New Years 2010

On new years 2010, I told myself that this year would be different. I had returned from the army 4 years earlier but I still wasn't home. I had moved 10 or so times in my life and even though I own lots of things, all of them fit into boxes. All my possessions can be packed into 1 trailer or 3 truckloads and unpacked into a bedroom size space within 24 hours. At all times.

I had struggled with a weight problem for most of my life, (even through the army). my weight never really hurt my dance card, but I always felt fat. I had a girlfriend for most of my life but I knew, "I was what someone had settled for" (at least physically) and that subconscious message affected the way I thought about women ever since. My father had joked that I was the only man in Arizona that refused to take his shirt off. The same held true in Iraq. 

In Iraq my dad told me about the bar he'd bought. A swank jazz club full of cougars and the Arizona elite. At the time (2004) soldiers were treated like rock-stars. Guys would make sure to flash their military id so the whole bar could buy those drinks all night long. And they were happy to do it. We were fucking war heroes and those were good times. After Iraq I had one more year in Germany.

Germany was like living in Saving Private Ryan except there's no war, everyone under 30 speaks English and the nightclubs are open till 5. I loved it there; I had already reinvented myself once to make new friends. Great friends. But after 12 months in Iraq, some had died, some went home, some were transferred, some had been made into real heroes, others... demoted in disgrace. Shifting tides told me to go home. So I called home and told my dad I’d help run his bar, which by this time was a total mess. My parents also decided it was time to tell me that they'd gotten divorced... And by the way, "you may have a step-brother."

I spent the subsequent 3 years desperately trying to save my father’s restaurant as it sank slowly into a dismal economy which had already taken my war money and my college fund. Every 3 months... things'll be better in 3 months... 3 months later, we would sit around and talk about how we would've been better off closed (but we can't due to contractual obligations). The restaurant was a money pit and took millions of dollars before my father called it quits. A happy accident of the recession was that someone defaulted on a payment to my parents for a property they had sold. They took back the property and continued to run it in order to make ends meet.

My mother and sister had convinced me to return to school and my new best friend had convinced me I was a writer. Off I went, back to community college. School was less difficult than I remembered and my newfound self discipline made it easier to get by.

For the first time in my life, a doctor can't tell me I’m obese, even though he may not agree with the way I got the weight off. I’m single for the first time in three years, and more importantly, I can flirt with girls and get them to flirt back. My confidence never needed a boost, but the new-found attention makes me feel unstoppable.