Childhood adventures and PTSD with Cully and Karl Ewing.

Top of the morning gents,

I've been doing a lot of research into the causes of flashbacks and their disorienting uneasiness that parallels the waves of nausea and sweating. In short, the triggers to episodes of PTSD and the hard swim back to the surface. Also nearly impossible, regaining our sense of stability, calmness and sometimes, where the fuck we are. Losing our location and time of day are common experiences during confusing upheavals and relapses into gun battles, emergency resuscitations, dead body transports and childhood existence in Alaska native villages. I'm betting that the smell of gun oil, burnt gunpowder and sounds of gunfire nearby has caused you coppers to lose your place. I'm also betting that screaming women and the smell of mortally injured children can induce the same crippling state of confusion forcing you coppers to absentmindedly and habitually reach fer yer gun. Perfectly normal.

When PTSD rears it's ugly head some returning soldiers describe feeling like being underneath a great ocean and as the seas grew deeper veterans and patrolmen felt they could no longer detect the bottom nor which direction the surface. We're all in uncharted waters when even our consciousness tells us the floor of the ocean is miles beneath us and for all intents and purposes we're submerged above and below deep dark waters bottomless. And mercilessly, there's no way to know what's down there, no way to call home for help and there our creatures, monsters and demons lurk. If we're airborne and flying in our hallucinations aloft, great dense clouds grow in all directions, towering violent anvil thunderheads roll steadily towards us, completely surround us, filling the sky with the slate-steel color of deep ocean waters, waters with no bottom and we can no longer see the ground. Unknown terrifying depths or uncertain paralyzing altitudes overwhelm and amplify our commonly shared PTSD with nauseating vertigo, no sense of direction and we can't find our way home.

Underwater, gasping for air and desperately clawing my way out of severe flashbacks, I've misplaced the time of day, the calendar day and even where I was when smelling ghastly improper, offensive and obscene body openings, the medical tang of cocaine, burning hot shell casings and even been transformed out of my car and out of this century driving past cannabis shops that vent their pine aromas across the highway. Some native women get ripped away into darkness smelling booze and others fall out of synch smelling Eskimo foods or burning coal and seal oil lamps. To prevent turmoil and fearful flashbacks I've had native female lovers insist that I consume ZERO booze if our rampant illicit affairs were to occur as scheduled. I didn't argue, my telescoping third leg will abide.

Our noses are also extremely dangerous organs. How many broads have we bedded that breathed dragon's flammable butt fumes when sloppy drunk, horny and juicy, climbing atop us, ready to giddy-up and go. Shit, instead of episodic PTSD, sometimes the smell of garbage gives me serious wood. Humping opposing vaginal collisions next to a dumpster out back of the Ponderosa Tavern (Pondu) in -30 below temps quite possibly camouflaged each other's Marlboro fuming, Bacardi fuel-rich gob-stench. Aside my enjoyable and destructive bathing in alcoholism, my addictions to tobacco allowed me to become smoked bovine livestock with a giant erection, rutting cancer on the hoof. Fuck, like I'm the only human being on planet Earth that fucked like a rhino in heat, outside a bar in the freezing cold, north of the Arctic Circle. You coppers would never try such a stunt. Sure. I've seen a hunnert kids that look like you fuckers and to this day, ain't none of ye admitting shit.

Unscrambling yer brain can take a few seconds, even minutes, but those momentary spells leaves us vulnerable. Some triggers to PTSD are long hallways, slamming jail cell doors, echoes of loud inmates and automobile engines racing. Similar scenes from work raise havoc with normally intelligent, kind and considerate gentlemen, such as ourselves. For example, the Sarge was nearly caught in a multiple bogey cross-fire shootout at the Diamond Mall. The usual response is to duck behind solid objects out of direct line of fire and to reach for your gun. On that occasion, his response was appropriate. At other times, this can be disastrous in mixed company, job interviews, family reunions or driving. I've heard and smelt shit that disrupted witty conversations and made me appear lost in space. And incoherent.

I know some of ye have heard audio triggers on duty and you could feel the world slow down, see the ceiling drop lower, the end of the hall recede and the pounding pulse I see in the veins on your neck grow to mask all the echoing lesser sounds. I've also seen the Chief's blood pressure rocket sky-high in the veins on his temple on late-night high-stress narc jobs and awaiting outside the ER at MMC, Kotzebue's old hospital site. On really bad night-shifts I watched you coppers fall apart yet standing, swaying like a branch in a slight breeze. Except there wasn't any breeze inside the police station, just your mind departing my conversation while you and your entire existence shut down.

My trick to bring you coppers back to me is loudly repeat my shitty jokes, reiterate service request updates and locations of everyone on shift, at work. Then I conclude with your name and ask if you need anything further. Sir! Works most times. Other times I seen the Sarge stumble, sit down abruptly, rest a second, then reach over and put on his blood pressure cuff and struggle mightily back to rejoin the rest of us. The smell of coffee and my incessant communications have restored you coppers from that deep hollow feeling of your absence. I know broken men have no place in polite society, but I've watched you coppers for a long, long time.

Inside this anonymous am cop-talk blog format, we can't overlook our moments of upset and panic, but if yer spouse understands yer life-long struggle, and with God's grace, merely mentioning your name or your rank may bring you back. Shit, even just this week, it happened to me. I stand accused of the things I said. And forced to suffer my own stupid diagnostic stories. When looking for shampoo at Walmart's I saw an old product from my swimming days, Selsun Blue, so I loudly told bun that my crotch itches. A cluster of hillbilly inbreeds heard me and quickly made tracks far away from us. Right at that moment I had a weird head rush, echoes from earlier centuries, and sickening distorted noises that slowly faded as I came back to my wife. She's used to this shit, she suffers similar unscheduled departures.

Long before my years at the Kotzebue Rec Center, I used to shower at gyms and pools more than I showered at home, which exposed me to many noxious varieties of athlete's foot infections. For you coppers I'm talking about stink foot, boot rot and walking socks. You understand the first two cliches, but the walking socks were kinda gross. I've picked up dried socks the day after long VPSO patrol shifts, no need, my socks stood up by themselves and marched to the laundry room. They were that dirty and foul. And put a serious hurt on my nose. On occasion, my nose derailed my focus and I struggled to keep up with the world around me.

The reason I remember dandruff shampoos is cuz our coaches constantly instructed us swimmers and cross-country runners to take care of our feet. They also mentioned we take care of jock itch and itchy scalps too. The hazards to showers and dressing rooms were manifold. Another illness my girl buds on the swim team told me about was yeast infections due to unclean panties and unwashed swim suits and swimming in pools that skimped on chlorine. Clean panties, clean swimsuits and super-chlorinated pools kept our feet, crotches and scalps free of a single microorganism. That organism being fungus. Obviously, vaginal yeast infections were way out of my wheel house, but if I did have a pussy, I'd probably shove shit in there all the time and be married to a cop. Laugh it up faggots, I may be a turd, but I'm your favorite turd, so plug yer nose and keep reading.

What a lot of athletes and patrolmen understand is this fungus has plagued mankind since adopting shoes, boots and sandals. Oh, and also plagued mankind since wearing panties and underwear. We all personally know and worked with fat man-boys that wore panties and weighed over 400 pounds each. I tried finding the "Gumby and Barney Show" on the internet but all I found was obese boys fisting each other. Then sloppy kissing. I couldn't find any gay porn starring Tom Evans neither, but I'm in agreement, that shit is wrong on so many levels, as wrong as two boys fucking.

Since caveman days, footwear has allowed fungal infections to undermine toenails and the soles of our feet. It also gave us itchy crotches and scalps too. All from the same goddamned fungus. Toe jam, jock itch and stink utch are all from the same smart, clever and opportunistic fungus and fuck, even if I snort lines of Tolnaftate foot powder, brush my teeth with Desenex ointment and spread gyne lotrimin cream on my toast, it's a bitch of an infection to get on top of. Fuck dudes, I've peeled my boots and socks off and personally witnessed two native girls puke and die. That's saying something.

My wife is missing toe nails from the epidemic of foot rot that plagued Eskimo children wearing animal based, non-tunnik, non-gussik, non-synthetic mukluks for a thousand years. The same toe nail infection medications you see advertised on TV was a curse to First Nation's children before the discovery of foot powders, foot sprays and anti-fungal ointment medicines. Analogous and similar to installing tubes in brown Siberian ears to drain ear infections, removing aboriginal tonsils and pulling rotten Mongolian teeth, early pre-statehood physicians simply removed toe nails from little native boys and girls. Fuck dudes, after so many "procedures" at shit village clinics, it's a miracle them fucking natives got any body parts left for us to fuck, murder and torch.

Now take a second to imagine, 70 years ago, the pain those little native kids experienced after those stupid needless surgeries. The ear pain from chronic infections kills me to imagine, the tonsil surgeries were futile and the pulling buckets of teeth didn't help a native kid's looks, but ghoulishly peeling a little native kid's toenails made walking up Front Street, Eskimo dancing with Chester Sivik for the tourists so painful, donning any shoes or boots nearly impossible. If you recall some of the tortures our undercover operators suffered overseas, peeling finger and toe nails was a common method of torture. Fuck! AIn't nobody dancing or walking fer days. Maybe forever.

During a long hitch working a job that paid dimes, instead of dollars with Mashburn, Moto and Ramoth in Selawik, I suffered frostbite on my feet as I headed to the airport to catch my plane back to Kotz. We'd served the entire stack of warrants and loaded our customers on the trooper plane then booked back to Mashburn's for shots of Aqua Net hairspray with home brew chasers. I'm kidding. We actually had to book back to the VPSO Office and walk all over hell to look for a missing little boy. We found him playing Nintendo and ignoring the CB. We returned him to his folks and then I was finally 10-100 and walked across town to the airport.

Being in my boots all day and late into the evening, my feet were getting numb from the minus 60 temps. No prob, I'll pull my boots apart and dry out the liners of my Sorrell's when I got home. When I deplaned in Kotz and walked home to my black man's igloo (nigloo), I pulled off my boots and holy fuck, 2 toes stung like a motherfucker. Pulling off my socks also pulled off 2 frozen toe nails, leaving them inside my crunchy frosty socks. My toes had partially frozen and it cost me 2 toe nails. Walking around was a bitch and I whined like one for a whole fucking week. In summation, for my suffering, me, the limping and whining bitch was paid by Manilaq negroid Manpower a whole $9.76 per moron, per hour. Looking back at our shit-pay public safety grunt-work, we've no choice but to salute smartly while disaster ran its course.

When I told my wife how retarded VPSO's, foot patrols and prisoners went through the same agonizing toe fungus disfigurement and toe nail removal ordeal she experienced as a small native child in pre-statehood, pre-enlightened Alaska, she wiped a newly wetted eye and apologized for not understanding the pain and suffering soldiers, cops and territorial marshalls endured on duty, in POW extreme rendition camps and detention centers. She didn't express sympathy for retarded VPSO's like me, they were losers. But like herself and her childhood pals, she thought only her Eskimo mates suffered. Nup, like all of us, patrolmen, troopers and village cops suffered too.

I learned something from you coppers. Regardless of the lack of appreciation, public safety is a highly honored occupation. I'm sick of no-teefer natives declaring, "We got no copsh. We need shum-one to keep us shafe." When I stepped off the plane, the entire village of Kiana shook their puny heads and stated, "Not that asshole! Give us a tiny cookoo native VPSO. Just not HIM!" I chuckle that the tallest motherfucker in town was me as I walked dark patrols all night with highly trained dogs (doberman and German Shepard) I encouraged the kids to gather round and play whilst the adult brown-tard macaques and bully worst nation's chimplet faggots stayed way clear of me. Not a single bit of roughhouse treatment and not a single bad word spoken my way. Get this, I never slugged or flipped anybody nor let the dogs chew any sick niff ass. No gun? Shit, I got clubs, pepper mace, a strong back and super loyal dogs. Just the way I like it.

Selsun Blue is a powerful anti-fungal shampoo that kills the same fungus that fucks up our feet, groins and scalps. I buy the shit every few months when my feet start itching, my crotch bugs me and my hair and beard require a wire brush. I've yet to experience a vaginal yeast infection, but I sure as shit understand. For us men, we'd know our shit was fucked up when we experienced itchy butts and stinky fingers. When I stayed at Euro Hostels overseas I used dandruff shampoos just to CYA, cover my ass, and scalp. I also use it to prevent athlete's foot. It's been decades since I got jock itch from swimming and showering away from home, but in our years traveling all over Alaska, some hotels and hostels were guaranteed to give ye itchy utch. And feet too.

Another cool thing about stinky dandruff shampoo: mosquito repellent. No shit, wash head to toe with blue poo (Selsun Blue Shampoo) and you'll find even pesky bugs like tundra fleas (nuvivuks) will leave you alone. When I worked Mat-Su narcs, Rex Lewis and I spent most of the summer (1993) marching all over our 5 acre patch of woods cutting down the dead, dying, broken and fucked up trees. We also cut down Cottonwood trees cuz they littered that puffy shit all over God's creation. All the trees we cut, we split and loaded in Rex's pickup truck and stacked near the house to burn in our Blaze King wood stove the following 2 winters.

While we were clearing brush and thinning all the crap trees we were fucking eaten alive by mosquitoes. I mean, REALLY eaten alive by swarms of flying shit. Rex was the genius that told me that using stinky dandruff shampoo is a good foundation to keep away wasps, hornets, chiggers, no-see-ums, bot-flies, horse flies and lastly, vicious screaming mosquitoes. Stinking like dandruff shampoo and adding a top coat of OFF or Deep Woods spray repellent will save yer bacon. And yer nads. Cutting, chopping, clearing and hauling brush and trees seriously pissed off a million different breeds and species of horribly irritating bugs and flies and all of 'em will eat yer shit and rob you a dozen quarts of blood everyday leaving welts looking like itchy bleeding nipples all over yer ass.

I tried Rex's advice and bought blue poo dandruff stink suds, then sprayed my ass with DEET liver accumulative bug spray. Shit, I wasn't touched by a single fucking bug, flea or fly. Sweet. Me and Rex cut, cleared and stacked a dozen cords of wood and also heaped and burned a million piles of brush, branches and leaves. Rex called our smokey bonfires "smudges" which also drove away most of those awful skin rapists that leave itchy fucking burning stinging, poisonous titties all over my shredded, pockmarked mudflaps. Even at a young age, I possessed high-mileage war-torn gonad bags.

Rex even helped me tow away an old disused abandoned trailer. It had no wheels, but with his truck we dragged the rotten, rusted wreck down the road and deep into some trees on a blighted piece of property a ways down our road. I merely contributed to it's enhanced blight and neglect. At the end of the summer our 5 acres of woods and huge green lawn looked like a goddamned state park and golf course. Not a neglected hillbilly farm and inbreed fuck-hole we bought for $60K: $15K down and $438 per month fer 10 years. Owner financed, 10% interest accrued every year on the unpaid balance. Years later bun sold the place fer $75K and put the money down on her $200K duplex in Barrow, which 15 years later she unloaded fer $255K. I dare yer wives to pull off a financial achievement like that. Bun did this all by herself. I was temporarily detained, meaning incarcerated and unavailable to fuck her shit up. I probably would've bought stupid crap like cocaine and cupcakes. I'm dumb that way.

During 2011, we'd flown to Nome to perform apartment care-taking and hand-holding duties for now deceased patrolman Patrick Octuck who'd been referred to the Schick Shadel treatment facility in Seattle, Washington for his alcoholism. His referral came from his employer, Nome Police Department. Rehab, resign or retire, make yer choice. You see a pattern here don't ye? I remember when KPD sent Patrick to MAP (Manilaq Alcohol Program) and then later OCS (Office of Children's Services) sent him to Lakeside Recovery in Seattle. Octuck was non-synchronous, non-proximal bunk-mates with Kurt Cobain (lead man and songwriter for Nirvana) and both of 'em relapsed back to their respective ailments. Disorders we 've shared and battled together in unison. In these recent decades, remarkably by the grace of God, I achieved complete sobriety, Patrick and Kurt Cobain have both died. The reasons to quit don't outnumber all the reasons why.

After our year of thieving, pillaging gold and silver from permanently and temporarily abandoned houses all over Nome, we moved to Anchorage for a year and bounced around a couple different hotels. This is where we rediscovered uses for blue poo shit shampoo: hotel bed bugs. The first was the Midtown Motel and we got KILLED by bed bugs. Thinking back to Rex Lewis and his advice to combat irritating pestilence, me and bun washed head to toe with the blue poo and presto, it seemed like all those sick ass citywide infesting nigger crash pad chiggers and native bed bugs left us alone. The following week we packed our suitcases and moved onward to a different hotel. Problem solved.

2012 was the coolest AFN in mixed-mud, half-nate history because John Baker won the Iditarod, made numerous speeches, stage appearances and shook hands with everybody he knew. He and his brother and mom even warmly greeted and shook hands with me and hugged bun repeatedly. That AFN was notable because Anchorage was packed with the fairest monied citizenry of the NANA Region. Fer bun, it was a righteous family reunion. One problem was the wasted natives that came out of the woodwork and were staggering around stinking up the joint (Denaina Convention Center). It was also grim scenery witnessing so many disheveled drunken friends from back home getting the bum's rush and 86'd out the front door by AFN Security. Now I know why ye shant kick homeless pesky native inebriates in the seat of their pants. Gross man, squished unnuk butt.

Notably, 2012 was an epidemic year for Anchorage hotels battling bed bugs, shucking and jiving niggers and NW Arctic homeless natives. A common comment from our NANA AFN participants was, "where did all these fucked up homeless natives come from?" My reply was, "they're your neighbors and relatives that got wasted and can't find their way back home." Pre-judiciously assuming your kids and grandchildren were members of the Shovel Head Indun Tribe, begging change, pissing and puking all over town, I might've incorrectly assumed some o' them fucked up soggy bottom tundra Koreans and ice Negro zombies looked just like you guys. In every Alaskan town or village, aside from the normal detritus, we find VPSO, KPD and AST brat chitlens wasted and staggering in the middle of the fucking highway, shitting themselves. Ick, poopy butt.

I might've been suffering nerve damage from the bug dope and stinky shampoo, but after my flashback and smell-induced PTSD at Walmart's, I regained control of my breathing, stowed my pistols and bought me some more Selsun Blue. The medicated fragrance ain't all that fragrant. Matter of fact, the shit smells awful. All damn day I smelled the crap on my beard, pubes and hair. Fuck, when I awoke at night to piss and chug down a bucket of arsenic-laced well-water, I smelled anti-fungal medicine on my own goddamned pillow. That same bug-stank brought back deeply-buried memories from a long time ago. These memories triggered images from elementary and high school swim workouts, then further back to the bad ol' days. It's been said that smells trigger memories from way back in time. You see where this is going.

I've lost my place and felt my brains and awareness scrambled to shit whenever I walked into the Manilaq ER carrying or escorting inmates. The place always delivered me several pubic PTSD odor-impelled leaps back in time to when I used to snack on white trash skanky bush-lippy for hours after it died. Being efficient, I busted a nut before they got cold. I also dated a few rubber-arsed black chicks that put prosthetic eyeballs in their rectums and dentures in their pussies. It looked like chubby-cheeked monsters grinning at me with one eye. I done slobbered far too many nasty dark meat jelly-rolls.

I also nearly barfed while talking with Dr. Jan Shackles. She reminded me of my black girlfriends that put peeping eye-shit up their asses and full sets of chattering dentures in their gape-holes hungry fer dick. Like mine. Right there in the ER, my watery puke drool was so bitter, I kissed and licked an occupied body bag, then unzipped it open to disgorge, retch and burst forth quarts of barf-slurp out my chunky mouth. Trust me, I felt better and the deceased zip-locked tenant smelt better and my artwork likely made the ME's duties more funner. "Hmmm. Seems cause of death is an overdose of puke with a side order of rasty Boon-Tang leather labia." I gotta wash my mouth out with soap.

I'll repeat myself. Smells evoke powerful recollections. Some pleasant, most not. My memories of black girlfriends have sneaked back to the surface and I now can attribute my subtle racism to the Afro-snatch I scrawged and slobbered. Gross revelation huh? Over the last 40 years, my nose has found itself way up too many places it didn't belong. Namely in between the bubbly, foaming butt cheeks of round rubber black girl asses. Now in my old age I cringe at the places I visited, the girls I did and where my nose and chin served as vaginal and anal fulcrum eating all that shit up. Being yer last surviving moron coworker I thought it magnanimous to share with ye the curious intersections my thoughts find these days.

Let me be clear, I've no bigotry towards subsistence foods here on the nigruk spit, but damn, whenever I get a whiff of seal oil, my brain paints a picture of black girl ass and pussy, wide open with my face planted way deep, my mouth wedged and wet, foraging for nourishment like a rabid subterranean rodent burrowing up storm drains. Never shall those personal connections detach. I'm drooling bitter puke bile-spit now. I suspect you are too. Okay, KPD barf break. You can blow chunks all over Ham-Ham's patrol van. He won't notice. He paints it daily mid-shift nikipak scented hurl: cop car wash and excess alcohol evacuation.

I know you coppers are sober now. Some of you've not taken a drink since the 90's. I also know that as we get older, reduced our work stress, we sleep deeper and dream further back in time with greater clarity. What am I bullshitting about? We dream farther back in time with greater insight, guilt and painful, brutal honesty. Without my chronic drug abuse and even more protracted, persistent alcohol intake, my memories are cascading at me with impacts of heavy phone book blows to my head.

Deep sleep, clear thinking without violent responses like small children fighting back, has now supplanted my rather pleasant intoxication and nightly alcohol and drug induced death spiral into my pillow. 12-plus years of absolute drug-free sobriety is a long time to unravel stupid shit-caked trauma without unauthorized and prohibited chemicals fortifying me. Coffee with bong hits inhaled by my over-sized swimmer-lunged butane flamethrower tokes served as righteous ingredients for breakfast. My brain is still pissed off I removed buckets of bourbon from my RDA (recommended daily allowance) of alcohol, Finland's fifth food group. The brain makes an excellent slave, but brutal taskmaster.

My nightmares are shifting and deteriorating away from stupid narc jobs, night shifts with you lot at KPD and further back, far beyond the stresses of building marijuana grow rooms and operating drug houses. And hauling away dead friends back home to their parents and dead niggers forty miles north to the burn pile. Or Tyrell's dog food factory. My nightmares are now receding further back to water-soluble vaults of shit I've locked away and stored under lousier memories, dissolved and eroded by millions of gallons of liquor and half a century of fertile manure-rich self-delusion and nutritious fecal nocturnal desserts of oozing wart and tasty weft. Sorry, I just burped a fart.

Since my little brother died from drinking at the same volume and pace as I, things have become unraveled. I knew Cully was an alcoholic just like myself, my best friends and my coworkers, but living in shit-ass villages and working drug and alcohol interdiction, I witnessed far more consequences and alcoholic precipitant fallout. Fallout from alcoholism, assaults and domestic violence I personally witnessed and thus, justified my employment in crap public safety. This misery was in our job descriptions and you boys can vouch to the sheer volume of crap we shoveled and sniffed. I thought I was over the awful impact of following orders from you coppers and graveyard shift work schedules, but in my old age I've slipped, stumbled and it feels like something inside my head has fallen.

I've had numerous concussions over the last many decades but I'm not suffering symptoms of TBI, meaning traumatic brain injury. I still get examined frequently because Alaska has the nation's highest rates of head injury and skull battery. It's no wonder why we never left this place, we're peas in a pod and kissing cousins to badly beaten brown kids and bruised dead babies. I've been running away from these nightmares for half a century and finally taking a pensioner's breather and a pastor's sobriety, I'm facing simple truths that were made far easier to run and hide from with chronic Seattle drug consumption and voluminous industrial Nordic drink.

Just a few nights ago, my hair smelt like Selsun Blue and the odors triggered memories from when my little brother sneaked next to my bed late at night, interrupted my slumber and quiet as a church mouse, whispered, "Karl. Psst. Wake up!" I've awoken numerous times late at night with my little brother, still quite small somewhere around his 5th birthday, hiding in my closet, whispering my name. The shitty part is I'm not waking, I still sleep like a dead man, yet shedding a half-century of scar tissue, I quietly climb out my bed and into my rubber boots, grab my flashlight and follow my little brother to late-night hiding places he wanted to explore.

We had camps and forts like hay stacks we climbed, mined and hollowed where we stowed snacks and comic books. Other hiding places were camps we built during late-nights and early mornings milking goats, delivering newspapers and en route to the swimming pool for zero-dark-hundred workouts stripping and cleaning us foul naked farm boys with brutally astringent, acidic chlorinated water. Bleach by any other name, leaving our stinging injuries, chemically and painfully cleaned. I'm embarrassed at the amount of pus, blood and scabs me and Cully left in the pool filtering system.

You see, yer talking to a rapidly healing burrowing rat. Some hideouts we assembled deep underground climbing through 24 inch diameter storm drain pipes, underneath giant root structures beneath partially tipped trees, attics and basements of damp, cold empty abandoned houses and even secret camps beneath green tarps we draped around massive fir trees. With our sleeping bags and lanterns on the ground we kept warm and dry, miles out in the woods. You see, me and my little brother weren't humans, we were rodents or varmints that dug, tunneled and hoarded camping gear we stole from our parents' garage or neighbors on late night sneak outs.

The meanest dogs on our dark night routes never barked at us, they happily wagged their tales and whined to follow us to our childhood camps. On rare occasions we unlatched gates and untied our favorite dogs and let them follow us to our camps. The dogs were happier'n shit to snack and nap beneath giant trees, but proved terrified of our hideouts way down storm drain pipes hundreds of feet underground. Our dog-pals also refused to enter abandoned houses to climb attics or creep basement sub floor crawl spaces. We decided to only bring our adopted neighbor dogs along when we hiked way out in the woods with flashlights to play camp under tipped trees or under green tarps secured beneath giant fir trees.

Dogs ain't dumb, late at night in the pitch dark, they were good escorts through the woods and super psyched to tag along with two dirty ignorant little boys all over the midnight countryside, but not into rat holes that looked pretty darned dangerous even for canine pets we didn't own. Our adoptees would happily follow and lay down with us underneath a giant fir tree that smelled of dried pine needles and was a great dry covered play area at the base of a tree you'll never see in Alaska. Washington trees were so huge they lived centuries and provided safe harbor for a thousand lifetimes of injured little boys too terrified to return home.

Under one big Christmas tree about a mile in the woods, we connected 2 green tarps through the lower branches from opposite sides and tied them through the branches around the trunk and made a dry rain-proof open air tent the entire perimeter of the tree. It was righteous. The green tarps were invisible even in daylight. We stole a shit load of sleeping bags from my parent's garage and laid them on a bed of dry pine needles around the trunk of the tree, then stashed a lantern and comic books. We kyped decorative oil lamps because of their warmth, but if we lucked out on our late night scavenger hunts stealing everything not nailed down, we put Coleman white gas lanterns to good use. We'd sneak there late night, fire up one of our lanterns to warm up, eat canned fish or Spam, wash it down with stolen milk, then take a nap. Woods get real noisy just before dawn from birds and rustling brush, so we'd wake up and trek home.

On one of our escapades during our 5th and 6th winters, my little brother woke me and we sneaked out to the woods, found the concealed secret trail head and booked to our camp site at the base of our tree. We dialed in some weird old music station (KIXI) our grandpa loved on our little transistor radio, turned off the lantern after we warmed up, we dozed off. Cully bumped me awake and said a monster was in the woods and we should run. In the pitch dark I saw a deer just feet away, looking directly at us. We froze perfectly still under our blankies and awaited for this deer to attack us and kill us.

It did neither, it laid down near us, burped up cud, munching it's stomach contents and proceeded to lay close by till dawn. When the deer arose and left us, we sneaked back home to our beds. Still in our clothes. We slept there many times and occasionally found that same deer laying in our camp, jumping up to make room for us. That deer seemed to like our pirated campsite, dry on a bed of sleeping bags, way out in the woods as much as us two developmentally delayed subhuman creatures. It'd stand and stay a few feet away, wait for us to get settled, then join us. Animals confused my brother and I for feral non-humans. Must've been our smell. Over a couple winters, that deer no longer scared the hell out of us. It seemed to get used to us too and rested next to us as we graduated elementary beating academy incurring more frequent ocular, dental or genital concussions. We found comfort wherever we found it. Even wild animals that adopted us and our camp.

My mom was frequently cursed or spellbound wretched by her twisted demons that drove her to beat us little boys to bleeding. And sterility. One morning she asked us why our clothes smelt funny. I walked up, took Cully shirt and took a sniff. It was the wet hair of that goddamned deer that we befriended and had made itself home at our camp. My idea was to switch animals and tell mom, "that's the goats." It worked, she smiled lunatic and proceeded to do the laundry. Those occasions we didn't get beaten and injured were extraordinarily rare. Most days my parents were possessed, violent, angry and threw alcoholic tantrums that today, I would've felt justified in beating them to death. You know, fair is fair.

Little boys from the killing fields of Washington never forgive nor forget childhood nightmares and injuries so ipso facto, unknowingly become serial killers. Or violent alcoholics. Or murderous wife beaters. I'm confused which. When girlfriends from decades ago unleashed torrential curses and slaps, or got super wasted and thought it a good time to hit everybody around them, they ended up hospitalized. Or dead. One ex-girlfriend expired in a house fire. No mystery there. Another girlfriend of mine died from a cocaine overdose. I could've phoned for an ambulance, but it was more funner watching her change color and stilled.

Some girlfriends pointed my own damn guns at me, then fled. Others ran me over as they sped away. In MY motherfucking cars. What's satisfying is she died behind the wheel, wasted and pissed off. Sweet. When the cops arrived to tell me my car was impounded after a fatal DUI accident, in an automobile that was so old it lacked seat belts, I told them I'd given it to my vicious drunken super horny girlfriend as a separation device when she fled. Partial truths work. We all react poorly to violent women we fucked. I still grin inwardly recalling my sick vicious sex life and every single one of their deaths. Victims of child trauma always become the next generation's abusers. Die bitches. I suspect you copper already knew that.

Something is seriously fucked up here boys. I must be retarded. Or misshapen and deformed. In my wasted years I used to be attracted to alcoholic slap-happy insatiable fuck machines. I lost track of their numbers after those wasted pieces of nympho-ass caused me visits to jail. To complete their erasure, blank slate hangovers helped me forget my mad dashes to the STD clinics. Yer looking a walking talking miracle that should've died from acute alcohol intoxication, drug overdoses, car accidents, violent beatings and infected pussy.

Look at me now. I moved to cruel violent native communities and found a spouse that cannot account for the number of times she's been nearly beaten to death, nor the number of rapes she's survived. Some aspects of psychological stability might be amiss in this one, especially her taste in men. I finally married a sober woman that was a workaholic and found my tales of beating and killing skinny white trash bitches and bodacious black party girls funny. I'm a laugh a minute. You coppers may be seeing additional behavioral dysfunctions far beyond my dim awareness. Here's a sad state of affairs, I still consider you coppers normal, well-adjusted and stable. I'm not.

Rewind my trips around the sun a skoach over 55 revolutions and take a look at an episode when my little brother woke me late at night. I heard, "Psst. Karl, I'm scared." My little brother was whispering from outside my window here at the senior center. I knew he was all alone in the pouring rain and needed my help, so I got up, put on my boots and jacket and we took off into the woods. When we got to our fort, Cully handed me his flashlight and asked me to look at his ear. It was partially torn and bleeding. I wiped it clean and taped it straight and advised him to not turn his head when getting slapped or punched by our parents. Taking an angry adult-strength blow to the mouth, nose and eyes is safer than the ears. I may need clinical help. I awoke with a flashlight in my hand and wet boots at the front door. Just this morning. My jaw and teeth hurt and my neck was out of whack. I'm falling apart again.

A long-buried memory emerged from when I was a kid at the dentist. He told me that Cully had a sore partially immobile jaw, cracked tooth and a doozy of a cut inside his cheek. When asked, Cully told the dentist it was a result of play fighting, boxing and wrestling with his big brother. When it was my turn in the dentist's chair and confronted with his interrogation, I nodded my assent. The dentist looked at me with a sad, grim face, sighed, then advised I to take it easy on my little brother. You coppers know more than most and deduce that little boys cover for each other.

We also could never reveal openly our parent's violent streak and drinking problem. I think I know where I got my exceptional tolerance to strong drink. PTSD, flashbacks and panic attacks from childhood beatings on a daily basis has peculiar effects on a broken soldier much later in life. Aside from counseling, alcohol abuse is the most popular OTC (over the counter) medication available that seems to unscramble our heads and alleviate the symptoms of PTSD, but the cure is more deadly than the illness. We're fucked.

On really bad days, me and Cully skipped swim turnouts and read comics at any one of our forts. When questioned by teachers, school nurses or swim coaches, most injuries we falsely assigned to farm animal interactions, bike wrecks and rope swing accidents. Some other marks and bruises couldn't be lied about, yet healed quickly and we'd only miss school or swimming a few days a month. At the age of 6 or 7 we both got real good at dabbing bleeding lips, noses and ears. The spinal injuries and broken wrists and shoulders healed much slower. Actually never. We were survivors of violent mental illness and alcoholism and each others midget 4077 MASH Unit trauma surgeons. We could've used super glue, but cotton swabs, band aids and duct tape sufficed. Looking around the room here, I'm sure glad you coppers are with me and Cully.

In the pouring rain, finding warm dry campsites for late night escapes could prove a challenge. The rain poured from the trees onto our hair and soaked us. There were tree houses we tried to scavenge, but in the rain, they were useless, we got soaked. We knew of a couple old cabins and shacks out in the woods, but they leaked too. So to remedy this, my little brother Cully insisted I pry off screens or sideboards and we crept into the crawlspace and we set up camp below the floor and underground where it was dry. We did the same procedure and laid out old sleeping bags, stashed a lantern and comic books and homesteaded a camp in a dirt coffin, under abandoned old structures. We were a composite of several species of small furry animals and burrowing rodents, shivering in the dark, far from home.

On our sneak-outs, we'd creep around neighborhood houses to steal stuff and snag jugs of chocolate milk from the bins on the front porch. Mind you, 50 years ago, milk men delivered milk at round 0300 hours, so we simply helped ourselves to some. The dogs always wagged their tails in the front yards or whined to come play with us from inside the front door. We're lucky we didn't take a shotgun blast in our faces and necks. Folks sleep deepest after 2:00 am and the dogs never barked at us dirty little kids on a mish. It's cuz we were related to dogs, horses and goats, not our alcoholic violent parents. Besides, even the most rabid dog bites or falls from horses hurt me and Cully less than the murderous fucking nut-jobs that spawned us.

On one midnight sneak out, a strange car repeatedly motored by as we hid in shrubs, under parked cars, behind fences or in the shadows of occupied dog houses. When we loaded our arms with loot, the car again emerged from shadows down the road and raced our direction. We silently made haste to our abandoned shack, pulled our board aside, climbed in and hid in silence. The men in the car, got out and walked all around the shack, peeked in and tried to be quieter than us. I covered Cully's mouth when I heard him whisper, "Karl, I'm scared." So was I.

We barely breathed and waited them out. From under the floor of that rotten shack we peeked through the side boards at their boots as those two men walked all around our fort, in the dark, looking for 2 thieving kids. I thought they were trying to catch us stealing stuff for our camps, but looking back, they were murderous pedophiles looking to kidnap little boys, rape them and tear them from limb to limb. I would've been much more terrified had I known the real hazards facing us, but that nightmare is too much for little kids to consider nor comprehend, so we stuck to our childish views why they pursued us and never succeeded in finding us. They weren't sick child killers, they were just scary grups (grownups) and made hiding more funner.

My brother Cully thought storm drain pipes were fascinating to investigate. We mapped a number of them and used them as access tunnels to their much larger concrete junctions under manholes in roads. If you lift a manhole on any road, you'll find quite a large round access area for engineers to climb down into and perform clean outs and inspections. We found quite a number of 24-inch round storm drain pipes with open ends exposed, so we climbed in them. Some went hundreds of feet to larger circular areas we could set up camp.

Which is what we did. We kyped our supplies from our parents' garage and of course, neighbors' car ports and back decks. Way up our favorite storm drain pipe access, we stowed the regular stocks of sleeping bags, snacks, lantern and candles. The round circular engineer's clean-out was a hunnert feet up the pipe and made quite a nice hideout. We were startled when cars drove over the manhole up above, but got used to it, cuz late-night traffic was pert near zero on rural farm roads in Washington.

Me and Cully were sneaking around late one night and a police car lit up it's emergency lights, did a u-turn and headed our direction. We climbed way up our storm drain pipe entryway and hid in our camp up-tunnel a few hundred yards. We'd already booked long-gone way up our pipe tunnel by the time the cops were yelling at the end of the pipe and pointing their flashlights towards us. We kept mum and silently waited them out. Weeks later, we found an iron grill bolted over the end of the drain pipe that we climbed into and it now permanently blocked our entry.

To aggravate the patience of a pair of little brain-damaged boys, when we arrived after a massive rain downpour, we found that iron grill was clogged with our soaking wet sleeping bags and comic books. The rainstorm flooded our camp and washed our camp supplies and playthings back down our access tunnel and they all got trapped in that goddamned iron grill. We were forced to make use of 3 other drain pipe tunnels we'd mapped.

Using our camps proved to be great escapes. We'd meet up with our orphan friends in the neighborhood. Gordy Kelly and Frank Empfield were out and about past midnight and tagged along as we were sneaking around, petting and unleashing guard dogs and silently collecting shit from front yards and back porches. The four of us scored packs of cigarettes and beers we pocketed. We were heading towards the woods when we heard some mean old man yell at us, heading our way with a flashlight. Me and Cully, Franky and Gordo booked to our plan B sewer pipe entrance and started climbing inside.

Our friends balked at what we were doing, but quickly followed us up our secret tunnel. The dogs that we unleashed were too afraid to follow us up the storm drain under the roadway towards our much larger engineers' access and clean-out directly under the manhole a hunert yards away from the pipe opening where we guessed the old man was looking for us. We never saw that old man, nor knew what happened to our friendly dogs we unleashed and opened gates for. Days and weeks later, we found our dogs back on their chains and in their yards on our next late night creep. And of course wagging their tales when we returned. Dogs are great, loyal friends. Our duty was to take them out to play with us late at night. It's the mean old owners that suck ass, angry we left their dogs loose upon sunrise. As in Alaska, Washington wasn't kind to dogs nor children. Poor dogs got beaten and whipped cowering like us kids.

You may be wondering why me and Cully fled home and made camps all over the woods throughout the North Seattle area. Well, we feared and hated our parents. Being the oldest of all the boys in our family, we received the whippings and beatings. I'm talking injuries that cracked teeth, tore ligaments, broke ear drums, or nearly tore ears off. It was common practice to yank kids up by their ears or hair and in fits of anger, slap a child open-handed over the ears. It's called boxing a child's ears. Another injury that scared us away from home was the whippings with a belt. When you want to cause permanent injury to a child, the high speed belt wraps around legs and asses and the tip explodes upon the genitals. Boys and girls all know the explosive, convulsive agony a whipping across the pubic region can elicit and I pray your parents weren't sick fucks too.

My folks were cruel to start with, but their battles with alcoholism made our infancy and childhoods torturous. During one of my first episodes of PTSD, I nearly fainted in fear watching my brother Cully getting held down by one parent while the other flogged him unconscious with horse riding crops, sticks or boards. I've had my neck cracked by getting lifted and thrown across the room by my hair and also got a few scars from getting tossed on my side into farm tools such as pitch forks and axes. You see, now that all the parties involved are dead, I'm free to chat honestly about growing up in a vicious, cruel alcoholic house. I thought what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Now I'm doubtful.

My brother Cully never understood he didn't deserve to be beaten worse than a farm animal. He also never understood that alcoholism runs in families and that his drinking would kill him. Way back in 1989 when Cully visited me and Higman in Kotz, he brought a fat bag of death bud, but insisted I go out and purchase some liquor to drink. I found a couple jugs at the Burnor's and got a relative black market bargain: 2 jugs for $150. Deal huh. Cully stowed the liquor in his suitcase and nursed it on days me and Brian had no booze. Behavioral tells like that should've been a fucking clue.

A few lectures I suffered have stuck in my craw and impossible to hawk up and spit out. Marilyn Grey, my shrink doc that counseled me, years ago after some drug and alcohol (and assault) charges were erroneously leveled against me, echo in my numb skull all these many fucking years. She told me that really young children, including infants, love their parents absolutely. Then in subsequent years, that shit gets fucked up. The whippings, beatings, slapping and embarrassing insults eventually cripple any child enduring these torments. When my parents were wasted and cruel, me and Cully wet our beds. Now, I don't feel crippled. Shit, an old man now, I feel perty fucking strong, and hurt almost everybody in my wake. Remember, we never forgive the people we hurt the most.

Dr. Grey stated that mental illness runs in families and that some children are sorted out to suffer most of these abuses. She went on to lecture that some mothers actually hate one or more of their offspring while coddling and spoiling others. It can get so bad that the ostracized and abused children feel responsible for their boozer parents' bad days. Or in me and Cully's case, bad decades. She made comparisons to female primates that killed one baby monkey whenever another child misbehaved. You coppers might remember some of that shit, leaving ourselves or our best pals at work dead from assault, alcoholism or suicide.

On our public safety job applications there ought to be a disclaimer declaring healthy job seekers unfit for employment. At the ends of our careers and expiration of our lives, we all know that we couldn't save them all. Humans are sick fucking violent monkeys and in my old age, I'm not sure which species I'm a member of. I've hurt and maimed people I didn't know and killed girls that loved me.

Another species of animal that was smarter than monkeys and dogs was a horse. Me and Cully were responsible for feeding the goats and horses and one equine pal named Tango insisted on performing tricks to pursue us on our late-night adventures. Tango would bite the gate latch with his teeth and lift it open. He'd silently walk out the front yard and with keen night vision or sense of smell follow us rank farm kids and find us on our hikes. Tango was a smart horse that didn't need halter, bridle nor ropes to lead him. He just followed us without any rigging nor saddles and was happy to tag along.

Which is what he did. Some nights we'd hear him galloping down the road to catch up to us behind Maplewood Elementary, following us into the woods we called the Indian Trails and stand nearby as we snacked and camped. We'd never catch him if we tried, so after our camp out and naps, we'd sneak back home, with a horse following close behind. I'd open the gate again, toss hay and oats to Tango and the other 2 dumber horses, then sneak into our bedroom to feign sleep till dawn. I wish I could train goats, dobermans or pit bulls to be so obedient. For that matter, dead girlfriends too.

I've enjoyed tremendous friendships with animals far smarter than myself. We trained Tango our horse to open gates and turn on outdoor faucets for water and I also trained dogs to open doors. During my tenure as publican at Lem's Mortuary and Crack House, I trained Dopey the Doberman and Thatan the Afghan hound to open doors with their teeth. I'd call them to door, tell them to sit, then saying their names I'd twist the doorknob back and forth, letting the door swing open. I'd close the door and again twist the knob in exaggerated gestures as Dopey and Thatan watched.

I often repeated teaching this trick during Dopey's years as a straggler puppy when he joined my 2 other dogs, mysteriously appearing on my doorstep. Later on I'd arrive home to see all three dogs wagging their tails, on my porch, with the front or back door wide open. Smart dogs. Stupid owner. On a number of occasions, when cops or bad guys arrived to speak with me, the dogs opened the door with their teeth and tore out, barking and biting ferociously, attacking my honored guests back into their cars. I had to replace the doorknobs when I ended my lease because they had teeth marks on them. Evidence I blamed on my girlfriends that needed to go out to pee and poo. Before they mysteriously got dead.

When me and Cully were in our early double digits, 10 and 12 respectively, we secretly packed enough gear for a bike ride across Puget Sound, over the Olympic Peninsula and ride over the Hood Canal Bridge to our grandpa's cabin. We loaded saddle bags that mounted on our bikes, left confusing clues for our dull little brothers to parrot to our parents, then after everybody went to work and school, we hopped on our heavily loaded bikes and pedaled away.

The trip took most of the day. We loved the ferry ride across Puget Sound but the ride across the peninsula and Hood Canal wore our shit out. By the time we made it to our grandpa's cabin, we barely had energy to eat a snack and get in our sleeping bags to sleep. The following days and weeks, we scavenged clams and muscles from the large rocks at low tide and in addition to our groceries, we ate pretty good. Cully used cedar shingles, shoved them into the hillside creeks and made a clean water spout for us to fill our water jugs and our pans to make cocoa and instant milk.

We hiked all over the beach and broke into all the cabins for miles both directions. We scored arm loads of canned goods and cookware to use on the fires we built directly below our cabin, on the beach that stayed dry above high tide. At night, me and Cully were overwhelmed with agonizing lonesomeness and melancholy. For little boys, candle light, tiny transistor radios and only each other to talk to, the long dark nights were quite tearful. We even missed the whippings, beatings and berating from our mentally ill drunken parents and almost considered returning home. But each morning we woke feeling WAY better, forgetting the prior evening's sadness and proceeded anew on our daily duties to scavenge foods and clean our pots, pans and muddy clothes.

Even in brutally cold water, we stripped to our skivvies and dove into the salt water, soaped up head to toe, then dove under to rinse off. We both were blue from the cold, but it was a child's version of strong coffee and in such freezing fucking water, woke our shit up in seconds. Mind you, we were both competitive swimmers so the Puget Sound and Hood Canal might be dangerously cold, but we swam, scrubbed and douched our caked little boys' attire.

The bruises and cuts never healed and even today, I see scars on my little brother. Keep in mind, now he's an old man, having sneaked away a few nights ago now safely hiding inside a ceramic cremation urn. You see, in dysfunctional alcoholic families burdened with shame and guilt, accepting the death of siblings is a gut-wrenching endeavor. Worse, when it comes to the matter of burying my little brother, there was not a single volunteer to the spade. So Cully died alone and his insufferable life amounted to little more than 6 pounds of ash.

He'll forever be a small child that wakes me and whispers we gotta go out and play with stray dogs, a really smart horse and a brave deer to visit our camps. The worst part is I still hear him whispering, "Karl, I'm scared." Well shit, I'm scared too. I'm an old man now. I got wrinkles on my face and late at night writing here at my computer, I'm fucking terrified. Besides, late at night with my eyes too often wet, nobody's looking out for me and my little brother Cully. Unconsciously, you coppers have just volunteered to be deputized.

Another angel of mercy is an old native lady I call the ancient one. I awake every morning next to a pretty elderly First Nation's woman holding my hand and time-traveling every night just like I do. A rather elegant woman that endured inhouse violence and gender decimation at the hands of those family members that normally should've embraced and loved birthing and raising a really pretty girl of Siberian descent. She visits her own arctic nightmare beatings and childhood torturous whippings and rapes. Each morning upon waking, we mumble our fading vanishing bad dreams to each other, rub our injuries, broken jaws and loose teeth, stretch our busted necks and backs, starting another of our very few last remaining days together.

Next time you hold your grand kids, stay still a while, think back to two little boys hiding terrified in their camp and consider the sheer volume of unexpressed love your little kid contains within. Pondering these unfathomable notions, I'm ordering you coppers to patiently await for their expressions of unspoken affection. All transmitted to you, through fossilzed layers of scar tissue, radiating from inside a small child. That patience and understanding may allow you coppers to be better grandfathers than the shitty violent humans we've been.

It's okay, little kids know and understand such concepts and it's perfectly okay to shed a tear and let it fall on their upturned faces. Little kids know why grandpas weep. Me and Cully missed those moments. You readers easily detect the unexpressed love and affection beaten children bottle up, bleed upon, never revealed.

Horrible dreams and ancient bad smells serve only as relapse triggers. With so many childhood nightmares cursing me, I oughta lay off the stinky dandruff shampoo. Or pick up a bottle again.

Ceramic cremation urns got lots of room inside for us two little boys to hide. I'm betting theirs room for a bunch of broken cops too.

Karl.