Non Fiction Pt. 4

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Ah, the stories just keep coming. There are a lot more tales to be told as life unfolds. Enjoy!



I sit here on the couch drinking an afternoon coffee reflecting on the couple weeks in Europe. I love Europe and have been over the Atlantic Ocean numerous times with various airlines over the decades. I have managed not to collect a single frequent flyer mile with any of the airlines and am glad I never did. The plane tickets were nominally cheaper than usual, $900 each from Chicago O’Hare to Stockholm Arlanda.  The seats seemed smaller and not much different over the decades except for the screen in the head rest that allows passengers to play video games and watch movies in flight. It helps kill the time on a nine hour flight. Drinks are not free in economy class anymore and no more free suitcases. In the last 30 years the airlines have milked every last dime out of the passengers after they fight over the lowest online fare. It made no difference to anyone as our destinations; Stockholm, Paris and Rome were swamped with tourists. The 100 degree heat wave that hit Europe during our stay held no one back. It was the hottest I can ever remember in Europe, however. The airports, the streets, the sites, the trains all crowded past capacity. The Colosseum, Versailles, The Roman Forum and the top of the Eiffel Tower were all tickets sold only online and all sold out. 

When we touched down at Arlanda in Stockholm we skipped past the baggage claim and moved relatively quickly down to the the new Arlanda Express, the new train that goes straight to T-Centralen in downtown Stockholm in 18 minutes. The electric train gets up to 200 kph / 120 mph. It is not as fast as some of the other European trains but much nicer and faster than the diesel powered Amtrak dinosaurs America still uses. The gasoline across Europe was $2 a liter which is over $7 a gallon. A little hide and seek in Gamla Stan at first but we eventually found our tiny loft Airbnb on NyaStorgatan. It was just big enough for the necessities but a perfect location. Our host came to check up on us and told us that there were a lot of problems with prostitution in some of their rentals. There is an American black rapper that comes from time to time and is known for the stains on the sheets. We were not him and the guy bailed out as my old buddy Johan arrived. He scored some hash and gave me a few grams. It was pretty good blonde hash. We just don’t have that in America but is a personal favorite. We stepped out into Stortorget for a dinner in an outdoor cafe amongst the tourists. It was good to see Johan and seemed to be doing well, as most Swedes are. He had to work in the morning so it was a short night and we had a plane to catch in the morning.

I got a deal on the plane flights for the week in Paris, Rome and then back to Stockholm for $250 each. We got in to Paris around midnight to find a massive line of maybe a hundred people or more waiting in the designated line for cabs. We took a chance on a guy who said he could take us without waiting in line. The guy drove us to our apartment in the Montmartre neighborhood. All the buildings in Paris are the off-white color, six or seven stories tall and with the various blues tones on the roofs. The various rues become indistinguishable from each other to foreigners leaving the masses to follow street signs and smart phones throughout the centuries old city. We stayed in a one bedroom flat on the fourth floor on Rue D’Orsel.  Montmartre sits up on a hill and is a good walk for those not familiar with the cobblestone pounding of old European cities. The bells of St. Jean of Montmartre rang loudly throughout the day as they have for decades. I would suspect a good portion of Montmartre has been turned over to Airbnb rentals from the crowds in the streets. There were no curtains on the windows or air conditioning in the one bedroom apartment.Just windows that opened up to streets below. It seemed like a good perch until the following day when the temperature soared to 100 degrees on my watch. We walked around the crowded streets roaming in to random museums, stores, cafes and churches. The stained glass of Sainte Chapelle was probably the most impressive. There was a warm few hours in the little apartment just trying to find shade with little to be found. The night brought the much needed rain and cooled off the following day. We went through the busy Museum D’Orsay early in the morning and saw the masterpieces. We wanted to get away from the crowd and heat and descended into the subway station trying to find our connecting train. We settled on pizza after eventually finding our way back to Montmartre. We took a boat ride up and down the Seine river the following day and that was a fantastic way to see Paris. We made it half way up the Eiffel Tower after a few hours waiting and walked down the stairs to the bottom. It took about 11 minutes. We had some confectionaries at the popular Pain Pain bakery that was across the street from our rental. We had an early morning flight out of Paris to Rome and we were on a plane early in the morning. 

In Rome our driver was half an hour late to pick us up. He said his car broke down and he had to pick up the mechanic and make a couple laps around the airport in search of something for 15 minutes. His English was good enough and he eventually landed us at our destination behind the Vatican. We were on the top floor of a six story apartment building. We had air conditioning in a one bedroom apartment and a rooftop patio that was higher than all the other patios in the area except one. Our patio looked right at the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. We spent a couple days seeing what sites we could. Like Paris, Rome was packed with tourists. We walked throughout the Vatican and even went to mass with the Pope. The pope holds has almost every Wednesday if he is in town. The mass was in Italian, Latin, German, French, English and I think Polish. Francis is getting pretty old though. I would not be surprised if he steps down instead of dies as Pope. We found this legal weed store, Mama Mary, that sold some pot that had no THC in it that was actually very stony. Not sure how that happened but it was a pleasant surprise as it looked pretty lame at the counter. I lost my wallet somewhere around the Pantheon with all my credit cards and about $300 in cash. The shorts had a large hole in the pocket and I suspect it fell out of my pocket and not a pick pocket.  The Italian police took a report and told us they usually just take the cash and throw the rest in the garbage if someone finds it or it was stolen. We ate some great pizza in a cafe for lunch and headed towards Colosseum and Forum. We walked around the outside and then further on in the heat. We took a cab  home to do the laundry in the sink. We walked a few blocks and shopped at a local Carreforre grocery store. Excellent store with a couple smoked hog legs on the counter they shaved in the store to make prosciutto. They had a large selection of $20 wine or less. Rome is undeniable alive and beautiful and somewhere everyone should see. The bustling old city becomes eerily silent at night as we could hear all sounds echoing off the walls in the streets below. However, once the sun rose the crowds in Rome were an unwelcome annoyance. We jumped on a train for Anzio to jump in the Mediterranean Sea for a swim. We were almost completely alone as we walked around an empty beach town. We swam at a place called Lido Garda and then walked to a Beachhead Museum that was to honor the WW2 landing where my grandfather came ashore in WW2. It was closed. We retreated back to our air conditioned apartment in Rome.  I made some ravioli that we bought at the store and went to bed early as we had to catch an early morning flight back to Stockholm.  When we got back to Stockholm we jumped on the Arlanda Express again and met my friends Rickard and Anna. I have known Rickard since 1992 but had not seen him in 16 years. It was a great reunion and it felt like a lot less time had actually passed. FaceTime video conferencing is about as close as it gets to being there. We had lunch outdoors down near Slussen and then walked thee harbor and over around by Strandvagen for a couple drinks. We took the train and a bus to Eneby where Rickard’s sister Annika let us stay at her home. I had visited this home the last time I was there and it looked identical except Cliff had died a few years ago. He was the guy that sailed from Stockholm to Venezuela and back with Annika, 18 years his junior, and a cat. He met her when he was 40 and she was 18. She stayed with him until he passed in his mid 70’s. It was veery generous of her to allow us to stay in her home while she was out. I could easily live in Sweden again. My Swedish is pretty good and I used it frequently in Stockholm. The Swedes have a very high standard of living and take care of their environment and people.The city is clean with no homeless on the streets we saw.  I did notice the people were a little fatter than before and the mixed races that have been allowed in to the country over the last few years do not fit in well and are seen mostly among themselves. I went swimming in a clear and cold lake in Eneby. The beaches and parks used to be dotted with topless women and naked children. Today? Not so much. I suspect the camera phone put an end to those days. We spent a day walking around Vaxholm and enjoyed another lake cruise on Maleren to Drottningholm. We spent a lot of time talking and catching up on life over the years. Rickard and Anna are old and dear friends. They might come to the US next year. We will see. It was a great trip.     
   

  

 

Hey, it is Sunday! Time for church. Not saying I wouldn’t attend a funeral or a wedding in a church. Of course, I like traditions, the music, the art , the architecture. The gospel? Not so much. Hmmmm….If I were considering joining a religion, and I am not, I would probably be Catholic. Last summer was the third time I have been in the Vatican in Rome, Italy. I do love the architecture of the Vatican, the art and some of the traditions and customs. The other religions just don’t have this. Every Wednesday the Pope speaks to the people outside the Vatican and we heard him speak and ride around through the crowd in the Pope Mobile. The physical beauty of the Vatican is an amazing testament to the spirit of mankind itself. The idea of baptism, catechism, confessions and the categorizing of sins is all pretty interesting also. It is kind of like valuable guidance and therapy, but not really. These tales amount to little more than Santa Claus. Regurgitated stories throughout time that initially started around the astrological signs that dictated when seasons changed and crops would grow. The constellations were anthropomorphized into figures that lived int he heavens and dictated the sun rise and sun set. It measured the seasons, the crops and fertility. These figures then took lives of their own through word of a mouth. The stories were changed, plagiarized and eliminated by mostly illiterate people for centuries. Once the written word was created religion was slowly consolidated into sacred books that were then pumped as the words of the divine master up in the sky. This guy has no other measurable skill sets other than he was touched by the supreme being and he is the holy translator? Give me a break.
 

To confess to a priest?  
“Forgive me father for I have sinned.”
“When was your last confession?”
“Never, actually. This might take awhile. I got a list of venal sins here the size of a phone book I wanted to get off my chest.”
“Jasa, give me a break, son. I am a busy man. How about the top 10?”
“So, if I do tell ya, this means I am good to go?”
“Ummmm…..yeah, sure. You know where you are going, right?”
“The end of the rainbow?”
 

I think it is kind of cool for people to get stuff off their chest. A priest or pastor is not a trained psychologist nor a clinician. He is member of the clergy. The idea is the same in general though. I remember group therapy decades ago as a teen. One person would start out telling some sad story but was glad to be in the group. Then the next person would chime in and their story would be either better or worse. As the stories went around you tried to tell who the people were that were liars and geeks that were just looking for attention from those who were truly fucked. And, some of the others you actually felt sorry for. Still, others it was more like, “What in the fuck are you doing here? Get a grip. Your issues are petty. Get the hell out of here.” I suspect this what the priest thinks after hearing tons of confessions that amount to competition with soap operas and cable TV Jesus rammers. The priest has a pretty good pulse on what his parishioners are up to via confessions. Odd, this was used as a way to cherry pick the susceptible and credulous into sex acts. Just Google the words Pastor Sex or Priest Sex. Page after page of guys who are sexually abusing the women and kids under the guise of their religious bullshit.
 

Most of the modern religions are a bunch of bullshit that amount to little more than fiction in my opinion. If you think you have a personal relationship with someone who does not exist it is called an imaginary friend. I am just trying to help. It is not just Christianity either. Slowly, but surely, we, the human race, will move past the current popular religious characters like Jesus, Buddha and Allah and their goofy stories, miracles and prophecies. They will be supplanted by the next more plausible explanation of how we got here and what we are supposed to be doing while we are here on earth. People often forget about the mythical Greek, Egyptian and Roman gods that preceded the stories of the Bible, Talmud and Quroan. Why don’t we believe in those ancient mythologies anymore? Simple, they were proven false and people got smarter in general. The world is not flat. There are no sea dragons in the ocean. Man does not walk on water. There are no virgins waiting for you in the after life, burning bushes don’y speak and human sacrifice is not really going to help the tribe much. The good news is the number one growing religion in America though is no religious preference.
 

However, in all fairness, by far and away the most influential person in my life has been my Catholic step father. This is fact. His capacity for affection, his love for family and his commitment to do the right thing is admirable. I have always respected his opinion and listened to it. We don’t always agree but that is totally fine. We had lunch the other day and we spoke a bit about some of the issues that have transpired within our family. The family has suffered greatly over a few events that happened a few years ago. My dad noticed my lingering anger regarding a few of the events. I made it quite clear why I feel the way I do about how some of these events have transpired. He listened patiently and was engaging as he always has been. When I laid out my case of why I feel the way I do my dad asked me to consider forgiveness.
 

The fact of the matter, my dad is correct. I remember speaking to my grandma before she died and she told me she regretted that she always held a grudge. My mother had no relationship with her mother later in life and could never forgive her for some of the drama from her upbringing. I do think my maternal grandmother was a bullshitter and my mom was justified in cutting off communication if she was not going to come clean. However, my mother’s inability to process and deal with the drama had a detrimental effect on every subsequent relationship she had including with my brother and I. The inability to forgive her own mother not only limited her ability to find solutions that could bring her peace of mind, it prohibited her from developing into a healthy and happy woman, lover, wife or mother. I have to admit that I too am guilty of holding a grudge and it has limited my ability to manage some family relationships. I may be justified in why I feel the way I do but to expect great play out of mediocre players? That is the coach’s fault.
 

I was reading something that made sense one early morning when I was in Rome last year. I was actually looking at the Vatican from our rooftop perch for my morning coffee. The article was about forgiveness and it said, “Forgive people even if they do not deserve it. It is the only way you will find peace.” When I do think of the relationships that I would like to see improved upon I need to be able to get past the issues I have with them. The incidents that have occurred cannot unhappen and the comments and actions can’t be taken back. It is much easier for most to see fault in others than themselves. I am not immune to this. However, the frustration I have had with myself regarding previous mistakes, fumbles, failures and troubles needed to be addressed as well. It has been a difficult conclusion to come to but I need to forgive myself for some of these episodes in my life. I am not perfect and neither is anyone else. There is no need to contact the people I have had an issue with in life and let them know of their new forgiven status in my book. Many of them may feel different about our interaction and that is fine too. But I have to move on with life and forgive those who failed, fumbled and made mistakes on my watch. Sorry seems to be the hardest words. However, if we had a falling out, and you are reading this, I want you to know I am. I wish things could have or would have worked out. They did not. Neither one of us are perfect and I apologize if my actions or words harmed you. I am a work in progress. I am a durable guy. I will get over it or already have. Hopefully, this step will deliver the intended results for you as well.
 

Going forward…I think I have found a new modern philosophy that is pretty compelling and answers a lot of questions about happiness and life’s mission. It is called Ikigai and there are several references on the internet and I encourage anyone reading this to look into it. It is a strange name but pretty interesting. If you look at your life through the lens of a simple circle in four parts of your life. Those parts are; what you are good at, what people need, what makes you happy and how you can get paid. If you look at your life and where you are going this simple advice may offer some guidance. It has helped me a lot. In retrospect, when I look at previous episodes in my life I can see through this lens how there were both failures and successes. As I I try and chart the future I do keep this in concept in my head when I am evaluating the next steps….or at least I try to. I wish you the best. 

Over the years I have looked into a variety of different religions, piliosophies, thinkers and concepts in search of enlightenment. It always gets back to why am I here and what am I supposed to be doing while I am here? How do I find the most satisfaction out of the life I have while being able to offer my best in return. For me, most of the organized religions are garbage. One by one they have all been proven to be more mythological than historically accurate. Infiltrated with fabrications, embellishments and what amounts to straight up ridiculous. The myriad references have created the number one growing religion in America; none at all. Spiritual but not religious. It is a polite way of saying, “I don’t believe all the Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Taoist or Jewish bullshit artists posing as the sacred shaman, translator, anointed one, grand poo bah or whatever.” It just sounds less offending to the religious folks. One by one over the centuries all the old religions have been shed for the next common belief systems to answer the same questions; why are we here and what are we supposed to be doing here on the planet? The rest gets down to money, power and sex pretty quick.
 

Recently I stumbled across a concept that is only a few decades old; Ikigai. A goofy name for a concept I do find valuable in helping me find more satisfaction with choices I make regarding why I am here and what I am supposed to be doing. The concept was developed by Japanese author Miko Kamiya in the 1970’s The Meaning of Life; Ikigai. It asks you to think about what is the purpose of your life and are you faithful to that mission? Life is full of distractions and it is easy to procrastinate, deny, be credulous or intellectually unstimulated in today’s world. If your life is in the doldrums or you are not getting what you want out of your current outlook I would tell you to take a look at Ikigai and see if it may help you find another way of looking at things.
 

What is it? There are several references out there on the internet but basically imagine a a circle with four equal parts in circumference. These four parts are labeled; 1. What you are good at. 2. What the world needs. 3. How you can get paid 4. What you love. It is as simple as that. To find the maximum utility or satisfaction in your life’s mission or purpose try and focus through this lens. As I look retrospectively at a variety of different episodes in my past I can see how utilizing this strategy probably would have yielded better results too. As a young guy I thought all of my problems would be solved simply by making money. If you have money you get respect from those with less and the ability to make choices. Without money? Your choices are made for you and few respect you. But to assume all people with money are satisfied with he lives they leads is also misguided. Chronic poor decision making, insecurities, addictions, poor health, character flaws and personality disorders are not reserved for only the working man I can testify to. However, in general, the freedom to make choices and the liberties and luxuries of wealth will never be going out of style.
 

In my life, I always wanted to be the next great guitar hero. I played for decades and still do. The effort was always there but the natural talent was lacking. I simply did it so I could get attention. Most people can’t play guitar and just because I was better than them doesn’t mean I was going to make a career out of my playing. In fact, every time I have played in public it has been wreck. Why? A variety of reasons but one of them is not because I am too talented. When I was in the navy I managed to sneak my way into being a navy EOD diver too. This is the bomb squad in the water and on land. Many of these guys I served with parlayed their experience into careers and into good paying government jobs in a variety of capacities. I work in a restaurant. Although I did make it through training , served in Desert Storm and was honorably discharged, it was a poor fit for many reasons. After college I was an insurance agent and the only reason for that decision was my step dad sold life insurance his whole adult life and seemed to do pretty well. Although there were some nice sales from time to time it ended in bankruptcy and lots of drama in my young family at the time a couple years later. I can look at a variety of personal failures and disappointing outcomes and see now why most were caused. Maybe it is best described as an imbalance in my ideals and ego.
 

From the psychological perspective I believe the lowest common denominator is we all want attention. From child birth, throughout life and until death this is our currency of emotions. When people tell me they love me, or they like me, or enjoy something I have done? That is about as good as it gets. Some of us get a lot of attention and some of us very little if any. Innately we use what we have to get what we want. This is aligned with a set of ideals. What you see yourself as and identify as. When you meet someone it is pretty common the conversation is something like “What is you name?” “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” It is that important that within the first one minute you need to identify how you make a living in the world. This, of course, directly relates to your education level and income in most situations. Ask anyone that is unemployed how it feels going through the checkout line using food stamps now called SNAP benefits. There is shame in poverty and we do our best as humans to avoid it. All little children want to grow up to be happy, healthy and successful but that is not at all what happens. Life unfolds and you find out it is like the Stones said, “Ya can’t always get what ya want. But, ya get what ya need.” If the ideals are accurate, balanced and aligned the rest is simply effort and results seem to just fall out of the sky. When they are out of alignment the best thing that can happen is a less than outstanding result. The worst? Death, disease, addictions, failed careers, failed relationships, chronic bad decision making. No amount of money injected into these scenarios will yield better results. The only thing that will work is honest introspection and usually with the help of a talented therapist and firm commitment to implement the corrective action. 

No, my life was not a failure prior to my new found revelation. Sure, there were some events and relationships that failed but that happens in every life. However, it has also been a great ride filled with some fantastic people who have graced my life, great episodes and in a variety of places around the world. But a few years ago? I would be lying if I said I felt as if I had swung and missed. I compared myself to my friends and family and come to the determination that I was a wasted talent.I had little money. It is truly one of the worst things that can happen to a person. It might best be described in the way I heard my old mentor speak about another guy in the office, “He is one of the best third basemen I have ever seen. Unfortunately, all he wants to do is pitch. It is why he fails.” Why did the great third baseman only want to pitch? The ego was out of balance with the ideals. What was important to the individual was seeing himself on the mound and controlling the whole game and being the primary reason there was a victory. This is the classic case of Michael Jordan. All Michael really wanted to do was play baseball. Thank goodness he picked up a basketball early on. Even as he became a phenomenon around the globe for his basketball skills he still wanted to play baseball. After winning the three NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls MJ took some time off to play minor league baseball to fulfill his true passion. The greatest basketball player ever should be able to dominate some minor league baseball guys, right? Wrong. Different skill sets. Michael goes back to basketball and the Bulls and crushes all of them again and retires a champion. What if he never went back? Well, he would have to live with mediocre results as long as he identified as a baseball player. We all can do this. What are you good at? What does the world need? How can you get paid? What makes you happy? This is Ikigai.
 

Ikigai is way of looking at your like and committing to improving it in a way that is natural and goes with your inner talents, desires and how you find the most satisfaction from your life’s results. Had I looked at life through ikigai I surely would have made some different choices, said different things and made some different actions. There is a component of immaturity that all of us go through in learning to make adult decisions too. But, the smart folks learn it is best not to do that again and take another route. The not so smart folks either do not notice the lesson they are being given or they double down on the effort believing that it will yield better results. I was a master at this. If the ideals and ego are aligned with the objective the increased effort is the exact prescription to dial up better or more consistent results. If the ideals and ego are out of alignment failure compounds with the increased effort, regardless of the episode, place or people involved. If you are struggling direction or not satisfied with your results in general I simply offer something that makes sense to me. Ask yourself, “Is this my life’s work or is this a stepping stone?” “What do people identify me as?” “ How much time is left in my game clock of life?” “What would I really like to see improvement on while I am still here?” This is where Ikigai comes into play.
 

Simply look forward or back at choices you have made, both good and bad, and apply these four tenets of the philosophy; what makes me happy, what the world needs, what I am good at and how do I get paid. Like my dad said, “If you ain’t getting paid, it is called a hobby, son.” Just because I love to play guitar doesn’t mean anyone else is willing to pay me enough to listen that will satisfy my ego. I would literally starve to death if I were left to busk in subway stations and parks with my open guitar case singing my greatest hits. The world doesn’t need another half ass musician. We got all we can handle. Fun hobby though. Nor do we need the acid dropping, pot smoking guy on the navy bomb squad. The wanna be YMCA basketball star trumping the insurance and financial dream was also misguided. Actually both were. I am not made out to be an insurance and financial guy anymore than a pro basketball player. Even though I liked what I was doing it was only a matter of time before those ideals would crash too. 

A few years back I got a letter in the mail from the VA Vocational Rehabilitation that told me I needed to use my benefits or they would expire. This entitled me to return to school for free and receive a small stipend. Money was tight and the few hundred bucks a month extra would help. The only thing I was interested in was culinary school. I have always been interested in kitchens, cooking, food and drinking. It was a great decision. I did well in school. I liked the instructors. I got to go to Italy for a few weeks in the summer and cook. I worked in high end Italian restaurant and sailed out at sea as a cook on cargo ships after that. I was making great money and doing a job that I liked. Unfortunately, I was not happy. The sea monkeys out at sea were just too much. Too long out at sea is not good for relationships and those I met out at sea did not have much in those regards back on land regardless of their income. However, I immediately parlayed these pay stubs into a pre qualification letter on a mortgage and built a new home about two miles down the road from he apartments I grew up in. I used the experience of cooking at sea to take a sous chef job for a year and then parlayed that into now a management job at a restaurant making great money. I am doing what I like. Good food is what people need. I am happy. I am good at what I do. Others have told me this and they are entitled to their opinion too.
 

Going forward, I am not sure where I will be or what I will be up to. However, I suspect I will taking this philosophy with into the future. I can’t find any negatives in it and, for me, it seems to offer a path that is more balanced and has already lead to better outcomes. There is a bunch of information out there about ikigai and hopefully you find value in it too.  

Elton John’s song; “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word.” A well written 1970’s ballad that always makes ya think about someone you owe an apology to or someone that owes you one. I am not winning any awards in this category but have gotten better at this with age. Thankfully, the ego tends to die before the flesh. The picture above, to me, is a stunning milestone. I was in 9th grade when this photo was taken out front of Colonial Village apartments in West Des Moines in 1984. I am leaning up against mom’s old, blue Mercury Zephyr. It was such a piece of shit. I hated to be even seen in it. We lived in the bottom apartment right in front of the car. I drive by this location from time to time still.
 

I was having a tough time at that period in my life. My brother had run away for the final time and was living in the YMCA boys home in Johnston. Mom and I were on the outs, as usual. We shared this three bedroom apartment with a fat lady named Sherri Burkiss. It was kind of a strange arrangement. My mom somehow knew her before and her brother was trying to sell his vacant house in Urbandale. We got to move into a house instead of the apartments and the duplex on South 19th Street. Eventually the guy sold the house and we had to move out but somehow picked up fat Sherri Buttkiss in the process. I remember she wore a ton of make up and we had to share a bathroom with her. My mom was still going out with a plumber who was 10 years younger then her and living with us. I tolerated the guy. He seemed like an alright guy but was not my dad. He was a good buffer between my mother and I. He was smarter than my mom and what he was there for I wasn’t sure. I didn’t care. I had no game. I was working what shit jobs I could as a dishwasher or pizza maker. I had no wheels so I had to have mom take me back and forth to work. The ones that didn’t fire me I quit from. I was just about to start playing guitar and was still a virgin. I dropped a hit of acid for the first time around this exact same time. Kiss was done and I had moved on to the 80’s. Kiss was for kids and Van Halen was about partying and the ladies. This was my destiny. I wanted to be Jim Morrison since I had no musical talent or instrument. Jim was a dead sex symbol that lived on the airwaves. Being Jim meant I started acting the part. I had a Levi’s jean jacket covered with buttons about The Doors. I wore sunglasses all the time. I knew all the words to all the rock songs on the radio and began smoking pot. There was Nico Cote who lived on the top floor. He had a dad who was much older than his mom. He was a year or two older than me. He was a pasty, white, chubby, longhaired burnout. Not sure where he got the pot but it was real. I remember listening to Led Zeppelin in his apartment and smoking weed. It felt cool listening to the vinyl cranked up on the old turntable that resembled a piece of furniture more than sound equipment. There was this other kid in the apartments that we sold some fake weed to. It was oolong tea. He wanted to share it with us and started smoking it. Comedy.  

Around this time I was also thinking about the ladies constantly. I had none. I had some girls at school that I was friends with. I even finger banged Jana the girl down the street in Urbandale. After that I wanted to do it again. Unfortunately, mom and I were coming to a head and I would be out the door on the streets within months of this photo being taken. I spent a night in the laundry room in the hallway of one of the apartments in Colonial Village. Then it was across the street to what was then called Washington Heights apartments to sleep in their laundry room. I would just walk up at night and make sure there was no laundry in the washer and dryer, lock the door and fall asleep. I woke up early and got out of there on foot. Eventually, I ended up on the couch of my aunt Sharon and uncle Gary. They were old hippies that grew up with my mom in Marion, Iowa but had moved down to West Des Moines too. They enabled the drinking and drug use as long as I paid them a little cash and kept it down. I did neither. I was 16. I picked up a job in the kitchen at Mr. Steak a few blocks away for a few bucks an hour. It was barely enough to feed myself. However, I did manage to stay in touch with some of my friends that were in school and find drugs or hang out at parties. This is just the background of what led up to the accident.
 

While we lived in Urbandale my buddy Cary had a paper route. On that route was a hot girl in our class named Mindy. We knew this because he had the route collection roster. He would go around a collect envelopes every couple weeks from the people that got the paper. Mindy lived in a nice house in the newer section of town. Her parents had money. I always thought she was a nice girl and good-looking but just not into me for all the right reasons. One morning we had some little puppy out of nowhere start following us down the road while we were delivering his route. We came to Mindy’s house and she was up. We gave her the puppy. She loved it and named it Scruffy. She worked in Valley West Mall at the tee shirt screen printing store. I would drop by and say hello while making my rounds. As a dropout and deadbeat with little money and no home the mall was my world. I had begun talking to a girl from school named Julie. We were at the mall talking with Mindy when she mentioned she got a Pontiac Trans Am exactly like the one from the legendary movie Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds. I asked if she would let me drive it around in the parking lot and she gave me the keys. Julie went with me and I thought I was the coolest. I was going to do a couple donuts for Julie out on the ice in the parking lot. Nope. Way too much acceleration and way too little experience. The car slid into a light pole and left a huge dent in the side. I was fucked. I had no money. Mindy would find out and I would be a shitbag because she would tell everyone at school. I was the drop out who wrecked her car and had no money to pay for it. I got Julie to agree not to tell her. We went back inside the mall and gave her the keys back and thanked for the test drive. We went to a party. Julie got very drunk and was passed out on a bed. We did nothing. Then she started throwing up. I am not sure how we got a car but I drove her home and she did not get in trouble. She never told Mindy.
 

Fast forward thirty years. I saw very few of my classmates from high school after I joined the navy. There was a thirty year high school reunion that I was invited to and then it hit me; Mindy might be there. Surely, she got in trouble for the car back then over the car. Surely, there was no way of getting ahold of me as my game went from bad to worse in those years just before leaving for the navy. I was going to have to prepare for a pretty awkward reunion. I was kind of down on my chips too at the time of the reunion. I was living in a shitty apartment and working a marketing job that I didn’t care for in Cedar Rapids. Not where I thought I would be 30 years after high school I can admit. I figured Mindy probably married a doctor or inherited a fortune. I am not sure what her story was but she was there. I saw her and she looked amazing. I had to do it. I am sure she had told a ton of people I was a loser and I needed to tell her the truth after all these years. I honestly said, “Hey, Mindy. I owe you an apology.” She looked at me and smiled.
“Really?” She replied.
“A long time ago in high school I did wreck your Trans Am. I was being a dumbass and trying to impress Julie when it spun out in the parking lot of the mall.”
“Oh my god, Kurt Jasa.” It took her a minute for it to register. I am not 100% sure she knew it was me immediately. After I made the comment she did though.
“I am so sorry about that. I always felt like an asshole for that. Those were some pretty tough days.”
She thought nothing of it. “I never liked that car anyways. I do remember you gave me Scruffy though. We had him for a long time. You always were a good egg.” Someone else joined the conversation and then another and then we separated. 

That was it. I have no idea where she lives or anything about her life. It was huge though! It felt fantastic. It would have been a lot different if she said she had gotten in trouble and always regretted knowing me. Worse off, she could have shown up with a 30 year old bill for the damage and I would have looked like a huge degenerate in front of everyone else I had not seen in 30 years. Nope, it was a non event. It did make me also think of a few other apologies I need to make. I don’t expect all will be that well received and some are best left alone. However, if you read this and think I owe ya one, or you owe me one, drop me a line and we can discuss it.  

The last time I was in San Francisco was over 20 years ago. There has been a lot of news lately about the lawlessness and homelessness in the city spreading out of control. We walked around much of downtown and I got a good feel of what has changed and what is still the same.  Since I used to be stationed in the San Francisco Bay Area decades ago in the navy I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to to stay, Sausalito. The sleepy but affluent town on the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge was a great choice for our headquarters for a four day trip. We flew into SFO on an uneventful flight from Denver. The last time I was in the airport SFO did not have the tram that quickly rxpdeited us to the rental car lot. We wanted to rent a convertible for the trip and do a little driving. We opted for a new BMW 430i.
 

It should be stated up front, there are several reasons 1 in 10 out of every Americans lives in California. Marin County is stunningly beautiful with the high, rolling hills, miles of jagged, rocky coast line, sandy beaches, redwood forests of Muir Woods, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National parks to the west. Very few places in America offer this diverse of an environment in a single county. The rolling hills and headlands of Marin are home to numerous dairy farms. The temperature in May was cool enough to see your breath in the morning but able to wear a tee shirt by the afternoon only to return to a jacket at nightfall. On the leeward side of the hill is Sausalito, Mill Valley, the ferry landing and the beautiful view looking eastward over the entire bay. The sights and sounds of the bay in the morning resonate with memories from way back in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a young sailor from Iowa. At 7:30am in Sausalito today the town was barely moving. The seabirds can still be heard squawking in the distance over the occasional delivery truck on their morning route. No one seemed to be in much of a hurry doing anything in Sausalito. These folks that live here have the cash to enjoy the quality things in life and that starts with your home perched on the hill and the nice car. No shortage of Porches, Teslas and Mercedes in the area either. I have no idea where the cooks, bartenders and retail folks live. I saw no homeless people in Sausalito and nor any apartment complexes but I am sure there are rentals. We stayed in an Air BNB and loved it. The arrangement put us right in the neighborhood on Bulkley Ave over looking the bay.It was a studio with a small kitchen and bathroom with a deck hanging off the edge. I looked online for real estate in Sausalito and a place similar to that one was going for $600,000. We rented it for $250 a night. Sausalito is definitely cool to spend some time if you have a ridiculous amount of money. If not, It is still a nice place to visit.
 

My girlfriend had never been to the bay area so we tried to see a little bit of everything. We first stopped off at the legal weed store in San Francisco. The place was a small bodega compared to the larger dispensaries in Washington, Colorado, Missouri and Illinois. But surely the cheapest high quality pot I have ever seen. All completely legal and all sold right over the counter. No long lines outside the weed store but still and armed security guy sitting in a chair checking ID’s. The sale of the day was 3.5 grams of a Sour Diesel strain that was 50% off, for a grenade total of…..$15. Wow. Next stop was Mill Valley Whole Foods to stock up on food and beverages for the stay. No sales here but cheaper than eating out every meal. We also took the BMW out for a spin in Point Reyes National Recreation Area after dropping our luggage off in the studio. It might be 20 minutes as the crow flies into the headlands but soon enough the reception was lost on the Verizion iPhone 14. Nope, too bad. The few residents out in these parts have voted down cell tower construction to improve reception. Unfortunately, for us, I hit a pot hole and caught a flat tire. No spare tire in the convertible. I had only the satellite emergency signal on my phone but Cindy’s phone worked. Without that? I would have had to walk 4 miles to Inverness to call for a tow a passing biker told us. Several cars were driving by sight seeing and some very nice sports cars out there racing around too. Not one person slowed or stopped and asked if we were OK with us on the side of the road. Three hours later the tow truck guy shows up with an identical replacement BMW and we were off. We headed back to the safety of our studio for dinner and a night cap.

The following day we headed out to see the city itself. Taking the ferry from Sausalito to San Francisco for $28 round trip is pretty tough to beat either as a commuter or a tourist. Like clock work the ferry arrives and departs Sausalito on the half hour from 7am to to 7pm. I think it is fair to say most of Sausalito is closed by 8pm. The renovated Ferry Building along the wharf downtown San Francisco is well done and filled with various retail artisnal food and wine shops. The entire wharf has been renovated and Pier 39 looks very little like it did the last time I was there. It is a tourist trap with tee shirts and worthless Made in China trinkets in every other store. It is kind of gimmicky but tourists love that shit. We headed towards Hyde Street and the Cannery. We took the mandatory trolley ride up to Lombard St. We walked all the way to then famous Swan Oyster Depot but were disappointed to find twenty Chinese college aged youngsters standing outside. They were obviously part of a tour group. We stood in line for a few minutes but it was barely moving. I walked to the front and looked in the door. The counter was packed. Anthony Bourdain’s visit to the iconic place a few years back guarantees a line out front of the door for years to come. We continued on and opted for some pizza at Victor’s. It was a quiet place with great Neapolitan pizza. An eccentric old guy walked in and said he had been coming to the place since 1958. He knew the owners father from way back but still came in every day for a slice. From there we took a cab up to Haight Street to see the old hippie stomping grounds. I used to comb the area well in my navy days looking for acid and pot from seedy guys working the sidewalks on the weekends. .Today? I am not saying it is not there but it is a hell of a lot cleaner than it was back in the day. The street and sidewalks looked relatively clean for one. The old McDonald’s on the corner of Stanyan and Haight was demolished. That was an absolute zoo back in the day in the wee hours of the mornings. Street urchins, dead beats, punkers, homeless people and degenerates from all walks of life were stoned, drunk and whacked out out on whatever trying to keep their shit together in a McDonalds booth while the others were shooting up or vomitting in the bathrooms.They just leveled the whole place and nothing was ever built on top of it. Shit, the parking lot still has a chain link fence around it. However, after a walk in Golden Gate Park there in no denying the city has cleaned it up a bit.
 

I was determined to see the worst aspects of the city. The news has been full of stories about smash and grabs in retail stores and other retail outlets just pulling the plug and abandoning the property. We walked around the tenderloin area a bit and there clearly are some homeless people that are visible. I filmed a guy trying to smoke something off of a piece of tin foil underneath his coat as he stumbled down the street with his pants falling down past his ass cheeks. He was completely fucked up and had no idea where he was. I saw a few folks in this state wandering around Market St.too but most big cities in America have these people. Most big cities around the world have homeless people it is just that California has the weather that allows them to live outdoors throughout the year and the liberal politics that is always trying to help them. Honestly, I think it is a waste of time. The problem is there is no accountability for the deadbeats. There are a ton of services they are trying to provide for these folks down on their luck but there is not to zero accountability on behalf the deadbeat that is freaking out in the streets or shitting on the sidewalk. I don’t have much sympathy for the homeless in America. Most are hardcore addicts or have mental issues that are never going to be stabilized enough they can be a productive member in society. They need to gather them up, read them their last rights, wish them better luck in the next life and humanely gas them with nitrogen. Sound a bit rough? Not really, the vast majority of these people are never going to be a productive member of society at large and disproportionately use up services that are meant to assist people in a difficult transition in their lives. They are never going to be able to afford to live out in San Francisco for to start with. Most also next to nothing for job skills, cash or credit. Maybe if there were a mandatory civil service or labor camp for some of these folks we could get some lives straightened out and back to some form of normalcy. We did see a bunch of guys roaming around in bright green camouflaged Urban Alchemy jackets. These guys have radios and are probably ex cons, social workers or community activists who are there to try and deescalate and carrying radios. They make $21 an hour and are paid by a non profit. I saw these folks everywhere in the spots that their services were needed the most. From the pictures of the city taken a month ago there has been progress on cleaning out the tents that were choking off the tenderloin district.There is plenty of money in San Francisco and some water cannons would go a lot farther than liberal politicians and prosecutors in cleaning up the remaining issues.
 

We chugged back to Sausalito on the ferry after walking back to the Ferry Building down Market Street. The ferry went right past Alcatraz. I never have been to Alcatraz but it is hard not to think about the guys that were incarcerated on the island and the guys that escaped. I don’t think they got away. The water is really cold.But if the Anglin brothers did make it? The raft, or another craft that picked you up from the raft, would be the only way. We decided to eat at Poggio in Sausalito that night. It is a very nice Italian place with excellent food and service. Got rocked for $260 including the wine and tip. That is pretty expensive for a guy from Iowa. However, the quality was world class and worth it. We also ate at Scoma the following night in Sausalito. It was conveniently propped up on pilings in the bay right below our place. It too was fantastic but another $240 slap for the pleasure. We walked back through the skinny little alley and up our 88 wooden stairs to the studio. Probably not a lot of stairmasters or lawn mowers sold in Sausalito to be honest. It is strange how they all built their homes right on top of each other. If there is an earth quake that hits the Bay Area I suspect there will be substantial damage from all of these houses coming down on the ones that are below in an avalanche eventually. It didn’t happen when we were there but I did think about it a couple times when I was sitting on the small balcony looking up. One thing I also noticed was the amount of homes that are all built of wood from the surrounding forests. There were many houses in Marin that honestly just are not that impressive but quite expensive for what you are actually getting. But it is all about the location and the view. I often wonder why these people just don’t sell their homes and move to Iowa. Pretty simple, Iowa is just not that cool and if ya got the money the view and the weather here are pretty tough to beat.
 

We drove into Sonoma County and drove the crooked Highway 1 along the coast. It is a breath taking view as the Pacific Ocean crashes onto the sandy beaches. In Jenner we stopped at Goat Rock State Park and walked along the beach to the mouth of the Russian River. There are usually seals and sea lions in the area and this day was no exception. To sit there and look out over the sea fills my soul with the reflection of thousands of memories past. I think I were needing a place to go and die I would probably end up in this neighborhood. We drove into Guerneville and drank some Korbel California Champagne. It was a good time and relaxing sitting there looking out over the vineyard sipping on a sparkling wine. It would be easy to sit there for hours but the drive home requires sobriety. Cindy drove :)
 
The final day we wanted to go to Napa Valley. I have been many times and have fond memories of tasting wines in the vineyards of Napa Valley. I remember back in the late 80’s and early 90’s most would charge you $2-3 to taste a few wines or maybe $5 and you got to keep the souvenir wine glass. Those days are long gone. Today? It is just not worth it. In fact, it is a rip off. As much as I hate to admit it. I won’t be going back. It is now around $50 to try a flight of five wines? All bullshit. It reminded me of the ongoing unjustified tuition increases at colleges in America. There is always someone on the payroll to tell you it is necessary and justified. I don’t think so. The wine is better, yes. But compared to what? We went to V. Sattui which is a famous Napa winery that does not sell to the public. It is a great winery but the wine was flat. I am not sure but I got the feeling they sold their good grapes to other wineries and sold the tourists the bullshit for rockstar prices. Most people are not nuanced enough with wine drinking to tell the difference between a good wine and a great wine. Shit, more than half of America doesn’t even drink wine. I wasn’t going to get soaked for $50 at every place just to taste their wines. Instead we opted to head back to Sausalito via Highway 37 and Mare Island.
 

I was stationed on Mare Island in 1992 when I was discharged after Desert Storm. I was attached to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 9. There was a lot of navy in the bay back in the early 1990’s in the bay area. There was Concord Naval Weapons Center, Alameda Naval Air Station, Treasure Island, Oakland Naval Base. All of the bases were subsequently repurposed or closed a few years later or were to be transitioned into civilian housing via the Base Realignment And Closure (BRAC) process. During my last few weeks in the navy I basically just stood watch around our unit. One day in maybe January or February of 1992 we got a call that some fisherman had found some ordnance on the south end of the island and wanted us to look at it. Myself, Gunner Thompson and our transportation guy named Van were the first guys there. At first there were a few rusted out small arms rounds. Then we dug around and found a few buckets full. We kept finding stuff. By the time I left a couple months had gone by and we had a back hoe out there and a dump truck filling it up with old retrograde ammunition that had been dumped and buried and was now coming to the surface after all these years. There was all kinds of stuff and there was literally tons of it. We stored it in those old barn looking buildings that are still clearly visible on the most southern tip. This is where the horse stables used to be. We used to run our timed runs out on that track. Not anymore. It is all fenced off and no trespassing signs that make it impossible to get anywhere near where we were. I only say this because the city of Vallejo filed bankruptcy over the debacle. You can google Mare Island contamination and see the vast amount of remediation in cleaning up contamination. The National Registry of Historic places actually denied Mare Island a slot on the registry as the oldest naval base on the west coast. This was denied because of the contamination. There is also a website out there I stumbled across years ago that is still up. Mareislandmurder.com I am not sure who is behind this but they are not stupid. They claim the island was contaminated with hexavalent chromium from the metal plating shop and tons of ammo and chipped lead paint that went into the straits from the dry docks. In all fairness. In our unit of about 100 guys there are 3 known cases of autism and a downs syndrome case in their children. A few of the individuals at the command have also already passed. I am not sure if it is related at all. I am not sure anyone really go the whole truth of what all got dumped on Mare Island over the decades but there are several properties that remain unsold and undeveloped. All of our old barracks, the navy exchange, the old Marine barracks and several other buildings have been demolished. Those are just memories now to those who lived and worked on the island. The rest of the story the government wants to control that narrative. The vacant houses on what otherwise looks like a beautiful property leads the average mind to wonder what in the hell is going on here? I always wanted to come back and am glad I did.
 

We enjoyed San Francisco and the Bay Area. But I won’t be back anytime soon. The world is a big place and there is a lot of places I want to see before the show is over. Is it worth it? I think as a tourist it surely is worth it and is a great part of America. But there are too many people in California. The traffic jams suck the wind right out of any good time. These people stuck in these commutes everyday? The guys paying nose bleed prices for what amounts to average homes? It is all relative. If you grow up out there or your family has enough money to live comfortably then I would still consider moving out. It is not worth it. Today with AirBNB you can do just like we did and be right in the middle of a very nice neighborhood if just for a few days almost anywhere on the planet. You definitely get more of a community feel instead of the frequent flier feeling I get at the airport and hotels. I am not sure if the next big earth quake will hit San Francisco in my lifetime but if it does I suspect the city might end up looking like it did in 1906. There were several luxurious mansions in San Francisco that went up in smoke after the subsequent fire caused by the quake burnt the city to the ground. No one seemed to worried about the big one that we talked to. But bad news always comes unexpected. 

“He was one of the best third basement I have ever seen. Unfortunately, all he wanted to do was pitch.” An ego in search of an identity.
 

“Hello, what is your name? Where are you from? What do you do for a living?” Your identity can easily be questioned. Verification is a bit different. 

“Success is not healing.” These are two entirely different subjects.

“The man with one eye in the valley of the blind is king.” We need good leaders. Just because they are better than you does not make them an expert. It just means a pair of glasses might change your perception.

I was recently driving down the road in Des Moines and drove past a place I had almost completely forgotten about in my past. It was the office of the family counseling guy, Bob. The parking lot in the photo was me and my first car, the 1973 Gremlin. That was taken in his parking lot after one of the family sessions in the 1980’s. I recalled the place and the times well. No parking in front and we entered in the back on the second floor. I was 16 years old. 

My brother was living in the YMCA Boys Home in Johnston at the time and my step dad had come back into the picture. At the time, my brother was a ward of the state of Iowa on Title 19. Life at home had fallen apart too many times and my brother opted for growing up in the state’s juvenile system instead of with our mom and I in West Des Moines. A condition of his release and transition into living with my step dad in Webster City was completion of the family counseling sessions.

Bob himself was a tall, thin guy with a beard and glasses. I recently saw him on a political advertisement on television and recognized his face. It was him. There were many sessions in that shitty little office with the small rooms and two way mirror. I remember looking through it one time into the room we held our family discussions in. Honestly, it always made me think someone was watching and listening to us. The only reason that would have been used was for observation and unbeknownst to those in the other room. It also always made me wonder who else was getting counseling from Bob when our family wasn’t in there. In retrospect, he did get our family talking though. The conclusion? Most of the problems in our family were caused by issues in my mother’s life that were subsequently played out in our lives. Basically, there is a lot more that is inherited from our parents than eye color, hair color, gender and race. The behavioral traits are often passed down and replicated from parent to children in some instances. This was pretty heavy stuff because I always knew my mom had a lot of baggage. She was temperamental, foul mouthed, abusive, petty and shallow. There was no digging in to her confession about much at all. Ot was enough for Bob and he signed off. My brother went to live with my step dad.
 

As I drove along I started thinking about some of the other counselors earlier in life. I recall counseling as a little kid somewhere downtown Des Moines. This was even before the Bob sessions in the early 1970’s. My mother had divorced for the second time and the counseling was part of this I suspect. I was about five or six years old. I remember my brother and in this room with toys and someone talking to us. There was this toy barn and plastic figurines. My brother and I were jamming one of the figurine’s head in a plastic toilet and laughing in their lobby or one of their rooms. We were too young to know much of anything. These are early memories but I clearly also remember my brother telling me behind the garages at Colonial Village apartments in West Des Moines that my step dad and mom were getting divorced. This was the exact same time frame. I also crashed my bike in that parking lot and racked my balls hard on the top tube of the bike before hitting the pavement and crying. Back in the good old days no one wore helmets. It is strange how memories are indexed but indeed it was this time frame.
 

This got me thinking of how many other therapists and counselors were there in the past. Wow, there was the guy in the Council Bluffs rehab right about this same time as my life took a nosedive. How could I forget that guy? His name was John. He was a small, thin guy with glasses and a mustache. He was supposedly a bad ass Kung Fu master. He sure didn’t look like it. These were the toughest of times in my life and he listened. I was on the streets and couch surfing. I was doing and selling a variety of drugs. I was not in school and my mother insisted I had to go through treatment before I could come back home. It only lasted a few weeks. John was trying to tell me that my life was headed towards prison or death unless I was sober. He wanted me to admit that I was powerless over drugs and alcohol. He wanted me to accept there is a higher power and my only positive future was sobriety. I told him I doubted it. The shock therapy of sitting up in group therapy with some of the adults had an impact though. Those were drunks and drug freaks much further along in their disease progression sharing their stories. If you get shit faced all the time or do hard drugs you are gonna crash like most of those washed up dead beats in that group. The delusional crackhead guy that thought we are on the same basketball team was a classic. The old lady that was also delusional and patted me on the leg telling me she wouldn’t tell anyone our secret. I had never met her before. She was just gone. I got the message.

The thing was, I never tried to really stop. I actually enjoyed smoking weed, dropping acid, eating mushrooms and drinking beer. I tried cocaine and it just was not worth it. The weed, mushrooms and acid i thought were harmless. I liked the way it made me feel and think. I also didn’t think my future was bleak with, or without, it either. I didn’t wake up scrounging around for booze and drugs. Those folks on the adult unit were also not real sharp. If it were not booze and drugs it would something else. It didn’t matter. Ol’ John went for the Hail Mary one day. It was something like, “There is one of our patients that is just not getting it. Kurt, can you sit in the middle chair of the circle? Nice, I would like everyone now to tell Kurt what their impression of him is.” Oh, man. This was brutal. Most in the group said I was a smart ass, bad attitude, condescending and arrogant. I got up and walked out. My ego couldn’t take it. I went to my room and cried. I was alone and trapped. It was in that moment I remember an inner voice almost giving birth. It was an abusive, violent, volatile personality that went right for my own throat. I thought a lot about suicide in that moment. Those kids were not lying. Regardless of what I thought their impression was much different. It was not going to happen in that hospital but there would be a different way of counseling Kurt. John and I were done as far as I was concerned. It was a dirty trick on a 16 year old kid and I told him so. He kicked me out of their program. I never got to say what I thought about some of those other kids in there either. Whatever, I was transferred to an after care program in Omaha, Nebraska shortly after that.
 

My counselor at the after care place was a nun, Elaine. My step dad was Catholic and the program was run through Catholic charities I believe. It was a converted old elementary school I think. Elaine was a nice lady that was in her fifties. We had nothing in common. I went to St. Theresa’s church in Des Moines on the Sunday’s we spent with my step dad. It was a giant yawn. I was not Catholic and thought most of the stories I had heard from the Bible were fake even then. While I was there I do remember a few incidents taking place. The group therapy started to make sense in that the stories of all the kids I was housed with were pretty much the same; all broken families, drugs, drinking, sex abuse, run aways, drop outs and bad decisions. Most of the kids seemed pretty normal by my standards. A few of those teen personalities in there were some weird kids but none that were so fucked they were unrepairable. There was a guitar playing counselor named Frank in his twenties. He had a mullet and mustache. He was also a recovering whatever. He was cool. He was the guy that took me to the hospital when I split my finger putting a barbell back on to a weight bench. A huge scar remains I am looking at now as I type. It was here I also noticed in the group therapy that some of these stories of the other teens were either bullshit designed to garner attention or not too harsh at all. Yet other stories seemed a combination of confessions, denials, embellishments and attempts at acceptance. I was no different. I played along. Ol’ counselor John’s stunt was fresh in the memory. I tried to avoid any personal accountability and just make friends. It went OK I guess. The other teens issues seemed boring compared to some of my previous stunts or the burnouts in the adult unit at the rehab. It honestly made me start to wonder what in the hell they were doing there in the first place. I too was looking for attention through my story, actions and behavior and this can’t be forgotten. I was going through puberty and started growing face hair. I shaved half of my face one day. I can’t think of any other reason for doing this other than dumb shit teens do to get attention. I remember we also had a little talent show to try to help build self esteem in the residents. Frank and I played an acoustic song. I wanted to do Helplessly Hoping by Crosby, Stills and Nash but we opted for another tune I can’t remember. Frank was good guitar player. I sucked. I was discharged after a few weeks for pissing on this kid named Mike who was also from Des Moines. He was a nerdy guy that went to Des Moines Roosevelt that was my roommate in Omaha. He was punk rich boy but a kid I didn’t trust. Let’s say he pissed on me first. I wrote about it in another story somewhere but his clothes got pissed on and thrown out in the snow bank. I remember Elaine made me explain what happened to my step dad and mom. He laughed but Mom was pissed. I loved him. I left the facility shortly there after.
 

i kept driving along trying to connect dots. Yup, after that there was the after care program in Clive I was prescribed by the nun Elaine. I was go to these teen AA meetings 3 times a week for 90 days, find a sponsor and swear off the weed, acid, beer and mushrooms forever. It lasted a few months. I remember looking around a circle of about maybe fifty teens at this facility who were all introducing themselves as alcoholics and drug addicts. Half of them had over reactive parents and it began to seem like a hustle when I overheard the conversation between my mom and step dad about insurance paying for it. The whole problem with the AA/NA stuff? There were a few. The vast majority of other teens were geeks. These were the social misfits that were looking for a peer group. The teen drug gang always has the lowest threshold for entry in to the group because all you have to do is use drugs or have some and you’re in. Most just wanted attention and gravitated to this group because of rejection from other peer groups. Where there is misery there is company. There was also no end or real conclusion to the diagnosis. I didn’t know anyone who overdosed on smoking weed. Sure, underage beer drinkers will make mistakes. That is about 50% of the crowd growing up. Some kids got drunk at a house party when the parents were away and got busted and thrown into the rehab process. Some kids had only smoked weed and were in there talking about life time addiction? It did not seem right. The for profit counselors disguised as health care providers were there to replace all those bad using memories with new sober ones? Yeah, wrong guy. 

Nope, the new teens and adults in the sober circle just did not resonate with me. Most were whining about their life or telling war stories about the good times they used to have. It was now cigarettes, coffee and another meeting. It was if that life, a few months ago,  was now a part of some past they left behind like a locker combination at high school. Nice try. After that the loser Mike, my old roommate in Omaha, was transferred to the same after care program I was in he overheard a conversation I had confessing to smoking some hash with a girl from high school for the first time in months. He told my counselor at the after care facility. Mom was notified and they wanted me to return to treatment. Nope. We are done with this over reactive for profit shit designed as mental health care, mom. I told her there will be no going back to treatment and if she had to pay cash this would not even be an option. These families were getting soaked and duped by some misguided counselors who meant well but were neither doctors nor really knew me. My step dad agreed and I moved out from my mom’s place and into an apartment on Forest Ave. in Des Moines with a high school buddy in 1986. It was party central and we started our second shitty band . A few months after this I joined the navy at 17. I had been in the navy six months when my high school class graduated.
 

After joining the navy I felt it was going to be my time to shine. I would simply leave the baggage and bullshit behind. In a way, I did. I could not believe I got past the background checks but as a juvenile there was nothing for the government to see. I never got caught by the cops. It was also in 1986 so the background checks were not as thorough for the run of the mill recruits like myself. It was the navy ASVAB test that was the first time I remember being scored academically other than a report card from school. I was average to slightly above average intelligence. Considering I only went to a couple years of high school I felt this was probably accurate. I tried my best on the test. I scored a 73 I think. It was in boot camp that I elected to try out for navy diving. After successfully competing an indoctrination test I was given orders to Coronado, California to begin deep sea diver training. I failed after about a month. I was too young and immature. Of course, before I failed I told everyone I knew I made it. I was now going to be a navy diver and not just a drop out, burnout too dumb and poor for college. This was my ego needing attention a long way from home. There was no one was really carrying my flag, because they had no idea what I was doing. They also had their own lives. I carried my flag proudly down the drain though. It might have been nice to complete training before telling people who I was. My ideal had already attached to the cool guys. Indeed they were cool. A few weeks later I was in the bottom of a helicopter carrier in San Francisco wearing a paper hat, plastic apron and washing food trays stacked as high as my eyelids with guys that never would have made it one day in dive school. Yup, consequences for failure, pal.
 

I was struggling with terrible depression at this time. Failure at dive school was the first time in my life I had really went all in and wanted to accomplish something and failed miserably. I was humiliated. On top of that, I hated myself. The failure could be pinned on no one except me. I strung together a variety of failures in my head and when I closed my eyes at night. It was negative to be polite. My buddies back in high school were headed off to college, tailgating, frat houses, fucking college girls and bong hits. I was a goddamn loser mess cranking in the bottom of a ship. A monkey could do my job and I was furious with myself and blamed the navy for exposing me as a loser like all the rest of the shipwrecks on the ship of fools. Truth was i just wanted to be a diver because it seemed cooler than all the other jobs. I had a big ego even then. 

I was fortunate to meet some great friends and a Swedish girl in San Francisco that became my girlfriend and subsequently my first wife a few years later. She didn’t seem to care I was a mess cook in the navy or an astronaut. She liked me for me and that meant more than anything the navy offered. We fell deeply in love and I was determined to make the relationship work. Being from Sweden we would have to determine where we were going to live if we wanted to pursue the relationship. I was in the navy for a couple more years and she returned to Sweden while I returned to attempt dive school again two years after the first failure. I was a good athlete but immature.
 

I had been training with some guys on the ship who were also attempting to get orders into the navy diving community. We became good buddies and challenged each other on everything from drinking, to working out and chasing girls. It was important for me to develop relationships with guys I thought were smart, cool and in good shape. I am fortunate for these relationships as it kept me from jumping off the ship when I got depressed. 

Deep down, I felt I was still going to be a rock star and that is all that really mattered. I took my guitar with me everywhere I went. I bought an electric guitar and an amp and practiced all the time in a void near the fan tail of the ship. In California there were tons of bands to see in the late 80’s and early 90’s. It was both a blessing and a curse. I knew there were great guitar players out there but gravely underestimated how many and how good they were. I would go back to the ship and practice and just shake my head. I was getting further behind and I couldn’t carry a tune when I sang. I took both guitar and singing lessons during this time. I knew I had to try harder. I was writing my shitty songs but there was no one looking for a half ass guitar player who could not sing. My buddies went to concerts and watched bar bands but they were there for a good time. I was trying to live vicariously through the guys on stage. They were getting attention and earning money playing. I had to be at this level to start with and I was not. Nothing wrong with seeing some professionals putting on a show but I clearly was running the risk of just being a campfire strummer. I figured I had more time than most to practices and the talent would catch up with determination. Most just smiled when I played part of a song they knew. To me? This meant improvement and more importantly, my ego got paid. A balanced ego would take a compliment and move on. To me? It was a further sign to my destiny of greatness. Most admired my ambition but no one ever told me, “Yeah, one day I can see you up there in lights, man.” This was for a reason. Simple, lack of talent.
 

I was lonely. At night when I went to sleep I felt like a loser who had accomplished nothing. I would return back to Iowa with college while my old classmates would be graduating. The Swede would move on as she deserved better. I had a Lieutenant talk to me one time after catching me sleeping in a gear locker. I wrote about this previously but he ripped my ass for having a bad attitude. I had good scores on my ASVAB compared to the many of the others and was in good physical shape. He asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I told him I wanted to go back to dive school and he told me they already had seen enough of my stunts. He told me if I improved the attitude and no issues he would consider the orders. Respect is earned. Prior to that comes courtesy and discipline. I had neither. Not long after that talk we had a helicopter go down in the ocean and my lieutenant was the pilot who found the guy in the water. I was on deck when they brought the guy back to our ship. I was very proud of our lieutenant. I wanted to jump off the ship, however. The only reason I didn’t was the thought of our lieutenant pulling me out of the water and asking me what the fuck I was doing. He was a trained professional who called me out, and for good reason. His number gets called and he is goddamn hero who saved that man’s life. Me? Sleeping in the gear locker pissed off at the world? I would not have even heard the damn phone ring if my number did get called. If I actually showed up what was I trained to do? I was more worried about getting attention than paying attention. In fact, the only person paying attention to me was in my head and this surely was not applause. It was quite the opposite.
 

One of those mornings when I was off the ship and with the Swede in California I drank a bottle of white wine and listened to U2 Joshua Tree while she slept. I finished the bottle of wine and listened to the whole thing. I was stunned by the talent level. Not only did the world love this album, I was wounded by it. If this was genius what was mine? I was so far behind this talent level I almost wanted to hang it up right there. It was more of, “Unreal. These guys are fucking talent. You? Give me a break, shitbag. Maybe sell your guitar and amp? This is your last chance, pal. Your girlfriend probably will be fucking some Swedish guy in a few months back in Sweden. Why? How about you? You are nobody and she is a good girl. She is the type of girl that goes out with winners. I am finding it really hard to see how you are, actually. When mail call comes and she tells you it is over keep this one thought in mind…Bono’s voice. That is the sound of success. In fact, I am starting to think you are holding her back. Honestly, you don’t deserve her.” I was not inspired by U2’s album, I was threatened. This was talent I just didn’t have and my effort needed to quadruple to get anywhere near where I thought I needed to be.
 

This might be a great place to hit pause when looking at the replay. Here we have a young, athletic guy from Iowa with about a 10th grade level education. I played guitar at an average level getting the opportunity of a lifetime with both the Swede and being a navy diver. Things were looking up and headed for a fail at the same time. The Swede and I were off and on over most of my time in the navy. There were other girls that were one night stands or bar girls but there was no other girlfriend during this time. She never asked about my saws behavior when I was not around simply because I didn’t want her to ask about mine. She seemed cool with it. There never seemed to be a boyfriend when I spoke to her and more importantly she said she loved me. I was determined to make it work some how. It was a Cinderella story I felt. All I had to do was finish dive school and all would fall nicely into place. It pays to be a winner.
 

The reality? I was still way too immature to be thinking about marriage. I was also too immature to excel in the navy. I did make it through both navy diving school and initial navy explosive ordnance disposal training. To most, this is one hell of an accomplishment. It is indeed. They made movies about these guys. This accomplishment came in a few short years after I was the kid sitting in rehab having other geeks telling me I was a loser. Where the fuck were they now? Among those navy EOD buddies? A great group of guys and we had some great times and laughs. We had all made it through a difficult training and were similar in character. I loved them. We had a ton of great times. But the navy kept me from something I felt meant to be much more important, love. So much so that my attitude on the navy tanked immediately after the Swede said she would never stay with me if I planned on staying in the navy. I understood why. The navy was a divorce machine with young adults like myself having difficulty understand the difference between sex and love. The love was genuine but so were some of the issues that never got dealt with before I even joined the navy. I began to reinforce this negative attitude with everything I could find wrong with the navy itself. I didn’t care. I had already made it through dive school, explosive training, was a decorated war veteran after Desert Storm and had been around the globe. If had a little more balanced sense of attention and being in tune with my surroundings things might have ended up different. Both opportunities were squandered and much of this was my fault. It is much easier to look at it 30+ years later and connect some points. It must also be noted, the odds of me ever making it as an EOD diver in the navy I were infinitesimal, yet I did.
 

This would be one point where I would say the incongruence between who I thought I was and who I really was were at a crescendo. I couldn’t even see what the navy saw in me nor the Swede. They both looked past my shortcomings and got the best out of me. They saw something good in me that I never saw coming. In turn, I tried my best. The cracks in the game plan were set from the word go. All that was required would be a little extra stress and the cracks would prove too much. What were the cracks? For the most part, I was an athletic guy with a low self esteem and little in the way of knowledge about healthy relationships. I needed attention like oxygen and never got it from my mother. Had that relationship been stronger, or I had a sister, I might have had some better relationship advice during this time. There is a lot of great women in the world. It was a unique window of opportunity and indeed there were guys who were married in the service who made it work. For me? There were some tough lessons about to be learned here about ideals and ego.
 

First, success and accomplishment are not healing. Our broken family started long before I was on the planet. My biological father told me one time my mom did not have an easy childhood. Her mother, my grandma, was a tramp. She banged her husband’s boss for years and decades after grandpa died. There was a good chance Grandpa turned out not to be grandpa after all. To find out your father is not your father in your early twenties would be devastating and make anyone want to know why they were never told. It also alludes to the potential for a bunch of other bullshit to be going on as well. These were working class people with no college or passports. There was no anchor in the family that could provide a well rounded and mature direction. All of my grandfathers were dead by the time I was in first grade. One grandmother was a widow of a WW2 vet who was deep into Jesus but never worked nor had any relationship with another man. My step dad was raised by his now deceased mother and grandmother. His father walked out on his family when he was a kid. In short, my brother and I were just the latest version if dysfunctional families.
 

As i drive along I thought this here would have been another great place to hit the pause button. My mother desperately needed someone to intervene here and they did, both my father and step father. Both did their best to help my mother but were not equipped with the tools to do so. It takes two for any relationship to work and when both were eventually served with divorce papers this was my mother’s way of shifting blame for the chaos unfolding in her life. She was unable to effectively express herself and shared little in the way of personal accountability. When the stress hit she crashed. She was violent, foul mouthed and abusive. She failed to ever connect with my brother and I from the word go. The problem was it didn’t give me a lot of confidence in women. Mom fumbled time and again while I was growing up. I didn’t trust her decision making nor much of what she said. Mom never drank or did drugs so that had to be eliminated from my calculus as to why she was a flop. What I could not see is the scar tissue from her broken family had limited her own growth. Her failure to accurately process the facts, feelings and actions led me to believe she was just a nut bitch. In reality, she wanted her young family to be ideal and not like the one she grew up in as well. My biological father was now faced with being the head of his family at twenty years old and also lead the younger siblings left behind from my grandfathers premature death. This was a monumental task he was not prepared for. It blew up. The subsequent relationship with my mother had with my step dad lasted a few years but also blew up. Both had their own personal issues they were dealing with but my step father also made a valiant effort to build a family by adopting both my brother and I. Nope, when grandpa died and my aunt told mom her father was probably not her father it all fell apart. My mother had someone to blame and that is pretty much where she stopped growing, right there.
 

I write this because it is definitive proof that our family was grossly effected by previous failures in previous generations. Ideally, it would have been nice for some of those initial therapy session to spawn some introspection in my mom that led to her growing and being able to deal with difficult issues. Nope. Up went the walls, the dishonesty, the infidelity, the abusiveness and what emerged was the vengeful and petty person that had a sole commitment to never end up like her mother. Her strategy was to move away with a new man. Unfortunately, for all involved at this point? You take yourself with you wherever you go. All of the relationships my mother was in failed for a variety of reasons but none of them were her fault. My father and step father had moved on to new relationships that were more stable. My step mothers were good women who cared about my fathers. I was now an adult and after all the water under the dam already by 21 years of age it was my turn to make a statement in life. My first one was going to make something of myself. I did this by finishing dive school and coming back from Desert Storm a certified war vet. I had a young woman who loved me and was completely different than my mom and any of the American girls I had previously known which was few. In my ideal world the Swede would be proud to be married to American Special Ops hero with a bright future after overcoming almost insurmountable odds until i became a ricknlegend. If I could make that work I could make anything work. All I needed was a little polish on the fretboard and work on the vocals and things would work out perfectly. I would walk away from the navy after a great enlistment with the girl of my dreams. I would go to college, start a band and study wine making at Sonoma State University if the band didnt work out. It didn’t work. Not even close.
 

Back to the replay. What was ingrained in my head was that big results require even bigger effort. Thisbis true. It pays to be a winner was beat into me in dive school. I knew deep down what it felt like to fail. What I was too immature to see is there is no connection between success and healing. I was negative, angry and disappointed with myself even though by all accounts I was at the very top of my game by 22 years of age. However, it is at this juncture where the traits that made me a good athlete were not the same ones needed to build a healthy relationship and a family. It was my time to shine and I was not going to be dissuaded or have anything stand in the way. The navy was in the way of my dreams and I just lost interest. Everyone seemed to be into their jobs. I was into learning new guitar riffs, seeing concerts, sex with my Swedish girlfriend and buying acid and weed around Haight St. in San Francisco on the weekends. I was into myself and the Swede would make a great accompaniment to my life. I failed to take into account how she felt about America, us and the prospect of forever living in the United States with me. She understood the situation with the visas and the navy. We took a chance and got married in 1991. It was a flop. She was back in Sweden in 90 days. I was crushed. We spoke and I felt I needed to do more. I would leave for Sweden and make it work there. It lasted a little over a year in Sweden and ended in divorce. Why? My ego just could not take it. She wanted nothing to do with who i really was and did not subscribe to my ideals. I was miserable and subsequently made her miserable. I kept a diary during this time so it is well documented.
 

Living in a tiny apartment in Stockholm was not the same as the nice house with the palm trees we had for free on base in California. I was a nobody in Sweden and did not speak Swedish either. This was brutal on my ego. I eventually learned Swedish, made a couple friends and started a small import company bringing in high end American made bicycle components. But I was a mess. I could not forgive her for walking out on me and my dream of life in America. She changed her name back to her maiden name and I was insulted by it. I had to start from the ground up and make a fortune and prove to her that I could win even in her hometown. What I failed to understand? It wasn’t about winning. It wasn’t about me at all. It was about her feelings, desires and ideals too. Did winning matter or happiness? Sure, it feels great to win games, make money or get a promotion but unless those heavier, underlying issues are dealt with it only becomes a matter of time and the happiness will evaporate. Different skill sets are required to make relationships work than collect trophies. Had I learned this lesson here it would have maybe saved that relationship. Nope,I prefer the hard way it seems.
 

I could go on and on about different episodes, jobs and relationships over the course of my life. There have been good times, great times, tough times and terrible times. However, like Bono said, I still haven’t found what I am looking for. The reason for this is not simple but not really that complex either. The reason I think I made some mistakes along the way had a lot to do with incongruent ideals. By basing my ego off what got me the most attention, most money and most applause I failed to address some of my underlying issues which are mandatory for building a healthy outlook on life. It was the ideal I had of myself that lie at the heart of the problem. For the ideal of a great guitar player to materialize the skills have to be there too, not just have long hair and know a few chords more than the next guy.  
 

A mentor of mine in business after college one time gave me an audio tape of a motivational speaker. He thought I would find value in it. The guy talked about ideals. He worked with high end athletes, entrepreneurs and intellectuals trying to get them to their peak level of success for $10k a weekend somewhere. I forgot the guy’s name but I do remember the gist of his theory. In short, there are two types of successful people. Those who’re happy in their lives, feel successful, have healthy families, friends and loved ones. They are active members in their community and are working to improve the lives of others. Then there are equally financially successful people that are not happy, plagued with problems, feel unhealthy and their money can’t help them in the least. In fact, money can be weaponized or simply add fuel to a fire bringing their demise to a head even sooner. “An ideal” the guy said, “is simply how you see yourself on your best day. You look great, your performance is top flight and no mistakes. All the ladies want you and all the guys want to be you.” Wow, Bingo. That was me. I knew what the ideal Kurt looked like, sounded like and performed like….it just never seemed to materialize. He added an analogy of the sunset. “Everyone can see the color change just before the sun actually sets. We all can recognize the beauty of the moment. Imagine someone that no finds the sunset into the sea such a compelling view they attempt to fill the boat up with gas and chase it in perpetuation to keep the view of the sun always setting. The people standing on shore watching this may find it comical, or not. He is going to run out of gas and end up way out there if not sink. All he had to do was stand here and the sun will set tomorrow.” What seems obvious to most the individual on the boat seems oblivious to. 

I understood why I was given the recording. He was the happy, successful, hardworking and wealthy entrepreneur. I was the pissed off guy beating my chest because I was making more money at that time than I ever had. When I worked for him in the insurance and financial industry he personal sat with me and a pen and piece of paper covering risk management. The guy was a tremendous teacher and saw talent in me. I learned a lot. I still failed. Not really a surprise as I was not cut out for that world. I was skipping out of insurance meetings at the country club to go play basketball in the ghetto with the hood rats. I was more interested in the look of success than actually the mechanics of putting it together. I remember telling him when I first got a couple initials after name from some continuing industry education. He told me the initials were the least important and the knowledge was the most. I looked at it from the perspective of how people would view me. I must be smart as I have a plaque on the wall and some initials after my name. All the agents had this. The fake it until you make it guy was me. I was destined for greatness but not exactly sure how we were going to do it. No surprise this flop right out of the gates after college and subsequent bankruptcy was disappointing to say the least.
 

However, the divorce from my second wife was rough involving cops and lawyers. I was angry the marriage fell apart and wanted the best revenge, success. My business idea initially took off and I was making a lot of money. The problems were many, however, and other than the cash flow I didn’t feel like a success. I felt like a hustler and the customers we did get never came back because their results were terrible. When I added the angry voice in my head demanding results I could not materialize it failed. On top of this, the pursuit of this ideal was not only misguided it was used to evaluate others not hitting the mark either. There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism. Unfortunately, with ideals come egos and attitudes. Was it any wonder I had a lifetime of negative bullshit following me around like a dark cloud? A guy asked me at this exact time, “If you have conflict with everyone how do you win?”
 

About a decade ago I was struggling. My initial business that was successful crashed. Another marketing idea ran out of gas and I lost a bunch of money on that as well. I was going to build a business with an old partner from the failed insurance and financial days. That never materialized. I was forced to sell the house, no girlfriend, living in a friend’s basement and now a broke single father. I was trying to string together some type of recovery strategy. I needed the Hail Mary pass in the end zone to stun all of them who doubted me just like I did as a teen. Truth is no one pays attention to you when you are a loser. The world is full of them. Many were surprised by my failures as I was. Fortunately, for me, I did learn one thing in college, how to find information.
 

I wanted to know why I felt the way I did. I did not feel like a success and those that did compliment me obviously were not well informed. If they were intelligent or even curious and looked under the hood they would see it was more of a hustle or gimmick. I was not going to be a great musician because I did not have enough natural talent. No matter how hard I tried the ideal of me out on the world tour was misguided. Worse? The opportunity cost. If I would have spent this much time and energy on something that I was naturally good at the results surely would have been better than my guitar results. I was left with career choices that just did not seem very appealing. I remember talking to my step dad in the basement of his old house after college. I was not sure what I wanted to do with my life. I got involved with insurance because he had found success with it. That success got him a family, a home, a nice car and genuine happiness. I wanted this most of all. 10 years after college I was at the top of my game. Now I was holding on to a fistful of dollars but the wife was not coming back. I was infuriated by many of her actions at this time and would explode on the phone. The children were privy to these arguments as the peripheral narrows. I was not sleeping well and drinking and smoking weed constantly. I was a vet and I knew I got free health care at the VA. I wanted to be evaluated psychologically to determine what was going on in my head. At a minimum, I didn’t want the business to fail and wanted to find a way just to relax in my own skin and keep the success going. The money got me attention and inflated my ego. I had final arrived. I just felt worthless. It wasn’t my song or story or invention that was providing this faux success. It was a gimmick. I could not get results at work, in my personal life, on my instrument or just general overall happiness. The cash flow was great though.
 

I did get evaluated and thoroughly. This evaluation led to the opening of a claim based on a diving accident while in the navy in 1991. The evaluation and subsequent interaction with a psychologist and psychiatrist over a couple years proved to be invaluable moments in addressing why I think the way I do. It would be wonderful if everyone took some if these psychological exams. The tests were actually very interesting. A variety of tests that evaluated and measures the way I think and gave composite scores. Musical genius, math teacher, science guy in the lab and astronaut were not in the cards. The verbal expression and macro functions were at the top of the charts though. It was nice to see I scored high in something but this amounted to liberal arts crap. There was nothing there from my perspective other than a good trivial pursuit player at best. “Nice, a top flight bullshitter. I gotta get the fuck out of here.” I commented after reviewing it. The psychologist was curious why I felt that way. Many successful business leaders have those exact traits and scores he reminded me. My financial windfall was the manifestation of an idea that was created out of thin air. That requires talent. No surprise my psyche was falling apart. There was an imbalance between my ego and who i really was. I wanted to be someone the family and friends would be proud of not some bullshitter and a band of gypsies on the phones. In reality? Without that cash flow I was going to be in trouble and it would all fold like a house of cards. It eventually did too.
 

I learned a lot about myself in the following few years of meetings with the VA psychologist. We met once every couple weeks or so. Retrospectively, it would be hard to deny there were not psychological repercussions from a less than ideal childhood. Children that are neglected and subjects of abuse often later have emotional, psychological and social anxiety issues. Personality disorders are common in these waters as ideals become molded to what gets the most attention. As a child with few life experiences parents, coaches, athletes and entertainers become common ideals youngsters have and are often emulated. I knew I was not much like either my father nor my step father. I was more like Elvis I thought. Throughout each phase of my life this ideal has changed into something I feel is cooler and a better fit. But what is it I really want to do? No matter what I end up choosing to do with my life from here forward the incongruence needs to be addressed. There needs to be balance. There is nothing wrong with setting high goals and giving your best effort. However, the best results come from aligning the natural talents with a commensurate effort. There is nothing wrong with attempting to get people’s attention. It is an innate function of life. However, success and healing are two different things. This is exactly what the $10k a weekend motivational speaker knew. What was holding back half of the attendees from happiness was they had the wrong ideals. They were incapable of emulating the ideal in their head. Falling short of this leads to the feeling of insecurity. This is where the liars, the crying drunks, the sanctimonious, the ego freaks, the sluts and the tough guys make their way to the forefront. Just add a few drinks and these ideals imbedded deeply into the conscience of each individual are on display. My own lifetime performance has been nothing short of a poster child of incongruent ideals. Some of my friends, family members and past loves have had their own issues with incongruent ideals. I write this because it affects many people and families. These are difficult admissions but it is done in the name of healing, for myself and others who may be able to relate. 

So how exactly does one heal or re-calibrate? If you say to yourself, “Why did I say that? Why did I do that? What was I thinking?” Chances are pretty good you were looking to get some attention. It may be time to look at just exactly who you are trying to emulate to get the attention you need.

I knew this pic would linger at the top of the charts until the end of days and long after. It is why I was smiling. I should print it off, put it on a tee shirt and wear it maybe. Sabotage works in a variety of ways. This hit job was done on me almost a decade ago and still lingers at the top of searches. I called this fine publisher years ago about taking the piece down or writing a subsequent piece that portrayed a more factual depiction in as much detail as the initial blast to my character. Not sure who I spoke with as it was years ago but it is just something they would look into and never did, obviously. As the group of intellectuals at the top of this publication conferred about redacting or removing the piece they did the least of expected; they interviewed me for a job. Unbeknownst to the guy interviewing me for a writing job I told him I was indeed interested in a writing position “but your freakin’ paper pretty much threw me under the bus not too long ago. What is up?” Never heard back.

People often forget the vast majority of media outlets are not non profit organizations. There is a single image that forever represents the entire concept of bad news selling better than good. It is now over 100 years later and the black and white photo of the kid with the hat selling newspapers holding the sign that says Titanic Disaster Great Loss of Life Evening News. Bad new sells better than good. Always has and always will. Why? Simple, most people’s lives are so damn boring they find escape in story telling. It is always the same; headlines, weather, sports, business, etc… However, regardless of the category you will find the narrative is always amplifying or distorting information for the sole purpose of entertainment. In the weather report there is always some guy in a suit and tie to tell me of a metrological concern. If it is not absolutely perfect there is a potential for drama coming from the weather. Sports is always the same too; rally around the local team even when they stink. That didn’t play out so well for Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno and the Nittany Lions football program or some of the local journalists who initially took the side of the university….until they could not. Headlines are the same; what is the most dramatic thing happening right now? Compared to what else is going on? Is it still important enough to continue coverage the next hour or day? This is pretty much the process of how we get our information given to us. We have natural bias and different opinions as Americans and citizens of earth but most seek out the media that delivers the narrative and perspective they like to see and hear reinforced. Then it is back to the mundane day to day episodes that are not newsworthy in our lives. In Dildoville, Iowa? Yeah, life is pretty mundane. Until that one night. Unfortunately, for me this is a smear piece. It was designed to ruin my reputation to remove any potential taint on a company that the state of Iowa went to great lengths to bring to our state so all could tout their international business prowess and yet off the locals little more than platitudes.

Me? Well, I do have to explain from time to time what happened so I guess if these folks want to tell half truths and climate some facts and refuse to take it down without the least regard for any consequences that would come my way? Well, let’s fill in some of the dots with more half truths by a different author. Hopefully, one day all involved will get to read this piece too. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.  

Much like the movie First Blood starts out I was indeed a former special forces war vet drifting in life. It seems this was the image drawn of me prior to the incident.  I was a victim of the 2008 flood in downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I lost the entire business as the city took an historic flood right to the downtown area where my office was located. Through a forgivable FEMA backed loan I was offered a life line of $50,000 to keep the business open for the next three years. We were marketing to the insurance, financial and mortgage industries. Coming out of the economic melt down in America at that same time I found myself in a business model that no longer yielded much positive. The three years of taxes were filed and the business was closed. Unfortunately, for me, when the business was making a bunch of money I decided to refinance the mortgage on my home to a 15 year mortgage instead of a 30, increasing the monthly payment, in hopes to pay off the home faster. When I received the local accessed tax value of my home it was probably $215,000 at the time. Yes, Iowa is cheap. However, I only owed roughly $160,000 on the home at the time and wanted to access some cash in home equity and move it back to a 30 year mortgage. The bank balked. They wanted me to prove that I could afford to even keep the house as I had little W-2 income to show. The self employment financial shell game all use the banks are well aware of. After the 2008 American financial meltdown banks were hyper sensitive about underwriting. I needed to show enough income to keep the damn house and force the bank to refinance it. This is how I ended up working in a kitchen in Dildoville on the weekends back in the day.

Julio used to work for me on the phones and owned a popular restaurant in Dildoville. We had a good relationship and kept in touch long after he stopped working for me. I explained the situation with the house and he offered me a job working in the kitchen on the weekends. This was my first job in a commercial kitchen come to think of it. None the less, I helped make appetizers, washed dishes and cleaned up. It was humiliating knowing the script had flipped. The restaurant was making a few grand a night. Julio was the man with one of two other bars down town in walking distance of each other. It was literally the same crowd of small town Iowa twenty to thirty somethings that worked local in retail or a job related to agriculture. The local drug dealer was a pretty funny guy, Zeke. He kept the town supplied with coke and good green weed. I bought a bag of weed off the guy one night there was an ice storm. It was really icy out but the guy literally lived only a few blocks away from Julio’s Place. He wouldn’t answer his phone and would not deliver although he had my cash. He was being a bitch about it. He finally, answered and Julio told him “Hey, if ya cant walk down here? He is coming to you. Put it in your car and he can get it from there.”  No problem. I humped it over to this guy’s car with a styrofoam container of wet garbage from the trash in the alley behind Julio’s Place. I humped it to Zeke’s place and found  a small bag of weed left by him in a paper bag. I left styrofoam container under the seat. It stayed in there for a few days. The temp warmed up and it began to rot. It began to reek. I guess before the stank was so bad it almost made him vomit and then he found it. Joe told him I placed it there because he pulled on my chain. All ya had to do was walk a few blocks. Now ya know. Classic. Julio’s Place? It was a crowd a little younger than I was. No one knew me and except for Julio and the local dealer, Zeke, that was all that mattered. The crowd were all locals and no one I would ever see outside of Dildoville so I let the ego down and joined the crowd. Drinking wine in the back while cooking bar food and singing to the juke box. It is great stuff, until it is not.

One typical weekend night at closing time Julio locked the doors, turned down the lights, pulled the shades down and broke out some Jameson whiskey. It was myself, Joe, a couple local girls and a guy with an accent. We were a long way from his home country, Assholia, which I had been to, so I inquired about exactly what he was doing here in the middle of the cornfield. He said his company had come here on an economic grant from the state. I asked why did the state of Iowa need to offer a foreign country an economic grant to come Iowa to do work that seemed like any number of companies in the greater region could do. The reply was, “I don’t know, but we pay your people like shit.” It was insulting drunk talk. All at the table, including myself were intoxicated. I asked Julio who the guy was as I truly wanted to dress him down. He was a twenty something, cocky dip shit that couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag. I helped cook his freakin’ meal and washed his dishes. Rule #1, “When in Rome, and the Romans give you a goddamn good deal? Don’t act like a belligerent asshole and demean them to their face when they are literally serving you.” I asked Julio about him and he replied, “That is Malcom Youngster He works for Dung Heep. His house is bigger than yours.” I looked back at him. He was too young and dumb to be in another country with a nice home talking like a drunken big shot after hours. His pedigree was his claim to fame. Another guy born on third base telling ya how they hit a triple I figured. I honestly wanted to punch the punk bastard. I did not. I got up and walked away. But I looked up the company.

What I found was stunning actually. It turned out the state and municipal leaders were looking to recruit employers to the neighborhood. It was being sold as a win, win for all involved. It sounded pretty shady from my perspective. First, these folks didn’t seem to have any unique skill, trade or products we cant find here in the USA or state for that matter. But these were non union jobs and that is fine too. However, the country they were coming from had a minimum wage of over $16 per hour at the time. Our minimum wage was $7.25 per hour. The exchange rate was roughly one for one. These were not minimum wage workers and that also is a neutral variable. However, to say the steep discount in labor was not a selling point of our diplomats trying to foster overseas opportunity for here back home would be an understatement. Of course, the converse of  this is the local businesses and competitors saw next to little of this investment. Sure, there is a knock on effect from new employees and a few residents in town but compared to the tax breaks? These “new” employees are already local residents. Are they paying the people here in Dildoville the same wages you are paying your employees back in Assholia? Nope. Just seemed a bit strange. However, it did seem to resonate with the drunk Malcom Youngster in the bar who had the same opinion about the locals’ pay. Shameful, in my opinion. Just act cool and be lucky ya got a good deal. Tip well and your chances of success improve greatly. Not a part of Dung Heep’s corporate training I suspected.

Indeed, I reached out by sending an email to Dung Heep’s customer service department. It was then forwarded up the chain of command in Assholia.  I will paraphrase but I explained I didn’t care too much for Malcom Youngster’s actions. He was a true class act. He gets drunk, runs his mouth and tells folks he is important. He also said he pays our people like shit too. I cooked this clown’s dinner probably. You know the saying, “When in Rome act like the Romans?” Might want to share that with Malcom. Odd, I looked up Dung Heep and the minimum wage in Assholia. It is more than twice ours. Even more strange, was Malcom’s reply when I asked him what he was doing here. He said, “I don’t know, you invited us and paid us to come here.” Indeed it seems to be true. The Iowa Economic Sellout Association recruited Dung Heep. In a thinly veiled vacation/state business meeting to Assholia for the geeks a the chamber of commerce of Dildoville a simple marketing slogan was used; “Come to Iowa. English Speaking. Low Wages. Tax Breaks. Cash Incentives!” Low and behold our cash flush Yanks from Dildoville found a taker in Dung Heep. Dung Heep makes oven baked livestock manure bricks and sells them for building and construction. Dung Heep CEO Angus Youngster is a multi-millionaire from selling turd cakes all over the world from his HQ in Assholia. Sounded like a good deal. “The Yanks use the Iowans’ tax payer dollars to build a large turd cake factory for me.  I pay the local geeks half of what I am here in Assholia and I don’t have to pay property tax on the building in Dildoville for a decade? Sure. In fact, I like it so much I will send my son, Malcom Youngster, to oversee the project.”  And this is exactly how I came to meet a young, drunk, Assholian; Malcom Youngster, in Dildoville on that evening.

That evening I did not take Malcom outside by the shirt collar and help him practice the culture of falling down in the alley until ya end up in the dumpster. No, I walked away and looked up the whole Dung Heep story. It was pathetic. So, in my note to Dung Heep I mentioned that I was not just the dish washer at Julio’s Place. I was a former astronaut. I had a contest every year where my buddies and I paid some cash and gave away prizes to active duty astronauts. We had a bunch of sponsors too. We were popular on the internet and social media. But sure enough, we found some companies who were actually gimmicks just using astronauts to sell products like shitty Luminocks watches and fake Chinese knives. There were businesses that would make nominal donations to the astronauts only to leverage that charity into some full blown marketing scam to appear as if they were in the cockpit too. Idiots. So we created a Wall of Shame and threw all of em’ up there so all our online visitors would know the real guys figured these clowns out. The indelible poop on the shoes for Dung Heep. It is a matter of reputation, right? Find somewhere else to exploit. Dung Heep was thrown up there for pulling a stunt only designed to really benefit a few; The Youngsters, the gimps on the Iowa Economic Sellout Association and the geeks on the Dildoville Chamber of Commerce.  Not the ethos of our astronauts by any means. The link to the posting was included in the email. When Angus Youngster saw this email he shit himself. An astronaut was washing the goddamn dishes at Julio’s Place in Dildoville and Malcom managed to find him after hours bar and insult him? Now everyone that follows astronauts on the internet thinks we are shitbags like Luminocks watches and Ginsoo knives? How do we get this taken down immediately?

The call was placed from Angus to Malcom’s handler in Dildoville, and CEO of the Dildoville operation; Sushi Q. “Sushi, What the fuck is going on with Malcom, this crazy dishwasher at Julio’s Place? What is this Facebook page with thousands of people that now think we are as shitty a business as Luminocks watches and Ginsoo knives. I got American hillbillies calling me on the hour about fake moon landings? What the fuck is going on? Make it stop, already.” Shortly thereafter, I got a call from Sushi Q’s assistant, Jane Brownoser, who offered an insincere apologize on behalf of Malcom and the whole team at Dung Heep. “So, can you take us off your website, please.”
“Nope. I don’t have to. It is true. It happened. And it is free speech. If you want it down you can get a few options. One, pay the people here what you are paying them in Assholia. Make a donation to the Homeless Astronaut Association or give me the difference in pay for a year as a consulting fee.” This did not sit well with Angus Youngster back in Assholia in the least when Sushi Q told him my options. Angus called his contact at the Iowa Economic Sellout Association and cried. “You guys gave us a $2 million dollar building and the gravy tax deal and promotional bullshit. How in the hell do I get this goddamn dishwasher to let go of my balls here on the internet? Jesus, he posted a fake picture of me wearing a freakin’ Luminocks watch while I make an astronaut smell my finger! I am getting calls now here in my office in Assholia wondering if I hate astronauts. This shit has to stop somehow.”

The meeting was arranged between Dung Heep, Sushi Q as the point person in Dildoville, the Iowa Ecomomic Sellout Association, the Dildoville Police Department, the Iowa Department of Criminal Intellectuals and the Iowa Star Troopers. The call from Angus to Iowa kind of went like this, “Basically, we will call this extortion and burn him. Tell him we will give him the money and once he accepts a check we bust him for extortion and ruin his life. People will think he is a fucking loser. The guy was working at Julio’s Place as a cook and dishwasher. Whatever, fuck him. It is your guys’ money. I can always come back to Assholia. You guys can go find someone else to come to the Field of Dildos.”

So, the play was set in motion. I got a call from Jane Brownoser who said they wanted it to be over and offered me a check. They wanted me to accept it in person at Dung Heep’s headquarters in Dildoville. Whatever, I drove up there. As soon as I walked in the door a lady posing as Jane Brownoser asked me my name and handed me an envelope. As soon as the envelope was in my hands I was jumped by about 3-4 police who took me directly to the Dildoville Police Department. There waiting for me was a Dept. of Criminal Intellectuals officer. His undercover name was Officer Magnum Force. He looked right at me and asked me, “What do you know about the Boston bombing.”
“What are you talking about?” I replied.
“A bomb went off in Boston a few hours ago. We know you were a former astronaut. What do you know about it?”
“Are you fucking serious? What are you talking about?” I asked. He went on to explain a bomb went off at a marathon in Boston that was being labeled a terrorist event. He also informed me that I had been under observation and was followed from my home in Cedar  Rapids to Dildoville by an undercover.

In short order Officer Magnum Force realized this was a nothing burger. We were sitting there looking at the website together in the Dildoville police department and he could tell I was legit. How I ended up at Julio’s Place didn’t matter. There was no crime; no assault, no trespassing, no drugs beyond a joint they found in my car. A lot of effort was being put into a harmless guy who took offense to a drunk Malcom Youngster running his mouth in Julio’s Place after hours. Lucky the old guy didn’t beat him with a trash can lid. He walked out of the room for about one minute and came back in and said, “We are going to have to charge you with felony extortion. You will need to get a lawyer. Need to place you in cuffs now.” He was cool and I could tell there was something up on the other side of the two way mirror. I was transported to the jail for one night and released in the morning without bail. My friend came and got me as my car had been impounded by the Dildoville cops. I was stunned. I was in a tough spot before but now I was facing serious jail time. This was bullshit but I was broke and just trying to save my house. The kids would be hurt. My ex wife would have all the proof she needed that I was a deadbeat.

I told some friends about what happened and a guy I went to high school with reminded me that since I was taking classes at U of Iowa I qualified for free legal aid. Bingo. I took all the paperwork the cops gave me to my meeting with a former Army Jag Officer Greg Hugeballs. Super nice guy. He looked at my paperwork and listened to my story. He shook his head and said, “This should be dismissed. This is not a crime. Extortion is when you tell someone to do something or else you will do something else. In this case, you had already written on the wall. You did not say give me money or I will write something defamatory about you. It was already done. This is no different than mugshot companies posting your picture and not taking it down without payment. Unethical, but completely legal. This is similar but not even as nefarious as that example. It is a felony so you will need a good attorney but should easily prevail.” I was so excited by this news.

First, I thought I would try my luck with the public defender in Dildoville. It was free. I was to meet with him in the local courthouse. As I waited in this side room in the court house I could hear him talking with the district attorney about a case. “Yeah, I don’t know what is worse these idiots from Chicago or the dumb white girls that fall for their bullshit.” I kind of rolled my eyes. This was the guy defending me? He came in the room and I asked him point blank, “How many cases are carrying right now?” He replied about 100ish. “Ever try an extortion case?”
“Nope.”
“Absolutely not.”

I asked my neighbor, who was also an attorney, who the best defense attorney was and she said the very best guy in town is The Hammer. So, I called The Hammer. He was a former veteran too. He said it was $5k but he would take the case. I had to borrow the money from an insurance policy I bought on my ex wife. It was her policy and she easily could have said no but she knew I was in a tight spot and she didn’t want to see the kids’ dad go to jail. Regardless of what I thought, I could tell the kids were old enough to know dad was in a trouble. Maybe the stuff mom said about him was right all along. I was absolutely infuriated and at this point I did not even know what had been done to me. This is where The Hammer comes in.

The Hammer immediately assumed legal representation for me in all matters surrounding this episode. First thing was to get depositions from all parties involved. I would be present for this and the questions would be asked and answered in that same tiny Dildoville court house side room I interviewed the public defender. The simple plan was to follow the email I sent. This chain of command proved within minutes it literally went from the customer service inbox to a manager, to Angus, back to Sushi Q, Malcom, the Iowa Economic Sellout Association and the Dildoville Chamber of Commerce. It was there the plan to entrap me by offering me a check as a ruse for an extortion charge that could later be pled down was hatched. “Astronaut, or not, how dare he expose Malcom for being the shit that he is? He is a Dung Heep man and we are sticking with that story. If anyone says anything play stupid. If people start questioning deny it. If we get caught beg for mercy.” Or, something like that.

The first deposed was Ms. Jane Brownoser.

She wasn’t Jane after all, imagine that. She was the newest cop on the Dildoville PD, Officer Mandy Noballs. She was the one sitting at the front desk of Dung Heep in Dildoville playing like a secretary just long enough to hand me an envelope. “My Officer, I have represented many clients who have been the subject of sting operations. I have never heard of one hatched in the chamber of commerce though.”  The Hammer began.“Why were you contacted in the first place?”
“Your client sent a picture of himself with explosives around his neck to Dung Heep’s office and requesting money. Based on this we launched an investigation.” She replied.
“ Do you know what my client did in the military?”

“No.”
“A good part of his training was with explosives. It is quite common for military members to take pictures of themselves with guns, in front of tanks, helicopters, ships, planes, etc… a variety of things rarely seen by civilians. Do you have any experience with explosives?”
“No.”
“Were you in the military?”
“No.”
“The picture you are referencing. This would be the 20 year old photo of himself in desert storm and on the front page of his own website for the last two years, yes?”
“Yes.”

“Could this be a way of verifying to Dung Heep that this is who he actually is and not just a dishwasher at Julio’s Place?”
“Possibly.”
“Have you frequented Julio’s Place before, Officer?”
“Yes.”

“As a customer or in the line of duty?”
“Both.”
“Why were you called out in the line of duty?”
“There was drinking after hours going on.”
“Were there any arrests?”
“Julio was issued a warning.”

“Just one time?”
“There may be other occasions I am not aware of.”
“Small town like Dildoville should be easy to find out. No more questions.”

Next Up Julio.

“Julio, how do you know the defendant?” The Hammer began with Julio.
“I used to work for him.”
“Now he works for you on the weekends in the kitchen, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Does he do good work for you.”
“Yes.”
“What do you remember from the night in question.”
“Not a lot. It has been awhile. I was pretty drunk. It was late.”
“Do you drink a lot, Julio?”
“I drink”
“You have two drunk driving charges and a third was dismissed within the last three years. Officer Noballs says she has been out to your place for after hours drinking as well. Cops ever been out to your place other than that one time with the after hours drinking?”
“Well, there was that one time a drunk idiot pulled out the gun that I had to beat down.”
“Anyone arrested in that one?”
“I think he was.”
“Seems like a pattern, Julio. Did you witness my client do anything physically to Malcom Youngster?”
“No, he got up and walked away.”
“There will be no further questions.” Julio got up and walked out. He was pissed because my mugshot was the talk of the town and people were talking about and what went down that night. It also exposed him for being a young alcoholic in a dying town full of sanctimonious drunks letting their hair down. It would kill business. Just like the idiot with the gun. People stopped coming for a while until they would get too bored and end up coming back anyways as there were only two other bars in all of Dildoville. I offered my hand in friendship and he scoffed at me and turned away. The friendship was done. Julio’s Place is done too.

Next Up Officer Magnum Force

“Did you interview the defendant?” The Hammer continued the routine.
“I did?”
“Did he answer all your questions?”
“He did.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I did.”
“You questioned him about the Boston bombing?”
“We may have. I would have to look into it.”
“Was he determined to have anything to do with the Boston bombing?”
“No.”
“Was there an investigation into this?”
“I would have to look.”
“The two foreign subjects involved with that were involved in that bombing were taken down quite some time ago. One killed in the take down itself. The other has been incarcerated for months now. Seems odd we would be asking my client who clearly had nothing remotely to do with the Boston bombing questions about the subject the day it happened here in Dildoville. Seems to me it merely happened on the same day five hours away by plane flight, yes?”
“It appears so.”
“Ever run a sting out of Dildoville before, Officer?”
“Me personally, no.”
“Ever heard of one?”
“Not recently I am aware of.”
“No further questions.” Officer Magnum Force got up and I stood up and extended my hand. He shook it. Nodded his head and walked out.  

Last Up Malcom Youngster

Malcom I did remember. He refused to make eye contact with me the entire time even though I was sitting directly across from him in the room. He was like any other guy in their late twenties who had received a thorough lecture from dad and then coaching from attorneys long before he sat down for depositions.
The Hammer started in. “Malcom, have you ever sat for a deposition before?”
“No.”
“Ok. Just relax. The questions I am going to ask you are going to require you to answer to the best of your ability. This is an official record of your statements and will be used later if need be. Tell me what you remember about the night in question.”
“Not much. It was quite a while ago and I was pretty drunk.”
“Do you remember where you were?”
“I was at Julio’s Place.”
“What time?”
“It was late.”
“After hours?”
“It might have been.”
“Who was there?”
“Julio and some other people.”
“Was my client there?”
“He may have been.” He said without even looking at me.
“My client says you were drunk and running your mouth. He said you specifically said Dung Heep pays the residents of Dildoville a lot less than the employees in Assholia receive.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What is it, Malcom? Were you too drunk to remember much or just sober enough to remember you didn’t say that?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No further questions.”

It was done right there. The Hammer would destroy this case and even told me he usually doesn’t put defendants on the stand but would in this case. I said I was eager. A couple weeks later I was back in the Dildoville court house with The Hammer and my 65 year old step dad with me. It was a low point in my life. Not only was this bullshit going on for months I had also gotten an OWI a couple months later and had lost my drivers license. I needed to hitch rides from my mom driving all the way from Des Moines and my step dad. I am so grateful for these actions or I would have probably missed the court as there is no direct bus route to Dildoville and a shuttle would be a few hundred dollars at least. The Hammer shook our hands and walked in the other room to discuss the case with the district attorney. Five minutes later he walked back in the same little room in the courthouse. “Here is the deal. You basically pulled down the pants of a very wealthy guy in Assholia via his son. He means business. The State of Iowa is involved and it is quite political as Dung Heep is the shining star of the Iowa Economic Sellout Association. These are very wealthy Iowa businessmen trying to grow. You just kind of figured out what they are doing and put it up in a way that pulled their pants down and they could not pull them back up. Lots of people saw that and they pushed a panic button and all over reacted. The good news is…..I clerked for the same judge as the district attorney. You went to the U of Iowa. So did I. So did he. That never hurts. Here is what he is offering. He knows there is no way in hell they are going to find you guilty of extortion and you will walk. The damage, in your opinion, has already been done by the lingering article on the internet. Probably is a smear piece and intentional. I would be pissed too. But that is not my forte. He also is an elected position. Guess who can donate the most to an arbitrary local election? Here is what he is willing to offer. No jail time, no fine and unsupervised probation for two years. Basically, just leave and don’t get in trouble and it is over.”
“Except for the lingering mugshot and their version of the story.”  
 

SRV and the Tri-Dong Dancers
 

Ah yes, the confessions of a shipwreck are always fun to recant. You ever catch the vapors or shankers, no? I think at my age it is safe to talk about the vapors and shankers in a language we can all easily understand, boatswains mate speak. May this truth find you and all your potential sexual partners on the planet.
 

There I was, a 20 year old navy sailor from Iowa stationed on the USS New Orleans LPH-11 moored on Pier 4 on the 32nd Street Naval station in San Diego. I was at the Starlight Bowl in San Diego to see a rock concert with Robert Cray opening up for Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble in April 1989. It would be the last performance for the Live Alive Tour that year and SRV would be dead within a few months in the famous Alpine Valley, Wisconsin helicopter crash. That night, however, I found myself out front near the entrance of the arena milling around looking for anyone who had marijuana or LSD for sale. It was hit or miss but I wanted to catch a buzz for the show. I remember going to the show with a buddy of mine from the ship but I can’t remember the guy’s name. I was working out constantly at that time in my life as I was preparing to go to navy dive school. The chance of a random drug test was low and the chance of getting caught on one even lower with my metabolism at the time. This was also the three strikes and your out days in the navy’s drug testing evolution to zero tolerance. The pot in California was so much higher quality than the Mexican brown weed I grew up on in Iowa. And the acid? Well, it is either fantastic or fake.
 

To my surprise out front milling around was a guy I knew from my first attempt at navy dive school, Hedge. He was from down south and a cool guy. He was a little older than I was but he was still in class when I got kicked out. It was great to see his face because we always hit it off well in class and it was he who was the first guy to introduce me to Bob Marley and the first guy I was on the beach with in Coronado before we classed up. You can’t do it now but back in the 1980’s a person could walk across the street from the Amphibious Base to the SEAL’s BUDS training obstacle course and the beach itself. We did it all the time on the weekends on our way to hang out in front go the Hotel Del Coronado. We used to run their obstacle course too. We smiled and laughed at recognizing each other. He made it. I did not. He was a 2nd Class Navy Diver on a salvage ship out of Hawaii that was in port on 32nd Street. He heard about the SRV show and decided to come check it out. He was looking for some weed before the show too. We laughed and exchanged information. He was going to be in port for a few days so we agreed to hook up and give me a tour of his ship and have some beers. I didn’t find any weed and the music began to play so I returned to my seat. The guy I went with told me these biker guys sitting right beside us were smoking weed. Not only that they kept passing us joints the entire show. Robert Cray sounded pretty soft from our cheap seats. However, Stevie Ray came out and just pounced all over the volume pedal on the leads in his songs. The guy’s voice sucked I always thought and yet he was on the radio and up on the big stage in front of thousands. He gave me hope. So did Hedge. Life on the New Orleans sucked ass with a bunch of non college, derelicts and degenerates packed like sardines into the berthings and work spaces. I wanted to be a navy diver pretty bad and seeing my man made it was encouraging.
 

The next day or two I walked across the base to the pier where his tiny salvage ship was moored. The entire ship you could have put on our flight deck with room to spare. There were only around 100 guys on his ship and it was mostly divers and their supporting staff. They strapped themselves in their racks at night and climbed the bulkheads at sea because the ship tossed so much in the waves. He showed me their dive locker and I was jealous. He put the helmet and suit on and went below the waves for a pay check. I was a deck ape on helicopter carrier doing deeds for the man a chimpanzee could do. None the less, we decided to have beers with another navy diving buddy of his from the ship. I can’t remember his name but he was a cool guy. Somehow the two of them had managed to let a girl have sex with both of them at the same time the night before. I was stunned. My hormones were at warp speed at this time in my life and the fact they had already discovered a willing young woman seemed unbelievable. But, they were navy divers. They were telling the truth.
 

“Sure enough, half way decent looking girl met us at a bar near the base, but not on it. We all four piled into her car and went to a house in San Diego. Next thing you know she was sucking my buddy’s cock while the other guy was fucking her. Next thing you I was in there getting some action. Next thing I knew it was all over. Their ship pulled out and I had no idea who that girl was or even what her name was. It was crazy how all of it transpired from seeing Hedge at the show.” I remember telling a different guy, Patrick, I hung out with from our ship. We worked out together as he was getting orders to go to BUDS and he played bass guitar. We jammed down in the ship’s armory or in a void on the hangar deck after knock off some days. We were in the Scuttlebutt on base. It was the enlisted men’s club on base where guys could drink for cheap in a cheesy lounge type atmosphere.
“You guys talk to black girls?” We were interrupted by two black girls that approached our table. The one girl was attractive with light skin and piercing green eyes. The other I do not remember. She was for Patrick I determined immediately.
“Of course we do.” One of us replied and so the conversation began. Next thing you know Patrick was headed back to the ship and I was headed home with the black girl with green eyes. It started out alright but it headed south pretty quick. She just really was not my type and I found myself in her apartment somewhere in San Diego with few options. We had sex and I fell asleep in her bed. I woke up to see a picture of a black guy in his navy dress blues on the dresser. It was probably not her brother and she forgot to take the pic down before bringing home the white guy. I played it off and she drove me back to the ship. I never saw her or the other woman again and do not remember their names.
 

It was a couple days after that the itching on the cock started. It went from a little itch to a crazy annoying itch with blisters on my cock. I broke the blisters and washed the dong pretty good. It went on for a couple days pretty bad and then subsided with scabs where the blisters were. I knew that was not normal so I went to the medical department on the ship. This trip reminded me of the line of sailors and marines in medical after pulling out of the Philippines. All were suffering some variation of Jungle Dick then. I had NGU, Chalmydia. Turns out the bar girl in Subic Bay was not as faithful as she said, imagine that. I now had a feeling it was a venereal disease this time but it did not hurt to urinate and there was no discharge from my cock. It kept the false hope alive it could be something else.
 

I was told by a corpsman it was probably some type of jock itch and was given some antibiotic ointment. Sure enough, in a couple more days it was gone. I was talking about it with some guys I worked with on the flight deck when a brother on the ship named Smart over heard the conversation. He was a black dude a couple years older than us, “Yo, mang. I’m telling you now, Whitebread, yo ass got the Vapuz.” I burst out laughing at the phonetics. He was a proud, black guy and he always, “Took care of his bidniz.” As he would say. He was the guy who coined the term skeezers on the ship when referring to promiscuous women. “Vapuz” was his way of saying vapors. The ghetto definition for a sexually transmitted disease.
“What exactly are the vapuz, Smart?” I asked
“It is what is on yo dick when you stick it in some bad pussy. You either get the vapuz, the shankers or the gleep, mang.”
I laughed again. The guy had his own words for everything and used them proudly. If you didn’t understand than you were too stupid to get it. The vapors were a virus, a shanker was some type of growth and the gleep was anything that dripped out of your cock that was not urine or semen. I shook my head trying to determine which condition I had according to Dr. Smart. What was not funny is it came back again in the exact same spot with the exact same symptoms. This also happened right as my orders came in for dive school at NDSTC in Panama City, Florida. I was leaving the ship in a matter of weeks.
 

One of the final memories of being on the USS New Orleans LPH-11 was sitting in medical with a corpsman looking at my cock. “Not sure, man. Might be herpes or it might be an infection. Put this here on it. If it gets worse it is probably herpes and if it goes away it is probably not.” I was stunned by the guy’s frankness. Whatever, I rubbed that stuff on the ol’ pecker about four times a day and sure enough the symptoms cleared up. I was sure it was a sexually transmitted disease I picked up as I did not use a condom with either girl. There was no other change in my routine and there were no symptoms like this before the encounter with the two promiscuous women. I did write a letter to my buddy Hedge on his ship telling him what happened but I never heard back. I was transferred off the ship in short order with my new orders.
 

I do remember doing the crazy calisthenics and physical routine required in dive school with a cock that itched so bad I thought I would tear it off some times. Just getting beat down on the pavement, grass, sand or in the water with one hand always trying to get a quick itch in on my cock. God that felt so good just to scratch my dong for a few sends of relief. I went to the medical department on the base at NDSTC and the doc also told me it was probably an infection. It seemed to be clearing up and offered me another ointment of some sort. Again, the symptoms subsided and I felt relieved….until they returned, again, in the same spot. I knew something was wrong. There was no way it would keep coming back in the same spot with the exact same blisters, itching, scabs and disappear routine.
 

It was Doc Martin our physician and diving medical officer at EODMU9 in Mare Island that confirmed it. He calmly and plainly told me, “You have herpes. I have seen it many times and you have it. 10% of our command has it too that I am aware of and probably more.” I was devastated by this. This was 1991 and the difference between HIV and HSV were not as well known to the average person pulling their pants down with someone other than the spouse. He tried to explain to me that my life was not going to be any shorter and that it is more of an annoyance than anything else. I explained I had girlfriend that was on and off and now I had this. He explained it was important that I tell her and let her know to get checked and always use protection when I had sex with anyone. Really? How was I going to have kids? Shit, how am I ever going to get naked with a woman again without lying to her face about herpes. “So, honey, I got the vapuz a little while back but the shankers are all popped and you are safe now?” I was doomed I thought to myself.
 

The Swede and I had been on and off for a couple years. I loved her but we were young and on the other side of the planet and the navy did everything possible to make it impossible to maintain a relationship. I called her in Sweden to explain the details and lucky for me that was a period when we were not together. I knew there had to be other guys there on the scene as well. She was an attractive woman and there was kind of a mutual don’t ask and don’t tell policy for whatever that was worth, not much. I did tell her and she told me not to worry about it and understood. She admitted she got a venereal wart off some guy in Greece when she was a teenager on vacation before she met me. She had it removed by a physician and had no problems. It was the first I had heard of it but it surely would not have stopped me from pursuing her as I did love her. I left the navy to live a life with her that lasted about a year and half from the time I left the navy. We got married in Lake Tahoe, had sex a ton of times, she ran back to Sweden, I left the navy to chase her over there and through all of it, she never got it. Like all, I was prescribed Acyclovir and it worked great suppressing the outbreaks. So much so, that I would fluctuate the dose to see if I would actually be able to ween myself off of it. I would never have an outbreak if I took Acyclovir. What could I say, if it didn’t break out at all do you even have it? Apparently, I could not give it to my partner if there were not active lesions on my cock or she was immune? I wasn’t sure.
 

The Swede and I broke up and I returned to America. I met the kids mother at work and the first time I had sex with her she got it bad. Her entire crotch looked a lot worse than my dong ever did. It was the same blisters and there was no denying it came from me. I did not deny it and it made me feel bad that I had passed it a long carelessly. I went to the VA and it was verified I contracted herpes while on active duty. I became service connected from that and actually would receive free health care for the rest of my life when needed along with a small disability payment. I loved the kids mom and we did get married and ended up having a couple healthy kids. We lasted almost 10 years in that time I think I quit taking acyclovir altogether as the symptoms died down. There would be flare ups from time to time but nothing like when I first contracted it years earlier. She never broke out again that I am aware of.
 

There were no difficulties with either pregnancy regarding herpes nor did the kids contract it. After the divorce twenty years ago there have been several women who have come and gone. Some I loved, some I liked, all of them I had sex with. I am glad I did. When you have sex with someone you give them everything you physically, emotionally and spiritually have to offer…for better or worse. Several ladies have confessed they had gotten a sexually transmitted disease from some dude at some point. There were several who had gotten herpes or a genital wart removed. There was also a great woman I knew years ago who had a shanker on her asshole and part of her cervix removed from a previous encounter with HPV. There was the attorney out of Joe’s Place in Iowa City a decade ago who refused to answer if she ever had an STD the following morning. I suspect the answer was probably yes. There was Farah Fawcett, one of the hottest women in American history, died of anal cancer. Yup, she was probably doing anal with the 6 Million Dollar Man, Ryan O’Neil, both or another Hollywood hustler back in the day. Someone was HPV positive and she contracted cancer from it and died. The stigma of the means of transmission being a sex act is exactly what keeps the taboo around venereal diseases alive and well.
 

An old flame told me one time, “Women don’t talk like men.”  This is true, to some extent. There is no shortage of highly specific pornography out there that disputes this notion. The headlines are full of sex stories. If it is not romance stories it is rape stories. If it is not soap operas and romance novels it is pedophile pastors and Fans Only pages. It is the ongoing fascination with sexuality in America. We have come a long way from women’s suffrage, through the Kinsey studies, women’s liberation and now internet porn and Fans Only where women can really give men what they want; to watch them perform sex acts for money. No, it is not help with a casserole or the chemistry homework. It is sex acts. If you see vintage pornography it pretty much the same except the girls have pubic hair. Where did men and women learn to shave their pubic hair? Sex education class in school? Mom and Dad? It was a trend started with pornography. Shaving the pubic hair makes the sex organs more visible. Just a new twist on the same old stuff. Fake boobs was the trade mark of my generation. The birth control pill and Playboy magazine was the trademark of my parents’ generation. To see sex acts sorted by genre for free on multiple sites is nothing short of stunning in the evolution of sex in my own lifetime, let alone my parents’ and grand parents’.  

In today’s America women are sexualized from a young age in bizarre ways. Young girls want attention so they emulate older girls online profiles. Those girls get likes and followers on social media for showing sexy selfies. Several of the sites are monetized and it does not take a very mature brain to realize they are making money with sex. Most kids have access to the internet too and are also curious about sex during puberty. They are easily exposed to hardcore pornography of the craziest performances and are left thinking this is normal sexual behavior and what is expected of them? Hey, that is exactly how the San Diego tri-dong dance I was involved in was thought up in the first place. I saw that shit in a video out at sea in deck berthing with about 30 other guys long before that act. Even then that is one hell of a leap from guys with Playboy centerfolds showing kitties and pubic hair in their locker during Vietnam. The centerfolds were a huge leap from the WW2 patriotic pin up girls that showed nothing and left everything to the imagination.
 

Some people reading this may think to themselves they would never make such confessions. Most people do not. They celebrate in public and suffer in private. Ego is a bitch. Most of these same people are involved in the same sex acts everyone else is, or not. Keep in mind, today, about one out of every four adults in America has herpes simplex 1 or 2. There are also the usual suspects in the venereal disease line up and guaranteed to be some new weird diseases that come from future sex acts. Monkey Pox comes to mind. No surprise the epi center of this bizarre virus with huge shankers was a gay free for all sex fest. How many of these guys were wearing condoms? When you look at online dating apps and see the hook up culture expanding throughout the western world so too will the sexually transmitted diseases. It is simple, wear a condom!
 

Ladies, rewind your man’s pornography five minutes. This is what gets him excited. Fifteen minutes after his orgasm he probably can’t give you an accurate description of who got him so excited other than the usual variation on the same sex act. It is sorted by genre. Not just on the internet but at the fertility clinics across America too. Yes, these scientists at the hospital now also get a sample from the male on the spot. How do the doctors promote the collection of the sample? Of course, you show him the porn library they have right there in the room. How did this not get taught in sex education in high school? They know all along guys like to watch women having sex? Wow. The ex and I did utilize the fertility clinic to get the kids on the planet. When it was my turn to provide the sample? The burning hot nurse opened up the cabinet door to reveal a whole selection of porn videos. My wife rolled her eyes. “Whoa, nice. Do you Guy have Big 10 Anal Sorority 3 or Stevie Ray and The Tri-Dong Dancers?” The hot nurse laughed and walked out with my wife leaving me to my imagination and a sample cup.
 

I was watching an episode of the World’s Dumbest on television the other day. This program has comedians narrating the replay of various videos of idiots crashing or failing at something caught on video. I don’t have any of these captured on video but it got me thinking how many accidents I have been involved with. I suspect there are as many citations for moving violations as there are crashes if one were to look at my driving record. After looking at the underlying list I also realized this is just the list that contains accidents and injuries involving wheels. I tried to put them in order the best I could.
 

1. The Ball Crusher in Colonial Village: This was the first crash I really remember. It was in the apartment complex in West Des Moines, Iowa. I was not in elementary school yet but on my first bike riding around in the parking lot. I came around the corner and crashed on the pavement and racked myself super hard on the cross bar. I was lying on the pavement crying and I remember my mom looking at my balls to see if I was OK. Huge Beat Down. 

2. Evil Knievel on S. 19th St: This was my first and last crash involving jumping a bicycle off a ramp. Across from our duplex on S.19th St. in West Des Moines they were building some new apartments next to the ones we used to live in. These apartments were going to have a pool. The heavy equipment guys dug out the pool area and then left it for the year. This created a mound we could get some speed on and then down the side of it like Evil on TV. Fast at the ramp. Pull up on the front wheel and land on the back one. Nope. The ramp was probably less than a foot off the ground and the shit Schwinn kids bike with a banana seat was not designed for jumping. Hit the ram and crashed. Huge dirt blanket. Lots of tears. Broke the bike. Huge Beat Down. 

3. The Chaparral: This was my first crash on a motorcycle. I was living with my biological father in tiny Waubeek, Iowa for a few months during 7th grade. It was a very rural setting. One day we were out on my uncle’s farm and they had a little motorcycle they would ride around on. It was called a Chaparral motorcycle. It was a little dirt bike. I got to ride it around a little. I crashed it and broke it somehow. They were pissed. No injuries.

4. Rolling the Three Wheeler in the Sticker Bush: Yeah, this was during that same time in 7th grade I was living in Waubeek. The guy on the farm a few miles away had a couple kids who owned 3 wheel all terrain vehicles. These were the first ATV’s with three wheels. They banned the three wheelers later because they constantly tipped over hurting and killing a bunch of people. It was myself, my step brother and the kid who owned it all on it at once driving around their farm. We were going up this hill and the damn thing rolled over with all of us on it into a thorn bush. I was underneath the 3 wheeler and it started leaking gasoline on me. I opted for the thorn bush and took one hell of a scratching to get out from under it. Scary for a minute but we were laughing after. Mild Beat Down.

5. Crash with Guy and Boat Trailer in Rain at Saylorville: This one I almost forgot. This was right as life started to head south for me there as a teenager in the 1980’s. This was the time I ended up jumping off the Saylorville bridge in high school, twice, for fun. The guy I was with was an older black guy that lived in Normandy Terrace apartments in West Des Moines I was doing drugs with. He had a fishing boat. We were out on Saylorville Reservoir in Polk City, Iowa fishing. The guy said he and his buddies used to jump off the bridge. It looked fun so I tried. It was. I did it twice. It started to rain. I went to go get the guy’s truck to help him pull the boat out. There were a line of guys trying to get their boats out as the rain moved in fast. My foot slipped off the brake and hit the guy’s boat trailer in front of me. He was pissed. He got back in his truck as it was pouring rain. We moved a little further and I wasn’t real good with this guy’s clutch. My foot slipped again off the brake and I hit the trailer again. The guy snapped. I damaged the trailer. I had to give him my info in the rain storm and I ended up paying for the damage. No injuries. 

6. Crash with Hesselberth: This was when I was 16 years old and living on my aunt’s couch or in a laundromat floor, a camper or an apartment complex stairwell. I was headed to a party with a guy who used to be the student council president and huge acid head. He was proud of his 1965 Valiant that was painted up with Grateful Dead iconography. Not sure how I ended up with him but we were driving over to a party in Des Moines, Iowa when he slid on some ice and rear ended another car. I was not wearing a seat belt and my head spider webbed the windshield. I remember reaching for my forehead thinking I would be covered in blood. Zero. Dead Mobile was dead. No injuries. The cop told me I was very lucky. 

7. Crash with Wiese: Wiese was my partner in crime in high school in a variety of different episodes. This crash also happened during the time I was on the streets at 16. One night we were out racing around his old Plymouth Duster with his girlfriend Amanda in Clive, Iowa. We were drinking and smoking and listening to Aerosmith. He was going to take me to my aunt’s house at the bottom of the hill. He punched it and hit a curb, bounced of the other curb and then rolled the car on it’s side in the neighbor’s front yard across from my aunt and uncles place at about 1am. Cops, firetrucks and ambulance all showed up. We got lucky. My uncle was pissed and threw me and told me I had to get out of their house. No injuries.

8. Mindy’s Trans Am. Mindy was a beautiful girl from school I had grown up with. I always thought she was gorgeous. Her family was affluent and I was living on the street at the time. Her parents bought her a black Trans Am just like the one in the movie Smokey and the Bandit. She let me drive it out in the parking lot of Valley West Mall in West Des Moines, Iowa. I was trying to impress a girl named Julie and spun out on the ice. I hit a pole and left a huge dent in the front quarter panel. Julie agreed not to tell Mindy and we would blame it on someone hitting the car in the parking lot. Mindy asked me if I crashed it and I lied to her. I always felt bad about this over the years. I did get a chance to see Mindy again at our thirty year high school reunion. She is still beautiful. I had to confess. I always thought deep down she rightfully felt I was an asshole. I did confess to her and she told me she didn’t care. The car was a piece of junk and I forgot I had given her a puppy that she had for quite awhile that she loved. It felt good to get that off my chest though. No injuries.  

9. The Gremlin:  This was my first car, the 1973 AMC Gremlin. A notorious hunk of shit with a reputation for low quality before the company went bankrupt. My mom’s boyfriend bought it off a guy he worked with for $150. My dad agreed to pay for half of my first car and I got my first ride for $75. It lasted a couple months. The shifter broke off at a stop light while I was driving it one day. Then the front end fell apart costing me most of my money at the time. Then I rammed that baby into the back of a Buick on Hickman Rd. In Clive, Iowa. It was done. No injuries. 

10. Fox’s Motorcycle: Fox was a guy on the USS New Orleans LPH-11 I was buddies with. We were in San Francisco, California. He had a nice crotch rocket cafe style motorcycle. It was a nice bike. He let me try it out. I literally put it in first gear, popped the clutch and crashed it in two seconds. I had to give him the cash to get it repaired. No injuries.

11. Fiesta Island: This was a legendary crash in the navy. This was in San Diego, California on Fiesta Island. I was driving around in a Suzuki Samurai with my buddy Bowser. The car belonged to Sano. He was a loser on the ship who got popped for drugs a couple times. He was restricted to the ship and let me sublet the ride if I paid the payment. There were parties out on Fiesta Island and now I had wheels. I had been there from time to time and we were looking to party. It was late and I was driving slow behind an RV for just too long. I was impatient. I accelerated around it to pass and it was right into a hairpin turn. I rolled the Samurai upside down. We rolled it back over. I cut my finger pretty good on the busted mirror. We drove it from San Diego to Tijuana and left it. Bowser took the radio out of it and the keys were left in it. Sano was happy. He filed an insurance claim. I had to get stitches in the finger. Decent Beat Down. 

12. Drove CRX in Ditch Colorado Snow Storm. I drove the Honda CRX all over America when I was in the navy. From Florida to Iowa and back a couple times and from Iowa to California a couple times. One of those times was the winter time and I was headed home on leave. I was going to stay with a buddy who was living in Steamboat Springs at the time. The snow was crazy heavy and I was following a snow removal truck along a highway for the longest time. I finally got into Steamboat Springs and hooked up with my buddy. A couple days later I was headed out and promptly drove into the ditch way up in the mountains. I had to get it pulled out with a wrecker, towed to the shop and all the snow blown out of the wheels too. Not even sure how I initially called for help now looking back on it. No injuries. 

13. Barbers Point Debacle: This was in Barber’s Point, Hawaii. It was so insane I wrote an entire story about it. 

14. Bike Off Cliff in Grimsta Skogen with Rickard: After the navy I chased Maria to Stockholm, Sweden. I met my buddy Rickard there. He was a talented cyclist.I would chase him all over the woods around Stockholm on our mountain bikes. One day we were on a rock ledge that was very narrow. Rickard made it and I followed him. I didn’t make it and about halfway I had to jump off the bike and bail out into a tree as the bike crashed down below. I had to climb down the tree and get my bike. No injuries.  

15. Rickard’s Motorcycle: This was in the woods somewhere in a suburb of Stockholm. Rickard had a KTM dirt bike that he was pretty good on. There was a track in the area and…..he let me ride it. I crashed it in 30 seconds. I didn’t understand the foot brake on the right hand side and when I clinched what I thought both brakes. It was a clutch and the front brake. Straight to the dirt blanket. It thought I broke my ankle as the bike fell on me. Nope, nothing was broken. I limped around for a bit and ended up going to a clinic in Vallingby closer to where I lived at the time. Crutches, some pain meds, an Xray….$12. Decent Beat Down.

16. Maria’s car in Sweden: The tiny Nissan Micra. How could I forget that thing? We didn’t even sell them in America. That was 1992 living in Stockholm. It was the year of their economic meltdown. Timing sucked. Whatever, I was driving it on the way to work. It was winter and the roads were slick. I was going to fast on the exit and went off the road into the ditch and smoked the underside of the car. It was totaled. I was pissed. It was my fault. Maria would be super freakin’ pissed I already knew. I blamed it on a deer that ran out. I lied. If I ever see her again this is a long over due apology as well. No one cared. I was the dumb American. Sweden is super huge on safety. I am just reckless… sometimes. This was another nail in the coffin of that relationship. No injuries.

17. Bike Crash on the Boulder: The difference between stupid and ignorant is that the ignorant people are unaware. The stupid know better and proceed. This crash would fall into the latter column. I was racing my mountain bike through the woods near Hassleby strand. This area, paths and trails were like the backyard for my buddy Rickard and I on our bikes. I was on a decline moving pretty fast when the tire left the trail just before the front access to the beach. I hit a huge rock that was right at the entrance of the trail. I went flying over the handlebars, bounced on the pavement trail and rolled into the grass as the bike went sailing. There were a couple Swedish women there walking I almost hit. They were startled as it happened so fast. They asked if I was OK in Swedish. I tried to play it off like John Wayne with a smile. They just shook their heads and walked off. The front wheel was bent so bad it would not rotate through the forks. That baby hurt. Decent Beat Down.    

18. Subaru Ram with Pick Up: Ah yes, the insurance rammer. This was right when I came back to Cedar Rapids, Iowa from Stockholm. The Subaru I bought needed some repairs. I lived in these shitty apartments across from Cedar Memorial cemetery. It is large cemetery and I would take the Subaru around the track at night in the snow. I was going too fast and went off the road and hit a damn headstone and fucked up the underneath of the car. It was going to be expensive. It was dying on me and I was going to eat the payments. Lucky for me. A guy I know had a huge beat up piece of shit truck. We had to go out to the stop sign outside of town. He was parked at the stop sign. I am not sure how it happened but the Subaru gave him the gypsy rammer and bashed right into the back of the vehicle totaling out my Subaru and getting the back of the truck fixed for said participant.  Our secret. No injuries. 

19 White Volkswagen Jetta: This was one of the few accidents I was involved with that was not directly caused by my actions. There was this old guy who was delivering medications for the pharmacy. We were on First Avenue in Cedar Rapids and the guy was following me too close. The car in front of me stopped quick for a left turn and I stopped just in time and the old guy crunched in the entire back end of my car. His car was smoked too. He was pretty apologetic I remember. I asked him if he liked Volkswagen’s. He just looked at me. “Yeah, ya just bought one, grandpa.” No injuries.

20. Drove Benz in Ditch with Kids: This was when the kids were little and the wife and I were still married. We had a Mercedes Benz E-320 wagon that was just a lemon. It was nothing but problems. It felt like I was driving a tank that constantly leaked oil. The kids were elementary age and I took the wrong road to Fairfax one day where the babysitter lived. We had a pretty good snow going on and the road I was on was not plowed because it was gravel. I missed the next road which was paved all the way into town. I went around a turn and ended up in the ditch and could not get out. I was thinking I was going to have to call for help when a farmer came by in his tractor. We threw a chain on the Benz and pulled it out. A Good Samaritan indeed. No injuries.

21. Volvo S80 Crash on I-88. This was the nice gold colored 2005 Volvo S80. It was the prize when we hit the big check in June 2006 when we were crushing it on the phones. I was subsequently driving it to Cleveland from Iowa to pitch some guy our marketing scheme when I was rear ended by someone else. I was pushed into the back of a stopped semi truck somewhere in the middle of Illinois. The car was totaled and I got a rent car. Drove all the way to Cleveland to find out the guy didn’t show up for the meeting until an hour late and then didn’t buy it anyways. I drove home in the rental. No injuries. 

22. Bike Crash Along Cedar River: One early morning winter ride I was pounding on my usual route in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was all the way down Wilson Avenue from Edgewood to the bike path along the Cedar River. I would ride that back up the river, around Mount Trashmore, up Bowling St. and then back west down Wilson towards home. I could do it under an hour usually. One cold morning the temperature was right around freezing. Down by the river I get up out my saddle and really start cranking and then immediately hit some black ice and straight down on the pavement. Brutal crash. Thought I broke my wrists. I did not. I just laid there for a few minutes writhing in pain. Had to get back up on the bike at 4am and ride it all the way back home too. Huge beat down.

23. Moped Crash in Guatemala. After the divorce I was dating Alyssa, a younger American school teacher. She taught English down in Guatemala. I decided to go down and see her. One day while she was teaching I went to Antigua via a cab. I had the guy stop and I loaded up on some Gallo beers with he big chicken head logo. It took awhile to get to Antigua. It was a third world market place type town. It did have a moped rental. I rented one of those on the credit card and took it into the jungle. I was going down a jungle path and crashed it. I got it out and took it back. The guy tried to tell me I owed him for the damage to the moped. I said it was already there. Gave him some extra cash for the damage just to get the hell out of there. I got home and filed a claim for fraud on the credit card. No injuries.  

24.  Cannondale Crash in Iowa City: I was working the late shift at the VA for almost a year. I got an unfortunate drunk driving charge that relegated me to the bike and the bus for an entire year. It sucked. I picked up a job at the VA hospital in Iowa City, Iowa. I was living with a friend of mine and it was a low point in my life. I worked the night shift and would get off at midnight. Then I would ride a few miles to get back to the peninsula where I was staying. I was coming down the hill on Highway 6 right behind Carver Hawkeye Arena. I was moving along pretty good and the fucking black ice rocked me right there just after the cross walk. Just a brutal smash on to the pavement. Hurt my shoulder but not broken and nice dent on the helmet. Huge Beat Down.

25. Rental Razor in Dominican Republic: This was another lesson in third world crashes. My girlfriend and I were roaming around the beach of Punta Cana when we see an advertisement for racing Polaris Razors around in the jungle. This looked great as we had just done in it in South Dakota. After three bus rides with another drunk American couple we end up in what looked like a Dominican trailer park with about a dozen homemade two seat go carts with lawn mower engines on them. We got in one and no sooner than I stepped on the pedal it was stuck to the floor of the go cart. Full blast right off the road and into a barbed wire fence. The motor kept revving and the Dominicans running the place finally shut it off. Girlfriend was bleeding. Bad scene. I cursed them out for lying about the whole goddamn thing. They drove us back to the hotel. She was fine and required no stitches. Could have been a lot worse. Huge Beat Down. 

26. The Neighborhood Rammer: Riding bikes with my girlfriend here on my very own road in front of my house. I see a neighbor get into his parked car ahead of me on the right. The guy starts the car and is crawling along at about 5 mph. I suspect he dropped something or is on his phone so I go to pass him on the left. He turns the car left into me right as I get about to his steering wheel. I go flying right over the top of the handlebars and onto the pavement. He didn’t look in the mirror. I was pissed. He was with his family. “Had much to drink at the neighborhood party?” The guy literally was about two houses from where he parked his car. “Pay attention to your mirrors, shithead. Could have turned out a lot worse for the both of us.” He just stood there. We drove off. Mild Beat Down.  

27. The Vespa Crash: This was a minor but humiliating crash. I was coming out of the grocery store and was looking behind me in my basket on the back when the car in front of me stopped suddenly instead of pulling out into traffic. I turned back around and had to lock it up quick. It tipped over and crashed. Huge dent on the side. Pissed. No injuries.