“How the fuck am I supposed to live up to that!?” I snarled, and whipped the book across the room.

I didn’t remember the incident until Jack reminded me the next day.

It was a long flight to Portland.  I managed to digest half of a book on the way, the story of an officer from the 10th Mountain.  USMA.  Rhodes Scholar.  Airborne Ranger.   One Hell of a resume.

I had just finished the Ranger School portion when the pilot bounced our flight off the runway at PDX.  Military pilot, I muttered to no one in particular.  The woman next to me was peering out the window.

“What makes you say that?” she asked.

“They always take that ‘controlled crash’ thing seriously . . . ”

I caught a look at him on my way out the door.  If he wasn’t Air Force, no one told him.

The first night in town was relaxed.  After few drinks at an English style pub someone mentioned another bar they called the “drink and fight”.  I stood up, late for the door.

On the way Jack mentioned something about Josie Wales.  He pointed me through the door of a place called Movie Madness.  I was immediately hit by the musty smell of old video store.

In a single breath I was transported back to my childhood, browsing the white wooden shelves.  Fond memories.  All those stories, trapped in their little plastic boxes.  The excitement I felt coming home with an armload of Rentals came rushing back to me.

Then I spotted the prop cases . . .

“That’s the actual Maltese Falcon,” someone said.

I was in awe.  I browsed past a scene marker from Blade Runner.  Josie Wales’ Colt Navy revolver.  Arnold’s lever-action from Terminator 2.  The dangling model of a xenomorph’s head.  The knife from the original Psycho.

Then I saw it, sitting in a glass case by itself, a little pink bar of soap.  My jaw hit the floor audibly.  Jack and company had seen this artifact before.  They folded their arms and cracked smug little grins.  Overtaken by the moment, I took a knee and crossed myself.

-   –   -

Later that night we sat in Jack’s pub room drinking whiskey.  Everyone else had called it, but I couldn’t give up the ghost.  We started talking “blogosphere politics” and the subject of Honor came up.  A few names were dropped; people I disagree with at a genetic level.

“I don’t even feel like fuckin’ defending myself to that asshole,” I growled, “He scoffed at the CMH.  He fucking scoffed! Fucking faggot . . . ”

My blood was boiling.

Honor is something I have understood implicitly my entire life.  Church.  Boy Scouts.  Football.  I wasn’t educated, growing up.  I was indoc’d.  There was only one tiny little problem – I never really fit in anywhere.  While my ministers and teachers were hammering me with ideology, my peers were hammering me with insults.  And their fists.

If God rewarded the good, why were these mean, two-faced fuckers put on pedestals while I got stomped to tears?  I was the trouble maker.  I was the problem child.  After a while, I didn’t want to be a part of anything.  I didn’t want to earn my place so they could keep knocking me down.

I wanted to do something that no one could take away from me.

Sitting there at the table, glass empty, hands shaking in anger, I felt unprepared.  Just months out from the greatest challenge of my life, and I was piss drunk and whining.  I should have been running.  I should have been training.  I felt pathetic.

The book sat on the table in front of me.  On its cover were the silhouettes of three soldiers.  I grabbed it and threw it into the kitchen.

The next day Jack suggested that maybe this process was necessary; the constant self-evaluation.  Constant striving.  If we’re content where we’re at, we don’t move forward.

When Craig Mullaney wrote about Ranger School, he described it as a perpetual grind of sleep deprivation, pain and failure.  He called it a Movement to Dawn.  Right now, my whole life feels like one long movement to dawn, eyes blinking shut, failing on my feet, ready to fuck up.

Better to fail on my feet than never show up in the first place.

“Ever tried.  Ever failed.  No matter.

Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.”

- Samuel Beckett