Spoiler
“You better lock your fucking body up”
Anyone that’s been to Marine Corp boot camp recognizes this phrase. Come to the position of attention. When a Marine recruit speaks to anyone, and I mean anyone, other than another recruit, he must come to the position of attention. Body straight and erect, feet, touching at the heels, toes at a 45 degree angle, hands curled almost into a fist, thumbs placed along the seams of the trousers, eyes to the front, expressionless face, shoulders back, chest out. And you do not move. For anything.
Parris Island is notorious for sand fleas that bite. “They look like gnats that bite like a bear”. It is like a needle poking into you that grows in intensity from a slight sting to the point that a man can shake. And you do not move.
Once my platoon was waiting to enter the mess hall. The sand fleas were so bad, that the over the doors of the mess halls there are turbine fans that blow down to keep the sand fleas out. We stood in formation outside on a wide sidewalk waiting to enter. The whole chow hall ritual It was actually quite a spectacle to see.
A Marine boot platoon marches faster than most people walk. If I walk at the boot camp marching pace and you walk at your normal typical pace, it would be like you were a car on the freeway doing 55 and I was doing 80. I would blow past you. And the gait, the stride is unlike anything anywhere. It might appear mechanical to an outsider, but to me it was anything but. There is even a difference in the stride of a Marine recruit from San Diego and one from Parris Island, even a difference between the 3 batallions on Parris Island.
The Mississippi River is the dividing line, those orginally from west of it go to San Diego; those east of it, go to Parris Island. I went in from Texas but at the induction center, they had vacancies for Parris Island, and I got sent there because I popped off to an NCO about this stupid mustache he had grown since I had gone for the physical. He was looking for volunteers for Parris Island and I heard “Minter, how about you, funny guy?”. So I got a date with the Sand fleas.
And I still think that those assholes from the 2nd and 3rd Battalions on Parris Island are faggots who do not know to march, much less deserve to say they are in my Marine Corps. No, baby I was from the1st Batallion, Parris Island, the fucking first, the real deal, baby, the 1st ever, not no fucking Hollywood Marines like those California movie star Marines but the fucking First, ever, since 1776 kind of ever. The first batallion, if its possible, has sort of an “old money” east coast feel to it.
In my mind, at that time, in terms of effective fighting men, it was the 1st Batallion Parris Island, then the North Vietnamese regulars, (the NVA), then those faggots in the other Parris Island Battalions. I mean, I ran in combat boots and trousers. The fucking 3rd Battalion ran in these faggoty little red shorts and high top black tennis shoes. What kind of fucking shit is that? I fucking imagine that today the 3rd is probably doing pilates wearing yoga pants and eating fucking vegan. They be writing Jezebel complaining that the 1st batallion called them faggots and are not suitably senstive to their orientation.
Then continuing down the list of effectiveness of fighting men, the Cub Scouts, any of those Hollywood Marines from San Diego, the Girl Scouts, any girls badmitton team, then the US Army. When we were running and we passed any platoons from the other batallions, the running singing cadence would change “Look to my left and what do I seeeee. Bunch of fucking faggots looking at me. Lefty righta layeft.”
And half of the recruits on Parris Island are black men pulled from urban ghettos of the east coast, Bed-Sty, Harlem, South Chicago, and the rural states of the south. And fairly rough dudes. Back then, the Marines were sort of the first criminal punishment, jail or Marines. The first night, our Drill Instructors picked us up at a receiving barracks and we went through this hell night. We stood on these yellow lines at attention like the scenes from Full Metal Jacket and they fucked with us. They called out “All my fucking jailbirds take one step forward.” And the half the fucking platoon stepped forward. They walked around asked “What you do?” And it was typical “Grand Theft Auto, Sir”, “Bad Checks, sir”.
They stopped in front of a guy from Harlem and asked him and he called out “Tax Evasion, sir”. And the DI went fucking nuts, all Ermy style “Tax E-fucking-vasion, Jeezus Fucking Christ. You communist cocksucker, just begin” (exercising). The guy had been a major drug dealer in Harlem at 21 and they couldn’t get a drug bust to stick, so they charged him with the Al Capone law. He turned out to be a super recruit, a natural leader, a platoon favorite. And 2 weeks before graduation, the FBI came for him and charged him with murder. I can remember being on those yellow lines at attention in the barracks and the Drill Instructor came out and told us. And it was a bitter pill for all. The DI went in his office and shut the door. I swear the attitude of the others was, “So fucking what. Big deal. They should have left him in the Marines.”
And the Marines served as a major melting pot and that uniformity goes both ways. So when the guy to the front of me was black, and the guy to the side of me was also, let’s just say that I got a little glide in my stride. And I still do. The Marines called it a diddybop. The jargon of the Marines is a historical collection of American street slang and foreign words from wherever the Marines have been. “Dee Dee” is “move” or “walk” in Vietnamese and diddybop dereives from that. And it has moved into the American lexicon. Another term I never understood where it came from was “dickskinners” which meant hands, usually germy, nasty hands. That was the whole etiquette lesson prior to the first meal in the chow hall. “Only 1 fucking dickskinner in that tray at a time, Privates.” My ex-wife started using Dickskinner to the kids, usually at the dinner table. It was most funny to me to hear it. “Get your slimmy dickskinners out of that plate. Use utensils like humans.”
Most of DIs are black also, about 60%, and the cadence they call is a strange soulful, uniquely Marine, uniquely American, mixture of Harry Belefonte, Barry White, Smokey Robinson, and Marvin Gaye. And you watch them walk, and you mimic it. They don’t really diddybob. It is much more alpha then a diddybob. To describe it, I could say that once a woman asked me, “Mark, did you ever model?” and I said “No”. She said “Well you walk like one.” And I said “No, that’s 1st Battallion diddybob. Marines don’t walk like models. Models walk like Marines.” And the verb for marching at full stride, for moving anywhere, was “swoop”. Marines don’t “go” somewhere, they “swoop” And when you are in that formation, it seemed most accurate. We swooped. So in approaching the chow hall, we swooped, full speed, headed toward the doors, continuing at full speed, the doors getting ever closer, and they would halt the platoon with the front rank literally inches away from the door, from that “80″ miles an hour to a dead stop. Sometimes the nose of the guys in the front would sort rock up against the glass. Then they would give this command, “Form for chow”. The were four columns. The two middle columns would do 4 right or left face movements, doing a 360 spin more or less. And the outside ranks, 1st and 4th, would step up 1 step, do a left or right face, step in front to be in the second or third ranks, then do another left or right face, effectively forming two ranks. It was crisp, bang, bang, bang, bang. And there we stood. With our bodies “locked the fuck up”. And it was chow time for the Sand fleas also. It was a much a part of the discipline of boot camp as anything. Men had scars on their forearms from the bites. If it was windy day, you thanked God. And if you moved, hell would come down on you. And when 120 men are standing motionless, almost any movement is quite obvious. You would get pulled out of the formation and forced to excercise, bends-and-thrusts baby, squat thrusts to the rest of you. It was an assumed action. “Begin!” needed no further explanation, “Minter, begin”, meant just go on the grass and “bends-and-thrust”, a verb as well as a noun. My favorite was in the barracks when they would say, “Begin until I get fucking tired and I’m sitting in a chair reading a magazine with a coke.” or “Bends and thrusts forever, Begin”. Being a 19 year old boy in Marine boot camp is a wonderful that sucks while you are doing it. I have seen guys do bend-and-thrusts for 30 minutes and then have drill instructor scream, “You better get faster” and they do. And the command for “faster” comes again and they still get faster. So “Begin” was hell. You perspired. The sand fleas lived in the grass. Your movement and your perspiration attracted a swarm of them. So you better “lock your body up” outside that chow hall. Marines learned this sly little gradual movement to slowly attempt to rotate your forearm and scrape the sand flea off the skin. I’m sure the DIs probably saw it, but it was part of the exercise, to teach you to move in that manner, when laying in ambush. There is a famous story of a Marine Sniper that took two days to move across a grass field, 500 mts, 5 football fields, and get within range to shoot a North Vietnamese general. He went without food and water, shit and pissed on himself. He was practically in plain sight. There were people around, guards. And he snuck the fuck up on them and shot that motherfucker. When asked how he got out, he said “I dee-deed like a motherfucker”. But the spot, the hell spot to get bit was the back of the head. We had on a cover. The army wears hats, Queen fucking Elizabeth wears hats, bitches at the Kentucky Derby wear hats. Marines wear covers, and “covered” mean you had a cover on. So just below the cover on the back of the head was hell if a sand flea bit you there. At the neck and very bottom of the skull you could possibly scrape the flea off with your collar by shrugging, twisting your head slightly. But you could do nothing about the back of the head.
And one day, the guy in front me in the chow formation got one. And I could see it as plain as day. And after a minute he started to shake and after 2 minutes of watching him shake, visibly shake and could I see him suffer, I reached up and brushed it off. And within 1 second, my Drill Instuctor was in my ear.
“You love him? Is he your fucking new sweety? Am I gonna come out into the squad bay tonight and find you two in the same rack swapping spit? That is a Goddam Marine Corps sand flea assigned to Parris Island and he is doing his fucking job. And he deserves his chow. Are you about to eat chow? God knows why, but the Commandant of the Marine Corps makes me feed your slimy worthless ass three times a day. How the fuck could you deprive that sand flea of his chow? You fucking let him eat. Nobody gave the fucking order, ‘Minter, go on fucking vacation, did they?’ You lock your fucking body up.” Then he walked away. No bends-and-thrusts. I assume it was because I did it to spare someone else. Sometimes it was surprisingly hard to keep a straight face while this ass chewing was going on. That guy was fucking funny. I heard once, and it could be urban lore, they gave aptitude tests to Drill Instructors, and a surprising number came back with the recommendation of “Stand up Comedian”.
The advice in this post today is not only for young boys. When hell comes into your life. When you get shown the door, by your sweety, when your Suzy Rottencrotch dumps your ass for that Jody motherfucker, (We sang while running, “Ain’t no need in going back, Jody’s got your Cadillac”) and most especially in a divorce,
Then “you better lock your fucking body up”. You get your ass into a spot and “you lock your fucking body up”, in a manner of speaking. You find a cheap room and get in it. Do not go all balls to wall and try to get yourself some playboy pad and try to rush out into the world with some angry attitude of “I’m gonna get me some new pussy.” No, “lock the fuck up”, let the fucking sand fleas eat their chow, and you do exactly as this post suggests, you make a plan, exactly as it states.
As my last comment stated, a loaded gun of stress chemicals just got fired at you. You are not thinking clearly. And you have to clear this stress. My research shows that testosterone is the best and maybe the only way to do so. I made a comment on Dalrock that Testosterone suppresses Cortisol, the stress chemical, and a comment corrected me “No, Testosterone stomps the fuck out of Cortisol”. And in seaching for the best way to create testosterone in your body, all the links came back with “lift heavy weight”, and there many pages online to instruct you. The sooner you build up the testosterone, the sooner the depression leaves, the sooner the pain is over. And every Game writer stresses the importance of lifting in Inner Game.
Now, the biggest thing for you to understand is that you’re fucked. You are fucking corrupt from this point forward. You had your chance at the happy happy little couple and now it is over. If you have to pay $2000 a month, then that $2000 a month is going to take the top $36,000 or more, pretax, off your salary. It has double whammy to it, in that it is the top of your salary, almost like a special tax, that forces you into a higher tax bracket yet you never see the money. So child support and alimoney is effectively taxed at a higher rate than anything else. Say for example if you earn $90,000 dollars and were allowed to transfer that $24,000 a year, pre-tax, right over to your lovely ex-wife, then you would be taxed on $66,000, a far lower tax rate. But you don’t. Your taxed at the higher $90,000 rate.
So if you think that after divorce, you’re gonna find happily ever after again, you better nderstand that the likelihood of your finding your next permanent “Sweety to share your rack and swap spit” is about slim and none.
When I first found myself in the street, I would get caught up in this “well, what would work?” Someone with no kids would want kids. And I can’t afford them. And someone with young kids would be busy with them. And someone with older kids is too old. And someone with teen boys would have this oedipal thing, and if they had teen daughters then I expose myself to weird legal shit, and you know what? Nothing is going to work. The real reality is that you have two choices: MGTOW and Game. It is hard fact, but the reality is that if you are over 45, the former is probably your better bet. But that depends on your own personal situation. I got put out at 48 and that is probably about the worst time to have that happen, child support set at peak income, too old to feasibly do anything other than tread water. The reality is that you are going to get old and fucking die. And in setting a plan, in this day and age, you better plan on 50 as being your cut off point. After that everything changes. You become subject to all sorts of discriminations in work and society. Corporations will lay you off just because you over 50 unless you sit in key roles just because the actuarial numbers say they should. When you go for interviews, you won’t get the job just because the people interviewing will assume all kinds of things or “I just didn’t feel him”. So you better plan to be 50 and have some viability at the point, some options other than working in a corporation. Some writers tout the Smith and Wesson Retirement Plan and it is one thing to think of in the abstract, when it is far away, but the closer you get, if you have painted yourself into that corner, it will be a hard pill to swallow, however you decide to pull it off.
But I hit the street and floundered at doing exactly the wrong thing without a plan. And tried to do everything to get right back with another “sweety”. And I wasted a ton of money on an odyssey that took me into South America, four different city moves, squandered cash, time, and energy until I found Game and realized the futility of it all. I was stuck on the idiotic idea of “We find each other then we build something together” rather than the way this post says to do it.
Rollo avoids the moral pitfall of directly making amoral recommendation. He kinda does and he kinda doesn’t. I don’t avoid it. Your ass is alone. Don’t nobody give a flying fuck about you. Social capital is incredibly over rated. You know who has true social capital? The guy with real capital. You build your life out of steel and concrete. You take care of you.
I hear comments about “I try to leave them better than I found them”. Fuck that. Leave a word out. “I try to leave better than I found them” And that one word changes the whole sentence. Women are just one more organism on this planet trying to gain the resources they want and need. To me, the image, the analogy that best comes to mind is that alien from the Sogourney Weaver movies. I was reading “The Arrow of Disease” in Discovery Magazine. The article was talking about how “bugs”, germ, viruses etc spread. It mentioned that the optimum way for an organism to thrive and spread is to get the host to modify its behavior to a manner condusive to the benefit of the organism: “For modification of a host’s behavior, though, nothing matches the rabies virus, which not only gets into the saliva of an infected dog but drives the dog into a frenzy of biting and thereby infects many new victims.”bBasically, the Feminine Imperative is but a slightly different version of this, but involves infecting your head and influencing your behavior.
So “You lock your fucking body up” and make a plan that contains the words me, myself, and I and lacks a bunch of “you, us, we”. There might not be an “I” in “Love”, but there is in “Financial Integrity”.
