© Sauce*Box, Winter 1996/97.
All rights revert to author.
What it Means to be a Warrior
by Mark Wood
I. What it Means to be a Warrior
I haven't forgotten what it means to be a warrior. To drink the blood of the enemy, I am still male. Most men have sex and violence linked together at some very basic level. When did I first become a sexual creature? I was always a sexual creature. We are all sexual creatures from the very beginning. I do remember the first girl I tried to have sex with. Her name was Wendy. I am not kidding, you have to remember I was born in Tampa, Florida in 1956. Glorious indeed, sixteen in 1972, a child of the seventies. Anyway I was a perfectly enchanting young God with a beautiful body. A face that made young girls wet in places they had not been wet before. Loved making them breath fast and hard and I loved to see them sweat, I still do.
It was never as natural as it seems to me now of course. I didn't know that I was a God at least not then, Hell I didn't even know that I was supposed to get in-between her legs. I have to laugh at my breathless struggles now, then it was another story. It seemed that everyone was coming of age in a time of brilliant light. All the world seemed open and available. My father had told me that I was to inherit the world and that he would give it to me. I believed him of course, he was God. He told me that he was God and I was his first born son. In my pantheon that made me Jesus. Funny, I didn't feel like Jesus. I felt like nothing, not much of anything. What I felt I could not share at least not then. . . . I couldn't let anyone else know that of course, so I learned to fake it.
I spent all my time trying to figure it out. Figure out what, you ask? Everything of course, I wanted all the answers. I had been told where I could find them. Books had all the answers, answers to every conceivable question, I taught myself what sex was from books. I taught myself what being a man meant from books. It did not fit what my dad had told me about being a man. That was a conflict.
What is really funny about being a man's son, or at least being Maurice's son....he did not know quite what to make of his sons, or for that matter how to talk to us or any child. Maurice was all authority, blood, Godhood, power, masculinity and a vague unresolved sexual energy. This punctuated with a trumpeting violence that simmered below the surface to erupt in destruction and an almost unbelievable amount of energy at unpredictable times. Well not quite unpredictable. You could predict that if my mom and Maurice spent any real amount of time talking together, well then there would be an eruption, fists, fire in his eyes. My father was a very dangerous man, I realize that now.
He terrified me but in a strange kind of way he also made me feel safe. I knew that he would never kill me, even though he used to tell me that since he made me he could un-make me. I just thought that all fathers told their sons that, most probably did and do. Did yours? As to why he made me feel safe? Maurice was like a natural force, kind of like living with a fairly tame earthquake or flood. He could not be stopped and in a way that was a comfort. I was terrified of the world and it was nice to have an earthquake on your side in a pinch. The flip side of that, was when the earthquake took notice of you, it could be extremely unpleasant. The real question should be, why was I terrified of the world? If I examine my emotions in any kind of honesty I can see that the most powerful, pervasive and dominant emotion that I have always felt is stark terror. Not some quiet little nagging fear, no, absolute terror.
Chittering, chattering, gnawing, and running rampant thru my heart and soul. Terror. Fear of virtually every thing or place or person. How is it that I have managed to retain any sanity at all? Another good question. I am not certain that there is an answer. . .Hell I don't know if there is one. I watched the woman discipline the child, it seemed harsh to me. I kept my mouth shut for a while then I said "OK, enough!" she said "Its not enough."
He can crap in his fresh diaper in bed, in bed its OK to crap in your diaper. I came back with what I hoped sounded positive, directed at the child, "Yes all you have to do is tell me or Her: POTTY " Not satisfied with the idea, she said almost as an afterthought "He doesn't have to tell me anything, he's in bed for the night. In bed he can crap in his diaper, he knows what he's doing." Then to the child, "Just say 'night, night - [pronounced nigh nigh] - that's all I want to hear from you." Obediently and almost in a whisper the child said what she wanted him to say, "Nigh Nigh."
I watched her walk out of the room. Then I walked over to the crib and looked down into the child's face. I said, "Its a hard world." The child in the way he always does no matter if he is happy or sad, copied me as best as he could. He said "Har worl."
I continued after a moment, saying, "It will break you." "Brea yu" he echoed.
He looked up, his face filled with a kind of unknowing pain as if to ask me, what did I do wrong? In the shadow filled room with the ceiling fan turning fast, a quiet sense of desperation shared between us, I had no answers.
I don't remember the first time I thought those thoughts of quiet desperation. It doesn't do any good to remember such things. Still I try to remember, Quiet desperation. . . Life is like that. At least it has seemed that way to me. Sometimes quiet and restful like a Sunday afternoon. Other times raucous like a beer bash at the beach or frenetic like a cocaine binge. It comes in waves on the beach and sometimes there is a storm and the waves rage. Other times it is smooth, tranquil and consistent. Does it seem that way to you?
I could have turned aside and said "This far and no farther." If there had been, I might not be sitting here and writing this. . .I might not be sitting here pulling tricks I learned a decade and a half ago. . .I might not be sitting here dying of AIDS.
Take a deep breath and pause for a moment. Over the shock of it? Good. That is very Good because this is not a sad tale of woe, don't mistake it for that. It is a great cry of Joy. A tumultuous explosion of emotion and experience. A commentary of my life and times. Anything but a tale of woe. Woe, the very word is depressing, so lets avoid it if we can.
I spent so much time when I was young trying so very hard to be depressed. To feel that my suffering was so much greater then the suffering of any being that had ever lived. That my awareness went beyond the knowledge of any that had ever been. My sensations more intense, my philosophy more complete. In short, I was young and full of myself and quite obnoxious. There must have been something, others saw it, even if I did not quite believe it myself. I managed to make others believe. Believe they did, in the end it was a great believing that swept us all before it. Forward like one of our Florida hurricanes cleansing all, leaving only devastation in its wake. Like the passing of the hurricane, enough is always left behind to sprout anew. Life is persistent and very patient. Nothing really has the power to eradicate it completely. This makes life very frightening sometime. It has a power to continue and persist that has never been equaled by anything else. I am a great believer in life and its power. In fact you might say that my absolute confidence in life has been a great comfort to me. You see for a long time my greatest fear was that I would be "Lost, Forever Lost." I usually call this out in a mournful wail, when I say it out loud at all. By this ridiculous statement I meant and mean that I would be lost genetically to humanity.
It goes something like this, "Behind me unbroken to the very beginning of life on this planet is a chain of life that extends through me and my father and his father forever and forever until the very simplest form of life in fact to the first living thing, It is my greatest fear that with me the chain will be broken!"
If I could rattle some chains here It would be more effective. I believed, and somewhere in my soul of souls still do believe this, and I mourn. What does this have to do with a twenty-month-old child who can barely speak and is not able to consistently remember that he needs to tell someone when he needs to go POTTY? Not a lot I must say, perhaps just this. When does it begin? The urge to self destruction, when does it begin? What had convinced me that I was so worthless that I did not love myself enough to treat myself like the precious thing that I was and am? How is it that at the earliest point that I can remember I have feelings mixed up with self- hatred, confusion, doubt and inadequacy? Was it inborn in me? Is it inborn in all humans? Is it merely that some of us do better with it then others? How is it that four children raised in the same environment can react so completely differently to it? Yet can still look each other in the eyes and know that the other one also knows? Knowing now what I know, that of the four of us, two would die. One on the floor of a dirty bathroom. In the home of a childhood friend, with a needle in her arm. The other one me, I have yet to die, but I most certainly will die from this damnable disease. Only a fifty percent survival rate for a generation. Is it that way in every family?
No of course not, my family always did things in a big way. My dad made sure of that. We were WOODS and you could tell that he thought of us and especially himself in capital letters. Hell, the old man even named his business after himself "MAURICE STEREO." It was how he saw himself and he made sure that we saw ourselves in that same brilliant light. I bought into it, hook line and sinker and as a result I never truly measured up. I guess that might be part of it but it certainly can't explain it all, not the madness and the selfishness. Not the focus on pleasure or the need for intense sensation. No I cannot blame dad. Hell I called him Maurice, it was good enough then. I guess I can say it proudly now. Blame him, Maurice? Not for that, not all of that. Even if I could, was there never a time when I could have said "That was OK for him but I want something different for me. No I demand something different for me!" There must have been, there would have been a time when I could say, "Enough it is over. I am not Maurice, I am Mark!" OK enough of that self pity shit, listen this is not going the way that I wanted it to go. So I will write about something else.
II. The Hunt That Changed my Life
When I was just about six-years-old my parents bought a house on the edge of town. Now of course the town swept past the edge, it is now a quiet suburb. Then it was the great unknown. The house had a big yard that rolled down to a small spring-fed lake. Beyond the lake was an orange grove. I lost my virginity in that Orange Grove, in more ways then one. That is many other stories. Beyond the orange grove was a cypress forest. To me the WOODS was a fantastic place where anything could happen. My brothers and I spent many happy fun filled years in that timeless place. It still fills my mind with images whenever I think about it. The WOODS were filled with magic, filled with spirits both gentle and malevolent. In the WOODS I learned about life and death.
This particular experience happened when I was about 12 or 13. I convinced my mom and dad that I was old enough to have a weapon. I was the great killer, the innocent killer, the animal with a tool. My tool was the Bow and Arrow, of course. What other weapon could a young romantic warrior use? A sword, axe, sling and spear. . . I used them all, I was and still remain a hopeless romantic. Shit! Twenty five years later I am still crying over the suffering, the needless suffering, of a rabbit. What is the promise of life? This madman says the promise of life is pain. Pain, tears and pain, A God-damned ocean of pain with little islands of joy. To get to the island one must swim or navigate the sea in some craft. The sea of pain. Where is my ship? What has become of joy and happiness? The name of my ship was, work. My mind was to be the great navigator. Light shine down on me. Show me the way. Shine down on me. I look at the child and cry and thru the tears I say quietly "The promise of life is Pain and Joy, no in-between. It will break you, my son."
Back to the rabbit story . . .I had swallowed the world like some great restless carnivore. What I could not keep down I spit back up for the dogs to eat. It is that way in life, one eats what one can and hopes that he will not be eaten in turn. It is a false hope, in the end we are all eaten by time. Time reduces all that is great to dust. In the end even the world will be consumed by a dying sun. The sun itself will die and ultimately the universe. Will the universes death be a cold quiet mist of dead matter without energy to sustain it? Will the universe cycle forever on, expanding and contracting endlessly. In-between, time for such as us to arise and wonder. Has it happened once or a billion times, a billion times in a never ending-dance? It does not matter, you see I believe, no, I know that when I die, all will die with me.
I dream in a quiet dream and the universe exists. When I die, I will awake. When I awake, the dream will end. With its end, the Universe will end. Now about that rabbit.
I guess that I had one great summer of slaughter. I killed so efficiently that I never saw them suffer. I imagined that most of them did not. At least it is my hope that they did not suffer. In the past I had always killed them with a head shot or a heart shot, it was quick and quiet. I was frustrated, I had been walking for an hour through the WOODS and I had not seen a rabbit to kill. I looked across the ditch, it was a really more like a dry man-made stream or riverbed. I looked across the gap and there sat a rabbit quietly eating something. He had no thought that this was his last few moments on this Earth or that those moments would be defined by a wooden shaft in his guts. I took the shot, it was a long shot and instead of the quick kill that I was used to - he did not go into that darkness called death quietly nor conveniently. He was gut shot and it hurt and he cried. At the top of his lungs he cried and he sounded like a child crying to me. Like a baby crying out in horrible pain.
I was galvanized into action, I ran across the gap through the briars ripping my legs to shreds in the process. I felt nothing, I just wanted the cries to stop. When I reached him, he was pinned to the ground and running in circles around the arrow. I beat him to death with my Ben Pearson hunting bow. My hands were covered with his blood, the smell of his entrails filled my nostrils. Killing has never quite seemed the same to me since.
I can't help but see it in light of that rabbit. I am not some Lilly-livered-bleeding heart who cannot kill. I can and have killed when it was necessary. I could kill to put food on my family's table. I could kill to protect, I have. I cannot find it in myself to kill for entertainment. That is all, I imagine the God that lives in all things. I felt it was important for me to learn that lesson. God made sure that I got the point. I got the point, I have not killed for entertainment since. I killed that rabbit. In fact, I am grateful to that rabbit.
It taught me an important lesson with its pain. There is much to learn in this world and I have learned. It is apparent to me that I have learned for my time is growing short . Soon I will be the rabbit, will I scream?
I am the desert and the river that runs thru it, also the ocean that the river runs to. I am the clouds above the ocean. The raindrops that fall from the clouds are my tears. The tree with upturned branches that stands next to the river and catches the rain, am I as well. The fruit that hangs on the tree is me, the fruit rotting on the ground and the seed that sprouts in the ferment. All of this and so much more am I. . .I am forever. I am the dream. I am God and the opposite. All incarnate for this moment. I am the rabbit and the scream. The arrow, the bow and the hand that holds it. I am because I am. I have stood here forever. I walked this path when no man even existed. I am! Does that feel familiar? Does it fit? Does it tug at something in you? Does it, Are we here? Together are we? Forever are we? Just read it, if it strikes a chord in you...good.
If not, good.
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