“My heart was
fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy,
And when wrenched
by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure
The violence of the
change without torture such as you cannot even imagine”
-Mary Shelley-
Early up AM. Not
to vote; to perform a Houdini outta the damn night-night from the straight
jacket of weighted sheets holding me firm in place. Lessee—Scooter + Clancy + the Goofalator =
120 tons; with Stick and Jypsi as bookends: one to the stomach, one to the
butt.
Skipped the dangle, straight to the pot, next to the other pot,
on to the keyboard; suck nasty smoke and listen to the percule-gurgle and the
considerations of cerebral musings that are shit moving on to Shine-ola.
Iz my irritation showing?
Do you think these Capri pants make my butt look too big?
OK, here’s the deal: went to the doctor yesterday to
learn nothing that I didn’t already know.
The diabetes is holding its own.
The erectile dysfunction is a mystery since I don’t have anywhere to put
one if I had one.
The VA doles out two Viagrows a month; to be split in two
for a total allowance of four hard-ons from one full moon to the next.
I put in my monthly prescription request; and have accumulated a nice little
collection so far. If I should ever have
a passing fancy to off myself, I’ll just swallow all them blue pills whole and
go out in an explosion of ecstasy.
Maybe.
It was fun, telling my new primary physician the truth
for a change. Yes, I smoke three-plus
packs a day. No, I don’t want to enter
some damn program for smoke cessation.
Yes, I eat like a bird these days.
No, I won’t cut a deal to have my insulin increased if I promise to eat
more. Gawd-almighty! Doctors!
Greg House repeatedly asserts in the television series that
patients lie. When I suggest this to Dr. Madam-typing-away,
she rolled her eyes (a frequent enough mannerism to suggest a permanent tic)
and retorted that patients don’t really
lie. They just play to their denial!
Geehoseafat,
medical school and detective school all rolled into one! I’m so glad they’re learning something
besides medicine these days.
This recently acquired attitude of telling you that in
fact those Capri Pants do exagerate your bootie is a natural progression of the
promise I made to myself to tell all--of my Viet Nam--to the best of my
recollection.
Rigorous honesty, at the
end of the day, can be a real motherfucker for both the adherent and the
recipient.
As I see the light at the end of my personal tunnel and
run dry of memories, the Viet Nam Monologues will come to a final destination.
Unfortunately (or not), I have added a new addiction to
my repertoire of obsessive habits—writing.
That will continue until I run out of cigarettes and coffee. Pray, each of you hungry readers that such a conundrum never
comes. Pray.
I’m going to use one last allusion to Apocalypse Now, and let it retreat back
into cinematic history.
The character played by Robert Duvall—Lt. Col. Kilgore of
the 9th Mobile Air Cav—was typical of many people who fought in Viet
Nam. They engaged the enemy with
ruthless overkill and did not think for an instant that what they were doing
had any moral consequence. The Kilgore’s
never wavered in the conviction of the true believer; never questioned their own
attitudes...or methods.
Kilgore indeed ‘never got as much as a scratch over
there’ and returned to the world with his sanity intact.
Why? Because only a person
bearing the inherent goodness of humanity can go insane. That would account for all the rest of
us. Home again, home again, our noggins
just a mite askew.
Except me. I went
insane standing there before my barracks after Hong Kong with 60 days left
in-country. This is what I did:
First, I did not share my experience with Christina
Kwan…with anyone. I didn’t even speak to
Frosty, who had been witness to most of it.
Like the good addict/alcoholic who squirrels his stash away, I hid my thoughts so
that no one could steal them, or sour them with reality.
I would not accept reality; I wanted to stay lost…in her.
I convinced myself that when I returned, I would simply not be customer number 3,024, up a
hundred men from my time before. She
would see me sitting, waiting, as she entered our bar; her face would light a million candles in smiling
recognition of the one, the only Petruchio, who kept his promise and returned
for her.
Second, I began immediately to plot my return to Hong
Kong. I went so far as to scour the Camp
Library for material related to jobs in the Crown Colony: American companies
with offices, U.S. Government facilities, airline ticket and operations in Hong
Kong.
I thought of hiring on with a shipping line; perhaps
joining the Merchant Marines. I even
thought of just taking my accumulated pay upon the immediate separation from
active duty awaiting me at Long Beach, buying a one way air fare to Hong Kong
and working out the details when I got there.
The fly-myself-back scheme was marred by an imaginary
phone conversation:
“Hi, Mom? Yeah, I just landed at Norton. Yeah, I’m happy to be safe. Yeah, is Dad on the extension? Hi Dad!
Listen, I need to tell you both something. As soon as I get seps in about a week, I’m
going to fly back to Hong Kong. What? No, I am serious; I’m very serious.
What? Well, I’m going back there for
Christina. Who? No, Dad, she’s my
girlfriend. I met her there on R&R.
What? No, I met her at a church
social. I think she’s a secretary or a translator
or something. What? Well, I’m going to ask her to marry me and come back to
Rockville to live. I was hoping we could
put up in the upstairs bedroom across from Linda’s. We’d only be there until I
could get a job and maybe Christina too.
No, I’m sorry. My mind’s made up!
Listen, they’re calling us to the ground transport. I’ll call as soon as I can with more details. I love you! Bye-bye.”
As I composed this exchange with my parents, I already
knew it was never going to happen.
While the glamor and intricacy of these myriad
machinations played to Johnny Mathis love songs in my head, my delicate psyche
struggled to protect me from the heart-breaking truth. I had no job skills to offer any prospective
employer. I had no language skills to
boast. I had no degree to hold up as
symbolic of my abilities. My ignominious
exit from University was accompanied by a glut of hours with a grade point
average so low that completing my education was close to a mathematical
impossibility.
I was nothing. I
was nowhere. I was without an oar and
without a rudder to steer.
While my poor overwhelmed mind attempted to shield me
from the hopelessness of my grandiose plans, day-to-day life became a contrast
that was more and more intolerable, as time in-country plodded its painfully
slow way towards Freedom Hill.
To a man, every Vet who sees this remembers and feels his
own agony at being short. It was the
same for everyone, regardless of place or position: counting the days; and
denying the fear of death, in relentless pursuit of us all.
I had never felt clinical depression before. The identifiers were all there, but there
were no psychologists, no friends, and no strangers on a bus bench to either
hear me or to observe my increasingly bizarre behavior. Acting and sounding crazy in Viet Nam gave no
one cause for alarm.
Lost in myself thus, I became only marginally aware of how
profoundly my situation had changed from just a few weeks prior. When I came out of my daze, down on the
Service Craft Causeway, my small comfortable daytime village had been
transformed from familiarity to a fairly good rendition of Dante’s descent into
Hell.
That I was to survive this coming ordeal still perplexes
me all these years later. The madness
wasn’t over; it had simply become another reality.
More tomorrow. I
can’t do this anymore today.
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