BUCKY DONE GUN
Our CO’s daughter got into a nice school, and to me and the other worms that meant he was gonna blow his hooch in one go. Yep, drunk as a boiled owl. After a few minutes of groping around Black Betsy’s dark prefab bathroom pantries stocked with jacked up Euro meds and arm and hammer toothpaste, we finally plucked the prettiest flower in the field—a small orange bottle inside a white paper bag labeled BPM-KET, what they call a mythic pull, but it’s the same painkiller that all NATO SSN submarines are stocked with. In an hour, we’re so geeked that we can’t stay upright without falling over, but Mo is still looking at Facebook marketplace and saying, “I think I just sold my brutalist candlesticks.” * Whatever… this sub is gonna crank that M.I.A. all night and not give a fuck. We got great speakers up in here, and ballistic missiles.
It’s pushup time baby, skins only, and our hands get shredded by the corrugated metal floors. But we’re rolling now, and a boss bitch is rapping. Craig taps out after 45 and goes ‘Arg’ like a pirate—he knows his ass is in trouble after we’re done—the rest of us are in sync, pushing up and pulling down like we’re on a factory line. All my stupid buzzcut-having life has been practice for this exact moment, and my triceps are going beast. The dweebs are dropping like flies. By the time we hit 80, all the slim thicks have tapped out. I haven’t seen daylight in a month. By 120 the field has narrowed to the most juiced up fuckers left. I’m not even feeling a thing except for my pounding noggin and my sliced-up palms. If I lose, I’m either gonna kill myself or Craig. Now real legends start dropping out like Dogface and Scotty. They say they treated Fallujah like it was COD and I still wiped them out. By the time we hit 200, I’m starting to get giggly, and the dizziness turns into pins and needles. I needed this. There’s nothing like a lactic acid swell on a bean under 400 meters. My ears are gonna explode. One more… then another… and then I finally drop out and hit the ground moaning, but this was either PR, or PR on drugs, so I’m happy as a peach, plus I can’t hear a damn thing because of all the cheering and bass. They love me. For a second it all fades to white. I’m in pure oblivion—we could’ve been torpedoed for all I know.
When I come to, the cheering hasn’t ended because Klaus is still doing pushups. He’s only wearing underwear, and bullets of sweat are dropping to the floor off his shaved dome, but his face looks like a killer’s. “Three hundred and ninety seven!”, his dogtag clinks on the ground. “Three hundred and ninety eight!”, it clinks again. “Three hundred and ninety niiiiiiiine!” I swear to God the world goes silent… no more music or spittle spraying yelling, even that perpetual hum that comes from being underwater for so long… it all vanishes—everything except for Klaus’s dog-tag jingling as he hesitates in a plank hold. With excruciating concentration, Klaus squeezes his left hand into a fist as hard as possible and slowly puts it behind his back, before completing his final pushup one-handed. “Foooouuuuur hundred!” The noises come back all at once, and soon Klaus is getting thrown into the air and caught again by the crowd of monkeys while I stare from the floor.
Afterwards they surround him as he sits on a stool and wipes his neck with a towel. I hiss, “What are you sitting around for? Waiting for him to pull his dick out?”, and Klaus, with that special glimmer in his pale blue eyes says “How can he understand when he defiles himself? My friends, it‘s just like Goethe said, ‘Sobald du dir vertraust, sobald weißt du zu leben.’” The quietness intensifies, and Dogface asks “What does that mean boss?”
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live”, and the crowd goes “OH SHIT”, and I spend the rest of the night stuffed in the locker where Craig should’ve been, my NDMA pores slowly opening as I pee out military grade ketamine on my pants and swear revenge. You will rue the day you Kraut fuck.
* Submarine internet buoys, like the ALSEAMAR X-SUB buoy, are devices that allow submerged submarines to communicate with the surface without raising a periscope or antenna, using a tethered buoy that transmits GPS and AIS data.
GIF by Max Shoham.
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MAXWELL NORMAN’S ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Dutch Interior - Moneyball (2025)
I had the good fortune of catching these tuneful Los Angeles country-rockers at hometown show in sunny Southern California, and the strength of their worn-denim indie impressed me enough to check out this record. There’s a glut of artists doing this blend of Americana and scrappy garage rock right now (some of us liked MJ Lenderman before it was cool lol), but Dutch Interior have songs on top of songs to back up the style. There’s uneasy slowcore on “Canada,” a dreamland-cowgirl shuffle on “Wood Knot,” a brawnier banger with “Fourth Street,” and the eerie organ ballad “Beekeeping,” and that’s just the singles. Moneyball is in turns gentle, unsettled, and snarling, like a pet you’re trying to tame. And just like an ill-tempered puppy, the warmth within makes it all worth it. One of the best records so far this year, and someday I’ll be telling tomorrow’s hipsters “I was there.” Get hip now.
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Come celebrate The Word’s 50th anniversary on April 13.