Just Off Center

I've always loved the superhero that is Spider Man. I've read his comics through much of my childhood. Most people know the image of Spider Man in the red and blue tights. That's the uniform he wore in the beginning and I think it's what he wears to this day. But if you've never followed Spider Man you my not be aware that for a small chunk of time he went without the red and blue suit and began to wear a black suit with a white spider on the chest. And for a time, all was well. Cutting to the chase, Spider Man realized that the black suit wasn't a suit at all. It was, in fact, a living organism called a symbiote that had wrapped itself around Peter Parker but was trying to bond permanently with Peter Parker's body and fed off of Parker's adrenaline. Eventually Parker was forcibly removed from the symbiote, which then wrapped itself around another human and called itself Venom. Venom has since been an enemy of Spider Man.

Stan Lee, who wrote so many of these stories always tried to incorporate some part of his own life into the Marvel world. By doing that his fans have enjoyed the ability to relate some parts of their own lives to the characters in these comics. And so it is with me.

When I was 20 I was preparing to take a wife and I had to start making very big decisions about the course my life was on. I hated living in Indiana. I hated that I had no money. I hated that I had failed so completely at college. I hated that I had no real skills or trades. I hated all these things and I needed to do something that would change that. I'm not sure how the thought came into my head, but I think that I came up with the idea quite independently to join some branch of the U.S. armed forces. Joining up would get me out of my home state, teach me discipline, train me in a skill, and provide me with housing while paying me a stipend. In retrospect, I should have known that I wasn't meant for military service.

But I didn't then. So less than six weeks after turning a fiance into a wife I was on a plane bound for San Antonio Texas to begin my basic training in the U.S. Air Force. Seven weeks later I was rejoined with my new wife in Biloxi Mississippi where I would spend nine months in advanced training for my specific job. After that we were shipped off to Tucson Arizona where I spent the rest of my days in uniform. But as time wore on, I found myself becoming increasingly disenfranchised with government living. I was a troublemaker in the group, questioning orders and failing to show proper respect for authority. I began to gain weight from poor diet and excessive drinking.

By the end of my third year I was overweight and miserable. My marriage suffered as a result of the conflict between my desire to break away and think for myself and the pressure to conform and be a good little airman. I was put on a weight management program in which I was to lose a set number of pounds or percent of body fat every month or suffer escalating reprimand. For many months I showed great progress. Yet, progress or no, for every month that I didn't lose enough weight I met with an increasing probability of discharge. It only fed my disaffection for all things military.

So three months before my expected date of separation I was discharged from active duty due to failure to comply with military standards. I was shunned by my unit and treated as an example of how not to be. And this is how I relate to the story of Spider Man and Venom. As with Parker and his new black suit, I enjoyed a certain level of respect and pride of serving my country. But with time I began to feel the very uniform I wore tightening and restricting me, and not just physically. In order to get out of it, I had to be kicked out of it.

I'm not ashamed of my service, nor do I resent the government or the military. I did damn good work. It taught me a skill, got me out of Indiana, and provided me with money for college and a new sense of personal discipline. But to this day I see my last set of BDU's hanging in my closet and feel discomfort. BDU stands for battle dress uniform by the way. They are the jungle camouflage uniform that we wore in the desert. Yes, jungle camouflage in the desert. And I can almost picture it jumping off the hanger, kicking me in the nuts, tweaking my wife's tit, and running out of the house laughing maniacally on its way to wrap itself around another young idiot.

But now that the uniform is off and I'm back in civilian duds, like Parker, I'm doing about as well as I could have expected. I have since spoken with several of my comrades who have separated. Most of them feel as I do that the service, while beneficial and at times fun, did create a sense of bitterness and general malaise with respect to the business of national defense. If that makes me unpatriotic, fine I'm unpatriotic. If that makes people think that I was too weak to handle it, that's fine too. But at 28, I'm proud of what I've done with my life so far, and I know that it has so little to do with following orders and so much to do with following your gut.