It is the night before I ship for Basic Training.
I'm sitting in my townhouse, totally alone. Nothing but me, a flickering television, a book I'm trying to read, my ruck sack packed with one change of civilian clothes, some toiletries and my enlistment papers, and that's about it.
Earlier today Sgt. Anderson told me to be back at the recruiting station at 0-dark-thirty. I didn't know what that meant, and when I inquired he looked at me like I just asked him what my penis was for, and simply said "4:30 am."
It's already midnight, but I can't sleep. It's funny; my place is totally empty, but I still watch TV in the living room and sleep on the air mattress in the bedroom. I don't know why I don't just put everything in one room. Even when everything totally changes, I still operate in the shadow of my former life.
As I sit there alone in a lawn chair, weird thoughts go through my head. I think back about a book I read in high school, Siddhartha. It's a fictional account of the early life of the Buddha, written by Herman Hesse. The Buddha was a rich and indulgent prince who left everything he had, abandoned his material success , and chose a path of extreme hardship and deprivation, which eventually led him to enlightenment. I can relate to him now, and I feel like I am kinda following that path. In high school, I hated that book. I thought it was nothing more than simplistic crap, written by a failure trying to justify his failures. Of course, I was an idiot 17 year old. It makes a lot more sense to me now.
I am totally leaving the life of comfort that I have built for myself. I am giving up a life of opulence and privilege in order to spend at least the next fours years, and probably longer, bearing almost unthinkable hardship, getting paid virtually no money, all the while putting my very life into harm's way on a regular basis just so I can fill some void I think I have in my soul.
Why did I do this? Why did I give up my life to start over in the Army? Why did I give up potentially millions of dollars a year in income to squeak by on the embarrassingly low wage the army pays its enlisted soldiers? Why did I give up such opulent luxury for such incredible hardship and toil? Why did I give up public accolades for private struggle?
There are many answers, but each one boils down to this: Every morning, when I wake up and look at myself in the mirror, and ask myself the question, "Are you the man you think you are and want to be? How do you know?", I want to be able to respond, "Yes, Nick, you are, and here is the proof."
Right now, I can only say, "I don't know."
The gates of manhood are guarded by the demons of men's souls, and those demons differ for each man. That is the test of manhood; to find what those demons are, and then to slay them. That is the only way the gates can be made to open. My demon is that I am not sure if I am the man I want to be.
You cannot know who you are or what you are capable of until you face adversity. You cannot know the strength of the steel you hold until it strikes something solid. And you cannot know what kind of man you are until you look hardship and difficulty in the eye, face it, and rise to it's challenge. Without that test, you just don't know.
But it's not just that. It's not just about chasing my demons to prove that I'm a man. There is more to it.
You ever sit at your desk at work and think to yourself, "This isn't what I am meant to be; my life is supposed to be somewhere else." I feel like that has been my whole life up to this point.
I liked undergrad and had fun, but the whole time I had a nagging feeling that I was wasting time. I worked on Wall Street after school for a little bit, and didn't have time to think about that. 100 hour work weeks will do that to you. Then I went to B-School, and that feeling came back. It wouldn't go away; sort of like a scab that won't heal because you keep picking at it. The feeling went away for awhile when I met Lauren, but came back quickly. It always came back, no matter what I did to avoid it.
Even though I know I hated my old life and that I am supposed to be doing something else, I am a little nervous because I am not sure that this is what I am meant to do. I think it is, it feels right, but I guess I won't know for sure until I do it. But right now, I do know that for the first time I can remember since high school when I signed my letter of intent to play my college sport, I feel great about the direction my life is heading.
I guess one way to know if I made the right choice is to look at what happened in my life after I made the choice. To wear the decision, as psychologists say.
Let's look at me right now: It is my last night before I start on a drastically new course in my life, and I am totally alone. My family has essentially left me to my fate. My fiancee is irretrievably angry at me. My friends are elsewhere, living their own lives. I wonder what this says about who I've associated with in my life, that no one is here with me right now. That at my moment of deepest meaning, I face my demons alone.
I guess that it tells me that I made the right decision. If I had the life I wanted, then I'd have the sort of people around me who'd stand by me through this. At the very least, the sort of people who would see me on my way. But I don't.
I stayed up all night. I was so anxious to get going I actually walked from my place to the recruiting office. It was pretty fucking far. It was kinda fun though, walking through the city in the crisp January cold for the last time as a civilian. It was the first time I could remember in forever actually enjoying New York.
I flew from New York to Atlanta, where I was to get on a bus that would take me to Columbus, Georgia, where Ft. Benning is located, to begin Basic Training. I don't remember anything from the time I got into the recruiter's car until I got to the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. Nothing. I honestly could not tell you any detail about my trip from NYC to Atlanta. I'm not even sure if I flew out of La Guardia, Kennedy or Newark. I don't know if I had a layover somewhere. The only thing I distinctly remember is that I saw Gallagher in the Atlanta airport. No shit, as I was walking to the recruit assembly point, Gallagher walked by and a bunch of guys got his autograph and talked to him. It was really weird.
Before getting on the plane, we were told to go to a specific point in the Atlanta Airport and given written instructions on how to get there. I lnded and got to the waiting area without any problems, and when I got there I saw a woman who had to be a bulldyke, wearing a sweater with three up and three down and nothing in the middle. Sgt. Anderson did give me some Army intro material, and I studied it thoroughly, so I knew that meant she was a Master Sergeant. She was very nice and patient with everyone.
It was late; about 7pm, and I was one of the first ones to get there. Apparently, she had just put a bunch of recruits on the buses, so it was going to be a while before I got on a bus to Fort Benning. As I watched other recruits come and check in with her, I was almost shocked. It looks like someone threw a bag of ass into the washer and then dumped it out in this waiting area.
For real, these guys are straight out of a Saturday night at a mall parking lot in some medium sized rural southern city. All they needed was a few lowered Honda CRV's, neon uncarriages, bad car stereos and skanky women hanging off them to make the picture complete. These idiots are all milling around, talking loudly to each other about how cool they are or bragging about whatever the hell it is they think is important, dressed like goddamn morons. I mean, I love rap music, but I'm not Ludacris so I don't try to pull off a FUBU jersey, and neither should that 5'7" 120lb white doofus with red hair and buck teeth.
I can't stop thinking to myself--Are these the other recruits? What kind of fucking Army am I going into? The Wigger Nation?
I just read my book and ignore everyone. These can't the guys I am enlisting with. They must be going to non-combat MOS's [Military Occupational Specialties, the term the Army uses for a job is MOS]. I know I am going into SF and those guys are serious operators, much better than standard infantry, so there a little disparity is to be expected between who I go to Basic with and who I end up serving with, but still--there is no way these fucking scrubs could serve in a legitimate mainline infantry unit.
At about 10pm she divided us up into BCT and OSUT groups. BCT is Basic Combat Training. They are the ones who are going into non-infantry, non-combat MOS's, and are only at Ft. Benning for 8 weeks. They train totally separately from the infantry. OSUT is One Station Unified Training, meaning that you do your Basic Combat Training and the specific school for your particular MOS together. When you go into a combat MOS, like the infantry, you go to OSUT at Ft. Benning and spend 14 weeks there and get both schools done at once.
Much to my shock, about 90% of the tools in the waiting area are going with me to OSUT infantry training. For real, I am having problems describing the average quality of these characters. It looked like a line at a soup kitchen. If you saw most of these guys on the street, you'd cross to the other side, if for no other reason than to avoid the smell. Wanna be thugs, broke ass gangsters, redneck retards, homeless street urchins--every major sub group of social misfit has representation here. I am dressed in a white t-shirt, khaki pants, and shoes, and I almost feel like I am overdressed.
They load us onto a Greyhound-type bus and we started the two hour drive to Columbus, Georgia, home of Fort Benning.
I am sitting next to some lanky kid who couldn't stop shaking. I try to tell him to relax, but he doesn't pay attention to me and just keeps shaking. They play a movie on the bus. I couldn't tell you what it was. I think I may have dozed off for a second, but I distinctly remember the bus stopping at the gate to Ft. Benning.
It was about midnight by the time we got there. We pulled up to a side gate, which kinda surprised me. It's not like I expected a 60 piece brass band to be waiting for us, but I thought we'd at least come in the front.
There was a humvee parked next to a tent beside the gate. It was bitter fucking cold outside, and a female soldier came out of the tent, wrapped in a fatigue blanket with an M-16 on her back. I catch myself thinking, "It is way to cold to have to pull this bullshit guard duty. What a shitty job." Then I realize I am on this bus to get trained to basically do her job or some variation of it. That was kinda sobering.
She talked to the driver for a second, then opened the gate.
Ft. Benning isn't like the Army bases you see in the movies. It is big and spread out, and of course really dark since it was midnight. All I saw as we meandered through the base was open soccer fields and plain looking buildings.
We drove for about three minutes. As the bus pulled into the parking lot in front of a non-descript brick building, I see a man standing in the middle of the parking lot, hands on his hips, in pressed fatigues, shiny black boots and a Drill Sergeant hat.
He looks real pissed off.
Posted by Rudius Media at 4:27 PM