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.
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
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.
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