ON THE ROOF’S EDGE
20 Year Old Specialist Colt
My grandmother used to say, “Actors Act and Writers Write”. It was usually in response to my pointing out a good actor in a bad role. I will confess that it took me years to fully understand what she meant. It has something to do with the compulsion that drives certain people. I suspect it could also work for painters, sculptors, musicians or any other artistic type.
I don’t consider myself particularly artistic. I am just a guy that somehow has managed to figure out a way to tell stories that people want to read. I got very lucky landing an agent, had a lot of help along the way and now there are books on bookshelves with my name on them. I won’t lie, it’s pretty cool to be able to do it and to get paid for it.
I was sitting in my favorite bar last night, The Wild Colonial Tavern, in Providence. Stop by if you’ve never been, it’s everything a bar should be. I was sitting with friends, a young lawyer whom I worked with, my former partner and good friend from work and Maurice, the owner of the establishment in question. I wasn’t drinking like I was twenty-six anymore, for obvious reasons of age and generally having grown up a bit.
My former partner and the lawyer were talking cop shit. I can’t blame them, it’s fascinating. There’s a reason why they still make cop shows. Maurice, whom I have happily known for twenty-five years now, and I were talking about literature. He knows something about American literature having an actual degree in it. He is a big fan of Hemmingway, whom I’ve haven’t read since the late 1990’s. I don’t know if he is overrated, or I am just jaded. Maurice assured me that he is not overrated. Then he mentioned the Nick Adams stories and it occurred to me that maybe I should give up being jaded and give Hemmingway another try.
I respect Maurice’s opinion. He, like a lot of my friends from my twenties was older than me and had a lot more life experience. Not only that but he built the bar that he wanted to hang out in and that in itself is a hell of an achievement. A few nights after the first deployment going away party, I stopped into the bar for a last few drinks with the host of the going away party. We had been regulars since the doors first opened and it seemed the right place to have a last drink at home.
Maurice was there and after some conversation I the reason for our stopping in came up in conversation. He offered me one on the house. It was a glass of something that I couldn’t afford on my best day and given how recently he had opened the bar he shouldn’t have been giving away. He poured me a couple of fingers of fairly rare and old Middleton’s Irish whiskey, neat. I have been known to take my brown liquors on the rocks. This leads one of my toughest and closest friends to say disparagingly; “well if you like it cold and diluted, that’s your choice”.
Soldiers and cops tend to be superstitious sorts of people. Saint Michaels medals and prayer cards often accompany members of both professions. I carried a Philippine one Peso coin minted from a U.S. Silver dollar when the Philippines were a U.S. Protectorate. My dad gave it to me, in part because he wanted me to have something and in part because when his father traveled, he carried two U.S. Silver dollar coins for luck.
I carried that coin, and a few other things, in a pouch I wore around my neck on three deployments. The same things each time. Just like I stopped in the Wild Colonial right before leaving for each of those deployments. Each time Maurice pulled the bottle of Middleton’s from the elegant wooden box on the top shelf and poured me a measure on the house. There is something to be said for the power of superstition, especially if it comes in the form of excellent whiskey.
When I was in my twenties, I could write okay poetry, which I will never inflict upon anyone other than a few close friends and loved ones. I wrote a few decent short stories, but they were crude. The truth of it is that I didn’t have the life experience to be a good writer. I could write clever sentences but not much more than that. About the only bit of life experience, I had at that point was a little bit of well anticipated heartbreak and middling shitty childhood. Not enough by far.
That night, in January of 2000, sitting on the roof of the factory building in the cold. Sitting next to yet another older friend, with a lot of life experience in the cold, not caring about that or the heights. Just letting my head clear, my friend Don said something unexpected to me.
“Don’t go and get yourself killed because you’re trying to get some experiences to write about.”
In Vino Veritas, it wasn’t the only reason why I went on those deployments but I’d be lying to us both if I said that wasn’t part of it.