by Douglas Lain
No one knew what to do with the Saddams, and the Saddams did not seem to know what to do with themselves. They drifted between their home base at the Albany YMCA and the bars of the East Village. From the outset they had simply wanted the freedoms they were told with a straight face everyone hated America for having, with sexual freedoms in bold type, and arrived expecting to find a School House Rock, sexual “Great American Melting Pot” but instead found a hysterical post-9/11 America in full Land of the Lost mode, with them in the role of Muslim Sleestacks. The Saddams were a sexual cabinet of curiosities, a collection of almost every conceivable sexual fetish combined with an old-school analog LGBTQ continuum, VH1 “Behind the Music” mixing-board slider. The only wrinkle in their one-stop-shopping approach to sexuality being the fact that, being indistinguishable from each other, many was the first-year sex experimenting NYU student who might find what they thought was last week’s obliging three-way Saddam was in point of fact Poo-Poo-Play Saddam, or Pegging-While-Role-Playing-as-Donald-Rumsfeld Saddam, a situation remedied in admittedly unique ways by the bright young things of NYU by issuing all the Saddams with prudently laminated lanyards with their individual predilections printed in Arabic, all NATO languages, and a hastily adapted series of Otl Aicher 1972 Munich Olympic pictograms.
By the time the Saddams appeared that dawn in Albany, Iraq 2.0 had fully metastasized into a terrifying, IED-powered tornado of particulated human feces, and my personal life had imploded into an incomprehensible jumble, part Rosenquist F-111 collage (smash push in on the writhing, intestinal SpaghettiOs) part Yeatsian gyre of pot smoke, DSL masturbation, and failed relationships with a string of women I wholly sabotaged, terrified by the knowledge they were all smarter, more talented, and generally better human beings than myself.
For the under-thirty-five set, a brief history lesson. The 1980s: Reagan, stock market crash, A Flock of Seagulls, all painfully drawn out, like trying to shit a jack-o-lantern. The ’90s (pre–dot-com bust) had more of a monkey-trying-to-fuck-a-football vibe. By 1990 I was so broke and unemployed I joined the army. Then I quit the army. Desert Storm (Iraq beta) came and went so fast we didn’t even have time to convert all our kit from Vietnam green to camel-friendly chocolate chip, leaving us looking on parade as if we were uncommitted to which theatre of war we intended to fight in, or simple minded and unable to grasp even the most basic principles of camouflage. In 1992 I accepted the smirking shoulder shrug of an indifferent discharge, and was bum-rushed into civilian life, where I quickly realized everything they try to lure you in with during recruiting is a lie: no one is looking for the skills you develop in the army except the army, so I became a fry cook who could, should the need arise during the afternoon rush, be counted on to know the lethal range of a fragmentation grenade, or set up an effective arc of fire.
When the Saddams showed up in Albany, around about the time America realized Iraq 2.0 was no MISSION ACCOMPLISHED replay of the original happy-ending Gulf War (refresher: previous Bush, same Saddam) I had regrouped my life marginally: a year of art school before stepping onto the moving sidewalk helpfully provided to move all those lacking in any genuine talent or creativity into their natural habitat: advertising. A hell world where grown men and women argue heatedly about maxi-pad packaging color palettes. Where I managed to porpoise from storyboard artist intern to writer to art director before emotionally belly flopping, Shamu-style, shitting the bed purely out of apathy on project after project, and realizing to my horror no one, not client, boss, or coworkers even noticed. One morning I realized I was physically incapable of entering the converted warehouse in Brooklyn I worked in. Hence my expectorated presence in Albany (which in my pot-and booze-pickled brain I had managed to spin as a “creative exile”) when the Saddams showed up. Life offers us moments of soap bubble–like startling clarity. Glimpses of a hyperreality we choose largely to ignore due to the painful chiaroscuro it casts on the chaos and muddle that compose the rest of our lives. Such a 2003, monkeys-at-the-obelisk moment was the appearance, at dawn, in Albany, dressed in Walmart and Old Navy discount rack singlets and board shorts looking like a gang of Muscle Bears trick-or-treating as PBR swilling Bros. Which would have been at least, if not slottable in my pigeonhole mind on some level, potentially a fact that could be dismissible as a sign my personal universe had taken a startling left turn, if not for the fact that at their head was a man I had not seen in a decade: my old army buddy, Boston.
I want to say the army was a complete waste of time for me, but I did manage, before I could navigate the endless numbered forms of an army discharge, to acquire something no other experience, and no amount of money can buy: an army buddy. Exhibit “A”: the Army Buddy. Part Looney Tunes, Sylvester the Cat chain-ganged to that bulldog escaping across the countryside. Part flaming plane wreck co-survivor. Boston was, of course, in the shimmering counter-reality of army logic, not from Boston. He was named Boston because he could (at least with the officers absent) belt out, word for word, Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” in perfect cadence to a quick march. Basic training is Stripes. You think you’re Bill Murray. You’re Harold Ramis. As remarkably accurate to the basic training experience as Stripes is, I can’t help but think it would’ve been helped in its comedic depth if it had a scene in which Boston, setting the tone for both himself and for the rest of basic, revealed to us the single essential skill he possessed which would save our collective sanity: taking pictures of his cock and balls wearing sunglasses.
The food chain of America’s armed forces is simple: Air Force, Navy, Army, Marines. Which made me shudder to imagine the bus full of recruits in identical yellow school buses headed for Paris Island. From the moment I stepped on the bus I knew I had made a terrible mistake. To say the army casts a wide net would be an understatement. There are recruits from every race and background. Recruits genuinely looking to serve their country and improve their lives and themselves. I’m sure they exist. Somewhere. I just never actually met any of them. Calling my fellow recruits the dregs of humanity, while not charitable, would not be entirely inaccurate either: teen dads, the barely literate, more than a few blowing the explosive bolts on civilian life and loopholing out of jail time by enlisting. All with the dull, sullen eyes of guys who, not even out of their teens, had been singularly turned off life as anything other than something to be endured or outsmarted. Already confirmed in the fact that the deck of life was stacked against them. The only exception to this almost palpable slump-shouldered down-gaze was Boston who, even on the bus to basic revealed to us the alchemy of spiritual escape with his perfect, dare I say “Ghandi-like” resistance to the crushing hand of authority that awaited us at basic: taking pictures of his own cock and balls with a pair of 1980s, Top Gun–issue aviator shades perched on top.
It had taken Boston over a decade, but he finally popped up to cash in his Army Buddy Card in Albany, moving into my cluttered one bedroom apartment, mainlining The Price Is Right and Let’s Make A Deal. Subsisting entirely on a diet of expired MREs I knew better than to ask the origin of. To my great relief, his days of dick pics seemed behind him. The Saddams would swing over from their operating base at the YMCA around four-ish to collect Boston, who they seemed to have adopted as their de facto leader, agent, and pot dealer. The Saddams would drift about my apartment, mumbling in Arabic, leafing idly through my paperbacks, eventually assembling on the couch to watch Dr. Phil, for whom they seemed to have a deep awe and respect, doing massive bong hits before trooping down my fire escape and off to whatever drinking hole Boston had prearranged for them. The Saddams had proven an immediate sensation in their hipster bars of Albany, replacing even the vintage skeeball game as a mandatory accompaniment to a night of sport drinking. And Boston had seized on this interest immediately as a source of income for the cash-strapped Saddams. A Band-Aid solution to the Saddams, cash flow problems that would inevitably end in at least one or two roughing up and forcibly tongue kissing one of the Bros who had paid a handsome cover to see them. While
I had settled in for a lengthy Boston siege, to my surprise within two weeks he had purchased a 1983 Winnebago model “Brave,” loaded it with his expired MREs and the Saddams and roared into Manhattan, screeching to a halt in Times Square, pouring out to forcibly de-pant the Singing Cowboy in front of knots of horrified Japanese tourists, smashing his guitar to splinters John Belushi-in–Animal House style.
Once I’d survived the shot out of a cannon experience of infantry training I began to see army life spreading out before me. The daily, all-you-can-eat shit buffet of army life. The reality that most of what the army does has nothing to do with what the army does. As you read this, on an aircraft carrier steaming belligerently about the Persian Gulf, there is a sailor whose entire day, every day, is restocking vending machines: soda, chips, chocolate bars. I believe their contribution to the “freedom ain’t free” equation is greater than anything I might have contributed. I wasn’t combat material. The only reason I didn’t flunk rifle training was that I’m pretty sure Boston, as one of his trademark jokes only he understood, was shooting at my target instead of his (much like later he would send the Sergeant into a foaming rage by shooting out the lantern describing our left arc of fire during the night shoot qualification). I instantly loathed every officer I met, and the never-ending, wet and sleep-deprived camping trip that was field maneuvers seemed the acme of idiocy, marching around in the dark, digging a trench, filling it in, marching somewhere else, digging a trench, filling it in, marching somewhere else, you get the idea. I also began to realize that I did not fit in with the other recruits, even Boston. I could quit any time I wanted. Boston, to paraphrase Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman, had nowhere else to go.
When Boston and the Saddams showed up in Albany I had quit the army and quit advertising and was working up my courage to quit being a painter and go begging back in to advertising. I had wanted to be Pollock. Or Rothko when the depression began to swamp me. Like everyone else in advertising, I thought of it as a temporary solution. A way of buying time until my “true genius” was realized. A brief history of advertising: billboards, brands (Ivory Soap), radio, television (an Indian crying a single tear by the side of the road), dot-com boom (industry good times), dot-com bust (Bishop’s death at the end of Aliens looking dignified by comparison), Shane Smith crawls out of the slime of the Gowanus Canal and leads a Cleveland Steamer mass exodus to Brooklyn (we collectively place our hope for the future of our trade in the hands of a manboy who can write “I’ve been to North Korea twice” on his official resume with the same imbecilic enthusiasm an eight-year-old boy on a school yard might exclaim, “I saw boobies!” and singularly embodies the new industry standard of contempt as the new creativity. Even so, up until 9/11 it was still possible to do the odd project you could be reasonably proud of. Vice Media’s date-rapey, disaster-porn vibe ended that. And there are few spectacles as sad as aging out of the advertising industry. Except perhaps aging out and being forced back in for scraps, part time to pay the bills. Nonetheless, Vice and the Saddams were, on the surface at least, made for each other. A match they soon enough exploited.
I said the army doesn’t teach you any skills you can use outside the army, but this is not entirely true. As Boston and the Saddams demonstrated for the Vice television cameras shortly after they found out about the Saddams and left a snail trail from Brooklyn to Albany in their wake to see them. The army did teach me and Boston the solution to the previously unsolvable conundrum of how to get you and all your buddies shit-faced when you only have enough money to get half your buddies, or in this case, half the Saddams, shit-faced: 1) divide the Saddams into two groups 2) buy enough liquor to get half the Saddams screaming, vomit-through-your-nose drunk 3) have the first half drink so much booze, so fast they get so drunk they puke through a T-shirt stretched helpfully over the top of a garbage can to strain the chunkies out of the vomit 4) have the other half drink what ends up in the garbage can. Improvise, adapt, overcome indeed.
Early in basic I found myself in the position of Boston believing we were best friends. Which was odd, as it was almost impossible to even know who Boston really was. From the moment of his first dick-and-balls photo op on the bus to basic, Boston was a mystery, never revealing anything about his past or background except for what he could not conceal: a few blotchy 1980s-era, Mike Tyson-style homemade tattoos, and a hairline already plodding in grim, full retreat that made him our obvious go-to straw man for all future underage liquor sales. He never mentioned parents or siblings, and the combination of his never mentioning a girlfriend combined with his penchant for pulling out his junk for impromptu photo shoots in the presence of large groups of men called even his sexual orientation into question. And when we finally got leave at the end of basic, while everyone piled eight to a car and went hurtling down the interstate, Boston stayed on base to devote himself to what he revealed to us to be the intended use of his liberty: jacking off mercilessly in the Urban Warfare Mockup Village.
I awoke the next morning with that unique, David Byrne–Gauguin mashup of “Who am I? Where am I? How did I get here?” that only regaining consciousness after a night of blackout drinking can provide (in my girlfriend’s apartment, on my back on the floor underneath her bed, staring up at the bottom of her box spring) and was immediately washed over with guilt at leaving Boston behind on base. Guilty because Boston needed a friend and I had pushed him away. Boston was an oddball among oddballs and I did not intend to get tarred as a fuck-up, by the officers, the other recruits, or, if I took him with me on leave, by my girlfriend. I was secretly relieved when there was no more room in the car going to Albany. Basic training had not been kind to Boston. When he wasn’t forgetting his rifle in the mess tent or leaving his ruck unzipped, he was stealing live ammunition off the range or failing again and again and again to salute the officers. Worse, I had accepted his friendship at first, when I was frightened and friendless, and then gradually iced him out when I began to make other friends. And I felt ashamed for assuming my girlfriend was so shallow she would peg Boston as a weirdo. So it was with the power of searing guilt that I rented a comically huge Buick and sped back to base, and Boston, hoping desperately I would not catch him mid-jack.
Army Intelligence would not let the Saddams return to Iraq for fear they might inspire some strange off-brand insurrection. But this is not the age of televised, 1991 Schwarzkopf murder porn. Cell phone videos of the Saddams Hot Carling their way into the American consciousness embolden the Iraqi people. The Saddams establish the world’s first Rock Off league (Rock Off: all the Sadddams struggling and sweating and grimacing to shoot their load on a cracker. The last one to shoot their load has to eat the cracker). Sale of official league jerseys and other merchandise fund a host of other income startup ventures. In a move of unprecedented boldness, with the white-hot searing light of truth on their side, the Saddams throw the dripping homoeroticism of the UFC back on itself. Exhibitionist Saddam, after a full month of edging, storms into the octagon, engorged member in hand, threatening his junk-hugging, shorty short–wearing opponent scrambling out of the ring lemur-like, fleeing the trademark projectile ejaculations the Saddams are now known for. Viewed by millions of Iraqis, the event inspires a popular uprising of Poo-Poo-Play Iraqis who temporarily seize control of the national television station before being driven out by a SEAL Team, all of whom are whisked away from the encounter to receive intensive counseling for their trauma with a team of psychiatrists and psychologists working around the clock.
Back in Iraq the situation goes from bad to worse. The Poo-Poo-Play force that took the television station are all now national heroes. The balance of power has shifted. Hard-nosed American combat troops are prepared for IEDs and sniper fire, but not crowds of Furries, Adult Babies, and Leather Muscle Bears sweating profusely in the Iraqi heat seeking to embrace, fondle, and force their tongues into the mouths of their American “liberators.” Morale collapses. Rumors of mutiny sweep the bases. Getting personnel to return from leave b
ecomes an issue. American will to persist in Iraq flags like a spent erection.
Boston tried to act cool, but I knew he was surprised and happy to see me. I know this because he insisted we cam up, dark green on light green, as KISS’s Paul Stanley Starchild and Peter Criss Catman before blowing through the checkpoint and off base. He hadn’t told me where he wanted to go, and I hadn’t asked, fearing he’d take it as a brush off. It wasn’t until we were faced the east/west interstate choice that I got my first clue. I knew from his accent he was from somewhere in upstate New York, like me. But the phrases he used I couldn’t place. Growing up in a middle-class town outside Albany in the late 1970s, every night I would watch the grim, tabby cat–like face of Irv Weinstein and the Channel Seven News Team detail the flames-lighting-up-the-night-sky economic implosion that was sweeping across western New York at the time. When we got older our mock-remembering of the nightly list of disasters, combined with the warpath drumbeat sounding names of the Erie towns became our punchline for the region: “Rape in Lackawanna! Arson in Cheektowaga! Stabbing in Tonawanda!” The way he acted, the things he did, the way he showed up at basic with nothing, not a single item detailed on the list of toiletries and basic personal supplies they had given on the photocopied sheet of paper, I began to suspect that, especially as we headed west on the interstate, that Boston was not in fact from Lackawanna, Cheektowaga, or Tonawanda. The reality was far, far worse than I even dared to imagine. Boston, as he revealed to my horror as we sailed down the interstate, was from Niagara Falls.