“Everyone comes back.”
“Not me.”
* * *
—
Driving back to my apartment, I could feel myself nearing rock bottom. This city had lost its soul, and it was starting to take mine with it. I’d just spent twelve hours with a bunch of people who were existing, bouncing from one stimulus to the next, with no intention and nothing to show for it. On top of that, I was now headed home to a girlfriend I actively disliked and had not been getting along with for at least a year. This was not me. I am a workhorse. I act with purpose. I don’t do…whatever the fuck it is I just did up there in the hills. At least not for a paycheck or to prove myself to anyone. I did not recognize this version of myself.
And that was the most frightening aspect of it all. When you’ve lost track of the person you were proud to be for all those years, who cares what happens to whatever is left in his place? He could go crazy, he could go nowhere, he could go to hell. What’s the difference? I spent five tours dedicated to killing bad guys, and now the baddest guy of all was the voice in the head of the person looking back at me in the rearview mirror. When I pulled into my parking spot at the apartment complex, I couldn’t move. I sat there in my car for an hour and a half, trying to figure out what to do. Finally, I pulled out my phone and called my dad.
“Dad, is that studio you rent out available? I’ve got to get the fuck out of this place.”
He could sense the urgency in my voice. “It’s rented, but I’ll get them out by the end of the month. Until then, I’ll have a bed ready for you. Come on home.”
That’s all I needed to hear. I jumped out of my truck, walked into my apartment, broke up with Awful Person, packed up all my shit, and hit the 101 Freeway up to Santa Barbara.
It was an important step, but I knew it was only the first one of many. I didn’t just need to get out of Los Angeles, I needed to get out of California, out of this funk. It was time to find some purpose in my life. To find something that would remind me of who I was again.
Chapter 14
When Life Gives You an Ox, Make Oxen
Back in Santa Barbara, my days were smooth and easy, if a little monotonous. My nights, however, were the exact opposite. I was still going out with friends and getting obliterated, but for the first time since leaving the Army, I was getting into bar fights again. I never started any of them—even back at Fort Lewis—and I always tried to defuse situations with my words. I would go so far as to buy shots for the guy or guys causing the problem in an attempt to be the peacemaker. But I was equally clear with myself where my line was and that if it was crossed, people were getting punched.
In recent weeks, that line seemed to be moving closer and closer in. There were fewer whiskey shots and more kidney shots. I was putting as many good dudes into taxis as I was putting dickheads into hospitals. To be fair, beach towns like Santa Barbara and San Diego breed a particular kind of drunk douchebro who knows exactly which buttons to push to get his fucking ass beat.
One night, this young kid was just absolutely Kiefer Sutherland drunk, and he was talking an endless stream of shit to me and my friends. I can handle shit-talking, even the kind that doesn’t stop. You just smile, nod, and ignore. Basically you treat them like they’re your parents. The problem was, this kid hated to be ignored, so when he realized that his antics weren’t getting a rise out of any of us, he started putting hands on people, which was well across my personal line. I have no clear memory of how we got outside, since I had found my way to the bottom of a Jameson bottle by that point, but what I do remember was this kid rushing me with his head down, me putting him into a Muay Thai clinch and kneeing his face into oblivion, then his head bouncing off the sidewalk like one of those Bozo the Clown inflatable punching bags. How that kid was not dead and I am not in jail right now is a legitimate miracle. I would thank God for my luck if I wasn’t at least 50 percent sure that the real reason this kid didn’t sustain a life-changing TBI was that he didn’t actually have a B to I.
At the same time, I started dreaming of being back overseas, at war. Once I’d get home from the bar and pass out, my subconscious mind devoted night after night to churning through my past experiences, reliving them—not as nightmares but as fantasies. The dreams were as exhilarating as they were disturbing, quickly escalating in frequency and intensity.
Then one day I got a call from my old Ranger buddy Trey Bullock. Trey was one of the guys who had gotten out of the Army right around the time I did and went straight into private contracting work. He’d just returned stateside from being deployed and was calling to check in. I told him everything that was going on with me and he suggested that I reach out to the subcontracting outfit that was employing him. He said that if I wanted, he could help streamline the processing of a new security clearance so I could enroll in their qualification course in time for their next contract.
It was the best news I’d heard in nearly two years. This was the solution to everything I’d been missing and everything I was struggling to deal with. I’d avoided this immediately after getting out of the Army, but now I was ready. I’d have a place to put all this furious emotional energy. I’d be back with a team. And I’d be back doing something I was really good at, back being a part of something with meaning.
The million-dollar question was: Did I still have it?
* * *
—
The list of requirements you have to meet before you can even apply for a contracting position with the ████ is, to paraphrase the great Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, “long and distinguished.” You need to be a combat veteran; you need to have served in a Special Operations unit; you need to be able to obtain a specific level of clearance…the list goes on. As a result, the selection criteria, if you’ve been allowed to apply, are oriented primarily toward the attributes of guys who had been “operators” for some period of time: physical fitness, marksmanship, close quarters combat, that kind of thing. Although drunken nights that ended at In-N-Out Burger were a regular part of my stint as a private security manny, I made sure I was in animal-style shape by the time I applied to the program and was allowed to go through my qualification course on the East Coast.
Selection starts with a PT test that consists of a mile-long run, followed by a 100-meter 200-pound dummy drag, and finishes with another three-quarter-mile run. All of this you have to complete in less than thirteen minutes. I could sit here and articulate why you should think I’m an awesome badass because I met some sort of physical standard to be a ███████████████, but in reality, like everything in life, success starts with not being a pussy. Put one foot in front of the other, recognize that no matter what, all adversity will end at some point, and then smile to the poor son-of-a-bitch who is struggling worse than you when you pass him on the way to the finish line.