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Patrick doesn’t love being interviewed. He greets my opening question with an uncomfortable silence, squinting at the pot-plant behind me as if it might somehow be to blame for getting him into this. 

            “Is this going to be anonymous?”

            He doesn’t relax until we get onto the French Foreign Legion.

“You go to France and you apply, you give them your passport, and they do psychological aptitude tests, physical fitness tests. And if they decide that you’re suitable you go through basic training which is, ah, hell on earth.”

            As Patrick talks me through the gruelling selection process for the elite, multi-national French army unit, you can see him forget that I’m recording, watch him relax into visions of military parades and camouflage tents. He starts talking with his hands—not to mention eyebrows.

            “You get yelled at, abused, punched. They break you down so they can build you back up.”

            He tells me about super-marathon hikes in ill-fitting boots, unforgiving standards for uniform folding, and continual verbal abuse. One recruit, he says, was ordered to “mow” 60 metres of grass using a pair of fingernail scissors.

            “And he’s like ‘sixty fucking metres!’ But it’s not about why you’re doing it, it’s about you do what you’re told. Because when you’re being shot at, if you don’t do what you’re told, instantly, somebody’s going to die.”

            Lines like this flow of Patrick’s tongue with the ease of experience, free of self-consciousness or irony. At times, I can almost forget that he has not, in fact, ever taken a life-or-death order.

            “I mean, they only take one in nine. It’s a pipe dream, but I have to try it. ‘What if’ is way worse than actual failure.”

“Um. And after that. I don’t know. I like the idea of being a tour guide.”