CHOPPED STEAK MOUNTAIN CHOPPED STEAK MOUNTAINFrom the top of Chopped Steak Mountain, you can see everything: Tibet; the next mountain; Ypsilanti, Michigan; and, on a clear, sunny day, the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Three kinds of palm trees on Chopped Steak Mountain: coconut (to drink), betel (to chew), and rattan (to make furniture with).
An awesome variety of edible animals on Chopped Steak Mountain: hedgehogs, boa constrictors, mongooses, howling monkeys.… Although edible, they ain’t too easy to catch. That’s why I subsist on a diet of bananas and coconuts.
I live in this hut here, beneath this banyan tree. There’s nothing inside it but a cot and a rifle. The mud walls are decorated with pages torn from a Sears catalog. Just looking at this lawn mower can bring tears to my eyes. There’s a gargling brook nearby where I perform my ablutions. I wash a hundred times a day, just to cool off.
You don’t need a fancy wardrobe in this weather. No winter coats. No three-piece suits. No hats, gloves, or socks. No pants, actually. If you walk around with all your gear hanging out, no one says shit.
There are no other live souls on top of Chopped Steak Mountain but me.
During the day, I wander in the forest and dig up the odd cassava and eat it. I climb a tall tree and just perch on it for a while. I never enter the forest at night. Too many eyes in the forest at night. Lots of dead souls on Chopped Steak Mountain.
The light slanting through the trees is most beautiful at dusk. Everything is bathed in a pink glow. The brook is aquamarine.
There is this peculiar monkey in the forest. They should name it after me; I discovered it. What it is, is a chameleon monkey. Sometimes it has black limbs, a white head, and a brown body. At other times, brown limbs, a black head, and a white body. I’ve seen it switch colors right in front of my eyes. Each time it spots me from afar it grabs its dick and jabbers on in monkey gibberish.
The ghosts are just apparitions and I don’t pay them no mind. They’re just phantoms.
One time I found a ghost napping on the ground. His cammies were caked in red and brown. He heard me coming, woke up, snapped a salute, and shouted: “USMC! First Marine Division! ‘Mike’ Company! Third Battalion! Second Regiment! Fourth Platoon! Fifth Squad!”
I’ve found out on another occasion that this ghost’s name is Chuck.
I sit down on this burnt log to write myself a postcard: “Au contraire, mother, I’m still alive. I hope you are too. I don’t know what year it is in Kentucky, but here it’s always 1969, the year of the White Album. Until I hear from you, that’s a joke, say hello to my sweetheart, another joke. Before I enlisted, I politely asked Janny to put on her wet and wily birthday suit to take a dip in the golden pond with me, but the bitch had the balls to turn me down. I love you, anyway.”
I wrote that postcard in my head because I had no pen to write with. I write a postcard a day. I’ve penned at least a million postcards during my time on Chopped Steak Mountain.
Here’s how I fish: I cut a finger and dip it in the brook. A blue fish comes up and bites it, hard!, but it’s well worth it. Stubborn and stupid, the fish won’t let go even as I yank its wiggly ass out of the water. Sometimes, though, my bleeding finger droops and drools in the brook for hours on end, wasting all that blood, with nothing to show for it.
There is no salt or sugar on Chopped Steak Mountain. What I miss most is ketchup. Mustard also. The cheap, yellow kind. What I wouldn’t do for a nice c-rat of ham and lima beans. Good Lord! The good times now seem better and the bad times not so bad.
I came here on a 707, with a camera slung around my neck. I was only twenty-one years old then. When we sighted land, I thought, What a beautiful country! I also thought they were going to shoot us right out of the sky. As I deplaned the heat slapped me on the face. Why didn’t they tell me about this frigging heat?!
When I first came here, I thought, Let’s hope the changes this place makes on me will be minimal, and I can go home as my true self.
But what began as an interruption of my life has turned into my life. Now I would sit on top of a tree and think, I do not care where I am. I have no memories. I was never born in Kentucky.
Every now and then a plane flies over, always an airliner, never a Huey or a Chinook, and I aim my M-16 at its gleaming fuselage, just in jest, and make popping sounds with my mouth. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! I ain’t got no bullets left.
I ain’t got no teeth left either. They rotted off years ago. They hurt so bad at one point I thought my skull was rotting.
Should a Via Kong be ambling up this way, I’d level my rifle at him, Hello, Charlie!, but, like I said, I ain’t got no bullets left.
Halfway down the mountain, there are these houses on stilts, a village inhabited by montagnards. That’s a French word, meaning “mountain retards.”
Once I did venture halfway down the mountain. I was hiding in the bush, watching the montagnard ladies dip their boobs into the gargling water. I became so vexed and sorrowful I had to hightail my ass up the craggy mountain before I did something unwholesome. Never again.
Janny, who must be wrinkly by now, is most likely a grandmother. Maybe you’re dead already. I came so close to knowing you. You bit me like a blue fish, but you let go of my finger when I tried to lift you out of the water.
All the ladies come back, the girlfriends, the whores, even those glimpsed just once on the streets, one by one, when I sleep alone at night.
I sleep inside this parachute. The mosquitoes are the size of woodpeckers on Chopped Steak Mountain.
One night, as I was lying inside my parachute reciting the streets of my hometown: Melody Lane, Lily Pad Circle, Baseline Drive, Telegraph Road, I heard a loud snoring sound. I went on reciting: Yelling Boulevard, Hunting Pack Street, Frog Pond Drive … but the snoring got louder and louder. It must have come from the biggest set of lungs in the world. I wasn’t going to give in. I started screaming: Square Deal Road! Lick Skillet Drive! Possum Road! Greenback Street! The snoring stopped.
This morning I saw Chuck sleeping on the ground but he did not get up to salute me. I squatted down next to his head and was surprised to notice that he was old, like me, and not a young soldier. He had a hurt, sorrowful expression, with some accusation in it. His mouth was wide open and his eyes were slightly open.
About eight miles from here, in a part of the woods I never go into, is my downed helicopter. I was a Scarface, with more than three hundred missions to my credit. I worked the Delta to the DMZ. Every now and then I would manage to be at 1st MAW headquarters with enough time for a lunch break. The chow was fantastic: thick, juicy steaks; baked potatoes with sour cream; apple pie; and vanilla ice cream.
A hilarious memory: I once saw a Filipino queer impersonating Mick Jagger at a USO show. He was good too. The shit you remember.
The capital of Kentucky is Frankfort, population: 20,000. There was a nice tavern at the corner of Broadway and Madison, where you could get an excellent roast beef sandwich for 89 cents.
My favorite sport is football. My second favorite sport is baseball. I was a pitcher in high school, with a fastball that topped off at eighty miles an hour.
The stadium in Lexington can hold seventy thousand people. I was there at least a dozen times. We always sat in the cheapest seats, me and my father.
My old phone number is 732-0806. Janny’s phone number is 922-7908.
I was only supposed to be here for eleven months and twenty days.
I was not born in this country, but I will die in this country.