A new breed of men, the reservists differed from the low life Neanderthals as much as did the Cro-Magnon men of prehistoric times. A more intelligent and sensitive lot, they hated, with a passion, their indentured servitude to a lower form of life, and rued the day they had ever gotten involved in this country’s military solution to the problems in Vietnam. However much they indulged in grass, hashish, or acid to escape the hellish conflict within themselves over their participation in this war, they nevertheless remained faithful to the wives and fiancées they’d left behind. In spite of their disaffection with the Navy and the war in Vietnam, they still performed their tasks, only to the beat of the rock music to which they constantly subjected themselves, to drown out the screaming of their souls in righteous indignation over their complicity. More often than not were they standing up for what they believed, and at least confronting the lifers before they would agree to carry out those commands that offended their sensibilities in any way. And because I seemed to speak to something hidden deep within their beings, they unconsciously adopted me as the rebel for their cause, the white knight who might just free them from themselves.

The lifers, on the other hand, feared this new breed of man, who dared to stand up to them and question their authority. Like outcasts, the lifers had flocked to the Great Gray Whore, only because she appeared to give them what this society otherwise withheld from them—a reason for living. Driven to serve the soul of this sick society, these patriots of the Great Gray Whore searched in vain through the brothels of the Far East for her ever-illusive form. In their quest for the Great Prostitute, the genie who could fulfill their every desire, they turned to the Spirits of Alcohol. Instead of releasing the genie bottled up within them, they aroused, from his slumber, the ogre who ruled over her, the instinctive beast hidden within us all—Hyde. Because Hyde gave them what they wanted, they grew fond of the horny old devil. Then, one day, they ran into their own shadowy perception of the white knight, hiding out within a lowly peon named Drury, and grew fearful; for somewhere, in the back pages of their minds, they recalled a tale from the days of old, in which the white knight slays the beast.

And in the middle stood the majority of the crew who, unlike the lifers, still had some semblance of a conscience to which the white knight could appeal. Caught up in this tug-of-war for their souls, when push came to shove, they often fell prey to the ways of their animal natures. In their inability to interpret the language of the body, they easily lost their heads when confronted by the rawness of their desires. With their heads in the clouds, and their feet mired down in clay, were they driven to live like the gods, one day, and the beasts of the earth, the next; for this, they believed, was the fate of those who lived in the middle.

While neither lifers nor reservists would have much to do with each other, those who lived in the middle associated freely with the members of both factions. By at least keeping open the paths of communication between the two sides, they seemed to temper some of the hostility each side felt for the other. For now, they were the glue that tenuously held the crew together.

For I was just as incapable of accepting my sexual feelings as they were theirs. Where they sought acceptance in the arms of a prostitute, I fled to the confessional for absolution from my guilt—to ease the burden of my pain. Whereas they sought to escape their pain in the forgetfulness of an alcoholic stupor, I wallowed in mine in one failed attempt after another to get to the bottom of it. And where they discarded the responsibility for their pain onto the outcasts of society, I held tenaciously onto mine, fearful of letting it go.

For oddly enough, I needed my pain as much as this crutch needed me, as I had the distinct feeling Nature was driving me to lose my self in some yet unknown task. If only I could let go of my self, long enough to taste how it felt to forget about oneself, I believed I would actually find myself. In imbibing the spirits of alcohol, I had sought the spirit of such an experience. Because my actions were self-serving, I drank excessively, ever seeking to find that state of mind which could ultimately free me from the pain of my self. Instead of losing my self to the Spirit crying out within me, I lost myself to the spirits of alcohol which then blacked out my pain and brought to life the soulless Hyde hiding behind Nature’s desire for unity with spirit.

Compelled to release the incredible tension that’d built up between Mother Nature and Father Spirit as a result of their long separation from each other, I realized I couldn’t accept just any ole way of life fate threw at me, like that of the Great Gray Bitch or any of her prostitutes, for only the real thing, the way of my soul, could ever cool this compulsion of mine.

I saw too, how both my fathers’ spirits had been broken before me. When my real father unwittingly traded his soul to the Great Gray Bitch, she broke him in two, stole his mind, and carried it off to the metaphysical realm where he roams in madness, to this very day, unconsciously trying to find his way out. In the case of my stepfather, who had offered his body to her as cannon fodder in an earnest attempt to die to himself, she snatched up his soul and imprisoned it in a bottle with the spirits of alcohol, who eventually granted him his wish. And though they both found soul in my mother, such solace came as too little, too late, to stave off the fate they had inadvertently bought from the Great Gray Mother with their souls.

So had I inherited from them this tendency to cash in on the same terrible fate. Having given the Great Gray Bitch my body but not my soul, I still had a chance to change my fate before it was signed, sealed and delivered to me in an even more despicable form. For I was not about to live ’n’ die as half a man, or some soulless beast, as had my fathers before me.

Since the physical and the metaphysical were no longer in proper relationship to each other, I started drinking and compulsively having sex with my self. When confronted about my drinking, thank God, I had the fortitude to quit. But I wasn’t able to quit the other as easily, as the solution to this problem alluded my grasp yet.

The problem became so acute only because I’d never been taught by my fathers, or by the religion of my fathers, how to communicate with the metaphysical side of my nature. O, I’d learned how to ask God for things, as if the Almighty were some genie who could grant my every wish. But I was never taught how to listen or what to listen for. In other words, I’d never learned how God communicated with me.

Were the screams I heard, a last ditch effort by the inhabitants of the metaphysical realm to reach me? If so, who were they? What did they want? And did I really wanna know? I did ’n’ I didn’t, because I so greatly feared getting caught up in some metaphysical mumbo jumbo that’d ultimately lead to my own self-destruction.