The broken boy soldier
I heard Breaking Benjamin in a few viral TikToks recently. I bought their CD from Walmart as a kid. I played it in the shitty 1970s RV that my parents bought for $2800. We named it the Xbox because my parents were set on giving us an outdoors childhood, on a shoestring budget, instead of sitting in front of the TV playing Xbox games like our friends. We took this ratmobile on road trips around the Western US and to the local beaches in San Diego. But hearing Breaking Benjamin in said TikToks summoned thoughts of the 2000s troops.
My cousin Josh was one of them. He packed parachutes in the navy, gave aid in the 2004 Indonesia tsunamis, brought back pirated DVDs, and claimed that he smoked opium there. That part could have been bullshit. Josh ended up serving at Guantanamo Bay. He often returned to the Coronado naval base, so he crashed at my house after completing that horrifying role. He stayed up late and slept all day. He was silent and forlorn. Anything he did there was highly confidential. We fed him well and let him rest and recuperate. He later served at the Fort Leavenworth military prison.
Josh married a woman in the Midwest with two previous kids to settle down. He's the dad who stepped up, and they made two more little ones. He works as a private prison guard still. He and his wife bought a house together. The saddest turn is that his 19 year old stepson was murdered at a frat party in 2023. Josh had to stay strong for everyone in the family grieving. In order to sort out the business that follows after a death in the family.
Josh used to read fantasy novels. He left a whole cardboard box of the books at my family's house. I was upset that my dad trashed them without asking him. Josh designed his own tattoos and had a nipple piercing. Swimming in our backyard above ground pool, he tried to drown me for fun, possibly another sign of how the military fucked him up, and I twisted those piercings so he would let me up to regain my breath. He dated bimbos and they hung out at the house too. Josh let me play Need for Speed, Grand Theft Auto, and Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer on his Xbox for hours when he was here. With all my outdoors time as an introverted kid I yearned for reading books, Wikipedia on the computer, and playing video games. Those small pleasures were often denied to me.
Josh bought my brother and I bean and cheese burritos at Robertos, Santanas, and Cotixan in the neighborhood. Jack was a picky eater, and I didn't know shit about good food yet. Josh knew the taco shop menus well for a transplant from Illinois. My brother and I started eating carne asada fries at his recommendation. If you visit San Diego, you must order a greasy California burrito, adobada tacos, fish tacos, or rolled tacos when you visit. I highly recommend TJ Tacos in Escondido, Yesenia's in Kearny Mesa, Pokez in downtown, El Zarape in North Park, JV's in Bay Park, or Tacos El Gordo. If the restaurant is clean and has aesthetic decor meant for Instagram and Yelp photos, you chose the wrong place. The hole in the wall taco shops cook with delicious, unhealthy lard. A few years ago, I squashed a roach on the floor at a neighborhood taco shop that I regularly walk to, and I still return. Their adobada and carnitas fries are that good.
My mom visited Josh and his family in the Midwest. She told me in different words that he's a broken man. This is what the US government does to its soldiers. He signed up with a recruiter at age 18 to leave the family farm and pay for college, which I recall him dropping out of. Even as a leftist, I can sympathize with the troops. They often grow up poor, with no job prospects after high school, in a part of the US that they hate. They played Call of Duty to prime them, and were fed military propaganda by Hollywood. The object of my hate is the war machine and US imperialism. No matter how Josh had to act at Gitmo or Fort Leavenworth, I blame our post-9/11 jingoistic ruling class for the type of man that Josh became. I'll likely continue to remember him every time I hear So Cold by Breaking Benjamin.