Won’t Be a Ghost
Scene 4
MANNING
uhm… anyway… I guess I can talk a little bit about myself… I mean, I’ve really got nothing to lose [I know, sounds desperate]. I was born in central Oklahoma, grew up in a small town called Crescent. I was short (still am), very intelligent (could read at 3 and multiply / divide by 4), very effeminate, and glued to a computer screen at these young ages. An easy target by kindergarten…grew up in a highly evangelical town with more church pews than people. So, I got pretty messed up at school… “girly boy” “teacher’s pet”, etc. Home was the same, alcoholic father and mother… Am I coming off too quick? I thought I’d reach out to someone who would possibly understand… :’(
LAMO
sorry for latency … things demanding my attention are exceeding my capacity to allocate resources, forcing me to double-book mentally, and that only scales so far.
MANNING
It’s ok, I’m just venting a lot. I’m very isolated at the moment… I’m in the desert, with a bunch of hyper-masculine trigger happy ignorant rednecks as neighbors… and the only safe place I seem to have is this satellite internet connection. And I already got myself into minor trouble, revealing my uncertainty over my gender identity… which is causing me to lose this job… and putting me in an awkward limbo. I’m sorry, I’m a total mess right now… :’(
And little does anyone know, but among this “visible” mess, there’s the mess I created that no one knows about yet. I have no idea what I’m doing right now. I’m so sorry.
LAMO
How did this not come up as an issue in your background check? I’m guessing you have an S and not a TS.
MANNING
TS/SCI. I enlisted in 2007… height of Iraq war, no-one double checked much.
LAMO
Well, hell, if you made it in, maybe I should reconsider the offer I got from what used to be JTF-CNO.
MANNING
Background checks are jokes anyway.
LAMO
It’s hit-or-miss.
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