Although I am lauded as an accomplished cook, I rarely cook
for myself; being content to dine haphazardly, in disparate moments. Just as one hurries to be rid of a headache
by whatever means at hand, so I prepare food to sate my hunger in a count of
minutes-- the microwave a saving grace--come in the nick of time. A baked potato in six minutes, while a steak
grilles itself in the oven. A small can
o' peas to follow the spud with a momentary zapping; and the devilish business
is done.
I sit alone trying not to despoil yet another keyboard with
slopped food, the dorks hovering close to lick the finished plate. People who live alone should identify with
this repast of haste. One can attend a
restaurant only so many times without seeking the succor of a home cooked
meal. And one is never at liberty to dine
out in their underwear or to pull through a drive-in so adorned.
After cups and cups of coffee no longer dull the pangs, I
surrender to this inevitable routine—which comes usually in early afternoon. A feeding at 3:00 PM is no one’s idea of
lunch or dinner; yet this has become the mean time for me.
To recount my eating habits to my primary physician always
causes her a bout of eye-rolling and silent tsk-tsking. She views the rising numbers of my diabetes labwork
and cannot comprehend why I would ignore them with such a cavalier air. I sometimes wish I could assuage her fears
for the train wreck so clearly looming: from bad culinary habits, a
three-pack-a day habit and caffeine at all hours of the day and night; but I
can offer her no hope. None at all.
People in recovery (there are no ex-drunks or ex-addicts)
soon learn of this inexplicable inability to explain their behavior to others.
Friends and family, doctors and therapists, wives and lovers observe this
phenomenon of self-destruction with frustration and, eventually, despair. Knowledge is one thing; explanation is as
distant as the outer planets: out there, somewhere beyond vision or rational
thought.
This is all presage to a ditty about PTSD, my own, to be
precise. So, let me tell you where I
think it all began:
If you have heard me tell the prelude of this in meetings or
elsewhere, please bear a little patience as it now becomes integral to a larger
view. About ten days after arriving in
California from Viet Nam, following the final indignity of a digital
examination with fifteen other guys, all of us naked and bent over, I was
separated from active duty, given a military stand-by airfare, and sent on my
merry.
At LAX, I went directly to the men’s room, removed my Donald
Duck whites and mirror-shined black shoes, stuffing them all into a trash can,
then putting on the clothes that had been tailor-made for me in Hong Kong.
Even in 1970, the outfit was over the top. Starting with the
shoes: square-toed alligator black patent leather, with a garish brass buckle
and stacked heels; gray wool slacks with a subtle gray pinstripe; then the piece
de resistance—A pink pima cotton shirt with Tom Jones sleeves, cut to fit me
like a second skin.
My flight was the red-eye from Los Angeles to DC Dulles,
non-stop. I stepped up to the ticket
counter and had the standby ticket upgraded to coach. I believe, at this precise moment in time,
somewhere in the middle of June 1970, the PTSD began to gel. I was tanned like a beitel nut, close shorn
of beard and hair, wearing an outlandish costume and travelling not as a
returning sailor, but as some ordinary schlub in coach. Who the fuck was I kidding?
I think I was one of about four passengers on board that
night. In 1970, the airlines had not yet
begun packing passengers on board like kosher pickles in a jar. As often as not, these late-night flights
were practically empty. So, paying more
for a seat that would have been mine anyway was ludicrous. In my delusion of denial, and the shroud of
shame just now descending upon me--for the rest of my life--I was fooling
everyone that I was NOT coming home from Viet Nam; that I was NOT to be made an
object of derisive jeers; that I was NOT to be held responsible for a war I
hated as much as the rest of the world hated it.
As this uneventful flight approached the east coast, it was
announced that fog had Dulles socked in, that the aircraft was being diverted
to Baltimore. At 4:00 AM, the news would
not reach my parents, who had dutifully set out to retrieve their son. Upon
landing, we debarked for a charter bus which would take us all back to Dulles.
On the Beltway coming up to the Montgomery Road exit, I had
the driver pull over and let me out. The
fog in my brain was equal to the morning fog of the DC Metroplex. I clambered
up a steep embankment through tall weeds, thoroughly soaking the bottom half of
my classy gray slacks. I do not remember
how I got from that point to the stoop of my parents’ red brick Georgian in
Rockville. I just remember that that is
where they found me, waiting for this last minute confusion to unravel.
They had met the shuttle at Dulles, and then drove to
Baltimore when I wasn’t on board the bus.
After a futile search there, they finally headed back to the house. We greeted in the somber half-light of dawn,
my folks delirious at having their boy returned without mark or blemish; their
boy quite a bit less enthusiastic at being home and safe at last.
That’s what they thought.
That was what everyone thought.
They mistook the silence as evidence of no-harm-done. The very few who spoke out, like Secretary of State Kerry and such, ended
up making a political career for themselves.
To borrow a phrase from writers more gifted than I, the silence was
deafening.
For the remainder of that summer, I lived on the side porch,
mostly drunk and stoned, to give credence to the quiet numb quiescence in which
I found myself. No one came to ask me
questions about the war. No one ever did
from that time to this. Because my
existence was totally devoted to the business of denial and distraction—from
that vague summer all those years ago, for the next forty-two years—it never
occurred to me that my way out of the miasma was to finally tell my own story.
This is the last of my Viet Nam monographs. Of all of them, this was the most painful to
write; because after this came…the rest of my life—of those distractions and
denials that demonstrate the unseen marks and blemishes that riddled me through
and through. So, you see, the essence of
PTSD for many many of us is not the
act that created it; it is the act that followed. In one sense, I am still waiting on the redstone Georgian stoop, waiting for something to happen.
To amuse myself, and perhaps a few of you, I will press
forward with tales of the blond headed yeoman after his war was done. It may well be nothing more than something to
catapult my sorry sad consciousness onto another track; on the way to that last
whistle stop, the one that nobody expects will ever arrive for them…
