Training Max: Chapter 3

 

“Maybe I should just tell all the people at the barracks that the Earth is flat, and that Duterte is a goddamned honorable man,” he announced. “I am true to myself; no one can accuse me of the alternative.”

“That’s an idea with merit,” she said, “maybe if they let you go you’d finally be free with a justified and principled reason.” His reasons for joining the Army in the first place were manifold, sometimes contradictory, like the Joker origin. (Want to know how I got these scars?) He did admit, however, that he originally wanted to join the Royal Forces, until his mother told him that he was too old.

She remembered letting go of yet another foreigner, Justin, after hearing his admittance that he liked – no, idolized – Andrew Tate. How is flat Earth different? She thought. What is it about him that demands full and hard acceptance of who he is?

He, of course, demanding this acceptance, also gave it. And gave it in spades. She lit another cigarette, although asking him if he wants her to stop.

“No. I have decided that I don’t want you to stop for the moment. I have my reasons,” he added, cryptically.

“Name one.”

“Well, you enjoy it.”

She was silent for some time. 

I’m on the bus, he texted her an hour after leaving for training camp. 

Both of them knew that he had enough time, but inexplicably, he ran out of it, always. Nonetheless, he made it with four minutes to spare. Before leaving he sent her a manuscript of one of his first writings, adding as a sort of apology, “That was the younger me. I would understand if you don’t like it as much as you like my stuff now. You don’t have to read it if you don’t like it.”

He was truly a writer, through and through, and sheepishly proud of it. Writers are, after all, under no obligation to create metaphysical coherence; only meaningful stories. Narratives, after all, defy coherence; they are the source of it.  Narratives make sense only because they themselves demand it; to hell with objectivity and all else.

Moreover, she continued, writers are not allowed banal self-doubt: their doubt is higher than that. Reality will fall to ashes in such a Cartesian gaze. In dealing with a writer you cannot have self-doubt, or you will die, your sorry state of personal history rendered to utter nothingness. 

They gaze at you with eyes worse than hell: for at least in hell, your soul is valued. It is eyesight that sees nothing because it sees everything all at once, all their words in deadly formation of a dance and a battle between two samurai cohabiting the same brain.

They fill nothing with things: and in so doing populate the empty space between atoms with yarns so exquisite in their formulation it has always been true. History has always been complete. 

They do not lie; only tell you truths that your brain cannot accept - for literature does not happen in the brain: it happens along the region from your heart to somewhere in the vicinity of your groin.

She, however, juxtaposed with him, pale in comparison. She felt this truth in her soul: she was not jealous, having found his sublime literature among a cesspool of shit and smut. 

Once, however, and only once, did he mention that he thought he was unworthy of her, being more than he is. She immediately replied, “Never show this kind of weakness to me again, please.”

“Okay, baby. I’m sorry.”