“Only steers and queers come from Texas, Private Cowboy. And you don’t look much like a steer to me so that kinda narrows it down.” – Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Stanley Kubrick’s FULL METAL JACKET
I searched Texas for the famed steers and queers, and I found but one steer. So, I rode it. For a good 10+ seconds:
And then I found the queers!
If you look closely enough, you’ll see a brown ghost.
Texas, you meet expectations.
Saturday, March 3, 2012 at 7:45am outside a military dental clinic:
I walk across a parking lot and see a Lieutenant Colonel and a Captain walking out of the building I’m about to enter. The Captain looks familiar. I stop to stare. They walk past me; I start stepping toward the automatic doors a few yards ahead, but I stop myself.
Me: Joe? Is that Joe Cata-
Him: Mike!
He runs up to me and forces a hug. He won’t let go.
Me: Hey! Cut that shit out…we’re in uniform!
But he didn’t cut that shit out. How could he?
***
The last time I saw Joe was on a runway at Balad Air Base in Iraq. It was May 2003. I’d arrived a few weeks prior (May 8 to be precise) after spending a few months with Joe and several others in Kuwait City at a place called Camp Wolf. He was on the back of a C-130 about to receive several wounded Army soldiers. I was there to carry them off the ambulances and onto the plane. The bird was loaded and about to head back to Kuwait, and Joe asked the following, after seeing me again for the first time since I’d left the purgatory that was Camp Wolf in Kuwait for the Hell that was Camp Anaconda in Iraq:
Him: Is there anything you need–anything we can maybe send up to make things a little bit better for you guys up here?
Me: Yeah. MRE’s and bottled water.
Him: Are you fucking kidding me? They aren’t even feeding you?
Me: The Army is having to ration food, so we have to stretch 1-2 MRE’s to cover 3 meals. Water is from the Tigris…it’s put into tanks with some bleach and iodine or some shit in it. It sucks.
Him: We got boxes and boxes of both lying around, now that we have DFAC‘s. I’ll put some on the next bird up.
Joe was good on his word. Every subsequent C-130 carried cartons of bottled water and boxes of MRE’s. In fact, we used the boxes to create a divide between our cots in our tent: our very own “wall of water, ” we called it. It was clean, and it was room temperature (which was better than the 100+ degree water I was used to drinking).
I never got to thank him in person, but I always made sure whoever was on the back of the planes I saw the subsequent weeks and months knew to tell him how much we appreciated his efforts.
On November 11, 2003, we were both home, and he called. I didn’t recognize the number and let it go to voicemail.
Him: Hey, happy Veteran’s Day, man. Glad you made it back home. Hope to see you again sometime stateside.
He’s called every 11/11 since then. I’m one of (I’m guessing) 50+ veterans he calls every year.
***
I found out he’d served at a couple different bases since 2003, gone to college, gotten a commission, return to school a couple more times for a Masters and PhD, and now lives in Tampa but drills where I do in Georgia. We exchanged cell numbers and agreed to meet for lunch next month after catching up a bit in the parking lot.
About an hour later, I sent a text: “You are still damned sexy. Glad it wasn’t the desert sun that did it for me.”
He responded: “And you are still a pervert. Was hoping it was the desert sun that did it to you.”
Howdy Ho!
This year, I thought it rather foolish to go to New Orleans for a 13th time and spend my 4th Mardi Gras, given my crossing into “upper thirties” territory last June and my work wife’s turning 40 just a couple months ago. Also, how was I to top my Buddy the Elf does Mardi Gras experience of 2011? Luckily, I pushed such foolish defeatist thoughts from my head and went, because basing plans on “I’m way too old and mature for this” or predicted rain storms are for the unimaginative and the perpetually homebound.
I’ve met those people, and I am not they.
I decided I would NOT get off the plane and go to Pat O’Brien’s to down 4 quick Hurricanes this year by 1pm like I did last year, so we met with a marketing firm that might actually help us get more business, so that we can go on more educational, life-affirming trips like this one. After an hour of that, such plans ceased, and we dropped off suitcases with the bellhop and bolted for Bourbon Street without even seeing our room, because everyone knows stopping by one’s room at the beginning of a vacation only leads to unproductive and meaningless sex with one’s straight male work colleague, which is the last thing I wanted on a Thursday afternoon in New Orleans. No sir.
“Get thee to a tavern!” the voice in my head said, and if I’ve learned anything in my 36 years, it’s to listen to that voice in my head. You know the one. So we went to Desire Oyster Bar AND THEN Pat O’s for some Hurricanes, because that’s what wise veterans of Mardi Gras do. We met more lawyers and vendors who love to get lawyers’ business from our conference, and they said things like, “Hey- I didn’t know y’all were at the conference this year…you must’ve been sitting on the other side of the room!” so I said things like, “Bitch, I know what you’re insinuating.” and then stared at them until they shuffled off without suggesting I hadn’t exactly BEEN to the conference yet, because it’s THE BARS that are important in New Orleans, not continuing legal education.
According to Foursquare, we visited some other bars, and I met kind people like this medical illustrator, who became a close friend with her non-verbal communication skills:
Will you come home with me and babysit my children?
After around 1am, my fairly new boots started rubbing me the wrong way, so I went back to the room to change shoes, and while I was up there I thought: “if I go back there, I’m going to spend the next 3 days in misery, convulsing and throwing up like the past several years. Maybe I should go to bed.” So, I did. My work wife came in around 5.
After breakfast in bed–because that’s what same sex work colleagues do to take their awkward friendship to the next level–we headed to one of my favorite places to eat a dead pig in the world: Cochon. I love Cochon like I love hot coffee and a crushed ice blow job.
Then we went to the historic Columns Hotel in the Garden District to drink many many Pimm’s Cups that were delicious and made all the colors on the floats in the Krewe of Hermes parade more beautiful. Especially after ignoring Yelp’s advice on refusing more than one margarita at Superior Grill, because heeding the advice of Yelpers is not what one does when the drinking began at noon that day. Besides, they were delicious.
See the pretty colors?
This is 3 minutes long, but it shows more pretty colors and how much fun parades can be (even for the kids!):
After the parade ended, everyone returned to their rooms to put on nicer clothes for our Friday night on Bourbon Street.
At the historic Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone, we received several stares, a few laughs, and two roses from one older woman who found Mike’s pants and my lederhosen “very different.”
It’s hard to blame her, isn’t it?
I don’t always wear pants, but when I do, I will fucking blind you with them.
How come I don’t wear this to court…yet?
We then hit some bars with music and crowds, and I’m not sure what happened until we went to bed, but I’m glad it wasn’t too horribly late, because Saturday was approaching quickly, and Saturday matters.
Saturday morning, I stood in line over an hour to eat at Stanley Resturant in Jackson Square, but it was worth it (after the milkshake I had in line to stop the shakes…see the irony there?). But then the forecast rain began, and it came hard. We hit several costume shops for everyone in our group to be suitably dressed for the annual balcony party, and we happened to pass an Ace Hardware, and someone said, “Hey, why don’t we go as a German beer drinking team…with FUNNELS!” and that person became our leader forever.
The next half hour went like this:
1) Choose your hose.
2) Get the Ace employee who greeted our entrance with, “Let me guess–y’all want to make beer bongs?!” to help.
3) Stand and smile, because this shit is about to get real.
Now it was time for another costume change and to see how this plan would work, because it was 4-something in the afternoon, and we all know what “after” and “noon” mean when used in concert: you are behind on your drinking.
Lederhosen!
Photographs taken into mirrors connote the sensitive, artsy type.
If Dale Carnegie didn’t include “Go out on Bourbon Street in lederhosen while carrying beer bongs” in his famed “How to Win Friends and Influence People” book, then there clearly needs to be a 21st-centruy corollary written by me. Learn why after the jump:
I have a tendency to let my camera+ photos collect for months without uploading them anywhere, so tonight, I pulled a few from the past few months. The below represent Saturday activities with the children when their mother is off being productive or something. And no, it wasn’t Halloween.
The amazing Window Crawler!
We remember the show well.
It’s 8 a.m. somewhere, right?
You know I don’t have a good excuse, so I’ll save you the misery of hearing a bad one.
And, finally, the below was shot after I took down Christmas decorations and decided to set the eery mechanical Santa outside our eldest’s bathroom door to greet her upon exiting the shower. Sadly, I was about 3 seconds too late to capture the immediate dismay, but the kids’ reaction to her fright was pretty amusing:
Happy Valentine’s Day, Internet!
I’m hosting a meetup to drum up excitement and participation (and one free ticket!) to the impending Dad 2.0 conference coming up next month in Austin, TX this Thursday night (Feb. 9) at SweetWater Brewery during happy hour (5pm til 8pm). I’ve reserved us the VIP area, where we’ll get tours of the brewery and samples of sweet sweet beer to precede a few hours of merriment. Hope to see y’all there, and maybe you’ll even win a free ticket!
Let me know if you’re coming, so I can get a rough head count for food and brew. The address is 195 Ottley Drive in Atlanta. Say you’re there for the “Dad 2.0 meetup.”
