-or-Not proves this.  Unfortunately, what Base 10 fails to capture are differences in taste.  One man’s 8 is another man’s 6, and vice versa. Read more