lonely, directionless march toward nothing, devoid of meaning and camaraderie, where the only things you can count on are the regretful voice in your head and then, finally, death.
(If you’re reading this, Hallmark, I’m way ahead of you. I’m already working on a full line of Valentine’s Day cards.)
Of course, I had yet to fully face the reality of my mindset, and instead I rationalized my continuing deployment as a necessity for the business. I was a prominent figure in military culture now. Enlisted men and women looked up to me as an example of what is possible for them after the military. They looked forward to the crazy content we produced as a way to cope until their time came. And since much of that crazy content was inspired by the men and women I worked with on overseas installations, I couldn’t just not be there with and for them.
Jesus, I sound full of myself. Specifically, full of my own dick and balls. How I can still stand up straight after all those years of contorting myself to suck myself off, I have no idea. Moving on.
* * *
—
In early 2015, I finished a deployment that included the closest call I ever had as a contractor. It wasn’t any kind of direct engagement like I’d had back in my battalion days. The closest, scariest calls never are. This was more like one of those “but for a totally unlikely, totally lucky series of small events, I’d be in a million pieces all over the desert right now” scenarios. I never saw the threat. The threat never saw me. But we were on a 100 percent collision course, and the only thing that saved me were those lucky, random intervening events.
For some reason, that got to me. I wasn’t rattled, I was just frustrated with myself. What the fuck am I doing? I am going to die out here, with everything good I’ve got going on back home, and I’m not even gonna see it coming. Why? Fuck this shit.
One afternoon that spring, we found ourselves at a ranch just outside of El Paso owned by some kind of world-renowned horseshoer who was raising horses and bulls. Why we were there, I still have no idea. There was some kind of business rationale, I assume. In our infinite wisdom, we figured why not take this opportunity to test drive Jarred’s new drone camera while I attempted a skill I’d never tried before: maneuvering a temperamental 2,200-pound beast around a meadow with a series of subtle hand and foot gestures. The horse, however, was not so great at handling that drone, which sounded like a massive swarm of angry bees as it flew directly over our heads. I tried to pull back on the reins to settle her down (apparently this is not the right move). She was intent on getting me the fuck off her back, so she ducked her head and front legs and then reared back to fling me out of the saddle like I was a sack of shit in a trebuchet. I hit the ground hard. I broke my arm, nearly exploded my knee, and smashed my face. My beautiful, beautiful face!
Wanna guess what my first thought was as I rode to the hospital to get myself un-Humpty-Dumpty’d? Whether I would be able to make my next contracting rotation. I was supposed to be back at the qualification school in four days for training and to get recertified. I called my contracting agency.
“Hey, just so you know, I just took a bad spill. My knee’s fucked, my arm’s broken, and I need stitches.”
“Omigosh, Mat. Are you okay?” said the woman from the contracting office.
“Yeah, yeah. So if I can shoot with one hand, can I still come?” There was a long pause.
“Jesus, Mat, worry about your health and safety!” she finally said.
“No, I know,” I replied, briefly registering that what I had just asked was certifiable. “But can I still go if I only have one arm?”
At the time it didn’t seem like too crazy of an ask (at least to me it didn’t). It was my left hand that was hurt, and I’m naturally right-handed, so technically I still had my dominant side. If the hand was fractured, I figured I could just wrap it and go through the qualification course like that. NFL linemen do that all the time when they suffer a hand fracture. Jason Pierre-Paul blew half the fingers