The Elite of the Dammed

F. Scott Fitzgerald is credited with saying, “in America there are no second acts” I am almost apt to agree to such an assertion. For me act one begins on a train from Mechanicsburg.

I had just spent the weekend at the military barracks running over basic maneuvers and choosing studying fields as I attempted for the second time to enter the military.

It was under a mauve sky I was returning to Philadelphia over-turning events in my head trying to make sense of the decisions I was making. It was April of 2001 and I had been given a leave date of February 2002. It struck me as very odd and disappointing to be given a date ten months in advance as I was all ready to leave the life I had known these last several years.

It was a boozy mixture of disgust and discontent at myself for the life and choices I had wasted. A short list that contributed to this dramatic conclusion is: I had grown out of my first love; I had taken bad advice on leaving my studies for the secure job world of the post office. For several years now this included the complete depletion of regular intervals of sleep and the realization that I was dependent on this income to live for without it I was only a high school graduate with qualifications of a day laborer. For all my seven years within the postal organization the most dreaded question I could have ever been asked by a total stranger is “what do you do for a living?”

For me it was the outwards admittance to a lack of drive. I had been lulled into one of the cogs of the giant machinery that is a government job.

Troubles never come singularly. So one day in the midst of this absence of direction and love I decided to join the military. In my decision I thought I would again attempt studies and live a cleaner more respectful life. The life I had in Philadelphia was only a fractured shell, a close trio of friendships, which became ruined by drinking, drugs and paranoia. Women were scarce and largely best avoided rather than deal with the striking blow of rejection. Life was so lost and useless during this time I took my meals alone I went for drinks alone. I hardly existed to the outside world except for family. How I arrived at such a monastery condition can be explained elsewhere but from this high perch of solitude I made this decision that the military was the correct path.

So with nothing to do I decided to just work and sit around for the next ten months and read and drink. My closest friend had left for a fresh start on the left coast so I knew I had plenty of time to myself. It was a good feeling. I sunk into the seat of the train and let my mind wonder in a few months I would not have this leisure.

When the conductor collected my ticket he asked me if I came from the military barracks and I answered yes and that the Air Force was the branch which I had joined. I noticed two elderly women smiling in my direction. A small lump of respect welled within me as I was pleased in that fleeting moment.

Life had an order, a plan. I did not think love is what a person needs the most. What people needed most is success or a sense of accomplishment to give themselves meaning, an ability to look into the mirror and deep into their own eyes and be able to stand what stares back.

I arrived back into Philadelphia and kept my decision under wraps for awhile. I was riding the crest of making a powerful decision albeit one that would not go into effect for ten months. I remembered when I asked the Sergeant whom I had spoken to about my chosen assignment why was there such a long time to wait to leave he told me, “It is the next time we have an opening for that particular field.”

My mother was upset and of course was worried about the possibility of a war breaking out and I laughed it off. Outside of smaller skirmishes in Bosnia and Desert Storm the US has not had any major wars since Vietnam. I took off for two weeks at the end of August around my birthday and decided to take another drive across country. Another beautiful view of the vistas of America mixed with great wondering and loneliness as I made the trip again alone. The trip made its halfway mark at my favorite city, San Francisco. I remember waking up on the morning of September 11th and I could not figure out why the streets were so desolate. I refused to carry a cell phone so I was cut off from anyone I knew by 3, 500 miles. I finally found a pizza place open that also served beer (Pabst my favorite) on tap.

It was eerie as I found out the events that had unfolded a few hours earlier. What was also strange is the woman who owned the store look strangely like my mother even down to her hair color and cut and she kept playing The Beatles who were my mother’s favorite. As she continuously kept filling my beers I tried to explain out loud to both her and myself that I guess I am going to war in a few short months. The world had changed and so was my life about to. Sitting there hearing those songs and remembering dam near twenty years before the same songs as my mother, than young, playing her records and singing every word as I viewed collapsing towers in New York and learned who Osama Bin Laden was it was a strange juxtaposition of memories and future uncertainty. I wanted to reach out to this woman behind the counter or to my mother but I could not. Words formed in my head but the ability to utter coherently had ceased. I left the pizzeria drunk not even from beer but in a daze realizing now that these decisions were going to carry serious weight.

It was a sobering and isolated journey back home and the empty crimson skies of Kansas seemed to mirror my mind and when I finally drove into Philadelphia instead of going home first I drove downtown into Old City on a Friday night looking for familiar faces to get drunk with and forget the colossal mistake of joining the military. I had made yet another asinine decision I had committed four years of my life to something I personally had no conviction for it was all just because I was bored.

I am at the light at Third and Market and who walks directly in front of my car my old best friend who I had not seen and as far as I knew was living in Los Angeles for the last nine months. I beep the horn and he jumps in and that night dissolves into an inebriated catching up topped with sobering realities of both of our lives and the choices we were so blindly taking.

I was still a few months away from leaving for basic training in San Antonio and I was still checking in with the recruiter who was very flirtatious and I remember her telling me onetime in the middle of a conversation, “you know even though you were sworn in Mechanicsburg it is not until you get to San Antonio and are sworn in that if you try to leave you will be arrested for AWOL but I know that with you I will not have to worry.” We both laughed it off.

Life continued back at work at the Post Office getting up at 2:30 in the morning for work and everyone asking me “the military has not called you up sooner now that they are at war.” I was sick of the question and mixed with fear, regret and exhilaration at the idea of going to war but it was only October.

Halloween night I call my friend up and we meet downtown to go out and we wind up with a mutual friend who use to sing with a wretched local hardcore band who was infamous for their Halloween show. Despite the fact that I hate that music and that band we went anyway for something to do. So often my life has been lead by decisions made out of boredom. We are standing at the bar my friend and I just talking drinking a beer and commiserating over the awful sounds screeching through the speakers when up approaches this women who starts talking to me. I have very little interest in women at this point because I am not going to get involved with anyone with leaving in a few months.

Once again another night blackout drunk and I wake up next to this girl in the morning whose name I cannot even remember in a strange apartment and my car…...?

What little I do remember is the self depreciating yet refreshingly honest thing she said to me before I left, “You probably will not like me because I am a nerd.” That sentence instantly struck me as sweet and vulnerable I liked her immediately. We made plans to meet again another time and I called out of work and went home and slept off another long night.

A few days later “accidently” on purpose I bumped into her on the street near her work and I was walked her to Macys to get Chap Stick I discovered that she was running late to meet a guy she had been seeing. She also asked to borrow a dollar as she was a little short on money. I went home dejected but also realized I would have to tell her if things moved along that I was leaving in a little over three months.

Eventually I saw her again and again until it became an almost daily occurrence and one night feeling guilty I explained to her that I was due to leave for the military in little more than a month. She cried and cried and I was a bit taken aback as I knew she had been seeing someone else and she explained to me that she had stopped. She looked up at me with these big sad beautifully deep set green eyes and in the most earnest voice I had ever heard she said, “You cannot go.”

I told her I had already committed and there was nothing I could do and she insisted there had to be a way. Her cousin and husband came over one night and he explained to me as someone who served four years in the navy and was now stuck with two years in the reserves that you cannot get an education while you are in the military that they run you from morning until night six sometimes seven days a week. Again my mind was a swirl with ideas and the big day approaching.

Meanwhile this woman was a wreck over me. Sometimes she would burst out crying publicly and tell me how she knew the military was the wrong idea. One night I was trying to console her as she went through another bout and for some reason I remember saying, “I would only stay if I got married or something very serious.” I had never thought about it up to that point nor was I in love. I was enamored with this woman who was the only adult I had ever met who still somehow had her childlike innocence intact.

February 9th I am out drinking with, against the odds, my girlfriend and my best friend and also my girlfriend’s best friend. We are at a bar called New Wave and in our drunken exuberance decide to head to Philadelphia International to catch a plane going out to somewhere. My friend is trying to talk up Vegas on the way so we decide we will look to see when the next flight leaves. In the airport all the flights for Vegas had left and the only place left is the Bahamas at 1500 a ticket. As were walking back out of the airport to the parking terminal I say off handedly to my friend, “If we would have went to Las Vegas someone would have wound up married.” He laughed and responded, “It would have to be you to since you’re together.” I looked at my girlfriend and said, “Well I would have would you?” With a big smile she says “yes.”

The next morning we wake up it’s early on a cold Sunday. She mentions last night,

“Did you mean what you said?”

“Yeah,” not really believing the words that left my lips.

“Because if you wanted to we could.”

“I really don’t have the money for a ring or plane tickets.”

She walks out into the living room and I follow her and she goes into a safe and pulls out a Black Amex card.

“This card has a 10,000 dollar limit if you really want to.”

I had about 45 seconds to make up mind and I thought what the recruiter had said to me and then I thought of the risks either way both meant my life but running away to Las Vegas seemed like less of a chance that I would die.
“Let’s do it.”

With a big grin she responds, “But let’s do it all today.” We look on the internet to discover you can get married around the clock and all you need to do is register with city hall with valid identification in Las Vegas.

I went to the shower a ball of nerves my head spinning from last night’s alcohol and another huge life decision I put only a few minutes thought into. Fuck it I said to myself if worse comes to worse we walk away from each other. She comes into the shower to tell me the tickets are booked and next we need rings.

It is Sunday so jeweler’s row is closed and we head over in Liberty Plaza where a jeweler just happens to be open on a Sunday afternoon. We actually find the perfect rings. When we get back to her house she shows me a picture ripped out of a magazine she had saved that was her ideal and the picture and what was in this jewelry box matched perfect. I get down on my knee in her living room and I ask her to be my wife. We kiss and she packs as next we need to drive out to my house for my things.

We fly out to Vegas and hop in a cab and head right to city hall. We register and hop back in a cab across town to Circus Circus where she has oddly picked to get married. My mind is numb from shock from the series of events that is honestly too much to process at once and now I am standing in the lobby of the Circus Circus amongst middle school cheerleaders from Compton practicing cheers for a competition in the morning.

The Circus Circus is booked.

Back into a cab and at his suggestion we try the Little White Chapel of Las Vegas. We go in and are seen right away by a minister playing organ music through an old boom box and at 11:59 on February 10th I became a married man.

For some strange extravagant reason we wind up at the Bellagio where we explained to everyone as we are still in shock that we are husband and wife and they put us up in a corner suite that overlooks the strip. The room is all windows and to the right looks directly out over the strip and to the left looks out over miles a desert and the moon shines down with indifference and the stars sparkle and fade into coming morning.

And thus, F. Scott begins act two.