Bread, Circuses and BET

Bread, Circuses and BET

by

Varo Borja

We bring the bald lecher – the legions of Julius Caesar

The Roman Empire was a far-reaching, famously feared and complex organism. Before the Empire, in the days of the Republic, men of honor and ability graced the halls of the Roman senate with splendid oratories and diatribes, calling all citizens of the Republic who possessed intelligence and courage to great deeds. These illustrious senators also fought at the head of the Roman legions, conquering vast expanses of territory and furthering the interests of their fellow countrymen. Then, after the ascension of Augustus, a great empire was born, encompassing most of the known world; stretching from Spain to the Tigris-Euphrates river the Roman Eagle cast its shadow upon a world of toiling slaves, sturdy yeomen, and a luxuriant caste of persons who knew neither toil nor want. In the modern age, another eagle casts its shadow upon the Earth: the bald eagle of the United States of America. Born a republic and reluctantly, after a long period of isolationism, thrust into the forefront of global politics, this final superpower conceived under the auspices of liberty and justice seeks hegemony over the race of man. Through suggestion, sanctions, and outright subversion, the United States of America maintains its place at the head of the global machine. In the near or distant future, will the United States of America collapse, as Arnold J. Toynbee said, “by suicide, and not by murder”? (Dreher, 1) This remains to be seen, if not by our generation, then maybe by some future race of Americans. The Roman Empire fell amidst the fires lit by their neighbors the Goths, but the same flames were fueled by 400 years of licentious decline and outright cowardice. The moral armor of the Roman Empire was pierced with the arrows of pride, greed, gluttony and sloth. The once illustrious senators and noble patricians of the Republic were gone. They were replaced by a clan of self-interested, self-indulgent princes who cared neither for the austerity of toil for the good of their fellow citizens, or even for the defense of a bloated, but shrinking dominion from which they drew their incomes and pleasures. The United States of America has not wasted away to the extent of the late Roman Empire. However, the United States of America and the late Roman Empire have three broad characteristics in common that could, as in the case of the latter, lead to the eventual collapse of the United States and end life in America as we know it today.

The first characteristic that both empires have in common is the quality of the characters of their respective citizens. Citizens of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D. were copious gluttons, and they were both slothful and avaricious. Furthermore, they were loath to participate in government, and left its machinations to the “weak and distracted” (Gibbon, 663). Roman citizens also betrayed their fellow countrymen and “exploited public goods” (Dreher, 3) for their own purposes. From the time of the Julio-Claudian emperors, such disgusting public spectacles as the use of vomitoriums (public binging and purging houses) and the dispersal of massive quantities of bread to the mob at large gatherings were commonplace. Citizens of the United States of America in the 21^st century are also greedy, lazy and gluttonous. Voter turnout in the twenty-first century is negligible compared to that of the early 20^th century. Civil litigation is just as prevalent or more commonplace in the United States today than it was in the Roman Empire. According to insideprison.com, “The term ‘lawsuit abuse’ was first defined in the early 1990’s”. Many residents of the United States of America would rather sue their neighbors than carve out an existence by their own labors. Also, according to insideprison.com, “in 2002, civil lawsuits cost the U.S. economy a reeling 233 billion dollars.” This statistic is staggering considering the U.S. gross domestic product for the year 2002 was 9.5 trillion dollars (USA.gov); this means that two percent of the entire GDP for the United States of America was eaten up with civil disputes in the year 2002. Although some, if not most of these suits were legitimate, this disturbing statistic still reflects badly upon the land where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness supposedly underpin a society of industrious and benevolent, freedom seeking citizens. Another truly upsetting fact reveals itself when examining the GDP statistics for the year 2002: more income was generated through civil litigation than through the industry of agriculture. According to statistics found on USA.gov, a paltry 164 billion dollars was produced by the agricultural sector in this country in 2002: a little less than half what the deluge of civil lawsuits that year cost the federal economy. This is a startling fact, considering the decline of agriculture within the Roman Empire coincided with the decline of civilization. To quote Edward Gibbon once again, “Agriculture is the foundation of manufactures; since the productions of nature are the materials of art” (Gibbon, 48). It is also common knowledge that obesity runs rampant in the United States, and eating disorders abound, while much of the rest of the planet struggles to maintain even the most minimal diet. Citizens of the United States gorge themselves at Golden Corral and Taco Bell and then some of the diners immediately retire to restrooms to vomit up their extravagant meals, while the residents of East Africa and parts of Asia die by the millions for lack of proper nutrition.

Another disparaging aspect of the characters of both civilizations is the lack of zeal present for the defense of their respective, over-extended dominions. Roman citizens of rank in the fifth century A.D. spurned military service in favor of empty official titles and the pleasures of the symposium. The Roman army was overstretched and under-staffed, and therefore unable to defend its prodigious borders. Potential military talent was wasted as the old families of Rome cowered in their estates and left the protection of the empire to mercenaries and foreigners. 21^st century Americans support their military from the sidelines with yellow ribbons and Toby Keith inspired flag-waving, but few citizens in this country sign up for military service. Charles Moskos, a former professor at Northwestern University, noted in Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel’s article for the Los Angeles Times in December of 2006, that “of his 1956 Princeton University class of 750 men, 450 served (in the military). In the Princeton University class of 2006 there were 1,108 men and women, but only nine so far have joined the military” (Barnes and Spiegel, 3). Apparently, the Ivy League patricians of the U.S. aren’t as willing to defend this country as their forefathers were. The United States Army struggled to meet its goals for enlistment in the years 2004 and 2005, and according to the Barnes and Spiegel article, the army was willing to give exorbitant incentives for anyone under the age of 40 who would sign up for active service (Barnes and Spiegel, 3). Isn’t this a form of hiring a class of warriors to defend that which most of us are either too lazy, or too cowardly to defend? With such negative statistics as these confronting Americans today while we are in the midst of two overseas conflicts, an easy comparison may be made to the days of Rome when the outposts on the Rhine and the Danube went unmanned, and the Gothic barbarians trumpeted their entry into the age-old capital of a once proud empire. A more embarrassing fact may be noted when the military service records of the last two presidents of the United States are examined; the former president of the United States evaded the draft imposed by Congress during the Vietnam War, and the current Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States used family connections within the Federal government to evade active duty during the Vietnam conflict in favor a rear-echelon post in the States.

The second characteristic present in both empires that could lead to the eventual destruction of the United States is the content of their warped and highly self-indulgent cultures. The late Roman Empire featured a policy of Bread and Circuses, or an attempt to distract and sate the lust of the populace with material goods and horribly violent spectacles. Gladiatorial combats featured two or more opponents who fought to the death for the amusement of the mob. Horse races and exotic animals from obscure locales re-directed the attention of the denizens of Rome away from the ever-present threats of invasion from the Danube and Rhine sectors, and the potential assassination of whomever wore the purple of imperator at the moment. To quote Gibbon once again, “A people who still remembered that their ancestors had been the masters of the world would have applauded, with conscious pride, the representation of ancient freedom, if they had not long since been accustomed to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the unsubstantial visions of liberty and greatness” (Gibbon Vol. II, 85). Twenty-first century America has adopted economic policies that favor goods for the present, and a sedentary, television centered lifestyle. According to the California State University, Northridge website, “the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube” (www.csun.edu). This is a very disturbing statistic, considering American families lose 9 years worth of bonding and development; civic duties and religious affiliations fall by the wayside 2 months out of the year. Reality television composes much of what is broadcast in the United States today, and engenders feelings of self-hatred, exorbitant spending on the part of the viewers to become like those viewed, and a cynical, self-centered view of life in the modern age. Also, we Americans have our own brands of gladiatorial combat: WWE wrestling and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Self-indulgence may also be found in the homes of many Americans who sit for hours in front of computer screens or Xbox monitors. According to the Canada Review of American Studies, “The video- and computer-game industry generated a profit of US$6.35 billion in 2001, earnings greater than those of either Hollywood films or pornography and, in the entertainment field, second only to those of the music industry. It is estimated that 60 per cent of all Americans regularly play computer or video games;¹ 42 per cent of them are women; the median age of gamers is twenty-eight.² The production budgets for computer games now regularly run into the tens of millions of dollars, and the creation of a single game may involve a team of designers, actors, programmers, and musicians that rivals in size some film production crews” (muse.jhu.edu). With all this technological deterioration in the homes of American families, it is quite easy to relate this type of societal decay to the Bread and Circuses policies of the late Roman Empire.

Furthermore, religion in the late Roman Empire was a state-mandated form of Christianity that lacked the vigor, self-sacrifice and courage displayed by the early followers of Christ. Petty squabbles over doctrine and the clambering for crumbs of power from the table of Constantine wreaked havoc on the religious lives of Roman citizens. To quote Gibbon once again, “Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty, was successfully practised; honours, gifts, and immunities were offered and accepted as the price of an episcopal vote; and the condemnation of the Alexandrian primate was artfully represented as the only measure which could restore the peace and union of the catholic church” (Gibbon, 706). Many faiths abound within the borders of the United States, but an increasingly secular worldview, lackluster religious observance, and recent scandals associated with religious leaders have dampened what was once a vital element of the culture of the U.S. In the past twenty years, at least three major Protestant leaders have been indicted for crimes including solicitation of a prostitute and fraudulent money handling in regard to their congregations.

The third characteristic that both empires have in common is the nature of their respective capital cities. Rome, the capital of the Western Empire, was a city fraught with corruption and a professional governing class. The administrators of Rome were spurious at best; according to Mr. Dreher’s article the leading lights of Rome “ruled as if the common good coincided with their private interests” (Dreher, 2). Assassination was a constant threat in the Roman capital as well. Gibbon states on page 150 of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that, “The dark and sanguinary soul of the tyrant was open to every suspicion against those among his subjects who were most distinguished by their birth or merit. Whenever he was alarmed with the sound of treason, his cruelty was unbounded and unrelenting.” So, within the capital of Rome, whenever a tyrant was in power (which was most of the time) the constant threats of a leaderless empire or a general proscription laid upon those of the highest ability or rank laid waste to the societal peace of mind. Does not this same type of fear of assassination exist in Washington D.C.? Not always the act of physical assassination, but the even more cowardly process of character and political assassination enacted during the tenures of various Senators and Representatives, or Presidents and Vice-Presidents. Also, Washington D.C., the capital of the United States of America, is a city rife with the backhanded manipulations of lobbyists and self-interest groups. Furthermore, Washington houses a double-headed hierarchy of elected officials who both profit from and cling to their respective positions with all the fervor of babies clinging to their mother’s breasts. Is this image not akin to the sculpture of young Romulus and Remus, the mythological brother-founders of Rome, between whom fratricide was committed, suckling at the tit of the she-wolf who raised them with the same savagery and blood lust endemic to the other children of her breed?

In conclusion, I feel it is important to state two of the major differences between the late Roman Empire and the present United States of America: the resistance exhibited by Americans to be classified as an empire versus the Romans’ glory in that title, and the perfection taken for granted by Romans in their system of government, and a good portion of Americans’ desire for progressive fiscal and social policies over the outdated and archaic views held by some in power at the present time (Dreher, 3). Also, the Roman Empire had over a millennium to become stagnant and infertile. The United States, although certainly corrupt, lazy, and in some cases apathetic towards the rest of the world, is much younger and therefore stands a better chance of revival. Rome experienced periods of grandeur and political stability under such emperors as Hadrian, Trajan, the Antonines and Aurelian. The United States has also had moments of glory and unimpeded progress under various leaders, and has given birth to some of the best minds to ever grace the intellectual arena. However, the United States of America also designed, manufactured and dropped the first atomic bomb: a fact that haunts this country today in its dealings with rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran. Also, much like the Romans, we have a hoard of manufacturing and capital craving “barbarians” seeking economic mastery just outside the gates of our empire: the Chinese. Still, we as a nation insist on forcing our brand of democracy, our love of the material, and our self-centered egoism on the rest of mankind. The future generations of this country will have some very difficult choices to make concerning character and culture, but hopefully reform in our capital will herald a new and brighter age for the free and brave citizens of the United States of America.

Informal Works Cited:

1. Are We Rome? How the U.S. can avoid its own version of the fall of the Roman empire by Rod Dreher. Dallas Morning News: July 29, 2007

2. Expanding the military, without a draft; proposals to sign up more troops are raising concern about lower recruiting standards by Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel. Los Angeles Times. December 24, 2006.

3. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Abridged Version). Edward Gibbon. The Modern Library, New York: 2005.

4. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Unabridged). Edward Gibbon. The Modern Library, New York: 1965.

5. Insideprison.com. Found at: http://www.insideprison.com/

6. USA.gov. Found at: http://www.usa.gov/

7. The Canada Review of American Studies. Found at: http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_review_of_american_studies/v034/34.1budra.html

8. Television and Health. Found at: http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html

Faithful To A Lie

Faithful to a Lie: An Anonymous Account of Alcoholism and Its Effects

By

Varo Borja

As sure as night is dark and day is light, I keep you on my mind both day and night, and happiness I know proves that it’s right. Because you’re mine, I walk the line. – Johnny Cash

Alcoholism is an often misunderstood and mistreated illness, involving the suffering of not only the afflicted person, but the destruction of ties both familial and professional. Everyone around the alcoholic suffers to some extent, and is affected and sickened by a terminal disease without a cure. If someone is sick with virtually any other terminal disease, there is much suffering, but there is also much goodwill expressed towards the sufferer and the family of the afflicted. With alcoholism this is almost never the case. The alcoholic tears himself and his family down, running through the lives of people like a train gone haywire. There is financial ruin as well as emotional and spiritual devastation, and alcoholism doesn’t stop there. Alcoholism is a family disease and can be passed down to the sufferer’s children and grandchildren. One may ask, is there any solution to this type of devastation? From my own experience the answer is yes. My recovery from alcoholism has entailed much sacrifice and hardship, but contrary to common knowledge it has not been a matter of willpower; rather it has been an exercise in surrender that has included much joy and the development of friendships that have been life-saving and unconditional.

My exposure to alcohol as a child was somewhat limited. My father drank, and drank heavily, but almost never around my brother and me. He gave me my first sip of beer when I was eight years old. I still remember what the can looked like, the setting (a crisp autumn day, much like this one), and the taste. I didn’t care for it at the time, but I remember feeling grown up and a part of what was happening around me: two grown men being cool and getting drunk. My first real drunk was at age 16. My buddy Scratch and I lifted a half of a fifth of Everclear from a high school party and rushed back to his house, nervous and expectant with the teenage giddiness accompanied with breaking the rules. We mixed the stuff with several different types of Kool-Aid and drank it down for one single purpose: to get drunk. Scratch ended up getting sick and passing out after one cupful. I drank mine, the rest of his, and the rest of the bottle. I remember feeling much like a newborn baby must feel: carefree, alive, and nurtured by the nectar of the gods. My drinking took on much greater proportions from that point. I graduated from High School with barely a B average, but I earned an A in the ability to drink more than any of my friends or acquaintances.

After graduation, all my friends and I packed in our cars and drove to Myrtle Beach for a week of drunken orgies and no parental guidance. I bottomed out in my girlfriend’s hotel room; I was drunk on cheap liquor, naked except for a pair of boxer briefs and passed out in her bed with a five-day growth of beard in the midst of her polite society friends. She broke up with me not long after that, and I went on another vacation: to the nut ward. I had my first case of delirium tremens there, I tried to climb the fence a day later, and I was diagnosed not only with alcoholism, but with bipolar disorder. I was very belligerent and the staff doctor put me on high doses of Thorazine and Benzotropine, a drug that counteracts the horrendous side effects of the chemical straightjacket, Thorazine. When I would misbehave, the staff would take away my Benzotropine and my joints would lock up, making me unable to sit or stand up straight and consigning me to a constricted type of movement known as the “Thorazine shuffle”. I was introduced to another type of treatment in this facility that didn’t involve the use of chemicals and that would aid me, up until this day, in my continued progress towards a better life: Alcoholics Anonymous. I went to my first AA meeting so doped up on Thorazine that I couldn’t sit up straight, so I just looked at the floor and took in the smells and sounds of the place: Skin Bracer aftershave, rot-gut coffee, prayer, and laughter. The meeting made an impression on me, but not enough to alter the course of my life at that early juncture.

Four months after leaving my first treatment center I enrolled in classes at ASU. I did my best to go to class for the first month and to control, with daily exertions of willpower, my drinking, but soon I succumbed to the pleasures of the dorm and started making daily trips to the local package store instead of to my classes. I landed on the rocks two months later and had to take a medical withdrawal from school and go back to the same treatment center I had been in the year before. Another bout with delirium tremens was in store for me, along with several nights in the hole (the isolation room) and more mood stabilizing drugs. I was reintroduced to Alcoholics Anonymous in the facility and this time it took, at least for a little while. Over the next few years I was to put together some significant periods of sobriety, but the relapses in between did much damage to myself, to my family, and to the ones I loved.

The effects of my drinking were both numerous and horrid. My drinking aggravated my bi-polar illness, making work difficult and school impossible. I accumulated a list of more than fifty employers in the span of ten years, with experiences ranging all the way from installing foam insulation in newly-built Wal-Mart stores, to driving an express route delivering packages, to hanging sheet rock and various other construction trades. Drinking at first had been a type of social lubricant, but my relationships with women suffered greatly and I became a selfish abuser. I had sworn as a child to never strike a woman in anger, but by the time I was 19 I had broken a girl’s nose and caused her to fall down a flight of stairs; the fall made her break her leg as well. I had more one night sexual encounters than I cared to remember or could remember, due to my blackout type of drinking; the relationships that did last were fraught with emotional, verbal, and sometimes physical abuse. Relations with my family suffered greatly as well, and my mother kicked me out of her house more than once, telling me bluntly to never return. One of the worst feelings that I’ve ever experienced is seeing not only my mother, but my father crying, desperately pleading with me to change my behavior and stop hurting my family, as well as myself. My friendships were strained because the boys who I had grown up drinking with settled down, and started careers and families. My high school friends like Scratch went off to college at universities like UNC and NC State. They earned degrees and became offended when I would call them at 3 in the morning, drunk and belligerent with Hank Jr. blasting in the background, waking their wives and children, and trying to relive our days of glory when they had to be at work four hours later. I even tried to go back to college, but I went on a prodigious bender and the doors of opportunity closed on me once again with a clang. The referee of life had counted to two several times in my drinking career, but I always managed to rebound off the canvas with my intelligence and willpower, only to be pummeled again on the ropes by the 400 lb. juggernauts Jim Beam and George Dickel.

Through the years I managed to put together three significant periods of sobriety, which were very rewarding while they lasted, but all three ended in dismal failure. My first significant period of sobriety was from early 1994 to late 1996. During this time I became quite respected in the AA community and developed a relationship with an AA sponsor that was both rewarding and based on unconditional love. His name was Jerry, and he was a young man like me. We spent many hours together sharing and encouraging each other, but in the end we both left Alcoholics Anonymous to join religious congregations. I ended up relapsing due to my inability to be honest with my fellow parishioners and the lack of identification, or camaraderie that I felt there. Jerry is still sober to this day, but when I see him our conversations are brief and full of platitudes and empty pleasantries. My second substantial period of sobriety was from early 1998 to the first month of the year 2000. During this time I developed another friendship with an AA sponsor named Dick, and was surrounded by a group of young men and women who made me feel both whole and loved. We had many days of joy and shared pain together, and I grew by leaps and bounds in both an emotional and social sense, but I failed to expand upon my spiritual life and ended up relapsing after I’d met a drug-using girl and gone home with her. My last unsuccessful period of sobriety was from late 2000 to mid 2003. During this period I rekindled the relationships with my former AA friends, and began using Dick as my AA sponsor again. I worked through the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous this time, but I failed in the end to fully grasp the first step of the twelve: we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. This fatal flaw in the foundation that I had built brought the whole structure crashing down on my head in June of 2003. For the next two months I knew nothing but a living hell; I experienced a quality of pain through my drinking and the drug crystal methamphetamine that I had never known to belong to mortal man, and after losing absolutely everything worthwhile in my short life, including my sanity, I surrendered.

My last, and hopefully terminal period of sobriety started on August 12, 2003 in the midst of personal chaos and financial ruin. I sobered up, first in jail, and then in a local hospital and renewed my commitment to recovery with a willingness I had never before been able to muster. The quality of my surrender was golden this time; I had absolutely no reservations about my ability to control my use and abuse of alcohol through my own willpower. I struggled for a year to maintain employment, but I didn't struggle with the fact that I needed to take direction both from a Higher Power and from a recovery sponsor. The next two years were full of trials and hardships, but I managed to go back to school, renew and rebuild lost relationships, and most importantly maintain an attitude of compliant willingness. The last year has been very rewarding, and I have attained some measure of success; school, friendships, a relationship with a woman, and family ties are all growing stronger and more fulfilling every day. I have more friendships today than I can keep up with, and most of them are based on a mutually affirming and sincere desire to grow spiritually.

In conclusion, it has occurred to me recently that I was always very tough on myself for my lack of faithfulness to God, to the women I was involved with, to my family, and to my many employers. I had always considered myself to be a person lacking in fidelity to anyone or anything, but this is only a half-truth. I was abjectly faithful to the bottle that beat me mercilessly and also to the fight to overcome the allure that whiskey and the lifestyle associated with it held for me. I bloodied myself against the brick wall imposed upon me by my disease and by my own stubborn willfulness, instead of surrendering the fight and taking the directions given to me, which were to step around the wall. I have always been a very willful person; I managed to stay alive for over ten years in a world that gave me odds on living no more than three. Several doctors and psychiatrists gave up on me over the years, consigning me to the heap of negative statistics associated with alcoholics and drug addicts. However, there were some who remained faithful to me through all the disasters and drug treatments: namely God, my closest AA friends, and my AA sponsors. God didn’t give up on me because it isn’t in his nature to throw away His children; he can’t dispose of those he has bought with His own blood, sweat, and suffering. AA members and sponsors are much like God in that they invest years of patient assistance to those who suffer from the disease of alcoholism. However, unlike God, AA members are mortal and have limitations on their ability to persevere with the worst of the cases presented to them. There were a handful of loyal persons who didn’t give up on me though, and it is for them as well as a loving God that I will be eternally grateful and do my best to express that gratitude through a life lived not only in compliant humility, but active service to those who want a way out of lives lived in faithfulness to a lie.

Five Minutes

Five Minutes

by

Varo Borja

Violence is endemic to human nature. For most of us, desensitization occurs through the media, but for some of us personal experience can contribute to the lack of compassion for other people’s suffering as well. I went to high school in a neighboring town where violence was an every day affair; pillowcases placed over unsuspecting heads and beaten until red with blood, fistfights redolent with racial strife and bigotry where one or more participants lost teeth or hair, and drug-motivated beat downs where the small change pushers lost ground and game to older, wiser, cocaine wielding criminals fresh from the streets and toughened by gang warfare who wore their purple skinned bullet wounds and knife marks to prove it. In this essay I will attempt to describe the culmination, for me, of my lifelong desensitization to violence and the nuclear blast that enveloped me in my senior year of high school, and changed the way I think and feel about violence forever.

On a bright, crisp, late September day in 1991 I drove to school in my Honda Accord with many hopes for the future. I had applied for a Naval Academy scholarship and had lofty plans of one day soaring through the cool, azure skies of the Mediterranean doing mach 3 in an F-14 Tomcat, and then relaxing on the beaches in the south of France sipping good claret and resting my tired bones on the ample bosom of a hard bodied Moroccan belly dancer. I was destined to graduate with honors the next spring, I was starting sweeper for the school soccer team, and I was dating a rather beautiful and barely intelligent Barbie doll who went to school in a nearby town. I was listening to my favorite rap album at the time, Straight Outta Compton, and relishing the lyrics fraught with the rape and gun battles that I only aspired to be able to commit. My heroes were Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Cobain, Ice Cube, and Easy Mother Effin’ E: two of which had died or were soon to die by their own hands and the other two heavily involved in a culture of violence of which I was destined that day, unbeknownst to me, to take part in.

I crept in my car past the first row of parking spaces at the school and into the second, bass booming and treble blasting with one hand on the steering wheel and the other brandishing my silver-plated, rubber gripped Smith and Wesson .38 caliber revolver. My friends and I were all pistol-wielding suburban punks who drank cheap whiskey on the weekends and drove 90 mph down dead end roads where we’d fire off a few rounds at the phantoms in the underbrush and then shadowbox with invisible assailants, drunk on Early Times and the wine of innocence. My brother Lucas and I would usually end up in some minor scrape with two or more local idiots outside the Servco gas station on Highway 18 and go home with bloody noses or black eyes, only to sneak in the side window beneath the begonias and the radar of our ever-vigilant, but overworked mother. My mother was a police officer with ten years of protection, service, low pay and war stories under her belt, and through her tutelage and the assistance of two other veteran beat cops I had learned how to fight and to fight well. I had also learned how to wield every sidearm from my paltry Smith .38 to a Glock 9mm to pretty much anything Sigsauer made and sold in the United States. I could field strip an AK-47 blindfolded by the time I was 12, and more than once I had been to the gun range on mornings wet with dew and loud with the staccato rhythm of fully automatic assault rifles and submachine gun fire. By the time I was 14 I was a junior fascist of the order of Adolf (a nickname given to the junior police), I’d seen a C-130 crash at Fort Bragg during an arms show killing all hands on board, and had been in more fistfights and ad hoc wrestling matches than I dared to count. As I pulled into school that day though, my ten or so years of weekend gun play and extra-curricular boxing matches were all I knew of the world and its ways, and that wasn’t a hell of a lot.

Next, I remember walking from the parking lot to the front entrance, past all the fine honeys and flexing football players, past the empty cardboard cases of Busch Light and Beast, past the geeks commiserating by the graffiti clad doorway as to exactly which was better in Module Q1 of Queen of the Demonweb Pits: a specialized necromancer or a lawful-good paladin? The smells of early fall and teen angst greeted me on my arrival: cheap cigarette smoke laced with wisps of cheaper, south of the border dirt weed, Polo cologne saved for and bought at the local Belk, and the odor of burnt school pizza wafting from the cafeteria on the other side of the building. I immediately headed upstairs to the third floor to take up my usual place of residence by locker number 357: a prize won from a Freshman for the fictitious phone number of one of my acquaintances on the cheerleading squad, and a warm Budweiser. When I reached my place of repose on the third floor two of my friends were already awaiting me. My brother Lucas and my buddy Scratch (so named for the short story, The Devil and Daniel Webster; his name was Michael but he wanted to be a lawyer and he was a devil with freshman girls) were all decked out for the day in loose fitting clothes and baseball caps turned backwards. We were expecting the usual fight that morning: whites vs. blacks in some fashion or another. We played devil’s advocate most mornings, jumping into the fray on whatever side seemed to be losing, helping to balance the scales of the very volatile “scholastic” environment into which we had been placed and then ducking out before the authorities showed up, sneaking into our Honors English classes with pencils in hand and halos glimmering. After our initial exchanges of adolescent banter and “what up Ho’s” with each other and our surrounding school chums, we took a seat and waited expectantly for the faceless, would-be gladiators to emerge from their respective corners. We didn’t have to wait long.

Apparently, two young black students had been staring a little too intently at the posterior of a young white girl who happened to be the girlfriend of a white boy named Robbie K. Robbie K. had grown up in one of the surrounding backwoods communities and was quite accustomed, from a young age, to parties at which only one or two black persons were invited, and that more often than not featured a burning cross and crisp, white linens, no matter how unseasonable ghost costumes were at the time. Also, that day Robbie was accompanied by one of the more Caucasian of the power weight lifters at the school, James Dell, who was also known for his disdain for the black race and his rather outspoken manner for that disdain: the ability to crush a man’s face with one punch. Finally, unbeknownst to me, Lucas, Scratch and everyone else at the school that day, Robbie K. had a ten-inch Bowie knife tucked away under his flannel shirtfront.

The fight started in a flash, with the two young black males being joined by eight other members, all black, of various sports teams and cliques. James Dell held them off with flurries of rights and lefts, uppercuts and haymakers. Before my friends and I could join the fray though, Robbie had unsheathed his Bowie and knife and driven it up to the hilt in a fourteen-year-old black boy’s chest. The boy’s name was Terry. Terry had been raised by his aged grandmother to respect his elders, to do well in school, and to stay away from drugs. Terry was a child that had got caught up in a moment of passion, joined a stupid fight over teenage bravado, and ended up on the business end of a knife driven by more than one hundred years of ignorance, hatred, and wounded pride. Terry died almost instantly. Several wails went up at that point from the stricken crowd as Terry fell backward into his schoolmate’s arms and gasped his last few breaths. Still mad with the lust of battle, Robbie began slashing around with the now blood soaked Bowie knife, dealing a mortal blow to Randall Moore, another black boy of seventeen who was trying to get out of the scuffle. Randall received a slit open gut that year instead of a high school diploma. He came barreling down the hall past me and my two shell-shocked friends, spraying blood on lockers, bookbags, and lunchboxes, screaming for his God and for his mother. I wore Randall’s blood on my shirt and shoes for the rest of the day, dumbfounded at what I had just witnessed. After the police and the ambulances had come, after the media, like vultures, had descended upon the scene and picked clean the bones of a tragedy that they and their kind had helped to create, and after a thousand tears had been shed by a hapless community reaping, through their children, an unwillingness to reconcile racial hatred and bigotry that had steeped like a cauldron of shit for more than five generations, I wore Randall’s blood home. The fight that day had lasted a maximum of five minutes, but in five minutes time the lives of more than one hundred high school students had been drastically altered, two of which would never see another school year or grow into the happy, productive members of society for which they were supposedly being trained.

As for me, I didn’t cry. I drove home that day a little upset but unable to take in, at that young age, what had befallen my community that day. I’ve heard that the best time in a young man’s life to send him off to die for some ultimately trivial, propagandized cause is between the ages of seventeen and nineteen. I’ve also read that most soldiers in Vietnam were around age nineteen, and long before that children died beneath the flags of bloated monarchs as young as age 13. I do know that after the fight I gave up trying to get into the Naval Academy. Smoking reefer and chasing girls took the places of the junior fascist corps and organized sports. I still listened to NWA on occasion, but I developed a stronger affinity for Neil Young and Mozart and I gave that Smith and Wesson .38 back to the wizened old beat cop that had loaned it to me. That day didn’t end the maelstrom, however. Robbie K. and James Dell got off on a self- defense plea about three months later, ushering in a whole new era of violence at the school and in the community. Fights raged daily after that; police were at the school every day and metal detectors had to be installed. I witnessed a boy named Chris, who I had attended school with since our Elementary days, have his face rammed into a water fountain, breaking off his front teeth and scarring him forever, all for uttering a racial slur. I witnessed a girl of seventeen have most of her hair ripped out by four other girls of about the same age for uttering the same racist remark. I didn’t come out of that year completely unscathed either. I graduated in the Spring, but not with that bright golden honors sash that I had so greedily desired. I graduated with a 3.35, mostly for giving up on my Algebra Trig class and indulging more and more in cheap Tennessee bourbon. Lucas, Scratch and I would smuggle in pints of the brown stuff and mix it sparingly with coca-cola. By the end of most days I’d be so drunk that one of my friends would have to drive me home and pour me into my bed before my mother arrived. I came out of that school with a diploma, but I also came out with a taste for liquor that would haunt me for over ten years afterwards. I don’t blame my alcoholism on the school or anyone else, but we are all products, to some extent, of our environment.

In conclusion, I must say that reliving these experiences through this essay has not been easy. What started out as a simple descriptive process has turned into something of a confession. I have no need for either pedant or priest to absolve me of my past sins of omission or commission, but one thing rings true throughout this essay: violence begets violence, whether that violence is of a physical nature or of an emotional one. Since sobering up over four years ago, I have tried to live a life a peace and harmony and one in accord with the principles of a Higher Power. I find much solace in silent reflection, and the excitement of a brawl is more foreign to me today than Mandarin Chinese. I live a quiet, simple life, and I have the privilege of helping to raise two small children today who have never known me to be either drunk or violent. Hopefully, I will be able, in some small capacity, to pass on to them the value of “turning the other cheek” and a sense of wonder and respect for the sanctity of human life. I can’t help but wonder if I could have made a difference that day, sixteen years ago, to those boys bent on murder in halls where learning and play should have been predominant. If I had had the same values and respect for life that I’ve acquired over many years in the school of hard knocks that I have today, could I have stepped in and been a peacemaker that day instead of willing spectator? Unfortunately, hindsight is always 20/20 and the past is long dead, so I must continue to make amends for that sin of omission on a daily basis as I trudge the road of a happier destiny and try and give away some of the grace that has been bestowed on me.