Heroic

 

My neighbor Don is heroic. Vietnam at age 17, plenty of bar fights, never took any shit from anyone. Father, grandfather, great-grandfather and patriarch of a big clan. His adult children are tough, hard working, decent men, their wives and children intrepid and happy. I've met some of them riding with Don, crunching gravel at 10 miles an hour over hills and dales and narrow creek slabs. A good friend to have. We're about the same age, fellow hippies. His wife is wonderful, an artist, an avid reader, has some health issues and a big humorous smile. Don tells stories, makes me laugh or listen carefully if it's grim news of another death. He's lived here a long time, armed to the teeth to deal with a dangerous world. That's why my wife and daughter have an adequate arsenal and live on a tactical hill ringed with barbed wire and a steel driveway gate, a dog and chickens to make noise if a predator intrudes. That's life on life's terms. Gardens to tend, food to be put up in Kerr jars, rabbits and deer to be harvested.

 

I sit in the tin barn and write, smoke, listen to the radio.

 

As always, NPR got it 100% wrong today in praise of a new Matt Damon movie set in medieval France — asserting that there is no truth, no reality, and everything is a matter of individual perspective. The most  insanely emotional broadcaster in America funded by politically correct pussies and public institutions happily concluded: "We are all heroes in our own mind."

 

A hero in my own mind? Hah. Everything I endeavored to do in life failed. I was a mediocre musician,  an incompetent director, hopeless entrepreneur, vaguely courageous in fair weather, totally dependent on the good graces of others, an incompetent father, a terrible employee, and perpetually ignored. I tried to be positive and flunked. I was deaf to bosses, colleagues, good counsel, celebrities, and plain common sense.

What I saw as inspiring was scoffed at and dissed. All of my wives had buyer's remorse, and in today's context, I trust that my career as a lover would be vilified. Small wonder that no one wants my literary work, a million words in defense of liberty, a wild romance of white male aggression, privilege, and pleasure. I despise spineless surrender to a mob of savages to compensate an "injustice" or their hurt feelings. Life is not fair. Of necessity and objectively, it is life on life's terms, unique and individual.

Occasionally, I've explained why I lost my temper, which doesn't matter and doesn't change anything. My social skills amount to pitching the impossible and unwanted. Given enough rope to hang myself, I issued terse orders, paid too much to get what I wanted, wrecked work opportunities, and ignored the consequences. It was not heroic. It was a formula for disaster, the road to ruin and shame.

Go ahead. Listen to a touchy feely TED talk on NPR, smile and blink. Today's theme was "revitalization" in praise of snarky black people and spiral cord injury victims, people you will never encounter if you read my tall tales or philosophical rants. My message to democrats is drop dead, there is no divine right to vote, legislate, tax, regulate, punish, or reward whatever you think would be nice for everybody.

NPR heroes are patriots of color like Colin Powell, promoted and mourned as a "pioneering" political stooge. Republicans admire Oliver North, bravely shredding documents at the White House to cover up a covert conspiracy to trade arms for hostages and fund Contra coke smugglers. I'm not heroic. I didn't fight in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan, didn't roll over with my paws folded for Hope And Change.

In the past I was quoted by anonymous anarchists, because I said that I subscribe to the Fuck You school of political philosophy. It's my life, not yours to marshal and march into battle.

That's why Don and I see eye to eye. He said fuck you to Army officers and crooked cops, willing to get his ass kicked by men twice his size and didn't care who won or lost a bar fight. That's heroism in the trenches of life on life's terms. He thinks I'm okay because I was the smallest guy in prison, bulked up in the gym and faced killers who were three times my size, fifty years ago. I have emotional and physical scars. So what? Nowadays I'm too old and frail to fight anyone. If necessary, there's a replica Ruger on the shelf loaded with bronze BBs. I don't trust myself with firearms. Writing is a tense business. Too many novelists have shot themselves.

See? — I'm not heroic. I don't even want to promote my work anymore. Too stressful in a world owned and operated by happy smiley squirrels and evil chipmunks, playing patty cake with chumps. Nobody needs or wants hardboiled fiction, an antique genre that deals with gangsters and crooked government and heroic assholes and leggy babes in high heels, Depression era life on life's terms.

 

[milwaukee]

 

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