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JTarrou  3mo ago (text post)   1301 thread views

Stories with Sgt. Scott

For much of my life, people who hear bits and pieces of my biography would say “You should write a book!”. So perhaps finally, I begin to.

Here's the elevator pitch:

I'm an American who came of age outside America, a soldier from a pacifist family, an atheist from a faith-healing cult in Indiana. An intellectually pretentious infantry sergeant. A middle-class dilettante among rough soldiers, a semi-retired middle-aged house-husband with a phone full of cat pictures. A pot-smoking gamer and master-class pistol shot. Hunter, fisherman, amateur home cook. Good with kids and animals, bad with women.

As a short and non-inclusive list: I've been a missionary, translator, manual laborer, martial artist, drug mule, camp counselor, soldier, punk guitarist, research assistant, firearms trainer.

Debated theologians, imams and feminists, drank and sauna'd with Russians, smoked weed and chicken with Kurds, hunted deer and trouble with native Americans. Built orphanages in Ukraine and blew them up in Iraq. I speak bits and parts of ten or so languages, been on every continent but Australia and Antarctica (Africa and South America are technicalities, but those count), and all forty-eight contiguous states.

At the same time, I'm a skinny nerd who grew up on the internet, cut his teeth in the chans and treats online politics like bros treat fantasy football. Had an erratic but broad education, presented professional research at APA conferences, published history monographs and main-tanked a guild through BWL. Can calculate bullet drop, p-value and THACO.

I've performed musically in front of thousands of people, academically to hundreds and athletically for dozens. Conducted military funerals, psychological research and church worship teams. Attended the foundings of PAX, the first non-orthodox church in Novocheboksarsk, MOPH 180, Sniper Platoon 2/11, and the Michigan branch of the Proud Boys. I've sat behind a sniper rifle in the ruins of what was once Babylon, behind a Telecaster on the stage of a megachurch, and behind a conference table in the main hall of Palmer House.

For food, eaten everything from live dragonfly larvae to scrambled pig's brains. I've had pizza with mayo for sauce, kittie kabobs and roasted horse, twenty-year-old MREs and raw deer heart, straight out the ribcage. Drunk everything from prison wine to Romanian ration vodka, HofBrau Oktoberfest to Busch Lite, McCallan 25 to Dr. McGillicutty's Cherry Schnapps. Kefir, Kvass, Tiger.

For work I've trained green-broke mustangs and worse-broke cops, power-washed semi-trucks, sold legal guns and illegal hooch, shingled roofs, tied steel, smuggled dope into an embassy, fabricated windows and pallets with the Amish, driven diabetics to dialysis, and located underground utilities. Planted crops with illegal aliens, detasseled corn with midwest hicks, worked on climbing walls with hippies, washed shit off dairy cows. I don't put any of that on my CV.

Along the way, conflict was inevitable. Fought trailer park kids in Indiana, Gopkini in Moscow, Marines in Vegas, reform school kids on a soccer field, Mortar platoon in the quad, a cafeteria full of home-schoolers at Bob Jones University, drunks behind a bar in Flint Mi., the Al-Janabis in central Iraq.

Stranger perhaps were the ladies involved. Fighter not a lover, but they have their charms! Italo-hispanic painters, semi-pro russian hookers, a mohawk on long walks with amish girls, scrawny white boy at an all-black dance with a borderline little person, suicidal lesbians, a leather jacket with a married chick at an Ani DiFranco concert, and a guild-destroying hookup with main heals at a gaming convention. Just a selection of the awkwardness that has been romance.

My name is Sgt. Scott. I remember some of this shit and I'm writing it down. That's the pitch.

Ever since Covid, I've been writing through some of my past experiences. Much of this is half-baked digressions mostly to get memories down, but even so. Over the coming year I will be writing steadily on biographical stuff, and doing interviews with family members and old friends. I don't know if this will ever be a book, but it's a start. Be posting some of those projects here. Feedback is appreciated.

If you read this far and want to help, LMK which of the above sound the most/least intriguing.

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I always like anthropological perspectives. Comparing and constrasting all the different communities you've been part of would be interesting.

"But I have not yet gone to college."

I'll keep an eye out for the first installment.

But can you eat any man opposed to Jackson?

I'd like to add my voice to those encouraging you to write. You're an excellent storyteller, with an eye for bringing out the humor and more colorful elements of your experience, and I think that I'd enjoy reading whatever stories you committed to writing. Because you're specifically asking, I'm really interested in the stories about where you've been and why, as well as the mischief you got into, the romances, and the other fascinating characters (Cowboy comes to mind) that you've met along the way.

I want sniper school / ranger school / or other selection stories. I collect these like challenge coins.

Also, please include your favorite memory of a SEAL making an ass of themselves, but thinking they were a total badass in the moment.

"Kefir, Kvass, Tiger."

What's Tiger?

Kuwaiti knock-off of a Vietnamese energy drink, tastes like bargain Fanta and hairspray.

The beer, maybe?

Certainly possible but I'm hoping it's some weird drink I haven't heard about for me to try next.

main-tanked a guild through BWL.

Orc or human, vanilla or classic, and did you loot-whore yourself DFT or give it to a rogue/DPS warrior?

Dwarf, vanilla and I let the DFTs go, because I built a TF. The rogues and furies could cry their fucking eyes out. :P

Those were the days.

I recognize some of these words.

I like the Zeugma. Some of the pronouns were a bit confusing:

a mohawk on long walks with amish girls, scrawny white boy at an all-black dance with a borderline little person, suicidal lesbians, a leather jacket with a married chick at an Ani DiFranco concert

Here I am imagining a Mohawk Indian in flagrante delicto with an Amish girl (girls!), and you having gay sex with a thin Caucasian male whose date is a black midget. Also doing it with an article of clothing. This isn't right, I am sure.

The rest, once cleared of ambiguity, is a compelling introduction--though in a way it might better serve as a blurb or an "About the Author" section. Part of the draw of your other similar posts is the What's this guy's story question that isn't immediately or clearly answered. My suggestion would be, if you do write a book, to start in the middle, maybe in "the ruins of what was once Babylon" (a great line) but really anywhere. Don't be bound by a linear structure.

Have you ever read Paul Theroux's My Secret History? It's got its share of critics and most of them are right, but that doesn't mean it isn't an imminently readable book. I don't mean that you should copy it, as such (It could be titled "Me and all the various women I've had sex with"), and it's very different from this, but I feel as if I'm supposed to recommend it here.

As a writer certainly you know to ignore most of the feedback I'm giving you and go your own way anyway. And I am all for that. I encourage you to keep getting it out.

I want to hear about how you broke up a guild by banging the main healer. But perhaps that's my ex-WoW addict self talking.

The very short version is online flirting lead to convention hookups lead to a short, abortive long distance relationship. I got the raid in the divorce, but the guild split over the drama and we had to form another.

Your previous stories/posts were full of fascinating small details about life as an infantry grunt and made great connections to larger themes in both politics and life. The stories had a blend of humility and grandiosity that was riveting.

This post, in contrast, is super boring. You sound like a Kvothe-wannabe (which I know you're not). I don't care what you write about, just get back to writing actual autobiographical stories, and we will all gladly read them.

There is nobody who can pull off bragging about their interesting life on the internet (arguably even in print) without coming across as a little annoying. That never (or maybe only rarely) detracts from the interesting parts.

The original stories managed to do it quite well. @JTarrou is a fantastic writer with a fantastic story to tell... I'm trying to suggest he should actually just start telling the story.

I am thinking of Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman. I never read it, but I have heard perhaps 50% of it. None of the anecdotes start with Mr Feynman trying to make an elevator pitch, "I am an interesting character, you should read this book about my super interesting adventures". Like JTarrou's comments, they get to point right in the beginning.

My recommendation: red-team the sales strategy.

I agree. That's exactly the type of book that JTarrou should write.

Novocheboksarsk sounds intriguing.

I have no idea if it would sell, but that description reads exactly like a book I would snap up in a heartbeat from a second-hand book shop, read until the spine broke, and then madly evangelize to all my friends to the point of exasperation.

On the other hand, you've been around the motte and its predecessors to know that I'm not exactly the median reading public, so ymmv.

Happy to be of any assistance I can, even if it's just cheerleading, and eventually buying a copy of whatever you produce.

Quick note; I think using the fights & romances as sort of a zig-zag central beam of the narrative would be quite compelling, they seem even more central to your character than the more standard adventure fare of your far-flung career.

The whole fighter / lover tension seems to be wrought throughout it.

But then again I’m a military brat and third culture kid so that other stuff is more normal to me. Maybe that’s a plus; conflict and love are more relatable to a wider variety of people.

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