EPTEvery hour or so, an airplane rockets past. The first time you encounter one that flies low, it’s pretty incredible, this gargantuan, engineering marvel dragging through the sky above. When dawn first breaks, we’re usually seated in common area on the ground floor, just before the half of the complex that holds our bunks. Butt planted on the adobe brick floor, cross-legged. Sitting this way hurts my left knee, so when no one is watching, I pull my knees into my chest and wrap my arms around them. This hurts my lower back, but it’s manageable.
Rows upon rows of shaved heads around me, all dressed in the same olive t-shirt and black shorts. A plane soaring in the sky above. When this happens, the guy with the green beret pulled over his head, dressed in his pixelated green uniform, sleeves rolled up to the biceps, barking orders, commands, whatever, he stops talking.
The morning breeze runs its chilly fingers over my bare, sun scorched scalp. I can feel the wind tugging on the lone strands of my hair just above my left ear. Victim of a half-assed job by the military barber. I tilt my head up, squinting. There it is, Boeing aircraft blasting through the sky. This time, it’s really high up, around the size of my index finger. Eyeballing it as it rides the azure blue sky, blowing through the stark white cotton candy clouds that borrows from the sunlight a deep amber hue. I close my eyes.
Inside the plane. Striped brown carpets that line the floors. Bloated luggage bags speckled with travel stickers rolling down the aisle. The sound luggage compartments make when clicking open. Clicking shut. The way they loll from side to side during midair turbulence, like cement colored Jello. Pressing my palms against my ears as the toilet bowl sucks waste into the holding tank. It sounds like an explosion.
I imagine myself seated by the aisle. Rectangular bowl wrapped in copper-colored foil that has the airline’s logo stamped all over. Beef cubes, new potatoes, broccoli and baby carrots. Sealed, frosted plastic utensils. Bread bun. Fruit bowl. Haagen Dazs ice cream, strawberry. Picture perfect pixie face air stewardess with an auburn bob cut that teeters along the edges of her face to the cadence of her movement, dressed in an ornate cobalt blue dress that flows to her ankles, she pushes the in flight service cart, serving the passengers as she moves along, always smiling.
I’m wrapped in the woolen airplane blanket, and a movie I’ve watched before plays on the in-flight entertainment system. Return of the King.
Now I’m seated besides one of the ellipse shaped airplane windows, peaking out. A sliver of the aircraft’s wing. The sky above that burns tangerine, and the bed cotton candy clouds, they stretch all the way to the horizon and beyond, the place where the unrelenting sun is risen from its slumber. Somewhere beneath the clouds, I sit among many, cross-legged, arrested.
In this world, I’m flying far far away. Somewhere nice and quiet, like Australia. I want to be in Melbourne again. Close your eyes. This is all a bad dream. Wake up. Poof, the plane has vanished. Into the horizon, it has escaped, destination unknown.
“As a blacksmith uses heat to temper steel, so should a trial by fire strengthen one’s mettle.” — Jeffrey Fry
My mettle is a sheet of glass. The week after the first was the worst, because it opened my eyes to the fact that I was weaker than everyone else. Being classified as combat unfit, in the unit that I’m posted to, commanders practice restraint, and punishment is rare. Welfare is emphasized above all else. Yet I flounder, unable to adapt, despair abound, gripping me in its stranglehold. Adjustment disorder and chronic depression, this is all normal, and it gets worse, is what the Medical Officer tells me. Everyone else is taking this pretty well. How?
Jaded is what I am. Everyday I wake up at exactly 4 hours after I sleep. So if I sleep at 2300, that’s 0300. If it’s 2230, then it’s 0230. Sometimes I need to piss, other times I just stare at the grey, square mesh bed frame holding my bunk mate’s mattress. For the entirety of the next morning, and most of the afternoon, my eyelids feel like a pair of sandbags. In the lecture theater scribbling down notes, in the toilets hosing down detergent, cum, shit, and urine, on the ground floor cleaning my rifle, soot, oil and sweat smeared on my face, thighs, arms, all I can think of is sleep. Close your eyes, jump off a high place. Soar. There are no high places here.
When I enlisted, I brought in books, writing material, stationary, thinking that I’d spend all my free time writing, reading, improving myself. Really all I can think of now is sleep. With every second I can steal, its sleep, sprawled on my bed, boots still on, asleep. Shut eye and pray that this is a nightmare. And then someone yells from below, and you know that this is exactly where you’re supposed to be.
Before I drift off to sleep every night, I close my eyes and imagine myself leaving Somerset Service Apartments, the place where we stayed during our last trip in Melbourne. Sweater on, hands in my pockets, earphones wedged deep into my ears. Bob Marley, No Woman No Cry. I trudge down Elizabeth street. It’s night time and I relish the feel of winter’s wind combing through a head full of hair, caressing my face, pressing against my ears. Grit stained, weathered, black Chuck Taylor’s slapping against the concrete pavement. I try to remember as much as I can. The Australian Post branch that’s lies just beside the service apartments. The intersection just before the St. Francis Church. I imagine myself drifting through the street, Peter’s Giant Ice Cream Sandwich in hand, past the places I can still remember, Bank of Melbourne, 7/11, Nandos. People are sparse on this street, and they are Caucasian. Somewhere along the way, I make a left and cross the intersection, climb a staircase and enter the Workshop Bar, where I have a half-pint of sweet, sparkling Apple cider. Somewhere in this city, I left a girl behind. Rough patchwork of memories stitched together to form the crude tapestry that is my fantasy.
I am constantly checking my digital watch. Eyes fixated on the passing seconds. It’s excruciating, as if my head were trapped under a leaky faucet, drop after drop shattering upon my forehead, hammering into me the harsh reality of how little control I have over my life. Only 2 more years. 24 months. 730 days. 17520 hours. 1051200 minutes. 63072000 seconds.
What happened to you, you changed after the you booked out?
I just hate this. I really really really hate this, I just want to leave.
Huh. I thought you were a man.
I hate talking about how I feel to people, because people never understand. It’s very hard to explain to someone that you just want hole up in a room and do nothing. You tell someone that you’re depressed and they’ll tell you to just get over yourself. It’s all in your head they’ll say. The hopelessness, the frustration, the sadness. As if you could choose your emotions like dining at a buffet. Sure you can choose how you act upon those emotions, but choosing how you feel? Self help circles like to sell the idea that action dictates emotion, and not vice versa. Having experimented with ‘happy’ stimulants, I find this largely untrue.
All day everyday, I just want to jump into my bed, the one in my home, and fall sleep. See you in a year or two. Maybe never.
After this, I’ll fuck off so far from this country, never looking back, I’d tell them.
All day everyday, I just want to disappear. Get plastic surgery done, pay off a bunch of snake-heads, jump into a container bound for Ethiopia and live the rest of my days as a farmer. Or maybe Somalia, where I’ll become a pirate.
Maybe to Australia or England, where I’ll study creative writing. Never looking back. Maybe I’ll travel the world.
All day everyday, I dream of places far far away.
