Since my date with Parris Island was just around the corner, I thought, Why not be good to myself? After all, I was about to trade in my entrepreneurial aspirations for a jarhead drill instructor that would be riding my ass from reveille to taps. Considering that future, an invitation from my father for a carefree week of sun and fun on the glistening beaches of the Caribbean was an invitation I couldn’t pass up.

           Once we settled into our vacation condo, I wasn’t interested in lying next to a resort pool with a froufrou drink in one hand and a pulp fiction novel in the other. No, I had something else in mind. After an early dinner, I dressed in full embrace of the disco era, said, “Later, Dad,” and set out on foot for Freeport’s hottest nightclubs. I only had one problem . . . Every time I tried ordering a Bahama Mama or—my perennial favorite—a Yellow Bird; I was carded and asked to leave the premises.

           At first, I wasn’t surprised, but nightclub after nightclub asked me to leave. Could my off-white, button-down, silk-sleeve shirt be giving my age away? Or was it my
Feathered-back hair? Eventually, it didn’t matter and, rejected—again and again—I began my long trek back to the condo.

           Along the way, the flashing bright lights and marquee of the local casino beckoned me to come inside. I knew I had to be twenty-one years old to gamble, but I just wanted a free drink—and rumor had it, casinos were more lax than nightclubs in that department. I had never gambled in my life, other than my short stint as a teenaged pool hustler, that is, and I didn’t classify that as gambling since I was the sure winner!

           But, when I stepped into the casino that evening, I was instantly mesmerized by all the glitz and glamour. Unlike the nightclubs that had rejected me, this place was buzzing with so many people it was easy to blend right in.

           A massive orchestra of lights and sounds, as far as the eye could see . . . rows of slot machines, blackjack tables, and roulette wheels vied for gamblers to step right up and test their luck . . . The smell of money, coupled with the sound of instant riches, was just as intoxicating as the scantily dressed—and breathtakingly beautiful—waitresses who perused the floor with trays of drinks perched high above their heads. “Cocktails, anyone? Free cocktails . . .” announced one blue-eyed brunette with breasts three times the size of her bustier.

           Freed from the constraints of bouncers and bartenders, I confidently, and in an adult-like fashion, confirmed, “Yes, I’ll have a Yellow Bird on the rocks, please.” I’d been in the casino less than five minutes, yet already I’d seen more cash and cleavage than I had in the previous eighteen years of my life. This . . . is . . . it, I said to myself. This is the Promised Land . . . the promise of fame and fortune, that is. Just a lucky spin of the wheel, flip of a card, or roll of the dice and I could be on Easy Street for the rest of my life.

            Caught in the crossfire between money and miniskirts, my hormones roared like a Pacific cyclone. Go for the cash! My mind insisted, while my body clamored for all the cleavage. Showcased in Chanel, DeBeers, and Manolo Blahnik, these women were not only beautiful and rich; they were radiant and refined—from head to toe. “If you want the cleavage,” I told myself, “you better win the cash!”

            The trouble was, I didn’t know a thing about gambling. Playing a slot machine didn’t look like brain surgery, but it didn’t look like James Bond behavior, either. I wanted a sophisticated game, a game that raised my heart rate, and a game that tested my ability to think on my feet. After surveying the scene, I ambled over to the roulette table. From what I could see, the game attracted cultivated people of elegance and class.

            Perfect, I thought, as I watched the croupier spin a white ball against a checkerboard wheel. Intrigued, I wondered what number—or color—would come up next. Would it land on red or black? Three times in a row, I watched it land—much to the anguish of the handful of players—on red. Could it happen a fourth time in a row? I wondered. In a split-second decision that would impact my life for decades to come, I reached into my pocket. A total of four twenty-dollar bills—all of my money—were suddenly burning a hole right through my polyester pants.

            I stuck it all on red, even as the other half-dozen players jostled to stack their chips on black, convinced they couldn’t lose.

            The bold move startled the croupier. “You wish to place a bet?” he asked.

            “Yes, on red,” I said in a calm voice.

            The other bettors looked at me quizzically, as if to say, Do you know what you’re doing, young man?

            The croupier shrugged his shoulders, lifted my cash off the table, and slotted it into the moneybox. Then, he set my chips on the red bar and asked if all bets were made. Satisfied that everyone was in, he gave the sparkling wheel a clockwise twist with his right hand and spun the marble-sized ball counterclockwise against it. When it came to a stop, the croupier called, “Twenty-three . . . red.”

            A collective groan came over the table as he shoved eight chips my way.

            “Let it ride,” I said, an action that attracted more stares from the other players, stares that focused on the spinning ball, as it came to a rest.

            Red again! The croupier announced. I raised my right palm before he could even pay my bet. “Let it ride,” I repeated.

            Puzzled, he asked, “Are you sure?”

            I nodded, yes.

            More convinced than before that the ball would never land on red a sixth time in a row, the others doubled their bets on black.

            The little white ball danced around the wheel, bouncing from pocket to pocket until the croupier looked up with a surprised look on his face and said, “Five . . . red!”

            In just three minutes, my worldly holdings had gone from a grand total of $80 to $320. While my fellow gamblers kept increasing their bets on black, I put $120 in my pocket, and then stuck $200 back on red. As players and spectators watched, the ball circled the spinning checkerboard wheel until the croupier called . . . “Eighteen, red!”

            That’s seven times in a row! I said to myself. Black has to be due.

            A high roller standing next to me stuck the maximum bet allowed, $5,000, on black. Surely, I thought, this guy knows what he’s doing. He was a balding, heavy-set man, probably in his late fifties, and he was wearing a gold nugget bracelet, a Presidential Rolex watch, and a diamond cluster ring on his pinky finger, and a thick gold chain around his neck. His crown jewel though, was the trophy girl on his arm—a cross between Bo Derek and Suzanne Somers; just one glimpse at her had my manhood standing at attention faster than a Marine Corps drill instructor could order, “A-ten-hut!”

            I thought, This guy’s got it all . . . fame, fortune, and one smoking hot girlfriend. How can life get any better than that?

            “Place your bets,” the dealer said, prepared to spin again.

            While my neighbor and all his cohorts bet black and bet heavy, I stuck to my guns and stayed on red. “Let the $400 ride,” I said in James bond fashion. The very idea of letting it ride elevated my blood pressure to accompany the elevation I felt in my drawers. Despite the excitement, I exuded a calm and cool appearance; paradoxically, I was a nervous Nellie on the inside, desperately hoping no one would realize I was only eighteen.

            With another look of surprise, the croupier interrupted my thoughts to utter, “Twenty-five . . . Red!”

            Now, I might have been a D+ student in high school but, obviously, sitting dormant in my subconscious mind were the untapped gifts of omniscience and clairvoyance because, just like that, I was up $820—a 1000 percent return on my initial investment of eighty bucks. Man! I thought to myself, this beats the pants off curb painting and pool sharking any day of the week!

            At that point, the table had drawn more spectators, including a few beauties that rivaled the high roller’s arm candy. They seemed to be waiting for my next move—as was I. Should I take my $820 profit, call it quits, and buy a round of piña coladas for my newfound friends? Or, should I let the money ride? Whatever it was that had transformed me from Clark Kent to Superman in the span of fifteen minutes had to be more than mere luck I thought to myself.

            “Sir,” the dealer gruffly interrupted, “do you wish to parlay your bet?”

            “Parlay?” I asked.

            “Would you like to double your bet, again, sir?”

            “Yes,” I affirmed again in James Bond fashion. “Let it ride!”

            Invigorated by attracting a crowd while defying the odds, I had discovered fame, fortune, and gnosis in—of all places—a casino. Stay calm, I told myself and trust in your higher consciousness. Could red hit eight times in a row? I had recently read Think and Grow Rich, As a Man Thinketh, and The Science of Getting Rich, so I figured the desired outcome was not only possible, it was all but guaranteed. I knew I had to be tapping into that esoteric knowledge, privy only to a select few that dared manipulate the cosmos through the application of immutable, universal laws. Visualize and materialize, I kept telling myself—the Law of Attraction in action.

            Black amassed a stockpile of chips as the other players, like obedient sheep, followed the lead of the high roller’s new $5,000 bet. I, on the other hand, stood my ground as if to say, Gnosis is power!

            “Come on, black!” they shouted as the orbiting ball began to slow . . . In a teasing fashion, it bounced from slot to slot . . . then . . . teetered momentarily on the green zero before firmly settling . . . on thirty-two . . . red! Yes! I screamed in silence, barely able to contain my excitement.

            As the croupier collected all the bets on black and proceeded to pay me, I was approached by security.

            “Is there a problem, gentlemen?” I asked, maintaining my Bond-like composure.

            “You must be twenty-one to gamble, sir. May we see some identification?”

            “Oh, I didn’t know,” I calmly replied. “I’m eighteen.” At that point I was asked to leave the gaming floor, but—much to my surprise—I was allowed to keep my winnings. In less than thirty minutes, I had parlayed my $80 into $1,600—a “20 bagger” in gambler’s terms.

            Having secured the cash, all I needed to complete my evening was cleavage. As fate would have it, though, my luck stopped short of an intimate encounter—but not for a lack of trying. After all, Parris Island, which meant mandatory celibacy for no less than three months, was around the corner, and I had the kind of throbbing headache that Excedrin couldn’t cure.

            Lying in bed later that night, in the theatre of my mind—not unlike my rooftop rituals with pornographic magazines—I focused with laser-like precision on having a sordid and salacious orgy with all of the voluptuous vixens of that evening. The end result was an unprecedented orgasm so powerful; it felt like a tsunami had just roared through my urethra. Although I had been sexually active with a couple of high school girls prior to that point, their inexperience couldn’t hold a torch to the porn stars of Playboy, the power of my imagination, and the sultry seduction of the more mature mavens that perused the casino.

            Little did I know that, that evening would launch an unbridled passion for risk, romance, and riches while it synchronously ignited an epic war between my flesh and spirit, leaving both my soul and my sanity hanging in the balance. Yes, better than turning base metals into gold, the amalgamation of gambling, guts, and girls went well beyond a potent aphrodisiac. As I would discover years later, not even raw oysters topped with Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis could hold a torch to a casino on steroids!

            Shortly after I had returned home, my buddies—as a going away present— pitched in for a Georgetown hooker. It was a Saturday night before I left for Parris Island, and we were all piled into Tom’s CJ-7, after leaving the Crazy Horse. Half drunk, we had the top down, whistling and gesturing at the pandering prosties as we cruised along an infamous stretch of 14th Street. After several failed attempts, one finally walked up to us, patted down her Tina Turner hairdo, and balancing precariously on skyscraper-tall stilettos, she cautiously leaned into the jeep.

            “Y’all are just kids,” she said after only one glance. “Where you from?”

            “Alexandria!” Tom said, his eyes rolling down the curve of her breasts.

            “Alexandria!” she squealed. “Do you know where you’re at?”

            “Yes, ma’am,” my buddy Patrick replied.

            “Ma’am?” she said as a slow grin spread over her face. “Damn, you boys really are from Alexandria. You must be young, dumb, and fulla cum to be in this neck of the woods. Are all y’all looking for a date?” she nervously joked, her double-Ds practically popping right out of her halter-top.

            “No, just our buddy who’s going to boot camp next week, but we want to watch,” Tom replied.

            “Put up some money, honey, and you can watch all you want.” After settling on $100, she hopped in the front seat and directed us to a designated place that wasn’t crawling with cops. Unfortunately, because of detours and construction, we got lost and wound up driving all around Georgetown. We even got onto Key Bridge by accident and wound up in Arlington before we turned around and wandered back into D.C.

            It was hard to hide the fact that we had a hooker in the jeep—the top was down, and there we were: four male Caucasian teenagers with one African-American female dressed in “working” attire, her big hair blowing in the wind. At every stoplight, people were throwing out verbal jibes. “Whore! Whore!” They got a whore in their jeep!” one car full of college preppies kept reminding the other motorists.

            We finally found our destination, a vacant parking lot of a condemned building, but not before I was totally deflated, both physically and psychologically. Still, she tried her best. There I was in the dark of the night; my hands holding onto the roll bar as the jeep—in tandem with the fellatio I was receiving—rocked up and down like a small boat in a choppy ocean. When I couldn’t climax, she pulled out a condom and said, “Let’s do this the old-fashioned way. Normally I would charge ya’ double, but since you gonna be a Marine and all that, this one’s on me.”

            “No, I’m good—really,” I said with a sudden burst of energy as I briskly pulled up my Fruit of the Loom briefs from around my ankles.

            “What’s wrong?” she asked with a look of surprise. “Ain’t you ever fucked a black woman?”

            “No, ma’am, but that’s not the problem.”

            Frustrated, she said, “There you go with that ‘ma’am’ stuff again. I ain’t your mother, I’m your date!”

            “I’m too drunk,” I told her, “and, I can’t concentrate with my buddies standing out there laughing their asses off.”

            “I ain’t refunding your money—” she adamantly declared.

            “Oh, that’s okay,” I reassured her. “I didn’t pay for it anyway. They did.”

            After returning her to 14th Street, I stood straight up in the Jeep. Clutching a bottle of Absolute in one hand and the roll bar in the other, I kept howling, “Be proud—be a Marine!” as we headed home down I-95.

            An hour later in what can only be described as a ballsy, but brainless moment—knowing I was still coming up just short of the required twenty pull ups for a perfect PFT (Physical Fitness Test) score in boot camp—with the help of another buddy, I climbed over the rail and dangled from our ninth story balcony. “No guts, no glory!” I chanted, as I cranked out fifteen fingertip pull-ups (I couldn’t grip the concrete slab with my whole hand) without falling to my death. A week later, I was at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina.

            In boot camp, the drill instructors quickly identified a latent leadership quality beneath my truculent behavior and immediately made me a squad leader. “A-ten-hut!” “Left face!” “Right Face!” and “About Face” were second nature to me. My drill experience from Miller School helped put me way ahead of the game, too, as did the practice I’d been allowed with the M1 and M14. While at the rifle range, that practice also helped me on prequalification day—a practice run for determining marksmanship levels that divided us into expert, sharpshooter, or marksman (nicknamed the “toilet bowl”) categories. By the end of prequalification week, I had earned the title of high shooter in D Company (four platoons of approximately eighty maggots), an accomplishment aided by my knack for wind speed adjustments at long range and my knowledge that the key to a steady hand was a sling so tight I couldn’t feel my arm.

            My success on the rifle range caught the attention of the drill instructors, who always placed bets on who would be high shooter on qualification day. In added pressure, the senior drill instructor bet on me. And as luck would have it, the next day, a monsoon tore through Parris Island with winds blowing so hard the rain felt like sleet as it slammed against my face. We trudged through a course that was so muddy; it looked like a scene right out of the movie, Hamburger Hill.

            When the time came, I struggled to see the front post through my rear sight aperture—nailing a target five hundred yards away with precision, was impossible, and I came nowhere close to qualifying at the expert level. In fact, I barely qualified for a toilet bowl! Needless to say, my lack of success went over like a lead balloon with my senior drill instructor. No sooner had we returned to the barracks than he marched me out to an area known as “the rose garden”—a dirt pit full of briars, thorn bushes, and sand spurs. I was ordered to perform PT as punishment for losing his bet, and by the time I finished doing sit-ups, push-ups, and bends and thrusts, it looked like I had run through a cactus jungle.

            June, July, and August at Parris Island, as any Marine can attest to, is brutally hot and overwhelmingly humid. Add to that the presence of biting sand fleas and drill instructors in your face screaming at the top of their lungs and you’ll quickly wish you’d never left whatever hell you came from in the first place. Usually, the worst days were declared “black flag days,” which resulted in drills being limited or prohibited. Our drill instructors, however, broke protocol one day to get us to perfect a maneuver for an upcoming drill competition with the other three platoons in our company.

            “Little Red” was a recruit that looked like Alfred E. Neuman, the guy on the cover of Mad magazine. On that black flag day, he snuck a sip of water from his canteen without permission, an act that resulted in the drill instructor marching us back to the barracks, having us fill our canteens, and ordering us to stand on line in front of our bunks.

            “You want water, you sorry sack of shit heads?” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “I’ll give you your water, ladies. I wish to God I could drill you in panties and bras so we could let the whole damn base see what a bunch of whining sissies you really are. Would you like that, ladies?”

            We shouted our response in one collective voice: “Sir, no, sir!”

            “I can’t hear you!” he hollered cuffing his ear.

            We again responded in a louder and more unison response: “Sir, no, sir!”

            “Now, drink, you filthy maggots.”

            At first, we thought, Thank you, Jesus, and chugged our two quarts of water like dying men in the Mohave Desert.

            Only it didn’t end there.

            He kept ordering us back into the head to refill our canteens and repeat the procedure until almost every one of us “lady-maggots” threw up—sixty or so, barfing our guts out waiting for the next guy to blow. I finally blew on my fifth canteen, just over a gallon.

            However, our guide, a huge African American (“dark green” in boot camp lingo), with cantaloupes for biceps and tree trunks for thighs, must have had a stomach made of sponge. With the drill instructor right in his face, barking out orders to keep drinking, his stomach swelled like a helium balloon. When he finally erupted, it was like watching a human fire hydrant as water shot from both his mouth and his nostrils. I wouldn’t have thought it was humanly possible to hurl that hard for that long . . . but he did. We used dustpans to scrape the piles into a lake of liquid vomit, and then we scooped it up and poured it down the shower drain. For the next few days, the stench was almost unbearable.

            Although Drill Instructors would often acknowledge differences in race or ethnicity by their crude comments and racial rants—particularly towards blacks and hispanics—racism, thank God, wasn’t tolerated . . . at least not in the Marine Corps. Just imagine a white Marine in a foxhole in the midst of a fierce firefight. Flanked on all sides, he’s doing everything he can to keep from being overrun. But as the enemy converges on his position, his M16 suddenly jams. It’s dark; he can’t see squat, and he prays to God for supernatural intervention. Out of nowhere a brother-in-arms jumps into the foxhole and—in a Rambo moment—he unleashes a fury of fire, mowing down the enemy and saving his fellow Devil Dawg in the process. Shocked, blinded, and deafened from the intensity of the firefight, this hero creates a camouflage cover with his poncho and drapes it over their foxhole to await reinforcements. As the sun dawns a new day, the first Marine slips off the poncho only to realize that his brother-in-arms (a “dark green” Marine) is a brother from Harlem. Sadly, it often takes moments like that to realize that every man and woman is made in the image and glory of God. Oorah!

            One day we returned from combat training with mud-caked M-16’s. Because we hadn’t performed to expectations—we’d lost our coordinate in a makeshift firefight—we were told to strip down to our birthday suits and march into the shower stall with our rifles. After giving them a good drenching, we were ordered to put them aside and muster “butt to balls” right in the middle of the shower stall. Packed together like overgrown sardines, our drill instructor shouted, “Pushups . . . begin!” What in the hell? I thought. Here I had spent the last five years erasing images of naked men from my mind, and now I had to swap sweat with sixty of them? Be it as it may, there I was, a human sardine, getting sandwiched by a bunch of bareback men, as we knocked out twenty-five pushups at the whim of a warped drill instructor.

            Boot camp was a power trip for drill instructors back then. They were only six years removed from Vietnam with constant references to “Charlie” and “Gooks.” If you were caught choking your chicken, God help you. One guy who got nailed had to march around the barracks in his skivvies with his rifle at right shoulder arms and his left hand clutching his groin while chanting, “This is my rifle; this is my gun; this one’s for killing and this one’s for fun.” Once you were labeled either a “tube steak connoisseur,” “chicken choker,” “baby gravy chugger,” or “throat yogurt lover,” four of the more eloquent Parris Island phrases—at least at that time—you were marred for the duration of boot camp. From that point on, you were simply known as, “The Choka!”

            I had my own trouble one night when I got caught writing a letter after taps. I was on the bottom bunk, underneath my blanket with a flashlight and notepad, when a drill instructor disguised as a fellow recruit on fire watch kicked my rack against the bulkhead so hard my upper bunkmate fell out of bed. He then pulled me by my ear to the quarterdeck and ordered me to stand at attention as he turned all the lights on and ordered everyone out of their racks and to face the quarterdeck.

            In typical drill instructor fashion, he announced my offense: “Private Lehmann has decided he’s not tired enough to sleep. Apparently, because he’s a squad leader, he’s also taken the liberty to change the schedule for taps. So, to help this maggot get to sleep we will watch Private Lehmann perform twelve different exercises for five minutes each. His next command was, “Bends and thrusts—five minutes—begin!” Twenty minutes later, I was on pushups when he shouted, “Why Private Lehmann are you even on my island?” “To become a Marine, Sir!” “Become a fucking Marine—Is that what you just said Private Lehmann?” Sir, yes sir! “Hell Private Lehmann,” he said in a condescending voice, “Becoming a tick on a dick would be a major leap forward for you; you’re not even a nit on a gnat’s ass!” Now that you’ve got us all wide-eyed and bushy tailed, amuse us Private Lehmann; What would you rather be, a tick on a dick, or a nit on a gnat’s ass? Gasping for breath and struggling to knock out one more pushup, I bellowed, “Sir, Private Lehmann would rather be a tick on a dick, sir.” “Oh, this should be interesting, enlighten us Private Lehmann, why on God’s green earth would you rather be a tick on a dick than a nit on a gnat’s ass?” “Because sir,” I uttered as sweat was pouring onto the quarterdeck, “there’s no hope for a nit on a gnat’s ass, but given the right occasion, a tick on a dick could become a tick on a clit . . . Sir!” “What!” he quickly retorted, as the veins in his neck were about to burst. “What in the hell did you just say? Repeat that answer Private Lehmann!”

            Figuring I was fucked either way, I mustered every ounce of energy I had left, did one more pushup, and with my elbows locked and my back in perfect alignment, I looked him square in the forehead (you never looked a drill instructor square in the eyes) and shouted . . . “Sir, a tick on a dick could become a tick on a clit, Sir!” Anticipating a swift kick to my gourd (head), I was only too relieved to hear his next statement. “Well blow me the fuck down! That’s the smartest damn answer I ever heard—what are you one of them Harvard Mother Fuckers’, Private Lehmann?” “No Sir! Just a wanna be a lean, mean, killing machine, Sir! “Killing machine,” he smirked. “Hell Private Lehmann, after that piss poor performance you had on the rifle range, you couldn’t kill a Gook if he was standing three feet in front of your butt ugly face!”

            Dying from utter exhaustion and intense muscle burn, I said, “Sir, Private Lehmann requests just a one minute breather, Sir!” “Request denied!” he quickly retorted. “But, sir” I said, before he abruptly cut me off. “Butt!” “Did you just call me an ‘Ass’ Private Lehmann?” “Sir, no sir!” I quickly shouted back. “I’m sure you just called me an ass, Private Lehmann.” “Sir,” I quickly retorted, “Private Lehmann did not call you a derogatory name, sir!” “You!” he quickly snapped back. “Oh, now I’m a fucking female sheep, too! So, what you’re saying Private Lehmann is that I’m a sheepish asshole?” “Sir, no sir,” I bellowed, as I struggled to do another pushup. “Sir!” I begged again, “Private Lehmann requests just a thirty second breather, sir.” “WHY, Private Lehmann, should I give you a thirty second breather?” “Sir, Private Lehmann is exhausted, sir!” “You weren’t too exhausted to write your Mama after taps, were you, Private Lehmann?” “Sir, that letter was not to Private Lehmann’s mother, sir, and Private Lehmann is damn tired now, sir!”

            He then got down on both knees, placed his mouth an inch from my ear and hollered, “So tell us Private Lehmann, who, pray tell, was so God Damned important that you were willing to shortchange your fellow maggots of much needed sleep and melt like Frosty the fucking snowman on my pristine quarter deck?” Sir, Private Lehmann wrote a female friend and asked her to send a picture for the hog board, sir!” “Hog board!” I had his immediate attention. “At Ease, Private Lehmann!” was his next command and I immediately collapsed in my own puddle of sweat. “Are you telling me that a tube steak tuggin’, baby gravy chuggin,’ butt-ugly flower like yourself has a hog at home?” Sir, yes sir!” I replied. “Oh, this I can’t wait to see,” he said, before finally ordering me back to my rack.

            My sweet revenge came a short time later when I won the hog board competition and got to drink an ice-cold Coke as my fellow maggots (you’re not a Marine until you graduate) watched in envy. The hog board was where we displayed a picture of our girlfriend or wife and the drill instructors voted on who had the hottest hog. Anyone who could stomach the crude comments and endure the implied sexual fantasies of the other recruits had a shot at winning.

            After seeing all the pictures and foaming at the mouth—for the Coke, that is—I called in some heavy artillery and blew the doors off the competition. My sweet tooth was dying for a fix, so I wrote a letter to a high school friend back in Alexandria who was both a dancer and an aspiring actress—we never dated so I didn’t have any emotional or intimate connection to her. Smoking hot, she was . . . perfect. I explained my desperate desire to get my hands on that icy cold Coke and asked her to send a risqué picture.

            When the sizzling shot arrived, I cherished it for a day before exposing her to the den of dogs. When I posted her on the hog board the next morning, it was game over! That afternoon, a drill instructor ordered us to form a semi-circle in the middle of the squad-bay, and then placed a metal folding chair in the center of it. “Private Lehmann!” he shouted, “Get your sorry specimen of sewage semen in this chair!” Assuming I must have royally fucked up on something, I was momentarily tempted to try and become the first recruit in history to successfully escape Parris Island. As I nervously sat down, I thought I was about to endure a good old fashion beating at the hands of sixty pissed-off, homesick, horny recruits. Instead, the Senior Drill Instructor informed them that I had won the hog board competition, and handed me an ice-cold Coke. “At ease,” he told my fellow maggots, as I slowly drank my highly coveted Coke right in front of them.

            Boot camp was rife with sexual overtures. The verbal diatribes by the drill instructors, the drill chants, and the hog board were full of sexual connotations. No matter what the activity was, sex somehow figured into it. Even when we jogged, we chanted, “Mama and Papa were layin’ in the bed, Mama rolled over and this is what she said: give me some . . . pt . . . oh, yeah . . . good for you . . . good for me.”

            As the end of boot camp approached, I faced my PFT. For a perfect 300 score, I had to run three miles in under eighteen minutes, do at least eighty sit-ups in two minutes, and twenty straight pull-ups—my Achilles Heel. Having aced the three-mile run in just under eighteen minutes, and knocking out more than eighty sit-ups in two minutes, I unfortunately fell two short of the required twenty pull-ups for a perfect score. Passed over for acceptance into recon, I was devastated. Instead, I wound up an A-4 plane captain, stationed at Cherry Point, North Carolina from 1981 to 1985.

            When I wasn’t performing aircraft preflight inspections, sending off pilots, or helping ordinance load a few bombs, I was chasing chicks, reading philosophy, playing the stock market, or betting on just about anything—street craps, serial numbers on dollar bills, ball games, and poker. I gambled whenever I could, and the opportunities were commonplace, especially on deployments. Besides, I enjoyed it, and gambling was an easy way to supplement my enlisted man’s pay. I’d gotten a little spoiled raking in $300 a weekend—$900 if you included the D.E.C.A. debacle—with my curb-painting business; and, now that I was putting my ass on the line for my country . . . making a paltry $230 every two weeks just wasn’t gettin’ it!

            Shortly before a six-month deployment to the Pacific Rim for close air support combat training missions in Japan and Korea, I watched a man die—right in front of me. I was on the hangar deck where Marines were using some metal scaffolding to wash the top of a C-130. Finished, a few jarheads started pushing it away from the aircraft; only, instead of rolling across the deck, one of the wheels was locked and it toppled over. Everyone bolted except one man, who was knocked down before he could get out of the way—the scaffolding fell on his head, severing it in two. His brain was totally exposed as half of his face laid flat on the deck. The moment seemed surreal as we helplessly stood in shock and awe, watching in anguish, a fellow Marine die as he bled out arterially with the last few beats of his heart.

            Just like that, he was gone. And, it hadn’t taken a battlefield for him to pay the ultimate price. In that teary-eyed moment of despair, I couldn’t help but wonder where he had gone at that very moment. Was he in Heaven? Was he in Hades? Was he in Gehenna—screaming for mercy at the top of his lungs, forever burning in a literal lake of fire if he hadn’t confessed with his mouth and believed in his heart that Christ was his personal savior?” Or, had his life spirit been absorbed into the ethereal realm until he faced the great “White Throne” judgment at a future resurrection of bodies from the grave, as we were taught in Christian school? Would he be reincarnated, according to Hinduism, and conceived as an embryo in the womb of another woman at that very second? Or had his life force been reassigned to a lower species that was being concurrently conceived? Was he in a supernatural state of Nirvana, or did his body, soul, and spirit all just transition to a nebular existence?

            Witnessing a death in person for the first time, it brought to the forefront a clash of beliefs between what I had learned in church and Christian school, and what I was learning from philosophy books whose authors were heavily influenced by ancient Eastern mysticism and Greek mythology. That was the starting point at which I began developing a polytheistic view of God and the supernatural realm.

            As we toured the Pacific Rim just a short time later, gambling and girls re-took center stage—especially girls! While the atrocities of Miller School were only five years removed, in some respects, they had already felt a lifetime ago. Healing my sexual discord through sex transmutation, practiced primarily through auto-sexuality (masturbation), and casual hook-ups with a few girls, had in fact cured my anxiety—especially after doing pushups with a bunch of naked guys in boot camp!

            Only, I had no clue as to the many bizarre ways in which the female anatomy could be contorted and exploited; that was, not until the first stop of our West Pac tour: Iwakuni, Japan. There, I not only experienced my first strip club, but I saw women do things I never knew were humanly possible. In particular, I watched in awe as a stripper reclined on her back, took a hard-boiled egg and inserted it into her vagina, then shot it into the audience—drunk jarheads who, pardon the pun, scrambled to catch it. After that, in defiance of human potential, I watched in further amazement as she stuffed a whole banana in there and shot it out sliced and diced.

            Perhaps even more shocking was watching my fellow Marines acting like a school of goldfish, vying for position to catch it in their mouths. My thoughts were more focused on one concern: if she could do that to a hard-boiled egg, what, pray tell, could she do to a penis? Leathernecks are tough, but we aren’t made of steel. Short of a titanium tube steak with tethered testicles, I defied any man to attempt a coital connection without a copper-plated condom! The experience, while not the least bit stimulating, was, nonetheless, one for the ages.

            I was far more intrigued, not to mention emotionally moved, when I visited Hiroshima. To stand on the very spot that “Little Boy” landed after being dropped from the Enola Gay on August 6, 1945, and see the relics and artifacts from that atrocious day was a staunch reminder of the horrible reality of nuclear war.

            From Iwakuni, it was on to South Korea, where I served on an advance crew that helped build a tent city in preparation for Team Spirit, a multi-national combat training exercise in Daegu, South Korea. Our assignment was to assemble twelve-man tents, complete with a tiny kerosene heater in each, in the coldest weather I had ever endured—well below zero, Fahrenheit—and in the middle of a windy, barren field.

            When I took my first trip downtown, I was awestruck not just by bicyclists balancing baskets on their heads and carrying livestock on their backs, but also by the endless rows of strip plazas that showcased beautifully dressed prostitutes—storefront windows stocked with oriental dolls, only the dolls were human. Most windows contained eight to ten of them, on display for sex.

            Much like entering that casino in Freeport, I was instantly mesmerized at the notion that strip plazas were selling flesh over flowers and cleavage instead of clothes. I had never seen nor heard of anything like this. The process seemed simple enough: walk up to the window, inspect “the merchandise,” and point to the one you want. Mama-san, an older woman who was essentially their pimp, was the one that any patrons paid. And, she was as sharp as a tack when it came to negotiating since she knew Americans could shell out more money.

            At the pay grade of an E-3, those particular women were out of my price range. But that didn’t keep my entrepreneurial mind from thinking like a landlord and singing, “cha-ching!” as I watched in amazement the hoards of men who stepped right up and doled out the dough like they hadn’t been laid in their entire lives! Instead of the typical long-term tenant paying five hundred bucks for a month, here was an average of twenty tenants (albeit for only thirty minutes or so) a day forking out a hundred bucks apiece —the place was a cash cow bringing in a stout sixty grand a month!

           Another collection of bars and boobs stood just outside the entrance of tent city—only not the caliber of the oriental dolls on display downtown. For that reason, and because they were so convenient, these establishments had to meet certain requirements before GIs could patronize them. At the top of the list, the meretricious mavens had to have regular female examinations by a base doctor; the results of those exams were then posted on a bulletin board right outside the chow hall tent. Before anyone headed for one of those destinations, he stopped by the board and, with paper and pen in hand, listed the worker ID numbers—along with any corresponding comments—at the club he would be patronizing.

            For example, if you were planning to venture over to the Highway Club, my personal favorite, you would visit the bulletin board and list the information associated with the girls at that club:

            #1 didn’t show up for exam

            #2 diagnosed with gonorrhea

            #9 diagnosed with a disease on such and such a date; treated but didn’t show up for follow-up exam.

            Information in hand, you then went to the Highway Club where you were immediately barraged by a swarm of girls saying, “Buy me drinky, GI, buy me drinky.” As they all competed for your attention, you defended yourself with your list. If #1 won your heart or more like your hard-on, you pulled out your list and hoped with every inch of your thick stick that she was clean. If so, you spent the rest of the evening buying her drinks until you’d dropped enough cash—about thirty bucks—to warrant taking her home. Only, “home,” was just big enough for a single bed, a transistor radio, and a silver mixing bowl, which served as the toilet and was occasionally emptied in a nearby alleyway; you rarely found running water, and the room was usually around the corner from the bar, down the same dark, stench-filled, sewer-infested alleyway that smelled way worse than an over-flowing porta-potty.

            On one such trip, I was mortified by the conditions and, in a temporary attack of morality, I told my number to keep on what little bit of clothing she was wearing. In exchange, I handed her a twenty-dollar bill and elected to inquire about her life. She was thirty-five and had been a prostitute for twenty years. Her normal routine was to hook up with one American GI and be loyal to him during his TDY, which on average lasted about three weeks. If that wasn’t possible, she took her daily johns to her walk-in-closet-sized apartment, douched, defecated, and urinated in the bowl, and had sex. In return, Mama-san took care of her basic needs at the bar and she was off two days a week. She said her clients were predominantly married American servicemen, from privates to generals.

            When I asked her how many times a guy stopped short of having sex once he got to her place, she claimed that I was the first. It’s a lurid example of just how far a man will go to feed an insatiable demon cloaked in moral rectitude. Ironically, she was a prostitute of principle and felt morally obligated to respond in-kind to my free gift of twenty bucks. So she invited me to dinner in downtown Daegu with some Korean friends and two ROK (Republic of Korea) marines. We sat around a knee-high table eating Kimchi and drinking shots of Soju, like it was just plain water.

            Korean marines are as tough as nails and they can drink like thirsty Irishmen! Their favorite literature was one of my former favorites, an American classic—Playboy! I wondered if they, too, enjoyed reading the op-ed stories . . .

            Not long after that, she and I had sex in one of her friends’ apartments, and I couldn’t help but sense an underlying motive—even if the evening was a “freebie.” I could tell from the conversations we had that she was considering me as a possible meal ticket to the States. Deep down inside, they were all looking for their “Richard Gere” to whisk them away from lives of dope and drudgery and into a life of love and luxury.

            Sadly though, when one of the girls did find an American knight in shining armor, in many instances, he wound up being nothing more than a controlling pimp who made her his personal slave by day and hard-core whore by night. Later, after years of suffocating abuse, she would get enough gumption to leave him, only to be unfairly stigmatized as an Asian-American opportunist who sold her soul for a one-way ticket to Freedomville. In reality, these women were born and bred to worship the ground their husbands walked on, from sunup to sundown. More than cultural upbringing, such service was practically embedded into their DNA. As American citizens, they dreamed of a life of love and liberty; but what they got was lust and a leash.

            During my time in Japan and Korea, I visited Buddhist temples on two occasions. Those visits further solidified my interest in New Age theosophy by empowering me to engage in periodic meditation and experience the culture of Buddhism and Confucianism firsthand. Spirit-driven, intellectual enlightenment through meditation and shamanistic rituals appealed to my hunger for a higher intellect and a deeper understanding of the ethereal world. I weighed in on thought versus faith; Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), who 2,500 years ago taught absorption of oneself into the infinite (through collective stages of enlightenment that led to a state of Nirvana), versus Yashua HaMashiach, who 500 years later—in a Heavenly fiat—boldly proclaimed to be the son of God and the prophesied Messiah and Savior of the world (stating that He was the way, the truth, and the life, and that nobody got to the Father but through Him).

            Much like walking into that casino and being caught in the crossfire between my desire for cash and my lust for cleavage, I found myself in another predicament, only this time it was spiritual.

            Was Christ the real deal? Was He, in fact, wholly man and Holy God? Was He divinity that stepped out of the celestial realm to robe Himself in human flesh, become the slain lamb, bear the sins of mankind, and forever pave the clear and only path to the holiest of holies if people believe and put their full faith and trust in Him and what he accomplished on the cross at Calvary? Is He truly my advocate, interceding on my behalf twenty-four hours a day as he sits at the right hand of the Father?

            And, what about the successive teachings of Gandhi, Lao Tzu, and the long progression of Dalai Lama’s—that I possess the power within me to obtain progressive enlightenment and essentially achieve deification whether it be in this life, the next life, or a series of lives—possibly in different life forms—en route to reaching the zenith, kind of a spiritualized version of Maslow’s pyramid?

            Ostensibly, the answer was a syncretistic fusion of my Christian faith with my interest in old-world Eastern philosophy. Although I had recited the sinner’s prayer, accepted Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, and was “saved” in Christian school, after witnessing so many people who had never even heard of Christ much less the bible, surely I thought, there had to be more than one God and more than one way to Heaven. And the monotheistic spiritual view I held to that point was cracking under an apparent preponderance of proof—hence my spiritual paradigm shift to henotheism.

            I was no longer confined to the monotheism of Christian orthodoxy and was privy to both personal and experiential interpretation of other religions and disparate philosophies. The way I saw it, my belief in plural deity was the best of both worlds: a get-out-of-hell-free card (if the Baptists were right) and progressive enlightenment—possibly to the point of self-deification (if ancient eastern philosophers were right). When I returned to the States, I began to immerse myself in the writings of many Pseudo-Christian intellectuals whose philosophy and theology was in fact an amalgamation of both Christianity and ancient Eastern mysticism. That marked the gestation of an ambivalent tug-of-war between my mind and body, leaving my spirit and the question of its eternal existence hanging in the balance.

            Still upset over my buddy Jim’s untimely death in Beirut on October 23, 1983, I again found myself pondering the whereabouts of souls.

            Only now, having just returned from Asia, I had more questions than answers. In particular, I struggled with the notion that Jim was being eternally barbequed in a literal lake of fire, or—depending on one’s interpretation of Yahweh’s historical timeline when it comes to the abode of the deceased—in Hades, an intermediate place of conscious torment according to most bible expositors, until a still-future, bodily resurrection and judgment. The notion that at that judgment, he would then be cast into a literal lake of fire because he may not have accepted Christ as his personal Lord and Savior—especially after being blown to smithereens as part of a peace-keeping force in an Islamic region of the world that loathes American culture and Christianity—was a hermeneutical and linguistic interpretation of the doctrine of Hell I could no longer take at face value. Theologically, I tacitly questioned Christendom’s prevailing, literal interpretation of all scripture, particularly of Christ’s Olivet discourse in Matthew 24 and the prevailing apocalyptic, doom and gloom interpretation of passages found in the old testament prophets, and new testament books like the gospels, and II Peter and Revelation that allegedly deal with the fate of the earth, the entire cosmos, and the eternal state of the unbeliever—again, depending on one’s presuppositions and understanding of biblical exegesis and hermeneutics.

            At that time, in almost deconstructionist fashion, I found myself asking even deeper questions: What if they’re all wrong—every world religion, every theology, every philosophy, every belief, and every statement of faith, doctrine, or creed? What if Darwinian macroevolution was in deed true, and we evolved from Ape-like primates and our body, soul, and spirit all just kick the bucket for eternity. On the other hand, what if they’re all right? What if universal truth was in fact progressive, adhering to whatever faith or philosophy fits one’s paradigm for the moment? The question was whether or not there was in fact a standard bearer, a supreme deity by which competing world philosophies and a kaleidoscope of religions could be measured?

            Not to be outdone, my itch for living on the edge of the physical realm was fixing to take a big step forward, too, as I would be reacquainted with a casino during a training deployment to Fallon, Nevada. Shortly before our departure, we were warned about both the casinos and the brothels and advised not to blow all of our money on either one. While most of the guys were foaming at the mouth to visit the local brothel, I was chomping at the bit to hit the closest casino.

            Indeed, no sooner did the tires touch the tarmac than a foot race was launched for “Salt Wells.” Ironically, most of the married guys had the fastest feet; their excuse was, “We’re used to getting laid every day” and having been back from Asia for just a few short weeks, they weren’t yet caught up. Not me—I had had my fair share of coitus in both Japan and Korea. Instead, at the first opportunity, I was hoofing it for the local casino.

            Unlike the casino in the Bahamas that had had it all—glitz, glamour, and glitter—this was more like a cowboy’s casino with an all-you-can-eat beef buffet. Also unlike the Bahamas, I hit pay dirt in the cleavage department. Not yet invested in the game of craps, I sat at a blackjack table and managed to turn forty bucks into four hundred. During that time, I was engaged in a colloquial conversation with the civilian girl sitting next to me and, like in the Bahamas, I was once again caught in the crossfire of my hormones gone haywire.

            During the course of our small talk, I told her I had just returned from the Pacific Rim and that I was still reeling over my buddies’ death. She, in turn, said she had never dated a Marine, only a few sailors. I could sense that gambling was having the same effect on her libido and you could cut the sexual chemistry with a knife. No sooner than we had gotten up from the table, and we were lip-locked like two lost lovers.

            She then led me out of the casino with one purpose in mind. At three o’clock in the morning, I was having a sacrilegious soiree on of all places, a church lawn—the only dark place we could find. At first I was a little freaked about drinking and fornicating with a stranger on a church property but, by then, nothing could have held a candle to the raging hormones of a lean, mean, horny Marine.

            In the spring of 1984, a penchant for living on the edge and a growing desire for adrenalin rushes led me to take up skydiving with two of my Marine buddies. A crash daytime course ended with our first static line jump from 3,000 feet. As we climbed to altitude in a stripped out Cessna 172, the jumpmaster opened the hatch and instructed Brian to sit in the doorway—he would be the first to jump. “Okay Brian, we’re coming up on the landing zone,” the jumpmaster told him, “It’s time to climb onto the strut.” I could tell from the look on Brian’s face that this was not going to be good. He had already turned eighteen shades of green and was sweating profusely. He stuck his feet on the foot pedal and slowly grabbed the wing strut with both hands. Staring back at Bob and me, his face looked like a glob of silly putty flapping in the wind. Next command: “Hang!” That’s where you let your feet go and just dangle in the eighty-mile an hour head wind until you fly over the landing zone. Once over it, the next command was, “Let go!”

            Only instead of letting go, Brian instantly fell in love with the strut, holding on to it for dear life. “Let go, now!” the jumpmaster screamed. “I can’t!” Brian shrieked, ready to blow his grits on the civilization below us. “Oh boy . . . here we go,” I told Bob as we started laughing our asses off. There was Brian . . . a lean, mean, killing machine—America’s finest—just hugging that strut like a monkey on its mama. “Let go!” the jumpmaster repeated. Brian wouldn’t budge. “You pussy,” I screamed at him. “You call yourself a Marine.” “I’m an air winger, not a grunt,” he screamed back.” “Oh, you’re an air winger alright,” I shouted over the wind noise. “You’re in the air and you’re hanging on a wing! If only your drill instructors could see you now.” “Hold on Brian, don’t let go now,” the jumpmaster told him, “We’re past the landing zone; just hold on until we circle back around.” “Can I please get back in,” Brian pleaded. “If you get back in this airplane, we’ll let everyone back at VMA-223 know what a pussy you really are,” I shouted. “I’m good with that, really!” he hollered back. “I’m not a true Marine anyhow, I just play one in real life.”

            Truth be told, watching Brian panic and get whipped around like Old Glory in a thunderstorm was a little nerve racking. When we came back over the landing zone, he finally let go. All we heard were terrifying screams until they faded into obscurity. Bob made it look effortless and jumped without a hitch. Me? I wasn’t so fortunate. Already on the strut, the jumpmaster told me to inch out a little further. When I did—because the static line was too taut—my parachute began to deploy. Unbeknownst to me, the jumpmaster screamed, “Let go right now!” Only it was too late. My chute had inflated, and I found myself doing backward somersaults in my harness—a hell of an introduction to parachuting! Once I got untwisted, I was amazed at how serene and quiet things were, and I was addicted from the get go. The next weekend, I completed my five static line jumps, and the weekend after that, five “hop and pops”—that’s where you jump and immediately pull your ripcord—before I proceeded to freefalling.

            Within a couple of months, I was free-falling from 10,000 feet without a care in the world. The adrenalin rushes were terrific, practically unequal to anything else I’d done in my life, but they paled in comparison to the adrenalin rush I received on my forty-fifth jump.

            On that jump, I did a sixty-second free fall from 12,000 feet, which reached the speed of terminal velocity. I flared out and pulled my ripcord at 3,500 feet—at least that was the plan until I met “Sally Mae.” The greeting went something like this: “Oh, shit—fuck me . . . damn! I can’t believe this—”

            You see, Sally Mae is no lady—it’s the nickname given to a chute that’s wadded up in the middle with a little inflation on both ends. At 3,000 feet, I was dropping like a rock with one eye on my altimeter and the other one on my tangled chute. Knowing I was in extremis, I had only a second or two to make a life or death decision which was either: Untangle my chute . . . possibly all the way to the ground or, cut it loose, pull my reserve, and hope that it would inflate on time?

            In a split-second decision, I cut the malfunctioning chute away, yelled, “Oorah!” and immediately pulled my reserve—it opened, and just in the nick of time. When I hit the ground, adrenalin was practically shooting out of my pores as my heart pounded so hard my chest muscles strained to keep it from rupturing. A sudden realization that I had just defied death, I looked up at the sky and yelled; “Now that’s what I’m talking about! That, Mother Fucker, is living on the edge!”

            I’d never felt more alive (other than at the casino in the Bahamas), than I had at that very moment—and I knew right then that the extreme edge was not only where I marveled, it was where I fucking thrived! Tasting death was tasting life . . . only more magnified! From that moment on, the “Extreme Realm” was where I would reside not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, sexually, and . . . financially!

            Later that night, the jumpmaster along with the regular skydivers threw me a “celebrate life” party, and I hooked up with a woman who had watched my whole ordeal through her binoculars. “I like a man that lives on the edge,” was her repeated mantra, as we had a coital connection that culminated in an arterial orgasm so intense; my prostate was spasmodic for two days. That was when I had discovered the hidden meaning of my bumper sticker: “Skydivers are good to the last drop!”

            Not long after that, on the morning of September 6, 1984, I found myself once again knocking on death’s door. Only this time, it happened after a night of romance and passion with a lady eleven years my senior. I’d often seen her on ladies’ night at a club in New Bern, North Carolina, and finally mustered the courage to ask her to dance. Only, dancing led to her taking me home that same night.

            However, getting laid by a pretty lady, came at a pretty price. The time was 0730, and I was due at the squadron on Cherry Point by 0800. To make up some time, I started my yellow ’67 Mustang to defog the windshield while I got showered. The thing was, in my rush, I’d forgotten about my exhaust manifold leak and by the time I approached Highway 70, connecting New Bern and Havelock, I was out like a light. The car barreled into the intersection, and I was T-boned on the driver’s side by another motorist traveling east at 60 mph; I flipped across the median, and got clobbered again by oncoming traffic headed west.

            Unconscious and curled up in a fetal position, I had no vital signs when I was extracted from the wreckage. After a couple of minutes of CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by a former nurse who had been involved in the accident, I had resumed a faint heartbeat and very shallow breath. Only, by the time I was rushed to the operating room, I all but bled out internally and my left lung had collapsed after being lacerated by my flail chest and ribs that were broken in multiple places; in addition, my spleen had been obliterated, along with a small section of my intestine.

            When I woke up in ICU the next day, I saw more lines connected to me than a fiber optic network. I had an NG tube that went through my nose to my stomach, a morphine I.V. in my arm, another I.V. in my ankle, a catheter connected to my penis, two chest tubes inserted into my lung, an oxygen mask on my face, a blood transfusion machine, and a heart monitor. Moreover, a railroad track of staples ran from my sternum to my belly button. Struggling to regain consciousness, all I could remember were flashes of the romantic interlude the night before my accident. My first coherent thought was: Wow! She sure put a hurtin’ on me I won’t soon forget—what the hell kind of S&M did we get into?

            I’ve heard that most people who wake up with that much equipment attached to their bodies wiggle their toes first thing, then their fingers, and then their neck—not me. I jumped right to my joystick. Check the family jewels first, then the secondary extremities. Only I was surprised to see that with just a little bit of coaxing, my one-eyed Anaconda took a firm stand against the Grim Reaper—literally! Leave it to me to have a boner on my deathbed. A cursory onceover however, wasn’t enough reassurance for my worries over whether or not the internal plumbing still worked—especially with someone else’s blood in my body.

            I looked around the ICU—I saw two other patients, who appeared to be out like corpses, and from what I could tell, the nurses’ station wasn’t too close. The next thing you know, I didn’t feel a damn thing as I yanked that catheter clean out of my cobra.

            There I was, on my deathbed, a collapsed lung, splattered spleen, crushed intestine, flail chest and all—just admiring my thick-stick. Sensing imminent death and a possible transition into the spirit realm at any moment, I worked it like a man on a mission. It was a good thing my drill instructors weren’t there; they would have had me marching around ICU at right shoulder arms chanting, “This is my rifle, this is my gun; this one’s for killing and this one’s for fun.” Only when my heart monitor started going ballistic and the ICU nurse came running to my rescue—when she saw what I was doing, she upped the morphine and knocked my ass out for another day!

            Several days after I was transferred to a private room, it might as well have been a POW torture chamber! Only instead of the KGB, or Viet Cong, it was Aunt Jemima and her repertoire of respiratory therapy torture tools. Resting comfortably in a comatose state one morning, all of a sudden, my bed is being raised. Thinking they might be propping me up to watch the rookie quarterback Dan Marino air it out to the “Marks Brothers” (Clayton and Duper), when I opened my eyes, staring me in the face was a big ole’ black lady that I nicknamed Aunt Jemima—only she wasn’t serving pancakes. “Sit up, Sugar!” she said. “It’s time to start saving your lung.

            I thought I had a pretty good handle on pain going all the way back to foster care. That was until Aunt Jemima shoved an air tube in my mouth—attached to what can only be described as a vacuum cleaner looking device—and started forcing air into my collapsed lung. Trying to inflate that puppy was like trying to blow up a balloon that’s super-glued on the inside. No sooner than that first burst of air went into my lung and expanded my chest cage, than I grabbed Aunt Jemima’s wrist, looked her right in the eyes and sternly warned her, “If you ever do that again, I’ll kill you! You can take a pair of pliers to my staples and yank them out one by one; Hell, you can even take an iron skillet and bust up my right ribcage, but don’t, I repeat, don’t ever shove ole’ Electrolux down my throat, expand my chest cavity, and put me through that kind of excruciating pain again.”

            “Oh I see how it’s gonna be.” “You one of them whining, crying mother fuckers.” Shocked, I said, “What the hell did you just call me?” “You ain’t got no head injury, so I know you heard me. The only head injury you have is the self-inflicted one you got dangling down there in no woman’s land.” “You mean, no man’s land.” I replied. “Sugar, I mean no woman’s land as in, no woman’s gonna be turned on by that thing, especially after you’ve been tapping the well. Uh huh, I heard about that little stunt you pulled in ICU.” “Yeah,” I replied, “You just wish you could of gotten a sneak peek at that one-eyed Anaconda!” “I did,” she replied. “And?” “I got dental floss bigger than that!” she said. “Jesus! What kind of nurse are you?” “Nurse!” she rebutted. “Do I look like a nurse to you?” “No, not even close,” I replied. “Good, cuz’ nurses bring pleasure, but I bring the pain, Mother Fucker!” Do you call all of your dying patients, “Mother Fucker?” “No, just mouthy, masturbating Marines.” Clutching my busted ribs as I coughed up dry chunks of blood, she said, “Besides, you ain’t dying.” “Damn! You are one mean Mama!” I replied. “And don’t you forget it,” she said, as she shoved ole’ Electrolux back down my throat.

            For the next two weeks my morphine pump couldn’t keep up with my unprecedented pain as my busted ribs dug into my flesh with every expansion of my lung. Needless to say, I don’t have fond memories of Aunt Jemima, but she did save my lung and got me started on my yearlong recovery. When I was transferred to the Cherry Point hospital a few weeks later, I was released an hour after I had arrived and was confined to bed rest. I weighed all of 99 pounds—down from 165 pounds at the time of my accident. Only instead of going to bed, still draped in my hospital gown that barely covered my boney body and little blue booties on my feet, I had someone take me to the squadron.

            With the assistance of a cane, I walked into the hanger to prove to my Bulldog brethren that I was still a lean, mean, fucking Marine! Only that night, I was headed for the showers in flip-flops and a towel wrapped loosely around my torso. When a fellow jarhead—unaware of my accident because he was on leave at the time—walked past me, he said, “Lehmann . . . what’s up my man,” followed up by a friendly sucker punch right to the midsection. As I fell to the floor clutching my ribs and protecting my incision that was (thankfully) still stapled together, my towel slipped off and all I heard was, “Damn Lehmann; you look like shit.”

            Floundering on the floor like a fish out of water, all I could think was that I joined the Marine Corps so I could die a hero on a battlefield, and instead I’m going out in government issued flip flops and my birthday suit. Fuck me! When the military paramedics arrived, they insisted on taking me back to the base hospital. “No fucking way!” I shouted. After a steady diet of liquid Morphine and Demerol for the past three weeks, my pallet was set on the colonel’s eleven secret herbs and spices, original recipe, finger-licking good, Kentucky Fried Chicken! An hour later, that’s where I was.

            In the end, I was eligible for partial disability, for life—but I refused it on a matter of principle. It would have been a cold day in hell before I’d taken a dime of the pittance that’s paid to wounded Marines and fellow servicemen that gallantly put their lives on the line and unselfishly shed their blood on the battlefield. I could see myself at a disabled veterans meeting, listening to story after story about guys who had their legs blown off in battle and their faces burned in defense of their country; then, when the time came to tell my story, what would I say? “After getting laid all night, I had a car accident on my way to the base because I didn’t take the time to fix an exhaust manifold leak that gassed me into unconsciousness behind the wheel.”

            I don’t think so. Too many real disabled vets don’t get the care and support they truly deserve and desperately need. I was injured, but not in the line of duty and I wasn’t disabled or handicapped for life.

            Under convalescent care and due to be discharged nine months later, other than a short deployment to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, I spent the remainder of my tour confined to the barracks. I speculated in the stock market, played poker, and bet the farm on the 49ers in Super Bowl XIX, after having lost my shirt on my beloved Washington Redskins the year before.

            During my convalescent time, I met another Marine who was into metaphysics. He told me he could teach me how to accelerate my healing through transcendental meditation and connecting with the universal mind. Intrigued, I accepted his invitation and, along with a couple of other guys, went to his house for Ouija board games and demonstrations of levitation. I had little knowledge of the occult at the time, or the realm of divination and augury, but after playing Ouija and watching him levitate small items off his table, I grew increasingly concerned. When he asked me to participate in a séance, I refused.

            I knew from scripture that necromancy was not to be entertained. Intrigued, the other two guys wanted to stay, but in my condition, they didn’t want me walking all the way back to base. Hell-bent on an explanation as to why I wanted to leave, I told them that a spirit of darkness and death permeated his home and that I felt like I was being attacked.

            “By what?” they asked.

            “That’s just it—I don’t know,” I replied.

            “Dude,” they said, “take a chill pill. You almost died a few months ago and you’re probably a little sensitive.”

            “I am sensitive,” I said. “Did you see the gargoyles and demonic-looking relics all over his walls?” I asked.

            “He probably went on deployment and brought them back from the Orient. It’s just wall art,” they said.

            “That’s not typical wall art, and how about the incense? It wasn’t to make his house smell fresh.”

            “Maybe he smoked a doobie and was just masking the smell.”

            “No, I don’t think so,” I replied. “Incense is burned for demonic spirits. Something in his house didn’t like me, and it was letting me know.”

            After that night, some of the guys continued to go to his house for tarot card and psychic readings, but every time he came around me, the presence of evil permeated the air and a tacit silence rose up between us. In spite of that experience, my curiosity about the supernatural realm and the link between it and my manifest physical world continued to accelerate as my discharge loomed on the horizon.

            Another interest that revived itself during that time was my entrepreneurial aspirations. In addition to rereading The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles and As a Man Thinketh by James Allen, I immersed myself in the writings of P.P. Quimby, widely credited as the father of New Thought; H.P. Blavatsky, the mother of theosophy—a blend of biblical theology and ancient eastern mysticism; Charles Fillmore, co-founder of the Unity Church; Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking; and Dr. Wayne Dyer, the new age philosopher who had authored Your Erroneous Zones just eight years earlier.

            Undoubtedly inspired by the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg—an eighteenth-century Swedish theologian, scientist, and philosopher, whose works I had first perused while in high school—these readings wove together an ideological worldview that was an eclectic mix of Eastern and Christian mysticism, Western psychology, modern science, and polytheistic and pantheistic theology.

            My craving for spiritual enlightenment combined with my trichotomous obsession with sexual alchemy, adrenalin rushes, and entrepreneurial prowess once again led me to a zealous interest in the theory of “Sex Transmutation” from Think and Grow Rich. When I’d first read the book on the observation deck during my high school years, my practice of sex transmutation was limited primarily to healing my sexual discord. But now, after having experienced a taste of ancient eastern culture and immersing myself in the deeper writings of various spiritual gurus, the idea of channeling sexual energy as a means to increasing my intelligence, feeling closer to God, and manipulating the immutable laws of the cosmos to manifest the desires of my physical world had my fervid interest.

            While it would be twenty more years before I engaged in full-blown sexual alchemy—the seed had been planted in fertile soil. In the meantime, I would have to use my entrepreneurial acumen to figure out how I would become a multi-millionaire.

Continue to Chapter 6 »