photogrammatical

Madison Nease is kid sister to my buddy/housemate, Wes Nease.  She recently flew out from exotic Virginia for two weeks’ visit, here in the land of Damn Good Mexican Food and Legal Heroin.

She is a Lettuce Farmer by trade.  (That is to say, she works on a lettuce farm.)  During her stay she helped spruce up our vegetable garden, which seems to know no winter.  She also spearheaded the clean up of our “bomb shelter”, an open-air subterranean concrete room in the backyard. Once decorated with white twinkle lights, it became the dance floor at Colin/Kate’s Epic Joint Birthday/Maddy’s Going Home Party.

The following evening after the house had been picked up and the remaining guests had been wheelbarrowed to the curb.  We made a few images down on the dance floor while enduring weather in the low 50s, or what I like to call Southern California Freezing.

Thanks to Maddy for helping to straighten up our man cave, adding more vegetables to our bachelor’s diet, and for generally cheering up the joint.  Come back soon, the Goose misses you.

Madison and Wes Nease in The Bomb Shelter

I’d kept flakjacketphoto.com as my url for a while after I got out of the Marines. I didn’t see any reason to change it at first. Even though I was out and didn’t plan on reenlisting, it still seemed to suit me. I hadn’t yet started feeling the former part of being a former Marine. I was still within a window of time when I could have just changed into my uniform and been welcomed back. It took some time for that urge to wear off, but gradually I started to see myself and my future differently.

I was sitting on an ammo can in the desert the first time I said “I’m going to be a photographer.” That was in 2003. The time had come for me to really make good. So I stayed out, put on a little weight, grew a beard, got a dog, and started making life plans that didn’t involve weapons and body armor. I made peace with the idea that the Marine Corps could keep on without me.

A couple of months back I was sitting on the bed of a hotel room in San Francisco. My girlfriend was fixing her hair in front of the bathroom mirror, putting on her earrings. We were going to a fancy restaurant that night. It was a date night. The weather was perfect and we were planning on walking along the waterfront for awhile before dinner. I got a call from my Mother, her voice was nonchalant in the way it gets when there is something wrong.

She said, “A large manila envelope came from the Marine Corps today.”

I’d listed my Mother’s house as my permanent address.

I was taken off guard for a moment. I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, this is what I get for becoming complacent, this is what I get for becoming this paunchy, bearded asshole in a pink dress shirt and tweed sport coat. I thought about the large plastic tub in my garage, my uniforms neatly folded inside. My canteen cup now a pen holder on my desk, my Ka-Bar used as a letter opener. I felt that mix of dread and resignation you get when you realize something is coming at you faster than you can step out of its way.

“You’d better open it.”, I said.

And as the words left my lips I recalled standing at the edge of a dance floor, my buddy Franco and I dressed in new suits, scotches in hand. We were watching the groom in his Dress Blues dance with his bride. Franco pulled out his cell phone and said, “Take a look at what I got in the mail last week.”

So that, I suppose, is that. A closed chapter in my life. One that I’m very proud of, often sentimental about.

The chances of my donning a flak jacket again for anything more than old times’ sake are pretty slim, though I won’t rule it out completely. I met more than one salty corporal who had checked back in saying “I went through boot camp when your Momma was a sophomore.”

But I won’t hold my breath for the day I feel like the Marine Corps needs me again. If there is one thing I can rest easy knowing, it’s that there is nothing my boys can’t handle.