Matt Taylor
DAVID MARSH, early 30s
DAVID spent a decade in the United States Marine Corps before leaving at the age of 30. He soon found work as a salesman for a large stationary company and often finds himself having to listen to the endless complaints of Sean Walsh, a dour, self-entitled twenty-something he shares a small cubicle with when he is working out of the office. The pair get along well enough, but DAVID is constantly exasperated by Sean’s consistent complaints and often mocks him for his grim “the world is against me” demeanor.
DAVID Yeah, I’m alright, thanks Sean.
Ever since I left the Marines, I have a hard time feeling sorry for myself just because it’s another regular Monday morning at the office.
I was in for almost a decade, yeah. I actually completed two full tours of Afghanistan. The first one involved doing nothing more than walking up and down some hills for six months, and the most dangerous thing my unit encountered was a donkey. Unfortunately, I went back for my second tour a few years later and I almost got blown to bits while I sat on the toilet.
And I really did, yeah; a rocket landed about twenty feet away from me while I was taking a dump.
Actually, it was good timing on their part, because when I shit myself in fear I was perfectly placed to get rid of my bodily waste. It would have been much more embarrassing if I had shit myself while I was eating breakfast or chatting with a policeman or something.
Apparently that’s what happens during an insurgency, though. The enemy pack up all their shit and go on an extended fishing holiday when they know the whole military machine is en route. Then they just wait until the troops have started to get scaled back and everyone is getting bored and the next thing you know ten thousand enraged fighters are trying to chop you into bits because they think God likes that kind of behavior.
It’s funny—they never seem to run out of suicide bombers, either, as you would think that they might struggle to find employees for that sort of job. They must have a PR team that would put Apple’s to shame, because the mad fuckers fly into Afghanistan from all around the world just to volunteer for human-bomb duty. I never understood it until I met some of the locals and they told me that they were prohibited from drinking alcohol and everyone had more than one wife, and then it made perfect sense. If I had four fucking mothers-in-law and I was never allowed a beer, I’d probably be happy to scatter myself across a battlefield as well.
Honestly, if I went on patrol a hundred times during my second tour, I got shot at on ninety-nine of them. And after it was so quiet the first time around, I was a bit pissed off that I was actually going to be fighting for my life and not simply working on my tan again. Fortunately, the Taliban’s training school isn’t as efficient as its PR department, because the vast majority of them couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a shovel let alone put a bullet in you from three hundred yards. Plus, you aren’t standing still when people are shooting at you, either; you are running for cover like your life depends on it—and obviously it fucking does, because someone is trying to fill you full of holes with an AK-47.
So yeah anyway, it’s not so bad sitting in an air-conditioned office, man, even if the money sucks and the manager is a bit of a dick, at least you can use the bathroom without fear of ending up shy a leg or an arm. Try and think on what I said the next time we run out of creamer or you get pissed off because the air-conditioning is playing up. There are plenty of worse places to be than here, even if you have to share a room with a miserable bastard like me.
So . . . are you going to pass me that stapler or are you worried I’m going to have a flashback and bludgeon you to death with it?