37.

“All those pockets of crazies,” my friend Tom Bamberger says, “but so what? The world is full of crazies.”

That’s true, I think, so why don’t I get over those days? So what if I wound up in the military? It’s happened to tens of millions, probably hundreds of millions of men over the years.

“Armies have been around so long no one even notices them anymore,” the ghost of Albert Speer says, putting his bony fingers together. “It isn’t prostitution that’s the oldest business in the world; it’s war. Mother Battle and her bloody babies.”

But I wasn’t really bloodied, was I?

“Let’s just wait and see if you tell the truth, Ryan; see if you’re willing to tell what really happened to you.”