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ADVENTURES IN MARINE BIOLOGY
(And Other Tales of Deviance)
Obstacle Courses Were Not The Only Obstacles
I loved the obstacle courses and night combat, crawling
through and under barbwire and bayoneting for claymore mines. We
all would imagine ourselves as heroes, just like John Wayne,
surviving the challenges of combat, protecting our country from
the godless communist that hated our democracy, our freedoms.
All the years of imprinting from television depicting war as
heroic and noble had served its purpose. I thoroughly enjoyed
the PT (Physical Training), though hand-to-hand combat training
scared me. Still, I did well in it. In addition, there was
simulated fighting with rifles and bayonets (Pugil sticks).
Our job was to stick, parry, and slash, as well as being
taught to do maximum damage with the butt of the rifle. The
Pugil sticks were hard wooden sticks covered with lots of thick
padding on both ends. There was an area on the stick we held,
but our hands were protected with gloves, our heads with
football helmets, and our groins with a girdled cup. The most
likely thing to be injured was one’s pride, although there were
those exceptions.
I feared those exceptions. There were a few scenarios
that we were likely to face in combat and we incorporated them
into our training. In one scenario, two men were to face off
against each other, both with sticks. Another scenario involved
one guy with a stick facing off against two men with sticks.
Another had one man with a stick fighting and the other man with
gloves, and in the extreme scenario, one recruit with gloves
fought two recruit with sticks. We all had to train in each
scenario.
But before we had to go against each other, our drill
instructors showed us how to train and practice against a
variety of dummies. They showed us how perform endless exercises
of jabbing, stabbing, parrying, thrusting, slashing, blocking,
hitting and pounding. Once we mastered the dummies, we then
graduated to do the practice exercises with each other. All of
us strived as hard as we could because we were aware of the
potential violence we would face when we fought each other in
every combat scenario.
Eventually, our drill instructors decided that we were
all prepared to be killers. We were ready to go at it with each
other for real. Standing on the sidelines as I watched the life
and death combat of the other recruits I struggled to control my
growing fear and I tried to amplify my growing excitement and
aggression along with my desire to do well, to please my drill
instructors and to impress my fellow recruits.
As I stood on the sidelines, readying for the real life
combat, I could feel that the air was thick with potential
danger. Every one of us that were watching the combatants were
screaming our encouragement for someone, anyone to dominate and
subdue their opponent, to beat each other to a bloody pulp.
Every one of us was reverting and becoming our atavistic
killer-ape ancestors.
In the back corners of my mind a part of me felt that
all of this was wrong and I was concern for the safety and
dignity of my fellow recruits. In the forefront of my mind, I
was concerned with my safety and dignity and as wrong as
it was, I wanted to do the best that I could. I wanted to excel
in violence. I reasoned that getting hurt and injured was not
desirable, getting beat up and losing would be worse, and the
added humiliation of losing face in front of the other recruits,
would be the bad cherry on a cluster-fuck pie.
For the sake of time efficiency our drill instructors
set up three separate combat arenas, with one drill instructor
per arena, so that they could monitor three fights at once. I
had opportunity to engage in a variety of the scenarios. Each
time I went in jacked-up on fear and aggression. Almost every
one of my conflicts ended with me the victor. I suppose I was
lucky that most of my opponents weren’t too much bigger than me.
For some reason, I seemed to fare better than most of the other
recruits, losing only one or two conflicts and those had been
close.
On the
last day of hand-to-hand combat training, my drill instructors,
in their infinite sadistic wisdom decided to put me in the worst
scenario. I was now required to be equipped with only gloves
while I was to fight against two recruits with pugil sticks. As
if to confirm their dubious humor and their definite streak of
sadism, they decided to pit me against my two squad-leaders who
had planned and participated with a few other recruits to beat
the crap out of me. These two brutes delighted in violence and
they had led numerous recruits in many a blanket party.
I was terrified
at the prospect of going against these two huge men.
They were the biggest men in the platoon; and I was
still smarting from the blanket party beating I had suffered at
their hands.
My drill
instructors choice of opponents for me filled me with feelings
of outrage, “It just wasn’t fair”. I had thought their
selection was especially fucked because I was one of the
smallest recruits in the platoon pitted against the largest. It
was also unfair for two other reasons; I would be at a distinct
disadvantage because it would be two to one. They, armed with
pugil sticks that could extend their reach, against little
pitiful me without a weapon. “It just wasn’t fair”, my
terrified mind screamed once again. Over the years I would be
reminded time and time again, “What does fairness have to do
with anything?”
When the two squad leaders saw who their victim was
going to be, they flashed broad arrogant smiles between them.
The fear centers of my brain were amply stimulated and I
detected a familiar acrid taste of primate panic – it was my
own. As I started to feel primal animal terror and rage rising
up in me, jolting an adrenaline surge, my heart started
hammering, a buzzing of white noise roared in the interior of my
head and a sharp edge of vomit threatened to erupt forth. I had
a dismal feeling that I was living on borrowed time.
As they strode towards me, they radiated menace and
contempt, their handsome ebony faces stretched into snarling
masks of bestiality and their bodies seemed to tremble with the
impending violence they were going to gleefully commit on me.
They were cussing and jeering at me as they tried to double-team
me. The dual emotions of fear and hostility crackled between us.
“I’ll fuck you up, you little mother fucker,” one of them
taunted.
The other wanting to give his two cents snarled, “Your
dead man, your fucking dead!” They must of sensed my terror as I
kept moving to keep them from double teaming me, their contempt
for me grew as did their confidence that they were going to beat
me to a bloody pulp. “Yeah, that’s it you little pussy, you
better be afraid mother fucker!”
The screaming bloodlust of all the recruits wanting to
see murder and mayhem could no longer be heard; the white noise
in my head drowned out all noise, even the continuing jeers and
threats of my two squad leaders fell into the background. I
could almost hear my synapses singing. My vision narrowed to a
red-hazed tunnel. I went totally and utterly amok! I became pure
mindless reflex. I went beyond normal awareness. I was in fifth
grade once again, fighting for my life. I was told later that I
was gibbering inarticulately and appeared insane.
I came in quickly and ripped the stick out of one squad
leader’s hands and proceeded to pound the crap out of him with
murderous intent. Somehow, I managed to keep my victim between
me and my other opponent who was circling in an attempt to
bludgeon me. Finally, the drill instructor pulled the injured
man out of the fray. I savagely launched myself at the other
squad leader and I managed to quickly beat him to the ground.
Someone had said that the look on his face at that moment was of
stupid disbelief and terror. My blood lust was so great that I
was screaming and gibbering, while continuing to pound him
repeatedly, over and over again with the frequency of the blows
increasing exponentially in time. I continued to beat him even
with the drill instructors blowing their whistles and screaming
at me to stop.
At last, Sgt. Valentine, who was enormously strong,
grabbed me and flung me back several yards onto my ass. He and
the other drill instructors rushed to surround me as they chewed
me out for not obeying the whistle and their orders. It took a
while for the red fog of rage and fear to lift. During this
time, I felt strangely removed from normal consensual reality.
The buzzing in my head slowly subsided, my synapses started to
quiet and then my leg muscles began to twitch and shake from the
adrenaline crash. Time felt very slow, like moving through
molasses. I slowly became aware that my body was drenched in
sweat, I felt very tired and oddly at peace and still removed
from everything... from the world.
As I marinated in post-combat bliss, both of my squad
leaders - the men I defeated - came over to shake my hand and
congratulated me for my victory. Like Billy in fifth grade, they
had a new respect for me and now they wanted to bond as
comrades. I still could not understand this bizarre phenomenon.
Unlike my fight in fifth grade, I did not weep from the
horror and violence I committed this day.
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(GENESIS)
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(EXODUS)
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(REVELATIONS)
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT:
One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
(JUDGMENT DAY)
ADVENTURES IN MARINE BIOLOGY
THE MARINES: GOD'S CHOSEN
WARRIORS
VINCE'S GYM
CONVERSATIONS WITH NEO
NEO TEACHES ME THE ART OF WAR
& PEACE;
His Version of The Matrix
MEMORIES OF MY FATHERS
ZEN & THE ART OF RESISTANCE
TRAINING:
A Yogic & Scientific Approach To Weight
Lifting
ZEN & THE BIOLOGY OF
TRANSCENDENCE:
The First Matrix of Psychic
Phenomena
ZEN & THE ART OF KINESIOLOGY:
The Yogic & Scientific
Approach To Movement
ZEN & YOUR ENERGY SYSTEMS
ZEN & VARIOUS ASPECTS OF
TRAINING
HOMEPAGE TO ADVENTURES IN MARINE BIOLOGY
HOMEPAGE |
