Special thanks to the SBrooks for normal fantastic work of turning my chickenshit into chicken soup.
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Just about everyone you come across in this life has something that makes them special. For the privileged it is being born with money, athletic prowess, intelligence or even good looks. Their special skills help drive their lives and give them an edge on their competition. For those less fortunate, their gifts often serve as a cautionary warning to others about the challenges of life. My friend John has always had his own unique specialties that separate him from the normal humans, those being mayhem and destruction.
He's the human embodiment of the Allstate mayhem commercials. If there is a way to take something sweet and wholesome and turn it into a catastrophic shit-show, then John has probably done it and has the scars to prove it. He's a human wrecking ball and not in the Miley Cyrus weird way, but in the "I can't believe he's still alive and not locked up" way. He inevitably got nicknamed John Spartan and often times the Demolition Man for causing havoc by taking things far beyond socially acceptable activities. If there was a way to completely obliterate something, John had figured it out and tried it.
Yup, just a great guy to have along as long as you are on his good side.
I married Jenna Phoenix three years out of college. She was amazingly hot with a great ass, so it was completely understandable why I had my head so far up it that I didn't realize her bullshit. I knew when I married her that she wasn't exactly the warm and caring type, but she made up for it in the two most important ways to a superficial dickhead like me: She looked like a porn star and more importantly, she could fuck like one too. It is a scientific fact that a man can overlook resting bitch face and shitty attitude as long as she makes his dick hard enough to drain the blood away from his brain to keep him from thinking straight.
I would say that you'd be surprised at how often that happens to guys, but we all know that you'd not be surprised. We think with our dicks until we learn through pain and experience to think with either our heart or our head. The heart makes great romance, the head makes a great marriage, and a hard dick makes for a great fee for your attorney.
During our courtship Jenna and John had met exactly once while John was home on leave. She'd met some of my other friends and got along with them relatively well. They were normal human beings and not really too outrageous, comparatively speaking.
I tried to warn her about John but I knew she didn't really get it. It was a case of her smiling and laughing at stories of the things he had done without really understanding that they were actual true with little embellishment.
Stories are really funny when those things are happening to other people, but they take on a whole new meaning when you are caught up in the middle of them. It became a whole lot less funny when you have people associating you with a human man-child who is being talked to by the police about why about why he can't put mouse traps up all over Chuckie Cheese while yelling that he is going to kill the giant rat once and for all, or why you can't suddenly start running a checkout counter at Wal-Mart if you don't actually work there. Most of his activities were stupid and harmless. Others went a little too far.
Luckily, our hometown is like many others, so he beat the charges often. It is amazing what you can get away with when half of your cousins are on the police force, your Uncle is the sheriff and his wife, who also happens to be John's Godmother, is the Judge.
Even with the family connections keeping him safe, they had warned him that his stunts were going too far and that he needed to cut it out. When he finally crossed the line, Auntie Judge told him that he could either join the Army or he could do a year in county. Blast fishing in the reservoir while they were trying to restock it for the fishing derby really pissed her off since it was one of Auntie Judge and Uncle Sheriff's favorite annual date activities. You can mess with other people all you want, don't mess with Auntie Judge's time with her honey.
So off John went to honorably serve his country.
With John in the Army, he was gone most of the time from town, so his interactions with me, and by extension, Jenna, were minimal. He and I would email and video chat. I'd send him random care packages filled with stuff depending on where he was in the world.
Despite being an idiot, John had decent grades in school, and with the family connections keeping most of his activities out of his criminal record, he was able to enlist as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician. Because when someone probably has mental issues, you want them disarming explosives.
John was able to hide his nefarious ways throughout basic training since it was just a collection of random people and the drill sergeants were too busy trying to meet their required training events with the morons of the platoon. He even managed to make it half way through AIT before he got caught fucking around on an explosive range by building a C4 dildo the day the Command Sergeant Major was visiting the range. He may have even got away with it if he hadn't been bragging about modeling it after himself as his instructors and the Command Sergeant Major stared in awe.
It was at this point that John's instructors finally realized that John's personality wasn't a great fit for EOD but they thought they had an idea of where his personality would fit right in, combat engineers.
You see while EOD techs have to be mature and serious when disposing of bombs, combat engineers have about 80% of the intelligence with about 70% recklessness thrown in for fun. John knew he had found his purpose in the Army when explaining to his AIT instructors what he did to get kicked out of EOD school when they explained to him how he failed to build parts of a female anatomy to put his C4 phallus into so he could brag about destroying it.
And when he was instructed to add more explosives to his concrete charges the next day on the range, because as the good sergeant said to him, "blow all of that shit up because it's a pain in the ass to turn back in," John knew he'd found a home.
John would email me with his stories about the fun he was having. His hi-jinks and activities that got him a pair of Article 15s for doing dumb stuff, but not nearly enough to get him the boot out of the Army. He had a great time, but after his four years were up, he decided to come back home.
While he was off defending our freedoms, I had been busy getting married to my walking wet dream.
Jenna and I started out with a typical marriage. We had wanted to get settled for a bit in our careers before having kids. It is a lot easier to travel the globe when you don't have to worry about sitters and bringing enough diapers.
Things were good between Jenna and me, and then they suddenly weren't. She started to act differently; not drastically at first, but noticeable towards the end.
This went on for weeks. I tried to talk to her about the issues I saw within our marriage, but of course she said nothing was wrong and that we were fine as she went about her new normal activities. That lasted until eventually I came home from work one day to her wedding ring on the kitchen table.
My attempts at talking to her lead nowhere but the standard typical bullshit, "It isn't you it's me; I'm going through some stuff, yada, yada; I'm a cunt, blah, blah, blah." Just fill in the blank for bullshit excuses because she probably said it.
I was finally served the afternoon we were having John's welcome home party. Just the standard irreconcilable differences listed as the reason and what seemed like an even split. I left the papers on the table as I headed out to the party so I could welcome my friend home. My marriage had died and I still didn't understand why.
I'd missed having John around, and his return meant more to me that I was probably willing to admit to anyone. My marriage had gone to shit and I hadn't figured out why, exactly. I strongly suspected foul play on her part but I tried to put it out of my mind for the night.
I gave John a big hug when I saw him come in and his response was immediate.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"It's nothing, don't worry about it. We're here to celebrate you coming home," I said as I handed him a drink. "Glad to have you home, buddy."
He gave me a questioning look, "Yeah, right." Then he got a grin, "You're right, it is good to be home."
We had a few shots that night, by a few I mean we drank the bar dry and then they needed to go to the liquor store around the corner for more. They finally kicked us out and John and I made our way to the local fine dining option that is open in the middle of the night.
