The Post Office Smile

The Post Office Smile

            I have never been proud of my body, as it has betrayed me many times.  In football; in love; in health; in promotion points it has.

            Now, I am in Iraq and a nation has put more trust in my body than I ever have.  While the US government whispers sweet nothings about what my body is capable of doing, I purposely reject any notion that I even have a body.

            Instead, I focus on the bodies of others and what I want to do to them: militarily; humanely; sexually.

            From the insurgents that lay IEDs along my daily path to the women I see at Baghdad University to the interpreter girls at Camp Shield to Ali and Ahmed, and finally to the portrait of the woman inside the Camp Liberty Post Office, I focus on the bodies of others, ignoring mine altogether.

            The first time I walked into that bustling epicenter of solider communication, I noticed the portrait.  She was what I used to affectionately refer to as a “yellowbone”.  She was Hispanic, or maybe the daughter of a white father and a black mother . . . and she was beautiful.  She was posing in her DCUs with her arms crossed around her chest; a gorgeous smile stretched across her young face showed off her pearly white teeth.

            Every time I walked into that building, I admired (some would say lusted over) her image and never thought twice about why her portrait hanged in such a shoddy building in Baghdad.  It wasn’t until my last week in Baghdad, however, that I walked inside the post office to mail home souvenirs and found out.  The place was swamped and I found myself in a very long line.  AS the path of the line brought me within inches of the familiar portrait, I finally read the plaque underneath:

“PFC _________ died ___________ 2003 while convoying a shipment of mail from Baghdad to _______ . . . “

            I felt guilty; I felt ashamed.  For the past year, I had found myself lusting over a woman who had been dead for years.  I felt angry that such a beautiful face was gone, never to grace mankind with her smile again.  I left the building that day again feeling guilty, guilty that my body was intact . . . while hers was six feet deep.

My Trigger Finger

My Trigger Finger

(Expounding on Phil Aliff’s piece of the same name)

            I have never owned a gun larger than the Daisy BB gun that briefly held my interest when I was a child.  As such, the first time I fired a gun was in basic training.  To this day, after a one year tour of Baghdad, training exercises remain the only times I have fired a firearm.  I still do not know if that is a result of my humanitarian spirit trumping my primal urge to fight or my trigger finger betraying me and my fellow soldiers.

            On another hot day in Baghdad, I was presented with two opportunities to put all that training into action and take a human life.  I still have nightmares about what happened or, more accurately, what could have happened.

            We were convoying down the familiar stretch of Route Irish that connected us to all we did in Baghdad, good and bad.  It has been a relatively calm tour for the soldiers of the T-Bird 85 element and the calm was so unbelievable that we were starting to become stir-crazy.  I, like always, was a gunner, and my primary job was to keep civilian traffic out of our convoy.  As my truck reached the crest of the slowly rising hill and the on-ramp that funneled civilian traffic onto Route Irish, I peeked out over the turret.  This was a relatively blind on-ramp for travelers merging onto Irish and I had to be extra vigilant.

            Up from the ramp, at a speed that made all of nervous, came a van that appeared to pay no attention to the US Army convoy it was already dangerously close to.  My heartbeat raced as I jumped and drew my weapon down on this possible BVIED.  From every truck, radio transmissions warned me of the advance and everyone’s mind raced.

Was this the one?

Was this our time to feel the power of hundreds of pounds of explosives?

Was this our chance to strike first and take the fight to the enemy?

            AS I leaned further and further outside the turret, fists clenching my rifle as hard as I possibly could, I finally caught a glimpse of what was inside the ominous van.  While paranoid soldiers yelled through the radio to fire, I made out a familiar scene.  As perhaps seven or eight children horse-played in the rear of the van, a man navigated the vehicle while rotated almost 180 degrees, screaming at them to knock them off.  A woman sat to his right in the passenger seat and did the same.

            To put it more accurately, what I saw was a man, a husband, a father, doing what he could to parent his children while a woman, a wife, a mother, did the same.  As I realized what was actually happening, the questions and pleads over the radio became more and more harassing.  I did not want to shoot this man, this husband, this father, but by all measures of the rules of engagement, I had every right to.

            As the anxiety of the situation reached its peak, the man finally turned around and saw me and the barrel of my M-4 carbine rifle staring him in the face.  With rashness bordering on recklessness, the man sharply swerved to the shoulder as I made one last show of force and sat down, relieved.

            I explained that the situation had been resolved and we continued our trek towards Traffic HQ.  At the entrance to the police station, traffic was blocked to allow us inside the compound.  While my truck waited its turn to enter, a familiar IP truck made its way toward the entrance from the opposite direction . . . towards the entrance and towards us.  From where I stood, I could see the IP look me in the eye, point to the entrance, wave, and continue his advance.  I yelled, I stood up, I pointed my weapon, but he kept on.  With possibly the most aggressive posture I have ever used, I made one last attempt to show how serious I was, and it worked.  The truck came to a screeching halt just a few feet from the entrance . . . and our lead truck.

            Afterwards, our squad leader and our interpreter explained ot the man in convincing fashion that he was lucky I had not shot him.

            Later, one of my comrades approached me and asked why the fuck I hadn’t shot that guy.

“Which one?” I asked.

“Both of them!” he replied.

            I told him about the van and the kids and father and family.  I told him about the IP mistakenly believing he was an ally and could pass through, but my friend was undeterred and said both should have been shot to send a message.

            Months after returning home, I still think about that day and have nightmares about what happened. 

            I dream of the exact same scenarios with variations.  I dream that I again do not pull the trigger and all my friends are killed thanks to a VBIED that I let through.

            I dream that my friend is the gunner and he shoots and kills a father and husband over one man’s negligent driving.

            I dream that I pull the trigger, get congratulated by my teammates, and am haunted for the rest of my life.

            To this day, I do not know if I made a conscious decision based on principle or if I merely froze up and could not bring myself to fire on a human being.  Both scenarios only lasted a matter of seconds but they’ll stay with me for decades.  It is because of my own experience in that situation that I will never think of another soldier’s reaction to that scenario in terms of black and white.

            

Album Review: Grieves' "88 Keys and Counting"

            Seattle-based Grieves is just your average tall, skinny, self-loathing and introspective Jewish rapper . . . which is to say that he’s not average at all. 88 Keys and Counting, Grieves’ sophomore effort, was released November 14, 2008 on Black Clover Records after the spectacular breakthrough effort Irreversible.

            The album’s title is reminiscent of the piano jazz album of the same name by G. F. Mlely and the intro to the piece invokes the class and soul of earlier jazz fusion efforts with a cackling old-school-sounding monologue over simple piano.

            On Catapults, the second track of the work, Grieves, born Ben Laub, bares his soul from the very first verse, declaring “I feel like the last lit candle in the back of my mind” over a beat that could make even the coldest hip hop fan smile with joy. The fusion of classic hip hop and classic piano is managed beautifully by producer Budo and Grieves’ introspective opinions of what Heaven and Hell mean in the grand scheme of human behavior. “Heaven is just a six letter word like crutch” and “Hell is just a four letter word like fear.”

            After one reviewer called Grieves a “wannabe Slug [of Atmosphere] emo-rapper” after the Irreversible album, Laub could have created a more traditionally hip hop album, full of bravado, misogyny and references to sex, drugs and rock and roll. What tracks like Kings prove, however, is that Grieves is unafraid of the labels: he is unabashedly emotionally honest about what you should think about him.

            “You don't need to fight me off, I'm well on my way. Gonna leave these cobblestones and matchsticks in the back of my brain,

            I learned that you don't even have a single word that you can say that can make me quiver when you wave it like a knife in my face . . .  your king is dead.. 

            October in the Graveyard and Dead in the Water up the emotional ante with Grieves providing the clever lyrics as well as the crooning hooks over Budo’s fantastically untraditional hip hop beats before Life in the Hive, the album’s first instrumental effort, brings it back down, allowing the listener to take a breath before delving further into what has haunted Laub since the Irreversible release.

            The album picks up lyrically with the story of Gwenevieve. Whether Gwenevieve is a real person in Laub’s life is anyone’s guess, but the raw passion with which Grieves opines about everything that makes her vulnerable and desirable at the same time is admirable. Everyone has had a Gwenevieve.

            “She said the world paints a picture that makes her want to run, pull the stars out the sky and load them into her gun,” and . . . “She fights like a lover but sleeps with the enemy and acts like she's only getting close just to empty me.”

            “ Gwenevieve, another hook for the line, in a perfect little painting of disaster in its prime, and I love it solely because it makes me feel alive when she sets the world ablaze and sees the fire in my eyes.”

            Identity Cards, featuring Luckyiam, is another atypical hip hop song about just how atypical Grieves is as a hip hop artist with the premise being that no one can issue him an ID and tell him how to live based purely on occupation. The honesty with which Laub and Luckyiam, of Living Legends fame, speak of their lives both at home and on tour is refreshing and is balanced perfectly with an unbelievably upbeat piano-driven background put together again by producer Budo.

            With two more instrumental tracks mixed between songs with titles such as Nature vs Nurture, Learning How to Fall and Greedy Bitch, Grieves and Budo tell the story of Grieves’ life since the now classic release of Irreversible, knowing when to pause to allow the listener to refresh his or her mind. The instrumental pieces The March and Exiting the Hive are the closest thing listeners get to an intermission in this most dramatic performance of hip hop theatre.

            Grieves is a hip hop artist in the truest sense of the word. Whether a fan of hip hop or a fan of indie rock, listeners will appreciate hearing an album that is as beautiful musically as it is lyrically. 88 Keys and Counting is the story of life, maybe even the story of your life.