Call Sign Cletus in General

I got that call sign as I joined VAQ-131 to support OSW. Through message traffic, squadrons see who is coming into the squadron and they post a list in the ready room of ridiculous call signs. Mine stuck. Big corn fed motherfucker. Cletus it is. You can’t fight it. At least in the culture of that time. Now you can probably whine and complain and call for a safe space. Back then it was like the tar baby. The more you fought it, the more it stuck. I’ll take Cletus and wear it with pride.

I don’t know if it is all the injections I got the other day, or just the confluence of everything, but I am feeling like shit. I can’t think of Sandy without stopping, clenching up and tearing up.

It’s been a month. She is dust. Dust and memories. And it hurts to even write that.

I am packed for my trip. I leave Maine in the first of the Nor’easters. Appropriate I suppose. I’ll outdrive the storm in a few hours. Pittsburg by late afternoon. The next day to south of Memphis. If I see a Chick Fil A or a Hooters I am stopping. I love the south and its amazing lack of obscene political correctness.

Saturday afternoon I will arrive in new Braunsfels. Already texted the mancub. I’m going to need help finding a hotel that isn’t an hour away.

I am still on the hook for some class work, which if it isn’t obvious I am avoiding right now. I have no enthusiasm for anything. I just want to drive.

Last night I was surprised to actually account for my fiction. I have five stories in the works. Some decades old, some a few years old. I wonder when the Audrey stuff is going to start making its way into my fiction.

I never submit anything I haven’t written that day. So I am rewriting a lot of things I have previously written. I find myself out of sorts at times because things that are clear to me aren’t clear to my classmates. That is not their problem, that is mine. A writer’s job is to tell a coherent story. If my story isn’t coherent, I failed. All in all it is a good exercise. I get a shit ton (not to be confused with a metric butt ton) of feedback to my writing. Most of it is freaking amazing.

I have one professor who really hates it when I do this – to pause. To me it is more than a comma and less than a period. Frowned on in literary circles.

One positive is I don’t have to work too hard to come up with something to post for school work. I post the 509 entries to 514, and the 514 entries to 509. I am on the hook to explain my motivations and ‘tropes” (a word I am learning to despise) for a 1000-1500 word short story.

As far as I can tell, this coursework has never explained “Trope.” But they expect you to jump on the bandwagon. By context it appears it is a recurring theme type theme. The blonde cheerleader who falls for the bad boy biker and so on. I wonder if I am not a trope. I am a 6’3 218# straight white male who wears jeans and cowboy boots and tends to wear black tanks in the summer. I like to go to the beach, I like to body surf and I like steak. I don’t have a single tattoo. I only grow facial hair from SEP21 to MAR21. And yes I am a gun owner. I am the antithesis of everything men are turning into when I turn on the TV. Trope or not?

Now I have to go figure out which story I didn’t post to 514. Then explain myself. Part of me loves this, and parts of me hates this. Even Stephen King doesn’t know where his stories come from. And you better believe I am no Stephen King.