Currently Idle

Poetry from a spammer

Got this in my mailbox, from a spam address:

evening want wakeup
right cut eat
awake fit start
eat forget eat
search do allow
do not talk draw
open count know
Or rain go
To shut watch
our sing translate
eat spend buy

Hey, That really IS the first rule of Currently Idle!

Oh, and when the people around here tell you not to bring up any posts at the dinner table, THEY REALLY MEAN IT.

Mea culpa, compadres. I couldn’t help meself.

Glad none of us were packing our sig sauer for pizza night.

Aura

Train

The sun sets over the Hudson river and peace settled in for the ride. The soundtrack reaches an earbud delivered crescendo and it goes movie-fuzzed and unreal. God goes walking on the winter bare branches, catching up with the antique iron dragon, then falling back, toying with the too human attempt at speed.

Next to me, the fur coat infected by a human parasite stares at the humming blue screen. On the screen, a serene Indian moves through the postures of a long lost art breathing in and out of impossible form. The fur coat’s finger is firmly on the fast forward button, each pose a stop motion jerk of black and white dinosaur movie.

Inner Peace in half the time. Long languorous stretches for fur coats in a hurry.

The first rule of fight club.

The first rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club. Lucky for me, being the sociological excavator/investigator that I am, a man I met recently seems to have forgotten the first rule of fight club. We made our acquaintance as I’ve made the acquaintance of many men, which was that I opened his car door for him, pointed a .40 caliber sig sauer P229 at his head, and screamed at him to show me his hands and get out of the fucking car. I then put my hand on the back of his neck and pulled him out of the car and pushed him to the ground and another man jumped on top of him, then we handcuffed him, and then we found the machine gun in the glove box, and shortly thereafter we all became new best friends. He had mistakenly made a deal to sell that gun to a very good friend of mine, who happened to be acting in an undercover capacity. That’ll get ya every time.

The night started fairly normally—it was a Sunday, and I was getting ready to go to the birthday party of the child of close family friends. My cell phone rang, and it was an agent with an agency that we don’t like or trust and whose former leader liked to wear dresses, but we work with them anyway. Forgive me, but what happened was that they got the opportunity to run a gun deal, and didn’t know what to do, so they called the professionals, and we moved in and showed them how to run the show. (Not that it was our finest hour, but we got the job done.) I went to the party for about an hour and then it was time to go to work. I arrived at the set (our parlance for the theater of operations, or the area we are controlling within our perimeter) just as the undercover and the informant were headed to the deal. This is not how we like to operate, but some deals go by the seat of your pants.

I made out a car with two men sitting inside it and pulled up and rolled down my window. I didn’t know them as they worked for that other agency. They rolled down their windows and I said “are you guys here for the same reason I am?” They nodded and laughed and I said I would drop my car further back in the parking lot and then jump in their car. our set was a starbucks with an adjoining barnes and noble.

I parked my ride and crouched by the side of it to put on my ballistic vest (it ain’t bulletproof; it’s ballistic, meaning it will stop some rounds. They’re worthless if your opponent has a long gun, or a caliber larger than .45, which isn’t common but nor is it illegal or rare.) by the time I was going to rejoin the two other guys I saw my boss, jumped in his ride instead, tried to make out what was going on on the wire (monitoring the undercover and the CI) and realized I desperately, desperately had to pee. I held it stoically, for about thirty seconds, and then said, hey, I’m not being safe to go into a takedown needing to pee, so I ran into barnes and noble and took care of business and then ran back outside. Fortunately the deal had not yet gone down.

Eventually the bad guy showed up—I don’t really think anyone is bad, it’s just a turn of phrase—and they started haggling over the price. We made out what was going on as best as possible on the monitor the UC was wearing. It absolutely never fails to amaze me that humans have walked on the fucking moon, but the technology to clearly listen to a conversation taking place several hundred feet away still eludes us. This is standard two man cover team conversation while the undercover is doing the deal– “Did he say gun?” “I think he said ‘I don’t have the gun.’” “Wait, did you just hear that, he’s saying to follow him.” “No, I can’t make out any of this, are you getting this?” “Shut up!” “Well he’s not going to go with him, should we take this down right now?” “Did he give the signal?” “What was the signal again?” “Where’s the bad guy parked?” (Midway through this, of course, the various cover teams start to cell phone or chirp each other asking if other parties have a better line on just what the fuck is going on in there. If CI’s knew how little we could actually hear, they’d probably worry more than they already do. Undercovers basically discount the cover team. If shit breaks bad, it’s the gun on your waist that’s going to shoot you out of the mess, not some guys screaming across a parking lot in a tinted out Impala, trying to save your ass.)

Well, we were able to understand that he wanted our guys to follow him to get the gun, but we don’t let our players move off the set—they falsely agreed to follow him to a predetermined spot, he led out of the parking lot, and though they pretended they were going to follow him, he really had a much larger party in play behind and in front of him. When he came around the driveway into the back parking lot of the store he suggested, they weren’t there yet, but we were. Cue guns, screaming, and putting our man on the ground. When we finally picked him up he had a large wet spot at the front of his pants. It’s become legend amongst the takedown team that he wet himself, but I give him the benefit of the doubt that there was snow on the ground. Also, I don’t like laughing at people’s fear. Also, I know for a damn fact he could have kicked the living shit out of any of us.

We spent several hours that night talking about how he had come to have that gun he was trying to sell, and spoke many more times in the days and weeks that followed. (I saw him at court today.) whenever I interview someone I make a point of asking lots of personal questions unrelated to guns, drugs, gangbanging, shooting, robbery, etc. I ask about kids; girls; parents; jobs; anything to get them talking about things that are personal and meaningful and to put their minds into the space of the things that matter to them, the better to massage them into realizing that the quickest way back to the warmth of those children, that girl, that job, is to cooperate with me, help me get more guns or more bad guys, and in turn help himself. (ah, shit, I admit it. I also just like hearing about other people’s lives. I’m fascinated not, as some say, by the human condition, but by humans themselves—the things we do, the stories we tell, the actions we commit, especially when our actions are so at odds with the things that are meaningful to us, or at odds with human decency or even, most commonly, at wild, disparate odds with common sense.)

So anyway, it turns out that my new friend—I’ll call him Manny—fights for a hobby. Goes to fight clubs. But not existential philosophical fight club like the movie, which, if I read it right, was all about revelling in the pain, basking in the human warmth of getting your ass kicked—no, my man Manny fights for real, in illegal, underground, unsanctioned ultimate fighting bouts.

Three five minute periods, though they rarely go that long. Nothing on but shorts. A few ways to end the brutality—tap out; have the ref (yeah, they’ve got refs and paramedics standing by) stop the match because somebody’s getting choked out or excessively bloody or lost teeth; or have it naturally end because one of the parties has indeed, visibly lost consciousness. They put pads down, and are typically held in halls, like a VFW hall. There is an underground network of e-mails and phone lists, and the matches are aligned roughly according to weight, though manny, built like a proverbial fireplug, is only about 5′8 and goes probably 160, told me that he usually fights guys bigger than him. The winner gets about $1500, or a percentage of the door. The loser, clearly, gets stitches, scars, dental work, or internal bleeding. Manny told me that his signature move is the rear naked choke—getting behind the guy and then hopping up on his back and choking the shit out of him and riding his head into the ground, to the detriment of his nose, eye sockets, and teeth.

I asked if he’d ever been beaten—he said absolutely. He said, you’re not shit if you haven’t had your ass handed to you. but he wins most of the time. He described how there’s a little spot right on your chin where one solid, perfectly placed punch will knock the recipient down so hard that he’ll be unconscious before hitting the deck. He also described how he instantly attacks at the whistle, and begins with blistering fast punches to the face and instead of drawing his fists back for more blows, instead follows up with his elbows, using them like knives to serrate his opponents face.

He said he loves the rush. The money is good, but it’s mostly about letting off steam. I said, what the fuck is wrong with a nice beer, bro? Nope; he doesn’t drink. Doesn’t smoke, doesn’t do drugs, never been arrested—the whole selling an illegal gun thing was really, he got the gun from a friend and thought he could sell it for him and make an easy grand two weeks before christmas—”I know I fucked up, I just saw dollar signs and I wasn’t thinking straight.” Yup. I know that story. But essentially, not a bad guy. I’ve got a long diatribe about bad guys that I’ll save for another day.

He told us, as he sat chained to the wall later that night, that whoever the first guy to pull him out of the vehicle was, if he had wanted to, he could have knocked the shit out of that guy with his elbow because of how he was pulled out. Uhm . . . that was me. And it’s not like he would have gotten shot if he’d elbowed me in the mouth and destroyed my face, either, because I would have reeled backwards, and another agent would have moved up on him and taken him out more effectively, but generally, we don’t shoot people for punching us. I made a tactical error that night. We had been on the set and waiting for the takedown for about an hour, we were all jacked up on adrenaline, and when that car finally came onto the second set there was no hesitation, just run around to the driver’s side and open that door and put the man down.

But I left myself vulnerable to his elbow, and in hindsight, once I saw his hands, I should have taken the pace way down. Once the car was in park and his hands were outside the door of the vehicle, it was time to slow way down, make sure I had cover, and then dynamically remove him from the car. fortunately he didn’t elbow my teeth out, which is one of the nice intimidatory factors of having a gun–they think you’ll shoot them, even if the rules of engagement don’t really cover having your ass kicked—it’s really gotta be more about-to-get-killed before we start shooting people.

But man, he coulda knocked the shit out of me. I’ve tried to imagine what it must be like—to stand in a pair of shorts, in front of another man you’ve never met but who, for the sake of discussion, is probably muscular, looks tough as shit, and at the very least has the self confidence to be standing in front of you with every intention of beating the living shit out of you. and then another man blows a whistle and there are no rules. Just mayhem and pounding.

I stepped into a boxing ring once at a police academy almost a decade ago. Headgear, big gloves, just a few thirty second rounds. I didn’t last past the first round. The other fellow had boxed in the navy or something. He landed about four punched in really quick succession and I just wobbled around the ring. I did not fall down or get knocked down; I kept my hands vaguely up, and I remember one of his punches knocking my own fist into my headgear-clad face; I crossed my legs over, which is about the least sensible thing you can do when trying to fight; and at the end of thirty seconds, my lip was bleeding and an instructor asked me some rudimentary question and my answer made no sense, so they called it. Thank god. I would have gone down in the next round.

It remains one of the finest lessons of my life. Getting punched in the head is no fun, and it rarely happens just once; anyone who knows what he’s doing will unleash a flurry of punches, and they will be fast, and furious, and brutal, and have an incredible force behind them. My thirty second boxing match was with padded gloves and headgear. Manny gets onto a mat without any protective gear, and nobody to stop the affair until it gets really bloody, and no rules. They kick, they go to the ground, they grapple, they punch, choke, gouge, tear, slice—any way that the human body can wreak havoc on another corporeal vessel, that’s what they do.

I don’t have it. I don’t have the balls or the guts, to say nothing of the skill, to step nearly naked onto a mat to prove (or disprove) my physical mettle against another man. I would fear for my nose, my teeth, my body; I sit here and I gently punch myself with my knuckles right on the chin, looking for the “button” that manny described. I punch myself slighly harder, and slightly harder again. It hurts; when I catch a knuckle right at the bottom and outermost tip of my jaw, it hurts, and these are little baby punches I am delivering to myself. I cannot imagine what it must take to step onto that mat. Is it just confidence in your skills? Is it guts, or balls, or anger, or a desire for a rush more powerful than any I’ve known? I fear physical pain. I hate to admit that, but it’s true. I really never want to have the shit kicked out of me, and seeing as I don’t really have the self-defense or -offense skills necessary to insure that it will never happen, I studiously avoid it.

But I am fascinated by a man who would court it—nay, seek it, revel in it, move towards it. or perhaps i’m not even so fascinated by him–it’s not so important what makes him tick, if this is what relieves his stress, so be it–but it’s how far removed i am from being capable of that primal, primeval, medieval, base desire or ability to meet another man and let the viking roar and fight to the end. i wish i could. i wish i could stand on a mat and take all comers, unafraid of losing, but willing to bet that i have the raw muscle, the balance, the talent, the speed, the strength, the violence and economy of motion–to defeat another man. i wish i could do that, but i can’t.

“i try to fight at least once a month” he told me. He had a scar, looked about seven stitches, on his forehead. (Hitting the ground with someone on his back.) as we parted ways after court today I called to him as he went to his car. “been fighting lately?” “Next month, in New Jersey,” he said. “Hopefully. If the court will let me leave the state.” good luck, my friend.

A New Year’s Resolution–The Currently Idle Challenge

I’m going to blog here once a week. That’s it. Well, that’s not it for my resolutions–I have literally a dozen or more–but that’s my commitment to Currently Idle. I have so many “once a week” resolution/commitment/goals that I’m afraid Sunday nights are going to start to get jam-packed with blogging, a cardio workout, screenwriting, letters to politicians, and various other “once a week” goals left to the last night of the week . . . but I’ll worry about that then.

Until then, anyone else joing me in the Currently Idle Challenge? Once a week, take it or leave it.