Heavy Metal in Trenton (Part 2)

(This is part two of a five part series that will be posted on Monday through Friday this week. Feel free to leave comments and check back everyday!) 


Part II.

“How do you feel about a metal show?” a text message from Tom read. When the message alert beeped, I was at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, growing increasingly tired of roasting in the radioactive sun and dealing with privileged white kids who liked to use hallucinogens and refer to themselves as hippies.

“When and where?” I replied with my thumbs.

“Tonight. Trenton. I got us a hotel.” And this wasn’t extraordinary behavior for Tom. He would have gone by himself if he had to. But he knew that we both liked to live on the road. He knew that we were always following the traveling disturbance of loud sound.

I packed up my military duffel bag quickly. Then, saying goodbye to my ex-brother-in-law who I had been attending this festival with every year I could since age 15, I zoomed off to Trenton, following the female-toned British-accent voice commands of my GPS and blasting some twangy rock. For me, music has always been a constant comfort and I don’t like feeling alone. The philosophy of a tune tells me to just Carry on, my wayward son. Even if you don’t dig this track, the next song will be playing soon.

After we both arrived at the hotel, we dropped our bags on our beds and walked to my Lincoln Town Car, stopping to share cigarettes and talk with other hotel guests. The show would be starting soon, and we guessed that we were probably already late. But time for us meant nothing more than improvising our existences with the rhythm of life. If we were late, so be it: it’s not rock and roll to show up with punctuality, anyway.

We finally made it downtown at Championship Bar and Grill, and the humidity blanket of a summer city caused us to begin sweating after getting out of my luxury car.

Band stickers covered the PVC drainage pipe that the followed the perimeter of the establishment’s roof and leaked a brown stain onto the sidewalk and street. A vintage sign read: “Tomato Pies” “Burgers” “Pasta” and “Steaks” in descending order with alternating red and blue letters against a white background. The show had indeed already started; heavy metal burst through the walls, becoming audible on the street. Before even entering we could tell this place was going to be rough and dirty, which suited us. We didn’t like perfect things.

It was time to rock. Tom – like me, now a civilian – had just returned from national security contracting in Afghanistan, and he wore the wild, five month beard to prove it. He had bulked up considerably from working out every day and he had started the tattoo sleeving of his right upper arm.

I felt out of shape in comparison, considering we both used to be Marines and my muscles had since deflated and morphed into fat. My lips were cracked and my clean-shaven face burned from the outdoor folk festival. Underneath the classic Orioles cap I wore to represent my hometown, my professionally-short hair hid. I wanted to be as bad-ass as him. And I wanted a beard, too. But I would have to settle with simply trying to fit in. Contrastingly, Tom was metal; there was no doubt that he would make this scene.

More tomorrow...

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Heavy Metal in Trenton (Part 1)

(This is part one of a five part series that will be posted on Monday through Friday this week. Feel free to leave comments and check back everyday!) 

Heavy Metal in Trenton

 In the summer of 2001, my best friend and I exchanged our rock and roll dreams for military service. Dispassionate barbers trimmed curly mop-tops into sandpaper buzz-cuts. Piercings and prickly beards were replaced with the poster boy regulations of the image-obsessed Marines. And rifles replaced our sticks and picks.

9/11 occurred just a few months after we had shipped to boot camp. We knew then that our rock star fantasies would be forever replaced by the dark reality of unending global war. Our commander-in-chief told everyone this during his state of the union address after the towers fell. In addition to Afghanistan, Iran was coming. Iraq was coming. North Korea was coming. One of those damned countries was going to be destroyed; and we knew we’d be there, quietly wishing to return to the music that meant everything to us. In our lives, there’s never been a stronger love or a more fervent connection.

At just age 13, Tom (a man I call my heterosexual life mate) had developed the status of a guitar virtuoso, even subbing in at Baltimore biker bars for bands that his parents knew. On his free time, he sought about learning every single Metallica guitar solo by ear just because he could. A radio tower near his one-story home in Perry Hall, Maryland used to project classic rock through his half stack Marshall amp. He’d just raise the volume knob and lick along with Hendrix, Clapton, Frampton, Page, and the other greats.

I never was so good back then. But I played the drums, and drummers were always needed, so I learned to become functional since so many bands sought after me. I never turned down any requests for my services. I played in indie bands, punk bands, alternative bands, jam bands, blues bands, acoustic bands, hardcore bands, and experimental bands.

The highlight of my career still is the Perry Hall High School Showcase of the Bands in the Spring of 2000. My group at the time, Pubescent Weasel, intentionally created a wild, grating sound that was meant to offend everyone present in the auditorium. Beautiful people cringed when our singer leaped off the stage to scream into tiny blonde girl’s faces. I hit every drum and cymbal I could underneath his banshee yelling, not too concerned with any rhythm or beat. Over the wall of sound we created, our guitar player riffed out a hulking anthem of low frequency distortion. Inexplicably, everyone seemed to love us.

Despite our deep musical passions, like any graduates of high school facing the rest of their lives, we made our decisions about what to do next and suffered the consequences. In just the eight years after signing up to serve and shipping off, we’d live in eight states and seven different countries. Between us, we’d serve four combat tours, which would equal almost an entire year of each of our lives. And there would be no way to tabulate to the number of rockets, mortars, IEDs, and bullets we’d see.

I can tell you how many of our friends died and how many memorial services I’ve attended, but I’d rather not.

It didn’t matter because, we survived, and in the summer of 2009, in Trenton, New Jersey, the Gods of Rock would finally smile down and reward us with one night as rock stars.

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At Elmer's Bar in Connecticut

It’s Karaoke night at the only bar within walking distance of Central Connecticut State University. The air is beyond frigid outside, even for these New England types. As I approach the entrance, crossing Route 175, the atmosphere feels like a walk-in freezer. The smokers congregate outside the door, huddling into each other and puffing quickly. Billows of white smoke emerge from their lips like cannon fire. I walk past them, saying hello.

Inside, the patrons shove themselves into the crammed lounge and bar area, lining up three deep at the bar. They scream at each other over the music or stare into their bottles and say nothing at all. Someone is singing Journey, again. A drunken chorus reverberates as almost everyone repeats the lines – a cacophony of slurred and off-pitch chanting. It feels warm in here.

Not very much time has passed, and I’m already feeling as buzzed and good as everyone else. I only make 100 dollars every six weeks as a resident assistant of the nearby freshmen dormitory, Vance Hall, so I order Long Island iced teas. It’s the strongest, cheapest drink I can think of and I don’t like waiting three deep in tight spaces. It tenses my nerves.

The other resident assistants in Vance Hall like to play a game with me. I bet them 20 dollars if they can sneak into my unlocked room and take a picture of me before I awake. Their shadows under the doorway are enough. By the time they place their palms on the door’s handle to twist, I’m sitting up and watching them. I still haven’t come down from that combat high – that warrior frame of mind.   

I’m with my friends at our bar and we’re feeling fine. I like being an RA because I’ve found a family outside the military. I’ve found a new group of friends to live, work, and play with, sharing one hundred percent of our time together – just like that brotherhood and camaraderie I enjoyed in the Marines.

Suddenly, someone’s whispering into a microphone. “Let the bodies hit the floor. Let the bodies hit the floor…”

“FLOOR!!!” the would-be singer yells and my momentary peace is shattered. It’s a performance of Drowning Pool’s Bodies, a song which suddenly, I realize, offends my sensibilities.

I’m picturing Corporal Salazar’s body being ejected from the Humvee when the suicide bomber crashed into his patrol. I’m watching his body arc to the ground and bounce, before crashing against the rocky Iraq sand. I am seeing him bleed out. I’m watching hopeless faces circle him as he dies.

I’m no longer warm – my mind and body are on fire instead. I sit down at a booth and curl my face into my locked arms.

While everyone else keeps dancing.

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Following the Long Walk Home (Part 2)

He realized then that he had what he calls “a hollow memorial; a meaningless penance.” Zaleski finally decided to do something tangible to help with the legacy of his fallen friends. So he kept doing what he did – walking shoeless – but he started doing it with a purpose.

Some of the results were unexpected. In Zaleski’s pursuit of getting mandatory PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and grief counseling for all returning veterans by collecting a one million signature petition (20,000 names in each state), he helped finally cure some of his father’s demons. Initially Zaleski walked the Appalachian in bare feet to meet his goals. His father asked him “What’re you punishing yourself for?” and Zaleski shared the reasons for his personal crusade.    

His father started crying then, an emotion so rarely seen by Zaleski that he only initially recognized it as a “strange noise.” Zaleski’s father it turned out, had been wearing a tremendous guilt from his time in the European theater of combat for 60 years: the guilt of watching men serving 5 years being killed on the final days of the war when he had only served five months; the trauma of watching 12-year-old boy soldiers, “Hitler’s Wolfpack,” being shot down by his comrades; using soap made from dead Jews. His father’s revelations underscored the sense of urgency in Zaleski’s “Long Walk Home. 

“If you can get a guy (the appropriate counseling) right when he gets out he has a much better chance,” Zaleski says. Speaking of the estimated 175,000 homeless veterans in the U.S. he adds, “For a guy who put his life on the line to be under a bridge drinking his memories, that doesn’t make it for me.”

So far his progress has been minimal. Maybe 4 or 5 thousand signatures he guesses. And Zaleski doesn’t want to simply create awareness. He wants real change. “If I tell somebody their house is on fire but I don’t help them, what good is that?” Zaleski wonders. Of the politicians he’s encountered, most have written off his cause because they aren’t his representative. “They (the politicians) say nice things to my face,” Zaleski says brashly, but they eventually just ask him “are you my constituent?” and when he answers incorrectly they decline to latch on to his cause. “A soldier didn’t fight for the North or South or New Jersey or Kentucky,” Zaleski screams, “they fought for America.”

On a positive note though, Phil Roe, a Tennessee Congressman and former soldier himself, has decided that he wants to help champion Zaleski’s cause. So there is some hope. They plan on meeting up in October when Roe can concentrate solely on Zaleski’s cause and not on the upcoming election.

But even if Roe turns out like almost all the other elected leaders he’s met, Zaleski’s not going to quit. “I question my sanity I really do. I realize if I do nothing, that’s crazier than doing something. I don’t want to pass this along to the next generation. I don’t want another mom to tell me about her lost son.”

You can follow Mr. Zaleski and sign his petition at www.thelongwalkhome.org 

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Following the Long Walk Home (Part 1)

He’s in Nashville now, a stop on his way towards visiting all fifty states. He doesn’t use a small plane, an automobile, or even a bike as his mode of transportation. Ron Zaleski is walking all across America. With his petition in hand, he doesn’t even wear shoes. When there’s no one around to solicit signatures from, sometimes he’ll lay down that document to pick out one inch shards of glass or repair a torn off heel. Passion can’t even begin to describe how fervently he believes in his cause.


59-year-old Zaleski is the founder of the The Long Walk Home, a nonprofit organization that seeks to raise awareness and solutions about the mental health problems that veterans face during and after their service. He wears an impressively-sized sign around his neck on his daily 10 to 15 mile barefoot walk that reads: “18 VETS A DAY COMMIT SUICIDE(‘commit suicide’ in red, bold letters).” A veteran Marine himself, Zaleski’s quest is a very personal one. “I get that sense that everybody that’s in the military is related to me in some way,” he believes. “That could be my son, my daughter, my loved one in there.”


And the grief of his walk gets more personal more often than he likes. “The hardest part of this journey for me has been when a car pulls over, and a mother will stand there and cry.” She’ll tell him that “her child came home safe, committed suicide, and then she’ll hold me,” Zaleski shares, also tearing up.


Zaleski joined the Marines in 1970 even though he came from a devoutly catholic lineage and did not believe in killing. His family, he also notes, was “a dysfunctional World War II family.” His father had brought the war home with him as it continued raging within his mind. That rage manifested itself as alcoholism and mental abuse towards his family. Zaleski joined to intentionally anger his parents in a passive-aggressive kind of way.


But when the orders to go to Vietnam arrived for him and five of his buddies, the reality compelled Zaleski to follow his convictions. He told his commanding officer that the only way he was going was “chained to a helicopter,” and he was willing to face the jail time for his decision. Miraculously, they decided he could stay because of his other critical skills. “I became an office squirt because I could type and had brains,” Zaleski says, emphasizing his Long Island accent and vernacular. 


He saw one of those men later. Zaleski asked what happened. “We all got shot and two of us are dead,” his buddy told him.  He decided to embrace their sacrifice for freedom -- so he stopped wearing shoes in 1972. Understandably so, people would ask why he didn’t wear shoes and Zaleski would respond combatively, “because I don’t feel like it; you got a problem with dat?”


In 2005, after years of slowly destroying the family business he inherited and a horrible divorce – all problems stemming from his arrogance and bitterness (most likely learned behavior from his father) – a girl asked the same question he had been hearing for the last 33 years. “Why don’t you wear shoes?”


“I had been doing it so long,” Zaleski recalls, “I couldn’t really have an answer. God spoke through that child.” What were you doing? He questioned of himself. 

(Continued tomorrow)

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911 Call

Provided for you here is a portion of a real conversation that I had with an old friend (name changed) who randomly messaged me on facebook.com a couple evenings ago. Think of this as a 911 call about the trauma of life after war. I’m not posting this to marginalize the seriousness of this talk. I think this transcript can say more with its realness and rawness than I often can with my patiently crafted words. This is about as honest as it gets. I haven’t altered the transcript in anyway. Please forgive the adult content.

Joe Soldier 1:34am

dude i am feeling down is there any confort you can give me

Me 1:34am

sure, man. what's wrong?

Joe Soldier 1:35am

i miss my fallen friends and i joined the reserved and i and on a line about to cross it and valinterr to deploy to make it right

Me 1:36am

sounds like you got some guilt, man. Going to fight again is not going to help that. It will just bring you more guilt. Your fallen friends would want you to make a nice life for yourself, not volunteering again and again you did your time, bro no one can take that from you

Joe Soldier 1:37am

seven that is how many dear friends i have lost

Me 1:37am

Unfortunately, that's not a sacred pain man. I've lost just as many. People I recruited are now dead. I still feel like shit about it, but we make decisions we make, and we move on

Joe Soldier 1:38am

well how do you get by cause i drink way to much and take way to many pills

Me 1:38am

I used to do that. And then I found writing, and college, and other veterans -- things that helped me focus my energy positively and people to listen

Joe Soldier 1:40am

well i go to a consouler but she doesnt know how it is

Me 1:41am

Do you mean at the VA?

Joe Soldier 1:42am

well at the vow

Me 1:43am

Oh word. Dude, I know it's rough bro. It took me three years to begin feeling normal again, and I still have flashbacks and grief. One of my brothers died a year ago, and I have friends who are still serving that I worry about Have you checked out my website,www.notalone.com? It's a resource website for people like you, people dealing with the trauma of war. They've got programs there. I've used them. They're pretty legit. And if necessary, they can get you professional help

Joe Soldier 1:44am

no i have not yet but i will now

Me 1:45am

I blog for them and create other content. My blog is Behind the Blast's Shadow: An After War Blog You can read my story, man. I've been in your shoes. There are a lot of people on that site who have been there

Joe Soldier 1:46am

ok its just that sometimes it all hits me at ounce

Me 1:47am

Well, they say when it rains it pours, and aint that the fucking truth dude. You can't run away from all that though, sometime you're going to have to face it. Is it hitting you now?

Joe Soldier 1:48am

ya dude i hit me enough to make me cry tonight 

(End Transcript) 


My friend was okay for the night and I'm going to meet with him soon. I'm praying he won't do anything too destructive between then -- obviously, self-medication is not the answer. It's a long walk back to normalcy after war. And it's a struggle. We've got to prepare ourselves. Not Alone can help you do that. 

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Mission Accomplished?

Mission accomplished? Is this for real? Sorry to go on a sort of brain dump type of post here, but the events of this week in Iraq are just kind of overwhelming my thinking entirely. Not to be too abstract in what I’m typing, but, can this war really end? Does any war ever end? World War I begat World War II which begat the Cold War, which empowered a man we once supported – Osama Bin Laden (we covertly supported the Taliban’s insurgency against the USSR in the 80s) – to attack us on 9/11 and begin the Global War on Terror. I want to think of this as a victory but what are the spoils here? What does this mean for our country? What does this mean for the new generation of troops dealing with the trauma of “life after war?”

Can all be mended? Can everything be fixed? I can’t stop thinking about how the release of Saving Private Ryan in theaters caused an uptick in PTSD claims from WWII veterans. When I think of my elders, I think of bold, quiet men; stubborn fellows who out of necessity and social norms closed themselves off when they returned home. Not to take anything away from their glory and history, but were they ever healed from their experiences at war? Or did we just not understand or care? What kind of life is that to carry the secret burdens of combat forever?

I don’t want to be a bitter, beaten down, angry fart at the retirement home one day. I don’t desire to be a man who will, at the end of his life, finally be faced with the demons of his past. And I don’t want that for any of my other brothers or sisters. I want us to work on those issues now.

Maybe some WWII, Korea, or Vietnam guys will think our generational character is weak, but I’m glad there is so much talk and attention to the mental health issues that result from serving in combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other hotspots around the world. Maybe we can be the first group of veterans truly healed from our time at war. Maybe that inner peace will result in a greater peace and stimulate tranquility around the world.

No, I do not believe that this war is over. I believe we need to keep fighting for our veterans – working as hard as we can at helping them get well and making new lives for themselves – or we’ll lose this victory.

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