Hester's Reach

 Many years ago I referred to the "battle" of Hester's Reach. It was my first battle, and like many a battle since, it did not end well. I think I also mentioned my joining Claudell's Marines, which was a bad plan since I don't swim, I sink, but any way to get out of the small town prison I was in that threatened to kill my soul, was a way that I wanted to take. Luckily for me, Claudell's Marines did not require me to pass a swimming test, all they wanted was warm bodies. I met that requirement, and they handed me a weapon, gave me a modicum of training, and said "welcome to the Marines lad." I didn't care where I went just as long as it was away from the small, small town that was in the process of killing me. 

We spent a lot of time "marching" which to me seemed to be just walking from point A to point B for no reason, before our fearless  leader (and soon to be as dead as dead can be) Claudell decided which direction was the best for us. Claudell wasn't a natural public speaker, few of us are, and when he tried to rouse the troops to believe in the latest "cause" he had found for us, he generally  mumbled a few words, and asked his second to do all the real talking. His second was a fellow named Wilson, he was to become a major player in my life, and if I had known what he would eventually wanted to do to my sister, I would have probably contrived to kill him "by accident" in the battle that followed. However, since I can't predict the future and therefore remain poor, I did not shoot or stab Wilson. A decision that I came to semi-regret in the future. Besides, I figure killing the second in command might be frowned upon as treason.

  I was young back then, and dumber than I am now, if that is to believed. I had no idea what was expected of me, and the training in  Claudell's Marines was not of the highest quality. Mostly, it consisted of some older fellow telling me not "to get my fool self killed at the first pass." I took that to heart and resolved to attempt to make the other side have to work a little bit in order to kill me. Peace was not what we wanted, it was bad for business. Luckily for us, there was generally always some local asshole who wanted some other local asshole's land, castle or woman. 

For those uneducated. like I was way back then, a reach is a section of a river. It was not to be the last river that I had to face in my life, but it was the first. I probably should have realized later in life that rivers were not my friend, but I've never been accused of being the swiftest horse in the stable. This river lead to a rather large bay, that lead to some ocean who's name isn't important to the story. The important bit, if there is an important bit, is that it leads somewhere. When the clouds came, and the rain started to fall, it was more of problem for my fellow 'Marines.' One would think that a group called Claudell's Marines would be able to handle a spot of rain, but my comrades melted away like snow under a summer sun.

It was summer, that much I do remember of the terrifying, and terrible disaster that became known to history as the battle of Hester's Reach. Calling it a battle is granting more credit than it deserved, it was more of a massacre. Also, I doubt that history was paying attention. After all it's not like Cluadell was some sort of Alexander the Great conquering Persia. History is funny like that, it doesn't really care too much about your actions until they become world changing, and the battle/massacre of Hester's Reach was far from world changing. Well except for me, the battle of Hester's Reach changed my world in many, many not so good, ways. 

Claudell was a drunk, which isn't a crime, until you give aforementioned drunk control over thousands of men's lives, then it becomes important. Claudell liked Calvados, a particularly strong drink from France. It should have been a clue as to his ability to fight a battle that he was always blasted on Calvaods, but hindsight is 20/20. I suppose it was Wilson who was actually in charge. But like most seconds, Wilson could only offer advice, and it was unlikely that a piss drunk Caudell was in a mood to listen, and at the battle of Hester's Reach, Claudell was in no mood to listen. 

I managed not to die at the battle of Hester's Reach, but it was a close run thing. A lot of fellows I knew did leaves their bones on that watery graveyard. A lot of fine men watered the soil of Hester's Reach, and it was a pity. I said a lot of last goodbyes to comrades who had taught me better, and who deserved better than to die on a battlefield that would soon be lost to history. It was just a petty little battle in the civil war of people who gave no shits about the good men who died at Hester's Reach.  

Looking back on it, I should have never been anywhere close to Hester's Reach. I should have known better and I should have done better. Those are famous last words, luckily for me I survived (barely) Hester's Reach. It was a massacre, it wasn't the last massacre I attended, and it should have taught me more than it did, but the battle of Hester's Reach would be the first, but not the last, in a series of disaters that would eventually define me.

Endings

 "You are not good at endings are you?" I looked up from my attempt at balancing matches on the bar, to the person asking that question with a bit of surprise. "What makes you say that? I've finished/ended several beers just in the last couple of hours, all things considered they were happy endings as well. At least until tomorrow's sun smashes its way into my eyes and makes me want to die." She smirked at that (she is a great one for smirks). "Yes, Shakespeare you've certainly had a fair amount of beer. I expect that it will make you brood as usual." I raised an eyebrow, "who said beer makes me brood?" She replied "I said that, and while I have the floor, I'll say a lot more. Beer makes you brood, whiskey makes you maudlin, and gin makes you angry. These are the three moods of GI. Accept them or not at your leisure, but that's the lot."

I sighed, she made me sigh a lot. She had a point, not that I would give her the satisfaction of telling her, and not that I needed to, she already knew, the bitch. "I thought we were discussing endings, not the three moods of me. Neither of these statements I accept as true by the by." "Oh, we can discuss your poor performance at endings if you wish. I am big fan of discussing your failings, but you'll need to buy me another drink first sailor." I motioned for the barkeep to bring her another drink, nothing like paying the bill to listen to a list of your flaws. She was quite good at pointing out my flaws. I sometimes thought that perhaps that was why she kept coming back, she could never find someone quite as flawed (in her opinion) as me, and she was a master at finding fault. It wasn't exactly her best trait, but you know her best trait didn't require talking.

 "Have I ever told you I hated you?" She let loose another smirk. "No, I don't believe you have. I told you I hated you once, but since you were fucking me at the time, I think it might have been at best a mixed message. Not that you are particularly good at getting messages either across or through." I laughed at that, "have you ever thought maybe it's the not the message that is the important part? Maybe it just the simple words, take for example 'i hate you' not really a deep message there, unless you start to dig. But why would you dig into that? Do you want to know how much, or how deeply someone hates you? Do you want to know why, how, or what for? You want to hear the stories of how they lie awake at night hating you, and devising multiple ways to ruin your life? Or is "I hate you" enough to get the point into your thick skull? Well, not your thick skull my sweet, your skull is as finely formed as the rest of you, which is the tragedy of you. Finely formed, but ..." I trailed off before I finished that sentence it was an old argument of ours, we had several of them, old arguments that is, and it wasn't going to come to an end tonight. After all, I am shit at endings, she wasn't wrong about that, but I'd take that admission to my grave if necessary. 

"Yes, Shakespeare I've heard the stories about my fine form, not that I mind them, they are after all true, but I just figure that maybe you had something else to say for a change. You've no reply to my observation about you being bad at endings?" I took a deep drink of my beer, "perhaps I shall have to brood upon the subject, and get back to you with my findings." She finished her drink, stood up, gathered her things, and on the way out said "well don't brood too long pretty boy, after all I might need to remind you that I hate you in about an hour." She smiled, she was quite pretty when she smiled. "You know the apartment code, and the key will be in its usual spot, don't brood too long lover, but I'll realistic and give you two hours, because I know you'll sit here and wrestle with what I just said about endings for a "couple" of more pints. I can afford to be patient." And with that she swanned out of the bar with all the curse of her curves on display. 

 Watching her swan out of the bar was almost worth paying the tab in and of itself. When she tried, and she was trying, she had a walk that made grown men feel underage. She was aware of my gaze upon her departing form, and she milked it for all it was worth, the bitch. Maybe I should have told her I hated her after all? Though I wasn't exactly sure that I do, which is why I ordered another pint, and decided I had at least an hour to think (I prefer to call it thinking, not brooding thank you very much). Sully in his usual way, came over with another pint, and said "not sure who that one is, but she certainly has a way of making an exit." I nodded as I looked again at the door, "yeah I suppose she does, she comes and goes, but never quite leaves, that is part of the problem of her." Sully just laughed, and said "well you'd know better than me GI, but I am confused as to why you are still here, but then again I've said that about you way too many times over the years."

"Go polish a glass Sully, I'll leave in me own time, and under me own steam as usual, and not before." Sully just nodded and walked away, he wasn't going to say more than he needed to, and in his mind he had said what he needed to. It is what makes him a brilliant bartender. Of course she had a point, I am not good at endings, after all she is walking, talking proof of it. We had wandered into and out of each other's orbits more than once, and it seemed that is how it was going to be. A brief flurry of mutual attention, followed by (sometimes years) of neglect. Like an ancient church that gets a makeover once a decade before beginning to fall back into rack and ruin.

The other main point she had (the bitch) is that she knew all of this, and she knew that the pattern of our "relationship" was not, in fact, ours. She knew that because drunk me had decided one night to tell her that. It was not exactly the brightest idea I have ever had, but drunk me sometimes likes to make things difficult for sober me, the bastard. The point about me being bad at endings was just another broadside in our little war. She knew that endings were not my strong suit, and that there were/are other carbon based life forms of the female variety that were out there in the world. Like ships that have sailed away from port in search of fairer weather, but always knowing the way back just in case of storms. 

She was wrong about one thing, although she would never admit it, or maybe she just didn't remember it. She had told me she hated me more than the one time she mentioned. It was said whilst being fully clothed so the message was decidedly not mixed. It was crystal clear, and said with some force, made all the more pointed by a request to "get the fuck out of my sight." A request that I figured it was in my best interest to grant at the time. It was, at the time, what I considered to be a pretty fair approximation of an ending. I was, eventually wrong, but that is not an uncommon occurrence. 

I wondered what alignment of the stars had brought her wandering back into my orbit? Was she just at loose ends, and knew I would be there, like some human security blanket? Was she actually more fond of me than she let on? Or did she just want to make me her dirty, little secret again? Slumming amongst the proles, while waiting for something classier to come along? Then I realized it really wasn't the time or the place to ponder this particular mystery of the universe. I was never going to solve her for X anyway, and besides my allotted 'brooding' time was at an end. I called Sully over, and said "while as pretty as a peach Sully my man, I've got to go see a man about a horse." Sully smiled, and replied "your tab is paid GI, go give that filly a happy ending." I laughed "Sully my man, you've never said anything more true in your miserable life."

Ancestors

 This project has over the many years it has polluted the interwebs with its content has ancestors. They are long, long dead writers who drive me to do this. It is both an attempt at a homage, and an attempt to try to emulate them that this blog exists. The standards they set are unreasonably high, and someone with as little talent as me has no way of reaching them. It's not my fault that Krudy wrote prefect prose at a rate of 17 pages a day while shit housed. I can't compare to the prose of Joseph Roth who was also piss drunk most of his life, such a famous drunk that there is a hotel in Austria that still has an open tab for him, and he died in 1939. Sure you've got your easy drunks to follow like Hemingway or Dylan Thomas, but their path is just that theirs. Our path, my path is different in spite of my attempts to replicate theirs.

These ancestors, these influences, these literary fathers and grandfathers had their own set of circumstances that allowed them to put pen to paper. This is the 21st century and I have to contend with a lot more distractions, a lot more time sinks than they did, and clearly I am not doing a good job of avoiding them. It is exactly one person's fault. Mine and mine alone. I attempt to walk in their written footsteps the best I can, and I generally fail. I wonder if they had the same issues with writers who came before them, or did they just have the courage of their convictions, and realized they had talent that could not be denied or ignored. 

Several of these ancestors knew each other, some even exchanged letters. One of them would even admit that another one of them was twice the writer he was. Both of them were ten times the writer I am, and I am using the term writer very broadly. My ancestors are like Roman emperors, and how the fuck are you going to compete with fucking Emperors. I am not born or called to the purple. I don't know any actual writers, and given today's version of them, I am not sure that is a bad thing. I want to sit down with the Krudy's the Baudelaire's, the Zweig's of the world and ask them how it works for them. 

How do the words come? Do they pound on your consciousness like the NKVD on a suspected enemy of the state's door at 3 am? Do they slide out of you like a river that can't be damned? Do they have to be pulled like a bad tooth? Or do they just happen like a summer thunderstorm, something that can't be stopped? All of these I have experienced. I have rolled out of bed at 3 am to write something down that wouldn't let me sleep, I have tried to plan stories that makes some sort of logical sense, and I have just sat down drunk and wrote what came to mind. 

I claim the literary ancestor to this blog is Dostoevsky, and back at the start that was true. While he still looms over these pages like a vulture on a telephone wire, I am more and more convinced that he would not approve of where my writing has taken me. He's still there, he's just not on the path I want to tread, I mean for fuck's sake read him, then read me, we have little in comment. He had talent, I don't. But I try, and maybe in that trying I say a few things worth remembering. I certainly hope so, or else why would I be driven back to the keyboard over and over again?

All of this rambling is to say the reason I hesitate to write (other than pure laziness) is the standards I see, I can not meet. And I doubt Krudy had grammar Nazis to contend with, and even if he did, he was too drunk to care. Perhaps drunk is the way to write. Hemingway did tell us to write drunk and edit sober, but who wants to be Hemingway? After all he put a shotgun to his face and blew his brains out. If you were to look closely at the writers I try to emulate you might find a common theme, and it has nothing to do with the written word.

Cobras

 There are a few unpleasant ways to be jolted awake in the morning, having Felix's goons battering your door telling you to "wakey wakey, the boss wants to see you again." is one of them. Nothing quite gets the old pacemaker skipping a beat like a wake up call from Felix. A before breakfast chat with Felix is a way to get you to want to skip breakfast and possibly lunch as well. Another way is the industrial sounds of "progress" being made in our fair city. Someone, somewhere is always building something, and some other bastard is equally enthusiastically tearing something else down, then there are the bastards who live above you that like to teach their pet elephant (they must have a pet elephant, that's the only thing that could be that loud) how to polka at 8 a.m.. These are both shit ways to wake up, and face the day, but today option three was on offer, a gift of my glorious subconscious, and just a little too much gin.

Jolting awake, as the poison the cobras in your dream injected into you finally begins to work its deadly way into your central nervous system, is not a pleasant way to start the day either. You let out a small, girlish whimper and lash out to try to ground yourself into what you hope is the reality that doesn't contain cobras. Granted in this particular iteration of the cobra dream, I had at least killed two of the bastards. The one whose poison was in the process of killing me, and his/her/its partner (do cobras, like cops, have partners? Christ I hope not). It takes a few precious seconds to realize you're not in fact dying of cobra venom, and that you are "safely" in your own bed, and safely is defined very broadly. After all, Felix knows where you live, Felix seems to know everything about you. Sometimes, when you lose your glasses, you wish Felix were around, the son of a bitch would probably know where you left them as well, and what your prescription is. 

This morning's added bonus was as I jolted awake my hand encountered an object in the bed with me that I had no memory of being there when I went to "sleep" (some people, with little imagination and a lot of prudishness might call it passing out). Needless to say, this was almost as scary as the cobras. Had Felix finally planted a dead body in bed with me to pin some murder charge on me to make me dance to his tune? Had I actually killed someone in a drunken rage, as some people think I am prone to? A small grunt from the form next to me at least answered the dead body question. It seemed the body was, in fact, alive. Which I briefly considered a plus, before reconsidering the fact that I had no idea how that 'body' got to be beside me, and to whom it belonged. A quick glance to the left confirmed that yes, there was another (live) body in the bed next to me. Having answered the dead/alive question, I shook my head and began to ponder question two which was who in the actual fuck was this person? 

The glorious and wholly intentional lack of light in my bedroom was not going to be particularly helpful in answering this question, and my desire to "shed a little light on the subject" was not exactly high, so I was left with attempting to push aside the lingering terror of cobras in my mind, and start trying to piece together where I could have obtained aforementioned body. Rejecting the obvious way, which was elbowing said person, and politely inquiring as to their actual identity, I decided to try to think. I try not to think too much, as it generally gives me a headache, but it seemed to be the only unobtrusive way of ascertaining who was gently snoring into my extra pillow. Well short of finding their wallet/purse and rifling through it for their ID card, which would probably work, but they might frown upon. Sadly, it would seem I was stuck relying on my foggy memory, or my addles wits to sort out this person's name, and more importantly how they came to occupy the other side of my generally solo occupancy bed.

The gin was apparently more effective than I had hoped/intended for it fogged the memory and addled the wits (never a particularly hard thing to do in the best of times) to the degree where both were drawing blanks as to the solution to the latest mystery life had thrown in my general direction. I decided to lie there as quietly as any man could that was cursing himself for a drunken, forgetful fool, and hope that when they awoke, they would just fill in the increasingly large blanks that constituted the last 12 hours of my existence. A further, furtive inspection did reveal the person was of the female variety, which I suppose was a small blessing, and was presently in a state of undress that would suggest that perhaps the gap in my memory was even sadder than I thought. It would seem considering my own state of unclothedness that I had forgotten what appeared to be a smashing good time. I didn't even bother to swear off drink, why lie to the gods and yourself first thing in the morning?

As I continue to puzzle out how I was to learn the name of my latest playmate, she made my morning all the more exciting by muttering in her sleep. At first it was gibberish, and I couldn't make out a word of it,but then as she continued to carry on her conversation with whomever she was talking to in her dream. She calmly said "but Mr. Felix, I don't want to." And that, boys and girls is how I met the cute little typist in Felix's office. Some days I prefer the cobras.

To be continued (eventually)