My Jaw was Starting to Cramp

​My jaw was starting to cramp.

You’re supposed to keep it loose, so they don’t break it.

I’d had a broken jaw and was not anxious to go through that again.

Where were they?

One of the Hartford guys have trouble with their costume?

Like most day players, they were always overstating their skill sets and understating their vital statistics.

There was that one job where we needed some divers—scuba, you know—and the Hartford guy  said he had just the people.  

There were six of them.  For some reason—I don’t remember why—they all had to have matching wetsuits.  

Fine. 

No problem.

We got the gear, got the suits to the job and then those fucking guys show up.

Like High School football coaches, the lot of them.

You know like sometimes you see a group of guys on motorbikes out for a weekend ride, and you can just tell they’ve spent all week polishing the chrome and Friday conditioning their leathers?

They looked like that.

We had to send them home.  No way would they fit the suits.

Jim had to improvise.

Jim hates to improvise.

They could have been the best divers in the world, but, in our scenario, they were going to stick out like beachballs in a funeral home.

After that, we never built a move around them.  They were the parsley.

If I got my jaw broken off some parsley, I was going to be pissed.

He was taking another water break.

Apparently, it’s thirsty work beating on me.

I was reaching my limit.

Time to get ready.

I can’t tell you how grateful I was that we were close to the same size.

Bad Guy HQ

​I wasn’t exactly sure where I was.

Sure “Bad Guy HQ, but was this a satellite office, or the main branch?

No evidence of windows:  basement probably.

I looked up.

Sprinklers.

I smiled.

We could be in the worst fucking country and it was still somebody’s job to go around and make sure the minimum code was enforced.

Bureaucrats are the same everywhere.

“Excuse me, Mister Dictator, Sir, but your fearsome and fatal secret torture chamber and prison must be set back from the roadway a minimum of fifty feet.”

I followed the supply lines.

A couple of corners later, I found what I was looking for.

There was an illuminated panel over what looked like a fire door,

“Xzit.”

I pushed through and headed for the fresh air.

Thinking He’d Killed Me

​If the chair hadn’t wobbled, maybe it would have turned out differently.

Movement equals opportunity.

So,  I took advantage.

He wasn’t ready.

I have to tell myself that so I don’t feel like such a heel. 

But, he clearly wasn’t ready, because, when the chair went over, he froze.

Maybe he was thinking he killed me.

I don’t know.

Anyway, it gave me time.

Not a lot, but enough.

First, the chair leg snapped.

Then, so did his.

It wasn’t fair, but, like I said, he was starting to piss me off.

And, after I’d wedged myself into his uniform, I did take a minute to give him a taste of his own medicine.

Turns out he could dish it out, but he couldn’t take it.

I may even have broken his jaw.

That’s on me.

Memories of Meals I Had Forgotten

 You can feel the last bits of last night’s dinner as they come loose from the gaps between your teeth.

In an instant, you recall the mountainous lasagna and soupy house salad, you had at Somme hole-in-the wall that Paris said was the best in town.

Never take restaurant recommendations from the Talent.  Trying to be s team player will always leave yo reaching for the antacids.  Every single time.

Then, he used his left.

Caught my tongue between my teeth.

More memories of meals I had forgotten.

I don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re taking their sweet time.

“Oh, we need a stall for half-a-day.  Let’s send Willie.”

I can’t tell you how many times I got the short straw while Jim, or Rollin, or even Barney in the later years, would go off and work the mark.

“Get yourself caught, and keep them busy while we do this one thing.”

The “one thing” was, invariably, the toughest part of the play, and would take way longer than planned.

And, while they were sweating over which wire to cut, I would be getting the crap beat out of me.

After a while, you get numb to the beatings.  It was the shots that took it out of you.

Like first year philosophy students, there was no agreement on what constituted truth, and so there were as many different varieties of “truth sera” as there were dictatorships and criminal organizations we would go up against.

I remember this one job where I had to fill some time and I worked my way up the organizational chart of interrogators and each one of them had a different truth serum.

It struck me as funny at the time, and I got very philosophical about truth.

Aren’t we all just searching for knowledge?

It seemed only right that each serum deserved its own truth.

Okay, this guy is really starting to piss me off.

Is That All There Is?

 

It was years before they pushed me out.

I was working with Barney on some fucking thing, I can't remember, in some sweaty sardine can of place. I was holding--lifting really--something heavy. I did a lot of that.

Barney was laser-focused on whatever it was he was doing.

You couldn't talk to him when he got like that.

Sweat's running down my back and into my eyes. I can taste the salt. I kept blinking like my mom cried at those Douglas Sirk movies we used to go to whenever I was home on leave.

This was my life now.

Sure I was serving my country, seeing the world and defending everything Superman stood for, but, somehow, it always sounded better when I described it to someone else than it did when I told it to myself.

And they'd made sure there wasn't anybody I could tell it to....

The more I thought about the decisions that lead me to that moment, that precise location, the more I thought about all the other things I had promised myself I was going to do with my life.

I'd always wanted to drive through the Alps in a really nice road car--you know, something that could really handle the corners. I wanted to have a room lined with bookshelves floor to ceiling, a really comfortable chair and a fireplace. I wanted a place to dream, to draw, to create. I wanted to get lost in Scotland, more than once. I wanted to see Australia....

But there I was, a human jackstand.

I started having trouble breathing.

I couldn't catch my breath. It came and went faster than money when I was on leave.

And then it felt like I was breathing into a paper bag. I know that's supposed to calm you down, but it only ever made me panic more.

I could feel the shaking deep in my legs. It wasn't visible right away, but I knew it was coming.

I was going to drop the heavy thing and there wouldn't be anything I could do to stop it.

And the more I tried to control myself, the worse it got. It was one of those "don't think about pink elephants" moments. Don't think about the panic attack. CALM THE FUCK DOWN.

I tried to get Barney's attention.

By now I couldn't speak. My mouth was pasty-dry.

I nudged him with my foot.

He swatted in my direction like I was some sort of house fly.

I'd worked very hard so that he would never see me like this, and now it was coming and there was noting I could do about it.

I could feel my pulse throb on the side of my face, down my neck, and in my legs.

My palms were sweating.

Up until that moment, I had usually been able to get through by making promises to myself, things I would do, actions I could take to change my circumstances, get promoted.

I think they call it "hope."

The calendar kept turning, the threats kept coming, and I kept lifting, sweating, and handing Barney a wrench whenever he'd ask for one.

Promises, no matter how hollow, would not work this time....

My equilibrium was shifting.

I wasn't moving--aside from the throbbing--and yet I felt like I was going to lose my balance.

I tried once again to get Barney's attention, but he wasn't having any of it.

All the bad thoughts in my head, suddenly, like a group of lemmings, rushed to one side of my brain.

Just before I fainted, I managed to kick Barney clear.

After that, things were different.

After that, the cake mix was in the bowl and the eggs were cracked.

 

 

Blood and Soap

The soap suds and the blood met and swirled awkwardly around each other like teens at a high school dance before slipping into the darkness of the drain.  

And, like a high school dance, there were elements that blended and that would not.  Like the clean-up committee, they stayed on the sidelines waiting for the crowd to thin out and the water to stop before they could leave.

Soap washing off mixing with blood dripping out.

I was having an out-of-body experience.  Watching the blood and soap dance and mix, not dance and keep to its own, was hypnotic.

It didn't hurt.

At least I don't think it did.

It could have been the whiskey, it could have been the cocktail of prescription meds I scooped up from the cabinet over the vanity starting to kick in.

It didn't hurt.

In fact, it wasn't until I got in the shower, that I found out I was bleeding.

I shouldn't have been surprised.

They'd started with the drugs--everybody wants clean hands.

I don't know if they were afraid to put their hands on me because of my age, or they just had a thing for needles, but when they finally got ready to work on me, they decided to go straight to the point.

I don't know what they gave me, but I could feel the surge of warmth pour through my body like when they give you a hot towel at the barber, or a warm blanket at the hospital.

That very pleasant feeling was followed almost immediately by the overwhelming urge to pee.

This was their opening strategy, they were going to force me to talk so I could avoid the embarrassment of pissing my pants.

I smiled.  I actually smiled at that point and I know it made them mad.
 
They were trying to be all serious and scary and they were counting on embarrassment.

Comes a point, you live long enough, that stops being a thing:  embarrassment loses its hold over you.

It's different for everyone, but you know you've reached that point when you spend a little too much time talking to people young enough to be your grandchild and the hair restoration ads stop being funny.

I was an early victim of embarrassment and it took over my life for a long time.  I was embarrassed by everything.  And not that awkward embarrassment that comes from being a teenager; I was consumed by the thought that everyone--whether they knew me or not--was consumed by thinking about and judging me.  It wasn't until I could walk into that gym and be in command of my own body, not until I knew for certain that it would do what I was asking that I could begin to raise my head and look people in the eye.

Looking people in the eye was a big thing in my house.

My dad said it was a privilege and not a right.  You look a man in the eye when you are his equal and not before.  You look a man in the eye when you take his life.  It's transactional, an exchange:  you trade your amateur status for a seat at the big table.

I understand that now, but only because I wasted a lot of time waiting for an invitation.  I kept expecting that I would be deemed worthy.  All I had to do was collect enough merit badges and I would graduate to the big table.  I had buckets of merit and there was never a sear for me:  you circle the chairs listening to the music, but when it stops there is never an open seat.

That's what it felt like to be me.

And that was the me that these "professionals" thought they had strapped to that chair:  the guy who would roll up his dog rather than piss himself.

I love my dog.

I can always get more pants.

Turns out, my "hosts" had more drugs in their store and they worked through a bunch of them.

They tried several different hypnotics and amphetamines--separately and together--anti-psychotics, pro-psychotics.  (Before they got bored and started beating me, I think they were just making shit up the way teenagers experiment with alcohol:  a little of this and a little of that.)

It is often surprising to me how and where you learn that benefits of experience.  Jim used to say that life is prologue and it took the longest time to figure out what he meant.  

At one point, I felt certain that he meant you accumulate skills and experience and like it is some sort of account that you can draw from to confront challenges and identify opportunities.  It's only as I have gotten older that I see it as more of a toolbox:  you draw on elements and apply them as circumstances demand.

When you're young, the box is small and the tools are inexpensive--they don't hold an edge and they feel rough in your hands.  Time goes by, you get better tools, higher quality and, most importantly, you learn how to use them.

During my time at The Farm, we had a whole course on interrogation by drugs.  More than anything, this was the course that everyone feared.

You have to remember this was shortly after the war and whispers had been heard about MKUltra.  Everyone knew someone who knew someone who had gone into the field and come back "changed."  We didn't know what had happened or who was doing it, but we all were certain that there was "brain stuff" going on and we didn't want to end up in the produce section.

Nobody was certain where he came from but they had a guy teaching the interrogation course that they "found" somewhere in Europe right after the War. 

He was considered such an important asset that nobody knew anything about him.  

When you got to The Farm, the first thing you heard was about this class and the second thing was somebody's version of The Instructor's history with the company.  Some said he was an asset and others were equally certain he was a penalty--the "cost" of unfettered access to West Berlin.

"Instructor 37" was a name right out of the Saturday morning serials, but it didn't stick.  Everyone called him The Beefeater.

He got that name because his fondness for the gin.

Morning, noon, or night, it didn't matter what was going on, or who it was going on in front of, he was never far away from a glass, some ice and a siphon.

The Beefeater was the heavily-accented boogeyman that you told your deepest and your darkest secrets too, whether you wanted to, or not.

They called it a "course" but this was education not in the Socratic sense, but in the same way that birds teach their young to fly--by kicking them out of the nest.  You were not going to be given theory, instead they administered the actual drugs and evaluated your responses.  If you managed to keep your shit together, didn't freak out too badly on the way down, then you made it to graduation.  

Almost everybody did; most of those that didn't it was because of what they said when they were under--usually stuff that hadn't shown up during the checks.  

The more time I spent in the field, the more I came to appreciate the value of that experience.  It's not until you've had the needle in your arm and heard the words that you swore would never be said come tumbling out of your mouth that you really understand what interrogation can accomplish and at what price.

Spending time with The Beefeater you understand that nobody really says anything under the needle that they weren't prepared to say anyway.  The drugs give you the permission to betray yourself and to betray your country.

And, once you understand that, the drugs have no hold on you: you can always get clean pants.

So then they started beating me and that's when I knew I was able to escape.

In the Groove of a Scratched Record

He told us exactly what to look for, I mean, EXACTLY and then he did it.

We all smiled and applauded, but, truth is, nobody saw it.

There was nothing to see.

I mean NOTHING.

One minute, the world was one way and, the next, it was a whole different way:  the guy was that good.

Fifty years he's making a life with those hands and so you think he's gotta be good, but you also think, after that much time, there's gotta be some slippage, but no.  I mean, if he's lost a step or two in that time and we still can't see shit he must have been un-fucking-believable back in the day.

All the time in this business you run across people drunk on their own Kool-Aid.  They make a bit of a name doing whatever it is that is their thing and they stop doing the work and start talking.  They turn into librarians. Down goes the membership and up goes the shingle.

Funny how so many went into the Invisible Business looking for the spotlight.

I'm watching this guy working the tools of his trade and I'm thinking about the professionals I met along the way.  I am trying to think of the ones I knew that made their date with the sheet cake and I am seeing the faces of each of those that did not.

There was a period of time , back when we were working The Curtain, when there was a series of stories about how so-and-so had discovered another Japanese soldier on some out-of-the-way Pacific island who had been cut off and did not know the war was over.  

Can you imagine...?

It'd be like living your whole life in the groove of a scratched record:  the same musical phrase played over and over....  

That's your whole world....

Operators--real operators, not those waiting for a call from their publishers--would be fine with it.  You go in, you do your job and then you disappear; you don't wait around to be saluted, or to get a fucking sticker.  

Do the thing, disappear.

Soldiers have to be relieved; soldiers have to stand at attention and march in a line.  Operators can do neither unless they are playing a part, the part of a soldier.

I remember reading one of those stories about a Japanese soldier turning up on some island.  At the time, I was stuck on another one of those Albanian taxis with only all the God-damned gear that everybody else was too good to be seen with.  In the head I find this old copy of Look magazine that is being "re-purposed" one page at a time.  I was just about to tear off a sheet of my own when I saw the eyes of the "rescued" soldier.  The brought him back to the world, but you could see it in his eyes, the circuits were blown.  

We'd met guys like that.

Out in the field, at that time, you would still run across the True Believers for whom the world stopped when the Chancellery fell, or the wall went up.  There was nothing left to say, nothing new to learn.  Everything either fit, or it did not; you were either in, or you were out. There was nothing left for them but disappointment.

You don't send a soldier to do an operator's job.

When it does happens that current events get out in front of an operation--happened all the time back in my day--you fade into the background, or you become part of the landscape.  

After the Wall--those of us that were still around--we heard whispers about colleagues with second lives as loyal Party members.  We also heard about those that couldn't and took the pill.  When you're an operator, you find a way to operate; and when you can't, you disappear.

They took a break and re-set the room for some dice. 

As good as the guy was with the cards--a real mechanic--he was a whole different level with the dice.  Reminded me of watching Rollin get ready to take down a gambler.  

The guy told us how he was never the shooter, he would just position himself on the rail and "help."  He would pass the bones back up the table to the shooter and ring in the shavers and ring out the coolers.  

This one thing was the whole thing: a simple, fluid, innocent-looking move that passed right under your nose.  It passed.

When you knew what to look for, it still passed.

He did it with two different colors of dice and even after you saw the red dice go in and the white dice come out, I know there were still people in that room who would swear that he hadn't done a thing.

You gotta respect the skill.

The discipline that it took to get the touch and to run the tables on his terms right up until the last game had been played:  that's a real operator.

He was taking a well-earned victory lap and talking about a period when he could make a living, a period that is now long-gone.  He would show a move and tell a story about a time and a place and a person and some money and you could see he got a kick out of it:  not from his face so much, but the eyes.  They were lit a little differently when he was telling his war stories.

He said he was telling his stories for his grandchildren.  He wanted them to know the man their parents had never met.

I understood that; that was a move I could see.