Everyone loves me in a paper hat

15 years ago or so, I was working one of 3 jobs in Portland Oregon on my way to the final frontier. I carved roast at table side, and pushed an enormous silver coffin around a dark dining room wearing a ridiculous paper hat and was subjected to the stupid questioning of those with fat wallets out to diminish the fact that their day to day sucked as much as mine. I worked there for two weeks, amidst young chicks in full Dance Party USA regalia, until I called in sick one day. "I can't come to work. I have diarrhea." They wished me well and said they would see me when I felt better. I told them that I was going to always have diarrhea, and would never see them again.

Tonight, I worked at a wedding party carving station as a favor for my employer. It is almost one year to the day that I pretty much decided I would be terminating my marriage, and so I can't exactly say that working the event was easy. The funny thing about me is that, if you put me in a completely compromising or humiliating scenario- I will decidedly turn it around and somehow make myself the champion of a terrible snapshot. I can walk the aisles in Walmart with eyes full of tears, knowing I will miss my daughter's birthday and 4th Christmas, listening to this year's first constipated strains of Christmas music and survive, albeit battered and feeling ill. But I will survive.

The wedding party was normal for wealthy people. 100 in attendance. Everyone wore a suit or some black dress and reflected light unflatteringly about their faces by teasing their hair into believing that it was somehow independent from the individual and had some risk management issues with other planets, but got the memo at the hundredth hour.

People ate. People got drunk.. The dj suddenly started to be louder and played more energetic music. He made a point of deafening everyone in the room to introduce a Fergie song. The bride made her way onto the dancefloor as did her tipsy bridesmaids, and they started to dance. I don't want to describe the dancing because it was terrible. I am sure that they were all thrilled to be part of something very special... but what the fuck with the fucking Fergie? It almost overshadowed the moment when friend and family took the mic to talk about bride and groom and some guido from the Vietnam War told everyone, "When you go to sleep at night and you pull that blanket up over your head and are warm... that's what freedom is.... etc etc."

His speech was made worse by the fact that he thanked the bride for "her service to the marines" ( which people laughed at). Her brother took the mic and made jokes about not being woken up during the coup in Baghdad because his sister was watching some sitcom with friends, and he went on to say that they shared time at Guantanamo... Neither of which was likely true but was meant to highlight the fact that they were patriots.

I felt like I was that person who would emerge from genocide with heirlooms, and not children, by being a party to this event.

That's what freedom is? Having some fat drunk guy at a ritzy boutique hotel suggest that anything you might enjoy as a basic right is something you should feel tremendous guilt for and really not deserve at all-- because so many people died to give it to you? As a soldier, who lived, are you not ashamed that violence was the answer yet you stitch your wounds together in an effort to honor humanity during a wedding? What kind of science fiction is this?

You know what? Thousands of people die every day who pull blankets over their heads. Millions more are full of anger and fear that they can't provide basic necessities to family who have no way to care for themselves. Millions of people are afraid that their family will be shot to death in the next hour. So here's to you, mr fat veteran, for really letting me know what I have been taking for granted as you stand in all of your glowing patriotic splendor, sucking on a rack of lamb and feeling so proud of yourself. I hate that soldiers died for our freedom, but more than that-- I hate that freedom died with each and every one of them. Freedom doesn't live because people die. Freedom is ill-defined. Its sad that veterans choose to make themselves out as under appreciated heroes in a way that glorifies current war. Yes, you faced odds. Yes your time on Earth was horrific. Fight against it instead of promoting it, so that more young men will have to try to live up to your suffering to be called men.

Freedom shouldn't involve being baited and trapped into donating piece after piece of your soul toward a cause that is a necessary evil. Freedom is an effect and a belief and a fantasy. Freedom should never be a punishment. Did I feel fortunate as I carved for a group of 100 lavishly dressed guests during our global recession? fortunate to be employed? I thought about if this hotel was under siege and my family was hiding in its belly as I would try to please the enemy who had destroyed the perimeter and needed more... Because that was exactly how it felt to me. I wasn't celebrating a union, I was decompressing, and in my mind I felt like a trapped participant to a viewing of the world going mad.

Freedom to act as if nothing in the world needs your civic sacrifice isn't freedom at all... It's horror, and I have been serving for 35 years to fight terror at home.

As I left the event, several people thought I looked neat and cute in my 14" tall paper chef hat. I was invited to party with everyone afterward where we would no doubt talk shit on the chef and the hotel and everything in general. I told them all that I couldn't make it because I had a date to shit the bed.

And so I retire, to soil my Egyptian cotton... you fucking demon keepers of my freedom.