'My Name is John' Chapter 1...a memoir

Chapter 1



‘Left Handed Scissors? I’ll Take Two’




I always heard that saying. I never knew what it meant, exactly. I just thought actions had outcomes and conclusions. Or, repercussions, as mom would say in her fading Jersey twang.

I understand it now, its’ significance. The way one decision can change everything, make us veer so far left. Or right. But, never straight ahead. Never. ‘Forks in the road’, they call it. And we have thousands of them, millions really. And each path leads to millions more, and those have millions, and so on. It keeps going; infinite like ‘pi’ and a never ending chalkboard.

But there’s a difference between the metaphor and the literal fork in the road. One has stop signs, arrows, gravel roads, usually small cattle fences and a lone tree. There is always the lone tree. And the other one- the metaphor one- is life. But in life, these roads disappear. You can’t go back, use a map or something… a stick with a handkerchief that you planted as a reference point. In life, all you have is hindsight. And hindsight can be venomous. Today was my four way intersection. The one that changed it all.

•



It was sandwiched between an acrylic nail salon and a discount dry cleaners; the Marine Corp recruitment office smelled like acetone and aerosol starch. And a hint of peppermint, though I wasn’t sure. Maybe tea tree oil, or some kind of toilet freshener. An American flag wept in the far corner of the poky room; the thirteenth stripe resting within breathing distance of the synthetic carpet fibres.

“Morning, Son.” The wrinkles around the Staff Sergeant’s beady eyes introduced themselves. He grinned at me. He reminded me of a used car salesman. One during hard times, an economic slump, eager. Far too eager. Only his uniform wasn’t made of cheap polyester and his tie was anything but ‘loud’. I nodded, staring about the room.
It looked like a tax agent’s office, or some consulting firm. Only, this office was filled with propaganda, not computers and hands free phones. But, there was paperwork. Lots of it. Tidier than a room full of income statements and client files, I presumed.

Three large oak desks sat single file on cheap office carpet, with small pieces of military memorabilia, colourful service decorations, tall stacks of pamphlets with glossy finish and bright colour. Exciting posters of Black Hawk helicopters, sky diving paratroopers, and eye-catching slogans painted the thin sheetrock walls around the room. Slogans like: ‘First to Fight’, and ‘Up for the Challenge?’ And one that caught my eye: ‘Once a Marine, Always a Marine.’

Standing there, the images pried my vulnerable imagination with little effort. Like a muffled whisper on a quiet night. I was a dry sponge, really. Anything would entice me at this stage. Just lucky I didn’t walk into a hairdressing info session at the local trade college. I wasn’t made for small chat or perms. Definitely not.

Everything seemed to be for sale, offer what Webster Street envied; a chance to take centre stage in a vanishing act of adventure and opportunity. Not to mention those cool canteens that had their own special pouch. I always wanted one of those. How could I say no?


“Have a seat, son.” He stood up, repositioning his slim green tie before clearing his throat with a load smoker’s cough. I marvelled at the Sergeant’s impeccable form.
I sat. “Oh…thanks.” I could barely muster two words. Interpersonal skills weren’t my fine point.

The Sergeant was attractive. His form was beautiful, plain and simple. Two pressed creases ran parallel down each breast of his khaki shirt. A small black insignia sat on opposite sides of his lapel, while thirty or so service decorations weighed down the left side of his blouse. A pair of tailored green trousers fitted so high above the Sergeant’s waistline, I was sure he could touch his brass belt buckle with the tip of his nose if he wanted. He was a walking ironing board- a big one- not a burn mark or water stain in site.

I felt a tad shy of a buck, sitting there next to him. Probably closer to a quarter. A dime, really. My wrinkled, ‘Fruit of the Loom’ t-shirt and my acne. My acne had flared up, looked like a chocolate chip cookie. I was no match for the Sargent and his treated leather skin, tough, water proof no doubt.


I sat nervously across from the veteran recruiting officer. His forty plus years of life experience burrowed into the brightly upholstered arm chair, capturing my attention with ten bold words.

“What do you want to do with your life son?”

I felt a hard slap across my pale face. If I knew, I wouldn’t be sitting there, I thought, scrambling to answer a question that had no relevance on the nine hundred block of Lincoln Avenue. My silence made the question rhetorical. Pause.

“Ok…well, what brought you in here son? By the way I’m Gunnery Sergeant Pate.” He leaned over the desk, arm stretched out. He smelled like burnt cigarettes. Like my father. But, he wasn’t my father. Only uniform my dad ever wore had eight digits on the back, and came in the thick, pin stripe variety.

“I’m John.” I met him halfway, over the tiny bulldog figurine dressed in fatigues. My arms looked much thinner, far too white compared to his gym-junkie guns. I pulled away.

“So…tell me, John…what’s brought you in today.” He asked.

“Dunno.” I said, locking eyes with the soldier in the poster. He would have to be a male model, I thought, not a real grunt. He had perfect teeth, and his hair. His hair was stapled to his scalp, perfect part, and a little wave that flared above his forehead. “That can’t be a real soldier up there, eh?” I laughed, pointed.

He turned around, swivelled in his chair. “That one?” He pointed with a nod, smirked.

“Well, you know…you are probably right John. It would be safe to assume he’s a model.” He turned around. “But, one thing I know…” His face tightened up. “ …that’s not a soldier. That’s a Marine.”

“Oh, well…what’s the difference?” I asked.

He smiled, leaned forward. “John… the Army has soldiers. The Marines have Marines. The Marines are an expeditionary force of elite men and woman, trained, with high levels of discipline, John. Anyone can be a soldier. Not everyone can be a Marine.”

It sounded like a load of shit. A big load, stacked real high. And it stunk to high heaven, rehearsed, straight from some script. One that prompted hand gestures and facial expressions; and said ‘walk forward’ or ‘drop head’ in italics. But, something intrigued me. Maybe it was subliminal; like the smell of popcorn in movie theatres. I had to have it. A big load of it, extra large with butter dripping from the bottom of the bag.
“You look like a smart young man, John. You know what’s out there?” He gestured through the tall plates of glass. “What do you want out there?” He asked.

I turned around. I looked out at the same shops, the same parked cars. And the same people. People that I’d seen for years- never talked to- but knew, nevertheless. “Not much, that’s just Webster Street…pretty uneventful, really.” I said.

“Do you have an older brother, John…an older cousin maybe?”

“Yeah, got a brother.” I responded, still looking out the window. A new window, at least.

“So, your older brother…what’s his friends up to now? What are they doing with their lives?”

“Dunno. Not much. A few of them are in jail, I think. I mean, no one’s at Princeton, if that’s what you are asking.” I turned around.

The Sergeant’s head bobbled up and down, slow; like one of those wobbly caricatures on a long, forgiving spring. “Four years, John. Four years. You wanna’ come back here in four years…and say, ‘Hey…look at me, look what I’ve done with my life’?” He started to get animated… and his voice – his voice broke into command, shouting. And he was talking like me; like he was me. “…or you wanna’ be ‘back on the block’…scrapin’ nickels together, sweepin’ floors… dreaming dreams that won’t never come true?” Pause. He stared at me, straight through. Eyes so fierce, it could melt glass, cause a flood right down Webster Street. “Four years, John. Four years.”

I tried to work out if his nostrils flared like that when he argued with the wife, if it was natural. Or maybe, it was because he was passionate. Hopefully, for his sake, it was a once off.

We sat for the next half hour it seemed. I didn’t get much in, just listened. His sales pitch was clever, no more than a bit of well rehearsed dialogue really, grooming more hate, more frustration. More self loathing. So much so, that I’d buy whatever it was he was hawking. Left handed scissors…sure, I’ll take two. It was a straight forward solution to my world of confusion. The United States Marine Corp.

His questions perfectly timed, his responses and comments complimented each insecurity, infallible. It was as if this guy knew me, had my resume sitting square in his lap. Undoubtedly, everything about his flattering approach came from some Psychology text book or Ivy League case study. Or, Doctor Phil’s latest paper back at Barnes and Nobles. Uncle Sam was no dumb ass. Neither was Oprah’s protégé. And he was trained. Well trained. Expeditionary trained, as he put it.

The Sergeant. pulled a small red and white folder from underneath his desk. He pushed it into my lap before opening the front door and firing up a smoke behind the unsettling crash of the heavy steel. I looked at the binder. The letters ‘MOS’ jumped out at in bold, Roman numeral text; the words military occupational specialty captured in small brackets underneath. I opened it up. Hundreds of job listings, all in alphabetical order, preceded a brief description in tiny font.

It could have been written in Mandarin for all I knew. Or Latin, or Flemmish. ‘Logistical Combat Engineer’…What the fuck is that I thought, reading the just- as- confusing explanation underneath. With each turn of the laminated pages, I added my fingerprints to the collection of lost identities and adolescent fear that settled on the dusty pages. Aircraft Maintenance Technician, Aircraft Engineer, Artillery Crewman, Ballistics, Cook, Computer Analyst …

“Administration, John…”

“Huh?” I turned around.

“Admin, that’s the way to go John.” The Sergeant said confidently, the unsavoury smell of burnt tobacco contaminating the small office space. He sat back down, placed a small Bic lighter inside a half empty pack of cigarettes, hiding it underneath a pile of forgotten paperwork.

“Administration…office work. That’s the way to go son,” He said. A sly wink complimented a trusty half smile. He removed his stretched cover, hanging it on his knee. His short crew cut tried its best to conceal a seasoned crop of grey highlights on his broad head. He leaned back. “You’ll be sippin’ cold lemonade while the rest of the Corp is out there getting’ dirty.” The wrinkles around the Sergeant’s eyes lit up like a peacock’s tail feathers. His generous grin told a silent story, some sort of visual clue. The ‘secret’, I figured. Must be.

“Photographer?” I snapped with raised eyebrows.

“That’s a class five.”

“Class Five?” I questioned, burying my head back into the tiny print.

“Oh, sorry…class five security clearance. What’s your record like son?” He’d asked that question a thousand times before. I had no doubt that he already knew the answer. Thirty minutes of banter and a lifetime of intuition told him I was no Wally Cleaver. More like Eddie Hasckle. And even that was sugar-coating it. I hesitated.

“Eh, John…” The Sergeant leaned back even further, kicking his feet on a pile of last week’s paperwork. “Doesn’t matter son, we can sort through any mess here. You could say…we are kinda like…um, a garbage disposal.” His battered teeth reassured me; a half dozen gold fillings showcased with a gut bursting laugh. I smiled for the first time. An uncomfortable smirk really.

He looked like he smoked cigars. The way he was sitting, completely relaxed and all. A cigar smoker, I thought. Definitely a cigar smoker.

“Got an assault conviction.” I said, picturing him with a Cuban in the basement, flush with deviance.

“Felony or misdemeanour?” He asked, unsurprised.

“Um…well, it was assault with a deadly weapon, but..”

“Oh, that’s ok.” He cut me off mid sentence, a forced smile found my eyes as he looked up, reaching for a pen across the desk. “Anything else?”

A tidal wave of reservation drowned me momentarily. “Um…well, credit card fraud.”
The Sergeants’ pen was on cue with each syllable that struggled to find form. “And burglary, but that’s it.”

“B and E, assault with a deadly, and credit card fraud eh? Seen worse John, that’s for sure…just gonna limit your choices that’s all.” His matter-of-fact response put me at ease. And his tone. His tone was this acclimatised, you’re-all-lost-around-here-that’s-why-you-come-to-me tone. It made me feel accepted. His intention, no doubt.

He leaned over and grabbed a piece of paper from the printer. “Alright..look, you got Admin, Cook, Diesel Mechanic..and Logistics….and Infantry. There’s no clearance specification on those.” He leaned back. Decades of physical exercise stretched every fine thread of the Sergeants’ uniform. Each button strained to hold his perfect form, quivering with each effortless breath.

I stared at the scribbled words, unable to dress the bland job titles with stimulating images of recipe books, oil leaks, and yellow post-it notes. “What’s infantry?” I asked
“Infantry, your in the thick of it John. A grunt, frontline.” The Sergeant pointed to a large poster behind him. The JC Penny-model-one. A soldier crouched on one knee. An M16 rifle slung across his body and a bulky field radio substituted as a rucksack. Heavy camouflage paint caked the Marine’s face as he stared into a sleepy sunset. He looked happy. Why wouldn’t he be? The incoming mortar rounds and all.

“Its hard work, infantry.” The recruiter turned around, shuffling through some loose paperwork. “Work hard, play hard…get a lot of respect though,. It’s gruelling, but if you want to do a lot of travelling and see the world John…” Those words catapulted me to the edge of my seat.

“Travel, huh?” I asked, fishing.

“Yeah, you’ll do Asia or Europe depending on your duty station, and the Hawaiian Marines do a couple of tours in Okinawa.” He looked up.

My eyes reacted. I imagined dipping my taste buds into a menu at a German Bakehouse or sharing a pot of tea in a remote Javanese village, playing charades with some French local or getting ripped off by a taxi driver in the back streets of Bangkok. I was factory-bound, community college at best with a beer belly and two kids before I was thirty. It all sounded so enticing. I was certain my imagination was on par with the reality of enlisted life. Was it? Of course. The poster, look at the poster.


I was in that small office for no more than an hour. I stood up. A manila folder full of bumper stickers, glossy brochures, colourful testimonials with smiles of every variety tucked deep in the pit of my arm.

I glanced around the room one last time. I stared into the image of the soldier with impressionable eyes. It yelled pride, achievement, discipline. It whispered to me in bright colours and studio perfection. It tapped me on the shoulder and turned my curiosity into ambition. It winked at me as I looked down and pictured myself in a pair of patent leather size tens. And a water canteen. Two of them.

I walked out of there some sort of renewed sense of direction; I closed the door. That small recruiting office offered me a chance to leave it all behind, a chance to demand recognition, define myself behind a crisp set of dress blues. I was seeking asylum. From my mind. Anywhere would do, the further the better. The easier it would be to forget, the easier everyone would forget me. After all, West Alameda was too busy watching the prequel to last week’s episode of ‘Crime and Order’. They wouldn’t even know I was gone.