four

I lay awake that night, thinking about a letter from Nicky, written within a week of his arrival in Saigon.

Dear Asshole,

Arrived Saigon. Not what I expected, but what the hell can anybody expect anywhere?

You’d never know there was a war on. Taxi cabs running up and down the streets, lots of restaurants, people sitting on the sidewalks, drinking beer, making jokes. Looks kind of happy to me. And if it weren’t for the occasional Army jeep, you’d say, shit, this is vacationland.

Just waiting and watching, scratching and snoring. That’s the problem with this war, they tell me. Gotta make it happen, so says my friend Eddie Sloane, another asshole like you (he dropped out of a college somewhere in Iowa). I better do something before I lose my fucking mind.

Lots of girls and cheap, too, I’m told. Beautiful, in their weird yellow way, with long legs and skinny necks. Fuck like bunnies. If you’re lucky your dick won’t swell up like one of Dad’s big zucchinis and drop off. (Remember those zucchinis? Big motherfuckers, weren’t they? He used to come into the kitchen with them in September and scare the shit out of Mom, waving a big one around. “Put that goddamn thing away,” she’d say.)

Dad isn’t the kind of guy who normally waves his club. You aren’t either. Nice and quiet types. Peaceful and easy. Mom likes that, huh? I guess I scare her, since I’m never nice and not very quiet, except when stoned. Booze still sends me screaming through the streets, so I got to be careful. Pot is more peaceful, right? I mean, you don’t feel like killing somebody after a good joint. You don’t mind so much if they take you down. We all gotta die sometime.

Excuse my rambling. If I don’t sound exceptionally intelligent, blame the weather. I’ve got a good excuse, believe me. It’s so fucking hot day and night, your brain gets like a piece of chocolate left on the dashboard in mid-August. Like a wet piece of shit. So you say things you wouldn’t say to anybody back home, and you talk bullshit all night because you can’t sleep and don’t want to, in case you don’t wake up. Eddie and I talk all the time. Iowa is nowhere, I tell him. Back in Pennsylvania we pronounce it O-hi-o.

We tell stories when we can’t sleep, trading them like you and I used to trade baseball cards. He knew everything there was in just a few nights about all of us. About Mom’s fat ass and Dad’s big empty tasteless zucchini and your humongous fucking classical brain and literary presumptions. Is that the word? I’m no fucking writer, but I know what I like.

PFC Fucking Massolini. Who’s that? I got another month or so here, they tell me, in Saigon. Then up country we go, over the river and through the woods. Can’t wait. Proud to serve. Mr. Rawhide himself, with my M-16, gas-operated, ready to rock. Got twenty rounds in the magazine. Thing weighs 8.2, not including the strap. And not including the fucking grenade launchers they’re hoping to teach me to launch, which means you’re also stuck with ten or so extra rounds of ammo. A lot to hump and haul through mosquito swamps and elephant grass when you’ve got jungle rot and wanna scratch and dust your balls with DDT.

Eddie’s part Indian, he claims, so they made him the medicine man. (We call him Sitting Bullshit.) Bastard’s gonna haul bandages, iodine, plasma, morphine, tape, hypodermics, all that glassy, gooey, spooky shit. Save your fucking life in the right (or wrong) situation, so he’s got to haul it. The walking drugstore.

Speaking of humping, you still got your cherry? I hear those girls in the Ivy League are pretty damn tight-assed, all talk and no action. A hand-job in the library stacks if you’re lucky. Come out here, and get laid in style. There’s a whole street in Saigon, Ding Dong Avenue, they call it. Stopped by last night. You’d love it, man—regular shopping mall for tits and ass. Take your pick, honey. You stand in the lobby and point, then the Momma unites you in the elevator, till death do you part. The bitch takes you upstairs, saying things with a shit-eating grin like “Americans big money” and “U.S. soldier good man in bed.” Nice bathtubs, where she scrubs your nuts and prick. Big beds, mirrors on the ceiling so if you’re into that kind of kinky shit you can watch yourself hump (if you’re on your back). Or maybe she can watch you hump. They seem to like it, the fucking, though you can’t tell shit from their Shinola. I can’t anyway, but what did I ever know?

Dad got all emotional and told me the night I left that he learned something in The War, but he never said what. Started to say something about Italy. About Salerno. But the words didn’t come easy and he just quit talking. Like whatever he learned over there wasn’t worth saying or was too deep to spit it out. I don’t honestly think I’ll learn a fucking thing in Nam. Don’t believe there’s anything much to pick up here except the crabs.

“Is there a God?” Eddie keeps asking me—it’s like the biggest question in Iowa, he claims. “If so, how did he think up all this shit? How did he come up with Nam?” Maybe he’s a demonic genius, I said to him. Maybe he’s bored. This whole fucking mess happened because there’s nothing on TV up there in heaven, and you can’t lay an angel.

I told Eddie he should ask you the biggies, and that there’s more to you than meets the eye. Underneath it all, you got some balls. I believe that. You come on quiet at first, but then somebody bangs up against your wall, and you squeal.

By the way, if Uncle Sam Wants You, take my advice. Give Uncle the big finger. No good is coming out of this war, that’s for sure. Whatever Dad says, he’s wrong. He’s “so proud of me,” he writes. Mom writes nothing, though she sends clippings from the Wilkes-Barre Record. Just the sort of info I really want to know, like who in my high school class got knocked up and had to ring the wedding bells. Not me, I tell you. I’m not going home, not to Luzerne County. That’s history. It’s funny how clear you can see things from a distance. I recommend it, though you might think of Paris, not Saigon, as about the right sort of distance. You think about home in ways you never could when it’s right around the corner, or in your face.

I could have chucked it, the war thing. Gone to Canada like Buzz Mooney or shattered my pinkie toe with a jackhammer like Benny Dixon’s cousin from Nanticoke. Some days I think I should have pinched the doctor’s butt at the physical or just walked into the exam with a real hard-on and started jerking off on the spot. Guys do that kind of shit, and it works. But I made a decision. Just do it. Go to the fucking war.

Sometimes you just got to do something. Whatever it is, you got to make it happen, goddamn it. Make it happen. You do what you got to do, Asshole. And you do it well.

Hey, enough philosophy for one letter. War turns you philosophical, they say. Eddie claims there is more philosophy in this platoon per square inch than at Harvard and Yale, and I swear he’s right. You should hear some of this shit. If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll pass along some of the good stuff, and maybe someday it will mean something to you. Then again, maybe it won’t.

So write me, Asshole, when you can take a minute off from slapping your dick around. I don’t know why I’d like to hear from you, since you’re a prick and always were, but I would.

Your Big Bro in Lotus Land,
Nicky