A Survivor of Sins of the Past

The past being the past week in Las Vegas, of course. But the survivor I'm referring to isn't me.

Although the pain of paying $14.99 for 24 hours of an internet connection with the lightning-fast speed of a 300 baud acoustic modem kept me from posting more than once from Sin City, I took a lot of character and story notes throughout the trip, enough to gestate many pages of Vegas stories, I hope.

One of those character notes was a man I spent over an hour talking to in a bar, a man we'll call Ron.

Ron is twenty-six years old, although he looks more like a wiry thirty-five, his face seamed with wrinkles and small scars, his crew-cut black hair sprinkled with grey.

Before the latest Iraq war, Ron worked training DJs for the Deja Vu chain of strip clubs, teaching new DJs how to cue up dancers and music alike, how to read a crowd, when to shift from classic rock to rap to country, what to do when the featured dancer is late.

During the war, instead of crowds and dancers Ron read prisoners of war as a member of an Army Interrogation unit. Small flame tattoos run up and down both his arms. Interspersed among the claws and legs of two protective dragons, and above and below the tattooed unit mottos, each flame signifies a set of 10 interrogations.

I didn't ask Ron if he was at Abu Ghraib, but from the way he spoke about the professionalism of his unit and his work in the Army, I don't think so.

There is a swirling mist tattooed by a special, particularly painful, process surrounding the larger dragon. Spikes in the mist commemorate the dead, people whom Ron was close to who have died.

I counted at least 12 spikes.

In Tikrit, Ron's vehicle was destroyed by a roadside IED, and weeks later he woke up alone in a VA hospital stateside, crazy with fear because he didn't have any idea where he was. He has scars on both sides of both arms from entry and exit shrapnel wounds, and his lower jaw is reconstructed on a plastic plate. When, months later, he left the hospital and returned to his home in Colorado with his wife and his two-year old daughter, it was only a few weeks before their home, car, and most of their other possessions, were destroyed in a tornado. He considers himself blessed because none of the family was injured, but he regrets that one of the urns of ashes that he promised to take home for a fellow soldier was destroyed.

Ron and his family now live in a rented home on Lake Mead near Las Vegas. He commutes over two hours, each way, by bus, to his current job, daytime DJ for the Deja Vu Showgirls club in Las Vegas.

He's optimistic about the future, although his downtime reading matter includes a survivalist manual. I guess that's appropriate. Ron is a survivor.

There was lots more; the plan to pull a van full of strippers, strong-man competition style, for a block in order to raise money for charity, the Alaskan fishing job, the wilderness training parachute drop when he broke an ankle. An awful lot of living, some of it awful, most of it just living, for someone in their twenties. A lot of material

Ron himself, off course, is too much of a character for fiction -- I'll have to use him in small doses, spread him out over a number of characters. If someone made Ron up, I know I wouldn't believe them. Until I met him.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen

Bonus Ron quote: "I'll always have a job. I'm good at what I do, and everyone likes boobies."