What do I want? Oh, I want C9H13NO3 and vitriol-spitting and C19H28O2 and beating on chests. I want skinned knuckles. I wanna hear these stories about how ordinary pussy people grew spines the hard way. Physical and mental and emotional combat. People being assertive without a thought to consequences. Heroic or foolish and in success or failure. Impulses taken. Rules broken. Running away or wading in fists-first. I want passion. What have you done in your life that made you feel alive?
I want grand displays of danglitude from big brass balls.
...
2006. Summer. 2200 hours. I was laying on a holey cot in the middle of the northeastern Afghan desert wearing nothing but running shorts. My M4/M203 is tucked under the piles of clothes I'm using as a pillow. It's hot out and yet quiet fills space like some kind of cool blue-black Jello. The whisper of sand across sand teases my ears. The sudden, menacing buzz of incoming mortar rounds is rather shocking but I don't move. The other SLs/TLs are alert and the first impact sends them into action moving bodies into the crumbling concrete bunkers next to where our trucks are staged. I continue to lay there, rounds pounding the area like God's giant spiteful boogerfinger.
Given my super-sucky life circumstances at the time... my motivation to do basic things (like hide) was shot... my choice was easy. Do absolutely nothing.
I just sighed and said (to myself)
"Fuck it." I just laid there on that creeky old cot staring up at the pinholes-in-God's-blanket stars with my half-naked body spread out to the heavens like a dead man on an operating table.
"Do your worst." Apathy had crawled up in my soul (ass) and started picking out curtains.
Somehow I wasn't afraid. They dropped well over a dozen rounds right on us. Explosions put moon dust all over everybody.
I think about it sometimes and it was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life. Damned if it didn't seem like a good-fine idea at the time.