1.27.2012

ROAD JOURNAL: Doing Impressions of Drill Sergeants


Have you ever reconstituted a person in a dream that in life you forgot?  One of those sideline faces -- the kid in 8th Grade Phys Ed, the weird dude at your summer job, from your dormitory, your barracks -- a person on a parallel line to yours of whom nothing happened between you to bookmark the intersection between your lives, and recollect it.  A dream can bring this person to life.

I dreamed one of these.  The dream-state rewrote her from background actor to guest star.  A woman in Basic Training.  We sit together.  She went to LSU.  
What did you study?  
Business.  
School loans to pay off = military service.
Should I give you a picture of her?  27.  (29?).  5'2.  Black.  Very good-looking.  Very relaxed.  Drill Sergeants don't phase her.  I'm sure her voice could only be in my memory from overhearing it, it seems spot on.  We sit in a Missouri field in the late afternoon eating cold pressed chicken cutlets out of an MRE, plastic spoons, and she tells me about herself.  LSU.  Business degree.  (Me is me now, me her elder, not the kid I was in Basic Training, ten years younger than her).
In bed, after this dream, thinking: Wait.  I didn't make this up -- the LSU, her voice -- I did talk to her.  Briefly.  And I remember now.  Beyond the obvious memories of jogging, shooting, and getting yelled at, this went down late in the Basic I know this because I was doing impressions of the drill sergeants; a big thing I remember, because I did impressions of both the white and black drill sergeants, for everyone, in front of everyone, guileless, without racism in it, and while there were racist kids who thought it was gutsy to do the black sergeants, it wasn't, because, and as most of the kids read right, I admired all of the sergeants.  My sergeants were black, I admired them as I would Robert DeNiro or my dad.  I did them as they sounded.
Here's the thing: I thought this dream was my brain scanning the ruts for new material, picking a face in the crowd, and rewriting it, but this woman was here all along.  And this drill sergeant impression bit, called up in the waking consideration of the sleeping girl dream, it's connected.  I don't know if this is how a real writer thinks, but this is how I think, all here in this next bit.
This black girl was cool.  I did talk to her.  Once or twice.  I did have a Bivouac lunch in a field with her once, the chicken and the LSU business degree.  She had the quiet confidence that comes with having nothing to prove.  And I remember this: one of my drill sergeants had a thing for her.  I couldn't blame him, she was very attractive, she was charming, and she was closer to his age than to the rest of us.
He spoke differently to her.  Not in front of the rest of us, but I heard it.  I did not exist.  I did not exist enough, just a white face in the hallway, and so heard this drill sergeant's voice different with her, Romeo with her.  I heard this 4th quarter of his vocal range, that aspect of wooing a girl that comes into the voice and simultaneously softens it and lowers it.  Was this inappropriate of him?  Sure was.  Like I said, she was attractive.  I spent every morning doing jumping jacks behind her, so, you know, she was attractive.  She played him off.  She played him off in a cool way, not hurting his feelings, not leading him to continue his pursuit, not even for her benefit.  What a fantastic operator was this woman.
And Drill Sarnt's wooing Billy Dee octave?  The secret to the impression I did of him that made me a popular act in the barracks, when marching in formation.  The impression that moved me up the chain, was entrée into the black cliques and the white, which in turn allowed my personality to come in, and take over situations it craved to run.  "Let me have the map, guys."  A secret group leader, without having the Sauron's eye of the sergeants on me, never getting called out.  This impression perfected by overhearing the man speak to this woman, clicking that Billy Dee baritone in like a lego, I used to jokingly yell at the other kids around me to do more push-ups, to insult their ability to reassemble an M16, once I heard the man get soft to talk to this woman, I owned his voice as if it were a soul.  I was elevated.  I thrived.
It is ironic to learn the secret of the man's voice by being, myself, nondescript; by not being the person who bashes his way into every room demanding, "Look at me, everyone!"  By not being the guy doing impressions, running counter-programming to who might be in charge.
Yeah, yeah,  Ironic.  I should write a story about it.
Also ironic: the story is this woman.  My brain reminded me for a reason.  Reminded me, "You are looking for characters to recharge the writing -- I've brought you this."
Yes.  Right.  This isn't about me.  This is about Pvt. So-n-So, the pretty black lady from LSU with the business degree who stiff-arms advances from her Drill Sgts with class; she with the dreams, and the plans, and the kind eyes, and the big feet.  This is about her, Dammit!
Sometimes I have to tell my brain, Baby, this is the real world, Baby -- nobody wants to read what you have to say about some black woman's feet.  Go work on some impressions, Baby.

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