In The Pines

Letter to my Normie Friends.

Felt good to be joyous. Man doing something is so much better than sitting, watching, and feeling like shit isn’t it? Remember that feeling. Cherish it.

Aggressively Mediocre

I went to a Magnet school and almost flunked out. I was a soldier, but not a great one. I rode rodeo bulls but never once for eight seconds. I traveled the world but never to the coolest places. I died in the dumbest possible way but I survived.

Memorial

An hour and at least a mile later I still couldn’t shake the feeling of that place. The heavy sense of loss and futility and the gnawing question of “why?” would linger far longer than I cared to admit.

A dingy barracks room with beige walls, tan furniture and broken, stained, white ceiling tiles.

The Suicide Song of the 2nd Lanai

One by one we emptied our pockets of pocket knives and multitools until there was a pile of edged weapons sitting on Evan’s rug. “Go ahead.” He announced once all the weapons were secure. “Play your fucking suicide song.”

A well manicured brown dirt drill field is in the foreground. A row of old English buildings in the background. The London Eye ferris wheel is in the far distance against.

London Homesick Blues

We were in Westminster Abbey when I broke completely. I was tired. It was hot. The crowd was thick. I couldn’t stop to read the names or look at the stained glass without being bumped or jostled. I couldn’t hear. I felt like everyone was in my way and I was in theirs.

A bearded white man in white shirt and jeans laying on a couch covered with a blue blanket drinking a Coors Light long neck.

The Apartment (Crescent City Chapter 3)

I never paid a dime in cash but came with offerings of Zapps potato chips, Coca-cola, and boxes of chocolate glazed when the Krispy Kreme "hot" light was lit. In return I got a spare key, a shitty fold out mattress and raucous company.

A can of Shiner Prickly Pear beer sitting on a battered picnic table on a beach overlooking the gulf of Mexico

Obituary Beer

Right now I have Dos Equis in the fridge. An imported Mexican lager is fitting I guess. Dos Equis is by no means a “special” beer but it's crisp and cold and there, which makes it about as good as a beer gets.

A dimly lit, sagging, shelf full of liquor bottles.

Barrooms: (Crescent City Chapter 2)

It was mellower somehow, almost melancholy. It’s only recently that I’ve recognized it for what it was, a type of therapy, a crutch, or maybe a helping hand as we transitioned out of military service and faced our future.

A bedside lamp shins dim light on an empty bed in an otherwise dark bedroom

Dark Night

The room was still too bright and too hot and too loud and the world outside of it was still too dark, but laying there, thinking about the first act of our lives it felt like…man even now I don’t have the words…

A lighted floated rolls down a crowded night street in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

Mardi Gras and Flying Pancakes

You can see it in the picture. You can see it in that scraggly beard and the too long hair that would never pass on an Army post. You can see it in my drunken smile. You can see it on our baby faces and our too thin bodies.

Three young men walk down a fog shrouded night street. The one on the far left is looking back at the camera.

The Cast: (Crescent City Chapter 1)

When I was a young man I wandered the streets with my friends, making our way from bar to bar, always searching for a girl someone knew, or a buddy who should be out, always finding someone, though it was rarely who we were looking for.

Stock photo of a gray Koala bear hanging in a brown tree with green leaves.

How Not to Lose Your Virginity in Australia (Vol. 2)

It was just as miserable as my buddy had warned it would be and I was glad I wasn’t hungover. It was only then, as we were flying away, somewhere over the Pacific between Australia and American Samoa, that someone gave me the bad news.

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