The Testosterone-Fueled Adventures of Dirk Studman, Manly Man of Manliness

The crew of the International Space Station was shocked when the hatch to the SpaceX Dragon capsule opened and Dirk Studman floated in behind his signature disarming grin. This resupply mission was supposed to have been autonomous and unmanned. The ISS crew consisted of three experienced Russian cosmonauts and mission specialist Dag Nilsen from Norway.

“Forgive my unexpected visit,” Studman said in unaccented Russian. “Unfortunate international circumstances dictate that I impose upon you briefly.” Mission specialist Nilsen heard the words in Norwegian.

One of the cosmonauts was the preternaturally gorgeous Svetlana Fedorov, formerly principal dancer at the Bolshoi. She subsequently earned a PhD in astrophysics while simultaneously raising her twin nephews orphaned in a tragic catfish noodling accident. Her two male comrades were hardened Spetsnaz veterans. They were collectively skeptical of Studman and his intentions.

Studman quickly settled into the routine of ISS life. He dominated the Russian card game of P’yanitsa despite never before having played. Forty-eight hours later the four scientists counted Dirk Studman among their dearest friends.

On day three Studman glanced at his watch and said, “Well, I must be going. Thank you for your hospitality.” Before anyone could react, he was in his EVA suit, a sleek armored case connected to his waist via an aluminum carabiner.

Svetlana leaned toward him and whispered, “Am I pregnant?”

Studman could always tell. Though he had not physically touched her, Svetlana Fedorov would not be the first woman to find herself with child simply from being in the same room with Dirk Studman. Smiling sweetly, Studman said, “Nyet.”

In one practiced movement Studman was in the airlock. He depressurized the space by rote. Glancing at his Rolex Submariner a final time, he waved to his new friends and exited the ISS without fanfare. The backplate of the Rolex was engraved with, “Thanks, brother. Chuck.”

The watch had been a gift from Chuck Norris after their last afternoon sparring together in Norris’ dojo. Norris later noted to friends that he had learned a great deal that day. When the moment was right, Studman pushed off vigorously toward earth. The view was sublime. Svetlana wept.

Two hours and twenty-seven minutes later, Studman deployed his parachute. A quarter hour after that he touched down noiselessly in total darkness on the horse track of the Ryongson Residence north of Pyongyang, North Korea. Studman removed his space helmet and soaked up the silence. The air was sweet with just a hint of kimchi. Despite having just HALO’d into North Korea from the International Space Station, his heartrate loitered in the high fifties.

Studman’s dark camouflage fatigues rendered him invisible. He popped open the case and ran his fingers over its contents in the darkness. The German submachine gun, sound suppressor, and spare magazines were all right where he had put them one week and a lifetime ago back in Langley. In thirty seconds he had his HK MP-7 loaded, charged, and ready for action. He let the gun drop onto its sling before stowing his spacesuit, parachute, and dunnage behind the stable. He then activated his NVGs and pressed toward the foreboding enormity of the main edifice. It was showtime.

Avoiding the North Korean guards was not a challenge. Studman had both an otherworldly proximity sense and an uncanny ability to blend in with foliage, furniture, and household décor. In hard dark he could subconsciously sense the location of walls, furniture, and women in ways that scientists could not fully quantify.

Agency scientists originally suspected this capability to have been a strange sort of sonar akin to that of dolphins, but that had been empirically disproved. During the associated research, Studman had learned a great deal about dolphins. He maintains a regular correspondence with several of them to this day. Now his uncanny proximity sense was understood to be simply a thing he did.

Avoiding the array of armed guards was Childs play. In moments Studman stood poised outside the Supreme Leader’s master bedroom. Pausing to soak up the slightest sounds emanating from within the expansive bedroom suite, he could detect the slightest whimpering. With grim determination he readied his SMG, flipped up his goggles, and pressed purposefully through the door.

The rotund North Korean despot sat at a massive ornate table. In one hand he held an adorable squirming beagle puppy. In the other he grasped a dental tool. Shock and surprise registered on the dictator’s moon-like face. Without a moment’s hesitation, the highly-trained CIA Special Activities Division operative raised his German submachine gun and shot the short fat man in the chest with a five-round burst. The sound suppressor kept the report sufficiently contained as not to alert the nearby security contingent.

He was answered by a shower of sparks and the acrid smell of burned electrical components. Kim fell heavily out of his chair, his gaze disconjugate and his limbs now writhing athetoid and wormlike. So, Kim Jong Un was actually an evil robot. Studman had long suspected.

Studman dropped the abused puppy into his cargo pocket and made his way next door to the suite of Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong Un’s psychotic nutjob sister. It seemed she was the real power behind the throne, anyway. He used his simply breathtaking romantic powers to convince the 33-year-old under-tyrant to fetch him a helicopter. Ninety minutes later he landed the North Korean Mi-24 Hind gunship at Camp Humphries in South Korea to great fanfare. At the same instant Kim Yo-jong was also pondering her pregnancy status. Studman had likewise not touched her, either.

Studman retired to the BOQ’s at Humphries with his new dog. He named the adorable beast Monica, after his mother. Once he had cleared and stowed his gear, he enjoyed a protracted shower before curling up with the grateful little beagle. Another day, another despot...

Origin Story

Dirk Studman was the oldest of three brothers. The next two Studmen were a neurosurgeon and a male model. They fought constantly as children but would die for each other today. They all three had matching tattoos, but no one else, to include their wives, had ever seen them.

Dirk’s mom was first runner up to Miss America. She gifted him with physical perfection and the capacity to embrace disappointment as an agent for personal improvement. Her talent during the pageant was a series of Keysi katas. She spent two summers during college in Israel teaching Krav Maga to Mossad operatives. She had incorporated martial arts into their homeschool curriculum as soon as her boys were weaned. The Studman boys revered their mom. They were also more than a little bit frightened of her.

The Studman patriarch was a warrior poet. He had served with MACV-SOG in Vietnam and carried a Kalashnikov bullet in his right thigh. The Studman kids liked to see the scar. After the war he came home and earned a PhD in music with an emphasis on the flute. He had met the future Mrs. Studman at a Baptist Student Union mixer. They were married six weeks later. In the perennial parenting quandary of good cop/bad cop, he was ever the good one. The boys were crazy about him as well.

Dirk began shaving at age nine and set his first world record a year later (The farthest arrow ever shot from a bow using only one’s feet—ninety-seven yards. The record still stands.) When asked why he chose that particular discipline, the boy replied, “Sometimes your hands are full. Also, if it was easy everybody would do it.”

As a child, Dirk courted chaos. One afternoon while out playing with his brothers he saw a strange man attempting to entice a local girl to get into his car. Dirk did not intervene until the man grabbed her arm and the little girl screamed. The authorities subsequently investigated. However, no charges were filed as no one ever found a body. At the time, Dirk was ten. The little girl grew up to become a weather person on a local television station. Studman speaks little of this episode today.

Dirk became an Eagle Scout at age twelve. That same year he saved an elderly woman’s life in Cracker Barrel when she choked on a country fried pickle. An emergency room physician who was also present later attested that it was the most perfectly executed Heimlich Maneuver he had ever seen. The woman was an heiress to the Tillamook ice cream fortune and insisted Studman accept a monetary reward. Dirk accepted graciously and then donated the entire sum to charity.

For his thirteenth birthday, Dirk’s mother gave him a book on hang gliding. With his brothers’ assistance, he crafted his own machine out of aluminum tubing and bed sheets. Welding aluminum is hard, but Dirk mastered it readily enough. With the hang glider complete, the three boys retired to a local hilltop for a test flight.

The day was perfect with a modest headwind and no clouds. Dirk had improvised a launching device that used three Home Depot buckets full of gravel as a counterweight. While the launch was uneventful, Dirk inadvertently banked into a nearby tree and broke his right tibia. His parents took him to the local hospital for treatment. Enroute he postulated that his glider had a CG problem. Calculating the center of gravity is a perennial challenge with homebuilt aircraft. The following day he flew for some twenty-seven minutes on a wicked thermal. He later opined that his plaster cast likely rectified the craft’s balance issues.

Dirk had his first double date that same year. He was the only guy, but the girls were twins. They played tennis and then went out for Frosties at Wendy’s. Dirk had never before played tennis. There had never been time. They all three had a wonderful evening. Though both women went on to successful careers and families, they each still harbor secret feelings for him.

At age fourteen, Dirk borrowed $1,000 from his parents and started a web-based business. When later he sold GoDaddy.com it was responsible for 4% of the commerce on the Internet. He established his money in a perpetuating trust. Though Dirk Studman clearly does not desire money, he does feel ever driven to give back. It is a little-known fact that the American public library system went bankrupt in 2005. That America’s book repositories are still open is thanks solely to Dirk Studman and his e-fortune. His donations were entirely anonymous. He would be scandalized to know I just told you that.

In Dirk’s home state you had to be fifteen to get your driver’s license. However, the State Police said that, in his case, they’d make an exception. He earned his at twelve.

Dirk’s first car was a nicely-seasoned Ford Fiesta. Six months after he began driving, his car blew a head gasket. Dirk fabricated a replacement out of those rubber things you use to cover dishes in a microwave. Doing so was easy compared to welding aluminum.

Part of the reason Dirk had lived as long as he had was an uncanny ability to blend into a crowd. Unless he was standing alongside his mother, Dirk was always the best-looking person in the room. However, most folks didn’t notice. They would simply pass by and feel inexplicably better. It was weird.

Had you asked Dirk Studman his profession he would have struggled to elucidate an answer. He did everything well. He did Law School and Medical School simultaneously but never practiced Law or Medicine. He became a legend in mock court. His patients also consistently described Studman as the most empathetic person they had ever met. Elderly women in nursing homes found him physically irresistible. It was unseemly.

In retrospect it was inevitable that a man of Studman’s stature might gravitate toward government service. Five years as a Delta Force operator had made him the requisite connections. Training for the CIA’s Special Activities Division is legendarily arduous. Once he had completed the course, Studman could not reliably render an opinion. He had CLEP’ed out of most of it.

Most of the rest of Dirk Studman’s government service remains justifiably classified. Suffice to say, it has been pretty darn amazing. Someday he’ll no doubt publish his autobiography, but you’d best be both well-rested and sitting down to read it….