John McClane

Because nothing particularly masculine happened to me today, but I do have some other writings in a similar vein, I'm going to include something I've already written. I call it "Hero":



At one point, the helicopter has John McClane pinned down on the roof of the Nakatomi Plaza Building in L.A. Nothing indicates this, but I get the feeling the building is so tall that one could see the tip of the antenna on the Twin Towers from here. Automatic rifles fire at McClane. Thin steel barrels light up the night sky. He’s bleeding. He’s tired. He’s not even supposed to be here. Unable to communicate with the men in the chopper, unable to retreat, unable to engage this magnitude of firepower, he wraps a firehose around his waist and jumps off the building. The firehose reaches its full length and pulls taut against the spool as McClane crashes into the thick window. He shoots the window, kicks the window, splashes through the window, and crawls across the broken glass to relative safety. The heavy cast iron spool breaks away from its anchors on the roof and falls past the window. McClane struggles to untie himself from the plummeting fire hose, which pulls him towards the open air of a quarter-mile plummet. The hose drags him across the thick broken shards of glass. He’s barefoot. Tired. Bleeding. At the last second, he frees himself from the hose, turns toward the future, and continues to kick bad-guy ass.

As for me, I learn in high school to say, “I wouldn’t trade my game for his,” whether talking about basketball, running, writing, studying, or sexual intercourse. On the other hand, if I could be anything else in the world for just a moment or a thousand years, I would be John McClane, swandiving off the Nakatomi Plaza Building amidst gunfire and small explosions as the world rises up underneath my bare feet and strong arms, certain of just one thing: whatever happens next better be ready for me.