I never questioned reality. Seriously!! To me, reality was morning coffee, kiss the wife, pull on my oar, then dinner, TV, rinse and repeat. I mean, that’s American middle-class life, right? I was vaguely aware that things were happening in the physical universe —like foreign wars, world hunger, and supermassive black holes. But those affected me, nada. So, I had no thoughts.

And let me stop you right there. My ... shall we say... “somewhat limited” point of view doesn’t make me a freak. Everybody’s concept of life’s dualities - right/wrong, moral/immoral, even religion and politics- is nothing more than the sum of what you know and how you interpret it. Hence, our beliefs might be closely held. But ultimately ... our reality is just the way we see things – cogito ergo sum.

The problem is that, if the phenomenon that we call reality is nothing more than each individual’s egocentric interpretation of their own experience, then there is also no such thing as immutable truth - only what you THINK is true. And that misperception can cause a lot of misery.

I was ruminating about the truth after I’d answered a call from an anonymous voice at Henry E. Rohlsen Airport on St. Croix. They said that they were very sorry, but an Embraer Praetor 600 originating from their location had crashed off the northwest coast of Cuba near Cape Maisi, with what they assumed were no survivors. However, they would update me as soon as they had more information.

Puzzled, I asked why they’d called me, and the professionally sympathetic voice on the other end said, “Because your wife is listed as being on that flight. We are very sorry for your loss.” I said, huffily, “You’re calling the wrong person. My wife is at a conference in Winchester, Virginia, two hours from here.”

The voice said, “You should confirm that. The boarding information for one of the individuals on that aircraft lists this phone number and you as her emergency contact.” That was when my heretofore comfortable world faded to black ... just like a blown picture tube.

Let me pause for a backstory here, because you don’t get a person as jaded as I am without a reason. For all the time I was growing up, my old man was a drudge at the GSA. He did it because he had a wife and kids to support, and I admired him for it. But it made me leery of the indentured servitude that big organizations hook ordinary people on.

Every day, rain or shine, my dad would trudge the 15 minutes to the Shaw-Howard Metro stop and ride the Green Line down to L’Enfant and up to Farragut West on the Blue. I loved my Pop. But he was just as trapped in that tar pit as every other nameless fossil they’ve ever dug out of La Brea. And ... from watching a once-vital man fade to invisibility, I decided that being a corporate drone was not my thing.

So, I had a couple of choices after graduating high school. I could start my life with a hundred thousand dollars of student debt ... or learn a trade. The former was a bad investment since I had no idea what I wanted to do. Working for wages had advantages. But there’s a built-in ceiling on advancement, and I had delusions of grandeur. Of course, there was a third option if you were naïve enough to believe a recruiter. That was the Army.

Some folks never want to leave their old life. I wasn’t one of them. I was too shy—or perhaps the more accurate term is nerdy—to have a regular girlfriend. I mean, I had my opportunities. But I wasn’t interested in any of the women who were interested in me, and all of my so-called male friends were acquaintances, not true buddies. So, I had no actual connections to my current life.

Consequently, one fine summer’s day, I rode the Metro down to Farragut North, walked up toward Dupont Circle, and signed the contract. I didn’t bother telling my folks. That’s the sort of self-absorbed asshole I was back then.

The recruiter promised me glory ... I could drive an Abrams tank or gun down the ungodly from my Apache helicopter. I could even fly UAVs ... wings loaded with Hellfire missiles. All of those opportunities sounded very alpha to me. So, I joined up. And don’t bother telling me ... I know I was an idiot back then.

The Army has a method. First, they tear you down to the studs, and then they rebuild you back to how they want you to be. It starts, in effect, with a kidnapping. Meaning they don’t give you any time to think over your decision. I raised my right hand in the morning and was on a plane to Fort Benning later that day. I let my folks know where I was from the pay phone at the Recruit Center.

The less said about Basic, the better. It’s ten weeks of physical and mental challenges that either make you or break you. I got through it by the skin of my teeth, and I was an Eleven-Bravo, not one of the glorious MOSs they’d promised me. There was a recruiter back in DC, who I planned to kill.

My duty assignment came as a surprise, given my less-than-stellar performance as a recruit. I was expecting a Camp Swampy experience, peeling potatoes, à la Beetle Bailey. Instead, I was assigned to the legendary 101st Airborne/Air Assault. They must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel that year.

The 101st comprises two of the old D-Day parachute infantry regiments, the 502nd and the 506th. The Third Brigade is the 187th —the legendary Rakkasans of Pacific War fame. I ended up in the 187th, which made me a mediocre soldier in an elite unit. I guess even a blind squirrel will occasionally dig up an acorn.

Oddly ... Fort Campbell, Kentucky, is primarily in Tennessee; Nashville is just up the road and is a fun place to visit. I led the comfortable life of a soldier in an excellent billet for precisely two weeks. Then, Tuesday, November 11, 2001, rolled around, and the U.S. military was poised like a coiled rattler ready to strike.

That evening, they loaded my squad into a deuce-and-a-half and trucked us up to Indiana, where we were told to guard a field full of cows. That assignment was puzzling until they said we should run for our lives if the cows started dropping dead. It seems that the U.S.’s last stockpile of VX gas was stored under that field, and the cows were the canaries in the coal mine. Fortunately, no cows were harmed in the making of that experience.

Then, around Thanksgiving, Bush gave us a pep talk, and shortly thereafter, we found ourselves occupying Kandahar, just as the taillights of the Taliban were disappearing out of town. That fits well with the Rakkasans’ traditional role as bait.

I mean, back in World War II, nobody knew whether the Japanese were serious about surrendering. So, they dropped the Rakkasans in to see what would happen. If our dead bodies came flying out, then the Japanese didn’t really mean it, and if they didn’t kill us, then we could proceed with the occupation ... easy-peasy.

My six months in Afghanistan were full of fun times, like our trip to the Shah-i-Kot, where we were briefed in advance that we would probably all die. Or, Operation Mountain Lion, which is still the battle that the U.S. Army has fought at the highest altitude.

I got back from that particular shithole, saying to myself, “Well, that’s over!” and then word immediately came down that it was time to settle up with Saddam. Why not? ... by that point, I was used to being crapped on from a very great height.

The Rakkasans had an easy time if you discount the initial unpleasantness between the Republican Guard and us. We were deployed up north. So, we were chasing Saddam’s relatives around Kurdistan while units that were a lot less elite got the privilege of cleaning out places like Falluja. Me personally? ... If you discount the three-day sandstorm at the beginning and my ride all the way up to the Syrian border, sitting on a crate of M203 grenades, it was business as usual – meaning a grunt’s miserable life.

I was mustered out when I returned. They offered me numerous incentives to stay. But two trips to that godforsaken sandbox were enough for me. The problem was that you eventually have to get a job, at least if you don’t want to be an incel. Since women don’t find unemployed losers all that attractive.

I had excellent benefits, so I went to George Mason for a degree in intelligence studies. I’d served as the liaison to G2 during my deployment—essentially a walking carrier pigeon—and I found intelligence work fascinating.

After graduation, I landed a position at a Jesuit school in Georgetown Heights as an expert in tradecraft and other subjects I would have to kill you if I told you about. Six years passed, and I was a tenured, thirty-two-year-old Associate Professor who was just nerdy enough to have never experienced the joys of holy matrimony.

I mean, I wasn’t deformed, and I was taller than average. So, I had my good points. But my crippling shyness and awkward social skills kept the female population at bay—or at least the ones I found attractive.

I mean, there are plenty of women who could, no doubt, put up with a man whose idea of fun was an all-day session of D&D ... at least, for the right price. And I had plenty of money because the place where I worked paid me a ridiculous sum to cast my fake pearls in front of real swine. But I wasn’t in the market for a nerd-girl or a gold digger. Yeah – and don’t bother telling me ... I already know academia is a scam.

Nonetheless, you have to publish or perish. That is ... if you want to stay on that comfortable gravy train, and that was why I found myself standing in the fabulous luxury of the Top Of The Hay-Adams, trying not to do something stupid.

They hold events up there for the high rollers, and this was a political evening hosted by a graduate of our distinguished University, his version of giving back to God. I was there to grip and grin because my Dean had told me that I would never see Full Professor if I didn’t scare up some grant funding, and the only way to do that is to rub elbows with the Great and Good.

So, there I was dressed in my best schmoozing garb, blue chambray work shirt, cords, and a moth-eaten tweed jacket, hoping to catch a break amongst all the wealthy donors ... even if everybody I’d met so far seemed to think that I should tug on my forelock when I met them.

The Hay-Adams isn’t the kind of place where I typically hang out. I mean, honestly ... I expected to be “removed” at any minute. In the meantime, I was hoping to convince someone rich enough, to invest in an idea that I had for breaking down evasion tradecraft into self-contained execution modules. Which was a total waste of time, because everybody else was there for only one reason.

Let me explain ... You know the old saying about politics making strange bedfellows. Well ... to be more accurate, that statement ought to read ‘politics makes bedfellows’ —end—stop —period. That’s due to the obscene amount of money floating around DC, and since power corrupts ... you get guys with big bags of YOUR cash and giant hard-ons ... it makes you damn proud to be a taxpayer.

The fact is ... Washington is infested by ancient white guys in expensive rugs. You see them everywhere, Capital Grille, Morton’s, the Monocle, the Army Navy Club ... all taking their daughters, or perhaps granddaughters, to dinner. Their single-minded focus on such a young woman would be touching. Except God help you if you think that either the predator or the prey has a soul.

It’s entirely transactional ... the geezer gets to pet a Katty, and the owner of the feline in question gets a little sumpthin’-sumpthin’ too. “That is the law of the jungle, and the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.”

I have never been able to suffer fools, which was, no doubt, the reason why I was so spectacularly unsuccessful at anything involving business. It might be a birth defect, so don’t judge me. Anyhow, I could tell that I wouldn’t be getting any windfalls from tonight’s big shots, who were so gaily frolicking their way down the road to perdition. So, I stepped onto the outside balcony to take a breather.

The White House was right in front of me across Lafayette Square, all decorated for Christmas. It looked like a postcard from an older, better time. You barely even noticed the concrete barriers on Pennsylvania and anti-scale fencing, and it was already too dark to make out the Secret Service snipers on the roof.

There was one other person out there besides me. She was a female. But I was so busy scolding myself for being so fucking unwilling to blow the ego-maniacs in that room that I didn’t take much notice. I mean ... I should have been in there making my pitch. But the sight of so much genteel debauchery and frantic soul-selling was too much for me to endure.

The woman was huddled at the railing in your basic spaghetti strap LBD. It was in the high forties. I couldn’t make out her face because a thick sheaf of auburn hair hid it. But I could see her bare shoulders shaking, as if she were crying. I won’t cop to being tuned in to other people’s feelings. It was more a matter of curiosity that led me over to lean on the rail next to her.

As I approached, I could see that she was built like a bag full of bobcats, with serious booty. I mean ... I’m a guy, I notice those things. So, I leaned in next to her and said amiably, “It’s freezing out here. Do you need my jacket?” That was when I noticed that she wasn’t crying. Her shoulders were shaking with laughter. That was certainly odd.

She slowly turned and studied me. Her face wasn’t model-flawless, but it was nicely proportioned, strong, and full of character, with big blue eyes set in a round face and even features. Her duskiness had a vaguely Mediterranean, perhaps Italian, quality. She stood there appraising me, as if she were buying me ... awkward!

I might have once been a soldier. But I’m pure nerd, right down to my clenched asshole. And being stared at by a woman as attractive as this one turned me into a tongue-tied nine-year-old, which is, in fact, a bit lower than my usual level of emotional maturity. So, I immediately snapped my eyes down to check out her fashionable patent leather pumps.

That definitely didn’t impress her. But hell ... I never claimed to be Clooney.

The woman was perhaps five-six. I’m six-three. So, there was over a half-foot difference between our eye levels. Regrettably, when I raised my eyes, I looked into hers. They were lovely, deep pools of intelligence, and my mouth popped open like a gomer just getting his first sight of the big city.

The woman was amused. She said, “You’re pretty special, aren’t you?” I had a feeling that she was referring to the “special” involving a short bus. I stammered, “I’m sorry. You’re just so beautiful...” That was the best I could do.