It’s a song about a man facing heartbreak who retreats to the winter woods. It’s a song about healing heartbreak on a cold morning with a Browning Auto 5. It took me back to Bienville Parish. It took me back to the first weekend in October. It sounded like my father’s voice.
...I pity them. I feel genuinely sorry for all of them with their yellow ribbon stickers and “would’ve served but” because I experienced something else during those dark days, something they will never experience for themselves.
It was little better than prison food. Three slices of cold roast turkey in between two sliced of white bread, no condiments, just a Styrofoam cup of water to wash it down and lime Jello for dessert.
For a long time I thought there was something wrong with me, that the reason I didn’t have faith was because I was bad or broken. I don’t believe that anymore, but I still don’t understand. How is it everyone I love takes comfort in religion and I find none?
When faced with unimaginable horrors some people will run, more will freeze, but a surprising number will fight. A shocking number of people will run to aid their fellow man. I’ve seen it
It was on those long drives that I talked myself into asking out a girl for the first, second, and third times and where I dealt with the crushing defeat of rejection and the low grade, lingering pain of being “just friends.”
Fishing buddies give no quarter and accept none. He ragged me endlessly. I was beginning to think he’d legitimately cursed me. I seriously considered seeing if I could find a gris gris to lift the curse.
There were plenty of bars, nightclubs, and strip joints scattered along the stretch of Louisiana Highway one seventy one that ran through Leesville, all of them designed to extract the maximum amount of money from the Fort Polk “community”.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
essay
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.
memoir
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.
commentary
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.
memoir
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.
essay
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…
memoir
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.
memoir
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.
memoir
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.
memoir
From my bed I could see into the hallway, and out to the nurses station where a pair of bored looking women in colorful scrubs sat typing away on aging desktop computers. But there was something else. A shadow. Something stalking.
commentary
One fine summer day I was driving down the highway with the windows down and Waylon Jennings turned up when I saw a big, black, truck barreling toward me in the oncoming lane. Now I was born in the Deep South. I’m not a truck hater. Hell I’ve
memoir
Sorry mom.
memoir
Beside my bed is a notebook where I jot ideas that come to me in the moments before sleep. On the last page I have written, “THE HOOK IS YOU DON’T HAVE THE FUCKING WORDS TODAY JUST LIKE YOU DIDN’T HAVE THE WORDS 26 YEARS AGO!” It’s true I guess.