Paradise lost

When I was back there in military school, I became very confused. I see now, that it is a great and deep confusion that can amount to only one thing: making my calling out of it.

Perhaps one day, I then immediately think, for I do not have the courage to stand alone in my conviction. Perhaps today, as writing these words could be a kind of first step towards recognizing and calling problems by their name.

The problem was, in military school, it was not all about being the best you could be, as I had believed. It was rather the contrary: becoming the worst version of yourself possible. It was not about being brave at all, it was about being a coward. And it was not about loyalty, unless you call sleeping with the enemy a form of loyalty.

For people were being abused there, sexually. Kids were raping kids, just because someone gave them a green uniform and said you are a soldier now. So what do soldiers do? Soldiers torture other soldiers, and so it was.

You see, it had all started out very different.

To enter the school, which was a preparatory school for the officers’ training, you had to be in good shape. You had to pass a battery of physical examinations, fitness tests and intelligence tests, mostly concerning math. So you would think only the physically fittest and the intellectually brightest were allowed, the best of the best. And so it was actually, which is why I still find it so difficult to understand how they could ever behave so poorly, so cowardly, so criminally.

You see, I did not enter that school to join the military. I joined because I wanted to be trained as an officer of law enforcement. I wanted to arrest and kick the hell out of rapists and murderers. Now I wonder, if I was just naïve. If I was going to learn anyway, what became apparent rather quickly. That you have to protect the bad guy. You have to sleep with the enemy. The rapist is your friend.

And in fact, that is why I left. Because up could not be down, and right could not be left. But back there, in military school, my whole world was turned upside down. I guess I was naïve.

You see, you have to be the best of the best, and initially, during boot camp, we were trained to function as a unit, to think like a team. We were all in it together, and there was no way we were gonna leave anyone behind. We would all help each other through the rough times, and the spirit was good and filled with friendship. I thought I had found the ultimate climate to grow.

Good food, good classes, and good friends. I loved military school.

I had the best intentions.

But I guess some of the kids were a bit aberrant. Some were getting their kicks from playing Hitler’s speeches on their tape recorders and listening to glorious Nazi songs. Some were fan of music filled with actual sounds of cats being tortured, and some were into abusing their comrades in group, sexually, raping and humiliating the other soldiers physically.

I guess my good intentions and my good spirit found my comrades’ attitudes a bit hard to digest.

So I left, because I hated criminals. That is why I joined, and that is why I left.

Years later, I was raped myself. I was sleeping over at a befriended female’s house, because I had smoked a bit too much dope and it had gotten rather unwise to crawl behind the wheel that late at night in the state I was in. So I asked if I could stay over and go home in the morning, which was no problem.

The problem was that, whilst I was fast and peacefully asleep, she crawled on top of me, and forcefully started having intercourse with me, like in some trance and fixated state of mind she would not easily be snapped out of. I awoke and felt like dying. What was happening? I did not understand. This had never been our arrangement, this was not what being friends had been about.

In fact, it had been about her teaching me many and many things about spirituality. Looking back, I realize I did what I guess a lot of women do when their guru has sex with them. They give him what he wants, so they can continue learning about the ways of spiritual life, love and discipline.

I panicked, I surrendered. The only option was to hit her in the face and forcefully throw her off my body and my hips. Which I did not dare.

So I made up stories. We all make up stories to cover for the bad guys abusing us.

This was love to her. She really loved me.

I had consented into having sex by staying over for the night, even though a physical relationship had never come up in our talks or gatherings.

Maybe the boys and girls in the army said they were suffering this in order to serve their country.

Maybe the soldiers who were only witnesses suffered it because you never let your buddies down. You are in it together remember?

But what is the truth still in the end, and who will still call a fact a fact?

Who will say rape is rape? And who will say who the real ‘buddy’ is?

When people grow afraid to speak, it all becomes rather dubious and unclear. Someone has to speak up. Someone has to call a spade a spade and say this cannot be.

For twenty years, I have not called a spade a spade. For twenty years I thought, well, criminals stick together, and I thought people raped other people out of desperate love.

You see, imagine your boss was dumping toxic waste into the river that feeds the lives of the neighboring people. Would you call a spade a spade? Or would you ‘suffer’ it because you had your own family to think of?

Suppose you are a good cop, but most cops in your department were dirty, using excessive force and even doing crimes themselves. Would you shut up because they wore the same uniform and they ‘meant well’?

Suppose your president is kidnapping children from immigrants crossing the border and selling the kids to families in his own country whilst putting the parents on some plane back ‘home’. Would you say he is a good man, looking after his people’s best interests?

What would your story be? What would be the best excuse you could make for the worst of criminals? Did they have a difficult childhood, a traumatizing youth? Perhaps an oxygen deficit at birth?

The thing is, we are all afraid. We are all afraid to stand up and to speak up and to say a spade is a spade and a crime is a crime. We are all afraid to remind each other of things like right and wrong, and we are all afraid to take a stand. We are all accomplices, we are all sleeping with the enemy.

So I thought, is this the world?

Soldiers raping fellow soldiers, cops shooting black people in their home, politicians extorting and suffocating their own people? Is this just the way things are, is this the world?

Are we all glorifying Nazis?

Sleeping with the enemy?

And do we have a plan? Do we still see a way out of the conspiracy and the silence?

Are we secretly keeping track of the other person’s crimes in order to get him convicted big time one day? Are we just waiting for the right time to blow the whistle? Or are we like, well, I guess it’s just the way things are. What do I know?

And if you blow the whistle, you get tortured like hell by the bosses and the government. If you stand up for truth and justice, you get hit between the eyes, if you try to open people’s spirit you get poisoned on a court’s order.

So I guess this is the world.

Well I am glad then. I am glad I let my friends rape my friends, back there in military school. I am glad I said my friend raped me because she loved me so much. I am glad I laugh out as loud as I can with the vilest racist jokes. I am glad to spit in the beggar’s cup and I am more than happy to make fun of handicapped people!

Because this is the world and I don’t want to be a stranger to it. I am a human being and so I am on the side of crime.

Always looking for a bad guy to adore.

Some Hitler still to glorify.

Some king whose colonial crimes I can call my own.

Hell, I can even laugh at myself back there in my youth, with all my dreams of locking criminal people up. What a joke! Don’t you think? What true and real naivety! What was I thinking?

Of course you do not lock criminals up! You cheer for them, you work for them and you protect them!

What was I thinking?

I must have been insane.

After all, a criminal is a man’s best friend, dog.

And a life of crime is a life of adventure isn’t it?

Let’s not be boring, and let’s not be naïve.

Let us not be stupid.

We’re all men of the world.

Wise men after all.