He Poured Beer Down My Jacket And Demanded My Call Sign Until He Realized Who I Really Was

was the old one. Take the exit. Leave before the paperwork starts. Let command protect itself the way command always prefers to, quietly, internally, in language that leaves the record clean. I had spent enough time in enough rooms to understand how institutions digest their own discomfort.

I had done that once before. Years before, after a memorial continue reading …