Nitro Brew Copy

[judsonrogers-blog]

Big Shots

It's a pale grey morning. I'm 21 years old, working at Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, California. "Vacation Wonderland," the arch over the town's Main Street reads. The Bohemian Grove is typically guffawed at in loud bars and smoky dorm rooms as being a kind of summer camp for the Illuminati. While not exactly incorrect, I never saw any blood rituals or masked orgy-type doings. It was simply an outdoor men's club. The clientele wielded nukes, billion-dollar assets, and the fate of the free world, but it was a men's club just the same. 

I've posted up at my open-air clubhouse, in an array of shotgun ranges dotting the coniferous hillside. Having just restocked the orange clays in the pull-thrower, I'm now oiling down the house guns (Beretta Silver Pigeons, $3000 a pop, for the curious).  My watch reads 7:00, and like clockwork, my friend Trevor, a lanky kid from nearby Windsor, brings the first open-air bus of excitable sport-shooting enthusiasts. But today, the first wave consists of only one man.

The guy hops out, and I mean hops, before striding over to where I'm working. The first thing I notice about him is his age. He looked mid-thirties, early forties at the latest. Perhaps not exactly a young buck, but compared to the drowsy septuagenarians I was used to servicing, he was practically a damn spring chicken. 

He was also dressed like a younger man, in skinny jeans and a skate shirt. My first thought was that he was a musician, a guest of some capitalist eager for a private concert in the woods (this was not uncommon at the Grove; in fact, it's pretty much the basis for its history). On his shaved head is a ballcap, with the BG owl logo made to look like an Eagle Scout badge. 

"Oh cool," I say. "I'm an Eagle Scout, too." 

He leans in, the smile dropped from his hardy face. "Congrats son," he says, "that's a real honor". 

Well that was kinda weird, I think, but whatever. I smoothly hand him a gun, and took him out to Shot 1. 

While he was shooting, we were joking, talking about music and recent films. I remember him telling me he had crowd surfed at an Eminem show in his home state of Texas. I ask if he was a musician. He said no. I do not pursue the line of questioning further. Official Grove guidelines prevented excessive fraternization with the guests.

He had missed the 24th and 25th shots, which occur in quick succession and are thereby the most difficult of all for any double-barrel brandisher. Having come to the end of his round, shooting 17 out of 25, he thanks me by name, and walks off to the waiting bus, as Trevor has just pulled up with a fresh (used here loosely) batch of sportsmen. 

"Hey Jud!" I hear from across the way. I turn to see my rangemaster, Greg, gliding over to me with a spring in his step. 

Greg was as salty an old fuck as you could find. He had been a marine for eight years, then a cop for twelve. He had the words "TRUST NO ONE" and "COVER YOUR ASS" tattooed in cursive script above his elbows. After 9/11, an old battle buddy called him about a new opportunity for his skillset. It was called Blackwater. 

With The Company, Greg had gone to Fallujah in '04, and Ramadi in '06. In short: he had seen death. When a coworker (a petulant Berkeley freshman named Sean) asked if he had ever killed anyone, Greg simply said he didn't check.  

So Greg, in faded cargo pants and an orange hi-vis range t-shirt, saunters up to me. He asks, his sunglasses hardly concealing his obvious shit-eating grin, if I knew who I had just befriended. I said no, Greg. Tell me, Greg.

"That was the Team Leader from Operation: Neptune Spear." My brow must have furrowed as I tried to remember where I'd heard that before. "The Bin Laden raid," he adds coolly. He tells me the guy's name, advises me not to forget it, and pats me on the shoulder before walking away into the mist. 

----------

The next morning, I'm oiling down the guns per usual. I don't look up as Trevor pulls up the hillside. I hear a door open, and sneakers hop on the gravel. 

"Hey Judson!" a familiar voice calls. "Ready to go shoot again?" 

"Fuck yeah, sir!" I respond.

I'm trying not to telegraph the fact that I know who this fucking guy is now. Still, as we head out to the range, the nervous, quasi-star struck energy gives way to a much more enthusiastic rapport this time, and I begin to chat with him as I would an old friend. 

While he's shooting, I'm now giving him the best tips I've gleaned from practicing every day after the range officially closes to the guests. Stand here. Aim slightly lower. Pull when the clay crosses that treetop. Arriving at the final two shots, the widowmaker of so many professional shotgunners, I tell him exactly how I had hit both not two days before. He grins, eyes lighting up behind Oakley wraparounds. "You're on, fucker". With that, I feel as if I had just been upgraded from acquaintance to friend. "Pull!" 

He nails both clays. Whipping around, he digs a wooden index finger into my chest. "I can never hit those fucking shots," he cries gleefully. "You're the fucking man!"

Inside: paralysis. Somehow, I manage to squeak out "That's what's up. Thanks man."

My masculinity now forever affirmed, I give him a mulligan on the scorecard, purging his one miss and earning him a perfect score of 25. 

As we walk back, I ask him if it was true. He affirms, relating details of the night of Mayday, 2011, one could only have witnessed through NVGs. He tells me how as soon as he was through the door, he had seen and tackled one of UBL's wives. "Thought I was gone, dude. Didn't know if she had a vest or what." 

He then tells me about hearing Rob's shots ring out from the ground. Calling the kill out, he then heard the rest of the stacked-up DEVGRU Red Squadron pass the word all the way down the dark staircase. A victorious echo that did not fade, but crescendoed. 

I ask him if the movie got it right. "About 85 percent," he shrugs. We bump fists, and he climbs into the idling bus. "Later dawg," he says, throwing up a Shaka fist. I return it. Trevor pulls off. 

Greg's standing behind me. "Don't catch feelings now," he cautions. I jump, spooked. "This place is queer enough as is."

[judsonrogers-blog]

Turning Wheel, Burning Flame

Nov. 8, 2016. The first thing I remember about that night was actually that afternoon. I was walking with my good friend Andrew, back from our history of electronic music class. The sun was setting and it turned the whole Santa Cruz forest a golden orange. We were talking about the election, how we had both voted Hillary despite supporting Bernie in the primaries. And yet, we were satisfied with the inevitable Clinton victory-- Trumpism would be a sociopolitical flash in American history, little more than a bad joke. A MAGA hat might even make a funny souvenir someday. The stable, positive present would surely be extended by the powers that were.

We drove into town to buy liquor. We were gonna need it, we joked. We were right.

I was living in the international dorms at the time. My friends and neighbors were all foreign exchange students, mostly Europeans (and Brits, with their newly-minted quasi-independence). As night fell, they got all gussied up for the spectacle. My friends, in suits and evening gowns, were all gathered around the TV in someone else's apartment. Reports of the ballots were streaming in. Florida was no surprise when it turned red. When Trump took Ohio, my stomach dropped. When Pennsylvania ran crimson, I removed myself. This wasn't good.

I couldn't watch with my expat cohort. To them, it was kabuki. For me, it was Revelations. 

I headed over to Andrew's dorm, across campus. I needed to bear witness with my fellow Americans. Nothing inspires patriotism like doom. 

Andrew wasn't around. I texted a girl from the same dorm I'd been seeing. She invited me up to her room. I was still lugging the handle of Fireball I'd bought at Safeway. 

We started pulling from it. Near silence. Her phone started blowing up. A crowd was amassing in the quarry. 

UC Santa Cruz had been built after the Berkeley riots of '65. It was, by design, difficult to gather in any one place. Campus was fragmented into ten discrete colleges, connected by soggy terrain, dense underbrush, and one breakneck two-lane. The only place it was possible to congregate was the old limestone quarry, which housed the student bookstore and administrative offices. 

Katie, the girl, was a theatre student. She threw me a metal clamshell. "What is this?" I asked.

"Warpaint," she deadpanned. 

I dragged the mascara from temple to temple, and took one of Katie's bandanas. I was already wearing all black. 

We set out for the quarry. Hundreds were streaming in with us. When we climbed the last hill, the maw of the quarry opened itself before us. Megaphones squawked impromptu slogans. Fires had been lit. 

There were thousands of students, all angry and panicked. The wounded youth were out for revenge. 

Eventually, one of the activists, standing upon the rock formation in the epicenter, commanded the crowd to go into town. Knock loose the bedrock of corruption, starting local. This was met with howling approval. It was also a terrible idea. 

Town was 3 miles away, downhill, accessible by only one steep road. It was night, and there were no sidewalks. Town was also filled with burly locals, who were never friendly with students, and who always ached to fight. 

Even if they'd made it to town, what would they do? Where would the aggravated resentment of a thousand Californian children go, but through windows and the emergency ward? 

This all hit me within the space of two seconds. Wide eyed, I pushed through the crowd and scrambled up the rock formation. 

"EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO GO TO TOWN," I hollered, "FALL IN FUCKING LINE." 

I had no intention of going downhill, but I did not betray this. I cajoled the crowd, saying that our fiery protest needed to go by each of the ten colleges to pick up as many demonstrators as possible. In reality, I knew people would break off when we stopped by their dorm, preemptively calling it a night. 

I climbed down from the rock, and the crowd split before me. I made my way to the new front. Katie followed me, and my expat friends had by now shown up, no longer in formalwear. 

We marched, carrying banners and singing chants, all through campus. We assumed the full road. Girls had gone topless. The men had draped their arms around each other. Hours flew by as murmurs of anxiety and revolution spread like influenza. 

Just as I'd suspected, the crowd dwindled with each bus stop. By the time we'd completed the circuit, there were only a few handfuls of hardline demonstrators left. They were now more interested in each other's company than in pillaging. I suggested a meadow (strategically located near my own apartment) to retreat and rest. This was met with mellow enthusiasm. 

I left the flower children and riot goons in the meadow. It was four in the morning. I slouched back towards my bunk, nothing more ringing in my head. 

I awoke at 3 the next afternoon. I had slept through my statistical modeling class. I learned that UCSC's lone Trump supporter, a buff Taiwanese guy I'd seen at the gym before, had been jumped. He was in critical condition. Outside, the tattered remains of a scorched American flag blew across the ground like a tumbleweed.

[judsonrogers-blog]

The Strange Encounter at Camp Widjiwagan

It was summer, and I was at camp. I couldn't have been more than 7 or 8. It started raining, and all the camp counselors (who were probably in their mid teens-early twenties) hurried us into the only available shelter, which was an outdoor pavilion. Since it was Tennessee, it was raining really, REALLY hard. The kind of sudden, heavy storm that only occurs in the South. 

The pavilion had a roof, but no walls. Me and all the other kids sat on the picnic tables inside, just chilling silently. Suddenly, a glowing orb slowly floated down from the ceiling, like it had passed through from the roof. I was pretty close to it, and occasionally it would crackle. We all watched in silent, wide-eyed awe as it dropped, almost like a fat glob of thick liquid, into the center table. When it did, it exploded and I was blinded by a flash of painless white light. 

I woke up some time later, as everyone else did simultaneously. I had been knocked down to the concrete floor. The counselors darted up, saying "wow, that ball lightning sure was cool!" in a kind of nervous way. The storm had stopped, but everything was still grey outside.