GUILT OF A MACHO-MAN

The News ....

     ''Did you hear the news that's going on the rounds here today.?''

     ''Hear what news, I only got here now. I got held up in traffic trying to get out in time for that fishing trip we talked about .... and in my mad rush to get here I nearly ran over a stupid dog too, lying out in the middle of the road as if he owned the whole freaking patch .... stupid dog, when I think about it now, maybe he was waiting for somebody to come along and put him out of his misery ..... remind not to lie down in the middle of the road ....

you know how close I was to hitting him ..... I .....''

     ''Hey, forget about the stupid dog or I will help you myself out onto the road ... our 'fly-boy', he has not been seen for the last two days.

No-where to be found ... or that seaplane of his.''

     ''So.!''

     ''So ... what do you mean 'so' ... 

it's not like him. He took that plane of his out after doing some repair work on the engine and he has not made radio contact since he put it's nose into the air, which is not like him and it's not playing the game by the rules. You know that, he knows that and we all know that'' ....

''So .... flew into the deep blue horizon did he.?''

     ''This is no freaking-joking-matter we've got here. The coast guard has been called out, and have, that I know off, reported finding nothing as of yet.''

     ''Ohh shit .... sorry .... 
I thought you were joking. We had arranged to go fishing today, just him and me, I was wondering why he didn't phone to remind me of the time we were going out in that boat of his, he said he would phone me but he didn't. I knew he was working on the plane. He was saying he wanted to take a long trip, didn't say where he was going to me.''

     ''This is not like him at all.
It's a bit if a 'Bermuda Triangle' mystery at the moment until we hear from the coast guard.''

     ''You don't think he really did fly off into the deep blue horizon ... do you.?''

     ''Don't say things like that .. but I don't know. 

That plane of his could have ditched, he could have run out of fuel, lots of things could have happened.

Don't forget it was an old two seater seaplane he rescued and spent all his spare time and cash on from the metal crusher.

Look .. all I am saying here is, he was an experience pilot over thirty years flying from 'dust croppers' to combat to hauling commercial. If I know 'fly-boy' I would put my money down on that he knew what he was doing, he knew so well, and if he did do it,
fly off, it was .... let's say, premeditated.''

     ''What you mean ... he knew what he was doing, how can you say that.?''

     ''Well, he wasn't himself the last month or so,

now was he ... truthful, even you were saying it. 

I thought he would come around and say something to me but  you know how he is, only talks when he's in the mood or has something to say and it will be in that boat of his, if he has anything to say. 

It's like the 'freaking-floating-confessional-box' on water, that boat. Him up front with pole in the water, beer in hand and talking away as if he was the only one in the boat, never looking back to see if you were paying attention to what he was saying, and never asking for your own opinion ... 

like he cared less.''

     ''Yeah ... sure, but that's the way he was, you know that ... how long have we been friends.?''

     ''Did he say anything to you the last time you were out with him in that boat.?''

     ''Funny you should bring that up ...

I mean, him saying anything to me. 

About a week ago we were out fishing in the 'confession-box', you know it has more repairs on it than an old shoe, well he kept talking on-and-on about his time flying in Nam.

Never stopped on about it, but as soon we came on shore again he shut up ...

 no more was ever said about it, so I gave it no more thought on my part. Just at that time he wanted to get it off his chest, real bad like, you know how he is .. getting moody in his old age too.''

     ''Yeah, I know ... what did he say, tell me.?''

     ''I forget most of it now, as I said, I gave it no  more thought.''

     ''Come on man ... remember, try to remember, it might be important. It could very well explain what is happening now to him, the state of mind he might be in too. I know we said we would not talk about those days when we were in Nam together flying. We just got on with what we have here when we got back, trying to keep our own shit together and not going off the rails all together with it.''

     ''Well you know he was flying napalm all that time of his duty out there. He use to say it was just like flying a 'dust cropper' ... it was getting rid of the termites in their 'dug-outs' ...

it was how he handled it. We all needed to justify what we were doing and that was his way with it .... 'justifying' .. that is.''

     ''What brought that shit on now at this time of his life, Christ All-Mighty man ... we can't live forever and who wants to anyway, we have seen and done enough for two life times, I want no more part in it, I will be happy to move on when my time comes.''

     ''I think it might have been some 

in-your-face documentary on T.V. he saw recently about that 'damned-war-from-the-start'. So easy now for them to talk about it in the open, like we are all buddie-buddie about it.

He told me it jogged back the memories like 'real time' clicking in and maybe the nightmares too and God knows what other shit he was holding out on.

It all came up and out like vomit and the bad after-taste was still there in every word he spoke, if you ask me he was starting to lose it altogether.''

     ''That just might qualify for a 'suicide-run' in that seaplane. Might want to go out like his famous name sake, James Dean, the actor.

The right man in the wrong place at the right time for young American adults who wanted their own

'Rebel-Hero'.''

     ''James Dean did not commit suicide,

I have you know. It was an on-coming car making a turn that crossed into Dean's lane and ran into him, head on, bang-crash. That driver of that car was the wrong man in the wrong place in the wrong car. He lived on till an old age but never talked about it, not to nobody. I often think at times how destiny steps in and surprises us when least expected. 

Three movies I think, Dean made and then life pulls the 'joker' .... dead ... what a waste.''

     ''Jeez, now it clicks in my mind as to why he called that sea plane of his 'Rebel-Spyder' and me thinking it was to do with his Ego .... and maybe it was.

James Dean was driving at the time of his death a Porsche 550 Spyder .. 

if I remember correctly now... and his most celebrated movie was ... let me think .. yes ..

'Rebel Without a Cause',

made him a cultural icon, and what was the year he died in now .. remind me on this one.?''

     ''It was September 30th 1955.

Yes ...'55, I will never forget that date,

it was also the year my old man died, fell into the water-well at the back of our house and drowned, poor bastard, drunk out of his mind on bourbon ... 

that's how I remember the date, plus, it was also the year Dean starred in the movie 'Rebel' ...

that's how I know all this stuff about James Dean and about the 'Rebel' date.?''

     ''Our 'fly-boy' .... James Jack Dean told me while we were out fishing in that 'confession-box',

how he was living in the shadow of Dean and using his name and name sake throughout his life to get his way, it was a game to him he got caught up in and he just kept it up to the extent it was hard to tell the difference between reality and the illusion ...

but every man has a story to tell and that's his.''

     ''Pass me a beer .... so your old man fell down a water-well ... that's interesting .... 

my mother walked off a bridge one night leaving my old man to bring six of us up, from eight to six months, and going through the rest of his miserable life blaming himself for it ... never got over it.

Nobody could give a reason as to why she did do it at the time ... but now they can say it was postnatal depression but you can just never tell with people why they take their own lifes ... can be a shit life,
that's my story .... 

boo, do I get my beer now.''

The Story ....

     James Jack Dean Sr. named his first son, James after his own father and James Jack Dean grew up in a some-what happy childhood. When he reached his teenage years he was more 'happy' with-in his life, swapping baseball cards and girls and sometimes not in that order. 

The baseball cards was a passion that will go with him into life.
The girls, well ... they were just there,

like birds can fly. 

 For the girls, they were out on a date with 'James Dean' and when 'Rebel Without a Cause' was on celluloid and showing in the drive-in's, well, life became even more interesting for our 'fly-boy'. He took it on personal-like to live up to his name sake and be 'The Rebel'.

The male homo-sapiens he always came up against in life gave him a more rough time over it .. 

but he could look after himself. They were jealous of 'fly-boy' and most of the time tried to pick fights with him, to rearrange his natural 'Marlboro Man' looks about his face, and you know what, he did look like the 'Marlboro Man' up on the billboards. 

He had that 'cowboy' look, the out-door tan, the cloths, the horse, the cigarette in hand and that silly grin on his face as if he knew the 'secrets' of all life was to be found way out on the open range with a cigarette in hand, horse under your butt and grinning away to yourself ... not a worry in the world.  

How many men day-in day-out looked at those

larger-than-life billboards while in traffic jams wishing they were the real 'Marlboro Man' ... 
free and easy. 

How many men and women took up smoking because of the 'Marlboro Man' on the billboard looked a nice guy, friendly and ... 
free and easy. 

What if the 'Marlboro Man' was a homo-sapien-homo-sexual-out-on-the-range ... 
free and easy, 

well nothing wrong with that, and maybe that's why he was 'grinning' but our James Jack Dean,

'fly-boy', was 'Macho-Man' himself,

one hundred present through-out, the all true American 'Macho Man', no butt

kissing here ... no sir. He was driven with a desire, a real inbuilt passion to prove his manhood 
by doing what all 'macho men' do-do,
 and that was ... flying planes,
like as if there is no fear and no tomorrow.   The word 'fear', no matter how hard you 

try, is not to be found any where in the 
vocabular sounds of 'Macho-Man'.

Confrontation of the moment,

that's what 'macho men' do ....

Confrontation of the moment. 

The girls knew that and the men could see it too,

like hunting dogs smelling the wind for the kill but destiny gave 'fly-boy' the name and the 'looks' to go with it and he did not let destiny down, let alone

'The' James Dean ...

he will not be turning in his grave. 

     ''I rode into life on a horse called Destiny'' ...

is what he would say when he had a few beers, like hell the beer reminded him. You know the funny-thing is, now that I think of it ...

our 'fly-boy' never smoked in his entire life, not even 'grass' let alone rode a horse called 'Destiny', or any bloody horse for that matter, the only saddle he was in was .... well you can guess that one for yourself.''

James Jack Dean loved flying, no disputing that, hence his nick-name 'fly-boy'. It was his 'reason for being' and fishing too, flying and fishing and also 'fishing' in it's broader sense.

Anything 'fly-boy' had a passion for began with the letter 'F' ... full stop. 

It also cost him dearly two marriages. Away from home most of the time flying and what with his good looks and name .. it played on his wife's minds, both of them at the time, that his now ex-wife's had good reason to be concerned. So things soon came apart no matter what was said to try to patch things up ...

but it was the women who were not married to him tended to stay longer.

     ''Good baseball cards in good condition were more easy to find than the woman who could live with me  and understand me'' ....

he always would say it, believing in the truth of his own words.

He never spoke about his combat-flying but he lived with the memories and the nightmares that visited him like old friends as he got older, and as he got older he got worse.

It was all coming in on him. The nightmares became more alive to him, like he was inside a war game. He dreaded dying in his sleep in his bed ... 

he had a real fear about that one. He always wanted to 'go' in 'Rebel-Spyder' his seaplane, he would say this joking with the boys but they knew he was not joking. He said it too often for it to be a joke anymore. 

They knew him too well for that sort of thing not to have some truth in it and it now looks like he made the truth into a fact, and fact into reality and reality into the stuff legends are made off. He became his own hero. He was making the James Jack Dean 'real life movie'. His was his own writer, producer, director and leading macho-man-star ....

he was calling the shots and death was going to be no surprise to him ...

it was not going to take him in one of his nightmares,

nightmares he was living-out into daytime. 

He was now his own God and he was going to have the last say, well at least that's how he saw it as to how he was going to die.

The coast guards arrived back into port with James Jack Dean in a black body bag, all zipped up and sometime late into the afternoon. They found his seaplane bobbing up and down like a cork in the water, empty on fuel and with him still strapped in his seat starting to feed the fish, three days after he took off in 'Rebel-Spyder'. 

There was an autopsy done on the body of James Jack Dean and it was found when they opened him up he was eaten inside with cancer like rust eating away at metal only it was his insides but if that was not enough to deal with and the truth be known by medical science .... guilt too.

Guilt with a capital 'G'.

The type of guilt you can flog yourself with over and over where the scares never heal over, but the doctor's could not find that one, the big 'G'.

They could find the big 'C' but not the big 'G', but his fishing buddies did and knew about the big 'G' a long time ago, well before he knew he had it himself.

It was not the cancer that flew the little two seater seaplane that day but a bigger disease called

'Guilt'. It was 'guilt of a macho-man' that had the controls of the seaplane 'Rebel-Spyder'. It was 'Guilt' that flew out into the horizon that sunny day ...

that day ... September 30th.

By all accounts and these are only other peoples opinions .... James Jack Dean was just in the wrong place on the wrong date at the wrong time ..... 

Or was he ....

The End ....

     'Rebel-Spyder' sank to the bottom of the ocean, the perfect resting place for a seaplane. 

It's owner, James Jack Dean
was put to rest in mind and body in the

'Confession-Box',  

the boat whom he shared his 'guilt' with and did all his 'soul-searching' in. 

   

And the legend of James Jack Dean, 

a.k.a. 'fly-boy', a.k.a. 'Macho-Man'...

It may not go into history like James Dean the actor and become the stuff what legends are made off but it will live on in the earth's 'energy' as his contribution to mankind for the greater good, guilt or no guilt, just like all human beings before him and will do after him, making their own legends and contributions to the world and humanity, it's all about Destiny,

take it or leave it .... free and easy.


''Destiny ...
 is not about getting what you want,
it's about wanting what you have got,
for each of us is the author of our own
Destiny.''