The Tao of Sam

Category: Chapters

  • Chapter 76: My neighbor just got Life in Prison

    I live in Alexandria, Virginia. I work next door to the Federal Courthouse. When I go home, I sleep in a building next door to a police station. None of these facts are very interesting.

    What is interesting is that for the past several months, Zacharias Moussaoui has been staying at a police station in Alexandria, VA, and makes a daily commute to the Federal Courthouse. My walk to work.

    To those unfortunate few that don’t know who Zacharias Moussaoui is, I’m not going to tell you.

    Zach leaves earlier than I do. Sometimes I hear the police sirens as they rush him by my window in the morning. Only once on my walk home from work did I see him go by. Men with M16’s and sunglasses line the street in front of my apartment complex and tell me not to move. They’re looking in the bushes for people with sinister plans. Once the perimeter is cleared, or as cleared as my apartment building’s front lawn can be, three black SUVs come speeding down my road towards the police station. Moussaoui rides fast.

    For the past month the street behind my office has been lined with news trucks. Armed with crossword puzzles and coffee, TV crews sit inside most of the day and adjust the satellite dishes.

    Today Zach didn’t get the death penalty. He said he wanted it. He wanted to be a martyr. He didn’t want to die like a dog in prison. His lawyers said he was an idiot. The prosecution said his silence caused the deaths of thousands of people.

    The presiding judge had this to say while I was in training just several hundred feet away:

    Mr Moussaoui, when this proceeding is over, everyone else in this room will leave to see the sun … smell the fresh air … hear the birds and associate with whomever they want. You will spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison. It’s absolutely clear who won.

    You came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory, but to paraphrase the poet T. S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper.

    You will never get a chance to speak again and that’s an appropriate ending.

  • Chapter 75: Deafening Experiences

    The guitarist finishes his wailing solo, the singer throws his hands in the air and with a final scream the set is finished. The roar is deafening, with hands and bodies flailing. One or two people yell “encore, encore” but the band is already gone.

    I walk into the airport while trying to balance a pair of shoes on my shoulder. The sun shines in through the windows on the walkway and warms the toes sticking out of my sandals. My passport is checked, my seat assigned, my water bottle filled. The view from the concourse looks out south towards the ocean, but you can’t see it from here. The mountains on either side of the valley rise strikingly.

    Wandering out of the bathroom, I lean against the bar and watch the crowd slowly filter off of the floor. Roadies are already tearing down the sound equipment. A group of women dressed in a way that’s only appealing to someone without fear of disease hover around the stage door. I’m still sweating.

    Getting the window seat means I can make up for staying out so late each night. At the time its living for the moment, but you pay eventually. The plane takes off with it’s usual shudder and I try to spot the Acropolis, this time knowing where to look. Athens looks smaller from 10,000 feet.

    Outside the air is cold and immediately refreshing. The air fills my lungs and my eyes refocus to greater distances. I start walking towards my car, rubbing a pair of ears still ringing.

    Nine hours goes swiftly with a pillow and a book. I grab food, switch planes, return to Virginia. The metro is quick to arrive, I barely wait 3 minutes. No one in the train speaks on the trip home.

    The next morning my ears aren’t quite back to normal. Images of the mosh pit, the skinny girl floating above me, the look of ecstasy on the singer all replace the picture my eyes return. Work on this, work on that, yeah, I know the drill.

    On my way to work I buy a coffee because even with 10 hours of sleep I’m still tired. My eyes have a little trouble focusing on the words on my computer screen. I can still see the ocean, the cliffs, the exotic brunettes. The fact that the applicant is claiming 20 year old technology doesn’t seem as pressing of a matter anymore.

    When you hear or experience something truly loud in every sense of the word, it takes quite a while before the quiet things return to their original level.

  • Chapter 74: Thank you for Smoking

    First off, a disclaimer: I’m not really a smoker.

    I’ve smoked before, I know what it’s like and I understand the buzz it gives you. It’s kind of neat, a little feeling of light-headedness that passes after about five minutes. The smell isn’t too tasty, and it stinks up your clothes. My throat is raspy afterwards too, and I don’t really like that. Overall I’m glad I don’t make a habit of it for several reasons, not the least being that whole lung cancer thing. In any event, whether I do or I don’t doesn’t change what I think of the action itself.

    Smoking is one of the best ways to meet interesting strangers.

    Take, for example, the guy standing on a street corner. His hands are in his pockets and his eyes lazily wander around the objects on the street. He has no real purpose, but there’s a reason he’s there. He could be waiting for someone to pick him up, to meet someone, to pick out his next victim, etc. No one can be sure.

    On the other hand, a smoker has an obvious reason for being there. They’re having a smoke. They’re not required to have any other reason to exist. A cigarette is a small sign that says “I’m content to just stand here; I require no other purpose.”

    Smoking forces you to stop. It forces you to stand outside and look around. Clear your mind. Suddenly you’re standing next to five other clear-minded people that just took an upper. Conversation can happen because … well … you’re all standing there anyway. The smoke circle is a shared experience, and shared experiences bring down social barriers to conversation.

    I won’t get into the significance of the offering of a light or a cigarette, but both are like holding a door for someone and then getting to stand and chat about it.

    Smoking kills babies, mothers and children, and in the end probably some people I know. It’s a horrible horrible thing, and I should go to hell for advocating it where children can read what I’ve written.

    I can name three things that let men talk to each other without the fear of feeling weird: beer, smoking and campfires. Social crutches they may be, it seems to work.

  • Chapter 73: The secret life of Sam

    When I posted the previous chapter, I had hoped to answer more questions than I created. This was unfortunately not the case.

    “Wait, you never explained why your AIM name is “bacon the spy“. Where does the spy part come from?”

    As with much of life there is a short answer and a long answer. I will attempt to resolve them in that order.

    For the past 8 years I have been living a lie. I am a Canadian spy.

    My family moved to Nova Scotia in the spring of 1996 so that my father could manage an industrial cleanup project. The Sydney Tar Ponds were a tidal estuary contaminated with a variety of coal-based wastes from coke ovens that supplied the now defunct steel industry. Unfortunately, the project was stalled by an intense amount of bureaucracy including the involvement of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Though not publicly disclosed at the time, the CSIS investigated the majority of the high ranking Americans involved in the project, including my father. The CSIS publicly involves itself primarily with Canadian internal security, but like most North American nations involves itself in international matters when such involvement would be beneficial to Canadian interests.

    I learned of the CSIS in what at the time seemed to be a happenstance way. My 8th grade class participated in a career day of sorts, the highlight being the inclusion of someone billed as a Canadian Secret Agent. He wasn’t really a secret agent, rather a middle aged office worker with an interesting set of coworkers. This disappointed many, but myself and several other boys still cornered him after the presentation to ask questions. He didn’t seem surprised that I was the only American in the school, and pulled me aside afterwards to continue talking. Though at the time I didn’t know I was doing it, I managed to confirm for him that my father was not a US government employee, he never went to Washington DC on the weekends and that I loved tuna and macaroni.

    I didn’t think about the agent until several years later, after I had returned to the US and was attending high school in Pittsburgh. The phone rang one morning when my mother had just left for groceries, and I picked up. He introduced himself as Agent McDonahue and asked me if I would meet him at a certain park in exactly 20 minutes. It seemed that the initial impression I gave McDonahue was positive enough that they had initiated an entry level background check which culminated in the extension of an offer. I was an Agent in training.

    I set up a cover job first at Giant Eagle and then Wal-Mart. When I said I was cashiering I was lying around a quarter of the time. The rest would be spent at a small unassuming house with a large and sophisticated basement. It was there that I learned how to program, how to persuade, how to defend myself. They encouraged me to take up paint ball to increase my tactical and situational awareness skills without raising any flags.

    My strength was my age and my sense of strategy, and they used both to great ends. Shortly after I started attending college in Cleveland they decided I had enough training and would be useful in their first assignment. When they told me what the assignment entailed, I walked away. I was furious and I felt betrayed. They had broken their promises regarding the limits of what I said I would do.

    A week later I was using a student employee pass to swipe discreetly out of the Cleveland Clinic. The job had been easier than I thought it would be. He didn’t even struggle. I felt fine. I was proud, but at the same time I was ashamed. Either way, I didn’t stop.

    It’s hard to explain the next several years, partly because it’s hard to remember. I was a full time student and a part time spy. The best lie is always the one that is closest to the truth. “Let’s go to Niagara Falls!” “You know, Delaware is one of the few remaining states I haven’t been to, let’s go.” It was remarkably easy to blend in. Maybe everyone didn’t want to know, and passed off my random desires for travel or my familial “commitments” as standard operating procedure for me. I did everything I said I did.

    You can still be dishonest and tell the truth.

    I’m a story teller at heart. Most of my life revolves around the creation and telling of stories. With this in mind, it has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done not to speak of what this job has let me do. Do you know what it’s like to smoke a cigarette in a burning car? Do you know how it feels to rock climb in a tank top and high heels? Or the pain associated with beating a man unconscious with a live cat? You don’t, and I wish I didn’t. Meeting the British boys was always an adventure; they knew how to have a good time on the Queen’s dollar. Sometimes my inexperience got the better of me; I was young and drunk and … she was South African.

    Canada doesn’t involve itself in world affairs except when world affairs involve themselves with Canada. American importers of prescription drugs were a target several times, but human traffickers were my most common assignment. Even with my limited experience, all my prior work left me ill prepared for my current assignment: intellectual dismemberment.

    It’s common knowledge that China has spies at the US Patent Office. Slightly less commonly known is the fact that everyone has spies at the US Patent Office. When Research In Motion (RIM) was sued for patent infringement, the darling of the Canadian tech industry was hung out to dry by the American patent system. Several phone calls were made to keep that from ever happening again.

    My job is to look out for Canadian interests. Whether it be the drug trade or intellectual property, I fight the good fight for my friends up north. The next time someone wants to talk about how the Maple Leafs suck or the latest Alanis album was a piece of proverbial ‘shit’, just remember one thing:

    Nobody suspects the Canuck.

  • Chapter 72: Nicknames and Social Constructs

    There’s no good way to explain it. Trying to turn it into something else doesn’t really work, as it’s painfully obvious to any who hear it what was really going on. It wasn’t really a conscious choice I made, but rather a consequence of wanting to hang out with oddballs whose lives continually drew them to interesting stories.

    My high school nickname “Bacon” comes from my involvement in a short-lived backyard wrestling league. There, I said it.

    The official name on the roster they made up was “Canadian Bacon”, which is perhaps the least creative wrestling name anyone could have come up with for someone from Nova Scotia. I had no real say, someone thought of it before I got there and it was done. After a while the nickname stuck, and was eventually shortened to Bacon.

    To anyone who hasn’t had a nickname, it’s an interesting thing. Men have a problem using actual names; they mostly turn them into strange variations like Markus or Edwardo. It’s a human thing, I guess. Using someone’s actual name has a certain personal nature that makes us uncomfortable, almost like a sign of affection. With nicknames all restraints are off, and it can be contorted or yelled without the fear of sounding too happy to actually see someone. With a nickname, the energy is converted into the name, not the person.

    The person I was in high school was Bacon. Sam has existed throughout many alterations and altercations, but the name Bacon was the me that existed from early 1999 until sometime in 2001. Good natured and hopeful, good at math and school, moderately successful at attracting female friends, if not as successful as what might have happened with them.

    Then college. Only rarely do nicknames carry over into new social circles. It’s somewhat unacceptable to expect everyone to automatically refer to you as a breakfast pork product. But I needn’t have worried; I had a new name by sophomore year.

    One fall day I wandered down the stairs of my frat house to find several brothers watching football. On the screen was Cory Dillon running and running and scoring and dancing, and all the while one particular spectator was screaming “C. Dills! C. Dills! Goooo C. Dills!” He turned to me and shouted, “Yeah, that’s right, C. Dills!” The rest, as they say, is history.

    From “C Spills” to “Dilla what!”, the name permeated many parts of my life. On my radio show I decided against the listener sponsored “Sam the Metal Messiah” and went with just “CDills” or sometimes “DJ Dills”. Not everyone called me CDills, to most people I was still Sam. But to the vocal few I was undoubtedly Dills.

    A nickname is more than a name, it becomes a persona, a caricature that is simultaneously freeing and infuriating. Some people fight against their nickname for good reason, as people start using it to drag along a collection of bad associations. Soon they feel trapped, in that everyone views them through the lens of their nickname and at no point do their actions change anyone’s opinion.

    I got a reputation as being a long-winded bullshit artist by some, but other than that I had no regrets over who Bacon or CDills became. They had stories and adventures, and their simple recitation provokes smiles and laughter in many. They summarize my existence in the two most mature social circles I’ve fallen into.

    I’ve moved a lot. Discounting technicalities, I’ve moved a total of 12 times that are clumped into about 9 distinct social landscapes. Each landscape necessitates creating a new social presence and a new group of friends. Each time and without effort the group creates a new persona for you, a set of known consistencies and nuances that provide them an ability to put you in continual context.

    I can’t bring Bacon or CDills with me, and I wouldn’t want to. Bacon and CDills aren’t people and aren’t even nicknames. They’re a social construct shared by a group of people so that we can all build an image of who someone is. The reason why a nickname is hard to lose is because it becomes synonymous with people’s expectations of you. I know someone who lost a nickname once. He had a hell of a time with it, and his still has to work hard at convincing people he isn’t that guy anymore.

    Nicknames and social constructs can be a scary idea. They are almost immutable once they exist long enough, and sometimes the only sure way to escape them is to start again. The solution is to always be the person you want to be. This is often easier said than done.

    Bacon and CDills might not be dead, but Sam plans on living forever.