Untitled Document

18 March 80

AT SEA, OFF HONSHU

So there I was, a budding novelist burning to say something and not knowing anything well enough to do it. I tried, goodness knows, flogging my giant Chevy over the hills and dales of North America. From Chihuahua to Goose Bay Labrador I rolled. Eventually I realized that I was missing something. Something, something I had come to know as a high-powered junior exec with the world's largest publisher.

Hard Cash.

I had just about depleted my savings, going the free-lance route. I mean, where was it at, being just another damned hipster waiting for the words to write the same goddamn anti-war rock n' roll travel epic with explicit sex and a deep meaning that everyone else was doing? I met one of my old high school classmates who was tending bar in an oh-so chic club in New Old Denver. He wiped the table with a lazy sweep of the rag.

"Watcha' doin', Rollin?" I asked carefully.

"Oh, you know, writing a Kiirkgardian novel. Not much. How 'bout you?"

That was the last straw. I had to get out of that in a hurry. A rash and senseless act was called for, and I was just the boy for the job. As you know, I have been an ill-concealed conservative all my born days. The Vietnam War sorta put a crimp in all that; I mean, it wasn't so much hat I objected to killing communists on principle. It was just mostly that I couldn't see doing it on the scene. After all, I thought NBC had the thing well in hand.

Slowly, though, I became possessed of the notion that Moscow was entirely capable of plotting to kill both my dog and my Mother, and in no particular order. There was only one way to confront the Bear outside the comfort of the nearest lounge. I had to Join Up and go to Asia. One African Morning last year, I opened an envelope which informed me that my dog was already dead.

I rest my case.

Anyhow, after doing an interminable set of pushups in the damp dishtowel of the Florida Redneck Riviera sun, I found myself commissioned as a Naval Officer, Special Duty Intelligence. Hard to believe. Harder to believe that the crisply-pressed Marine Demon who had persecuted me each waking moment was at rigid attention saluting me. I shook my head and went West, to learn the mysteries.

In a dim little room on a dim little air force base the Lieutenant motioned for silence. "The envelopes, Please" he said with a Pepsodent gleam. "And the winner is….." he paused dramatically. "Ensign Socotra! That's right! Your life, as you know it, is over! You are going to the Midway!"

Holy shit. I had requested the most challenging duty available. I had asked for anything that would put me up against the Great interface. What I got was the great gray Winnebago, the mobile home of 4700 of my intimate friends, and assignment to the red-hottest bunch of Fighter Outlaws in all the Pacific. I humbly extended my moistened paw and took the orders. A mystery addendum to those papers consigned me to the horrors of the Warner Springs POW camp, to a week of starvation followed by a week of intensive (not to mention invasive) questioning by people who had Really Been There.

"Do these guys know something I don't?" I asked myself while hunched over in a tiny isolation box. What did it all mean? Why were they pounding me nearly senseless? Was it an effort to teach me I was no John Wayne? Hell, I could have agreed with them in the first five minutes and saved the taxpayers a bunch of dough. But it had to played out to the end, and the end was the ramp of a Flying Tigers contract jet, which eventually dumped me on the tarmac of Yokota AB, shrouded in the perpetual smog of the Kanto Plain near Tokyo.

Shortly thereafter I was to learn the complete meaning of the word terror. It is sitting backwards on a two-engine prop plane, headed doe certain destruction on the flight deck of an Aircraft Carrier underway. I couldn't see anything. I was suddenly aware hat what I had wanted all along was another Stroh's beer instead of walking into the recruiting station. But it was too late. The airplane lurched suddenly, my guts moved up and the Commander seated beside me blew his lunch. I suddenly felt better. After all, I wasn't puking yet…….Bang! the wheels hit and 120 knots of kinetic energy was violently absorbed by the massive steel arresting wire.

And there it really began. Turning from callow youth into a salt-encrusted, decorated Peacetime War Hero. Casually munching sushi in Tokyo. Strolling the dewy streets of Nairobi. Dodging the Military Police in Seoul, minutes before the curfew. Pulling the Vauxhall to the side of the road in Perth. "Is that watcha call a dead kangaroo?" Drooling at the thought of a real live bar in Oman, only a hundred miles away. Watching the trash bags float gaily off the starboard sponson aft, into the blood red sunset off the coast of Iran. Coolly attempting to sample the fleshly delights of all Southeast Asia from my hotel in Bangkok. Damn, now where am I going to find a Laotian at this hour?

Been there, By God, all they have to do is let me go.

So where was I? I do have a tendency to wander these days. Most recently I am still suffering from a mild case of near-combat fatigue after our epic 93 days in the Gulf, itching to send waves of airplanes over the beach to Tehran. I finished my first book out there, and worked hard on number two. Time? Plenty of time. All you have to do is not sleep. That would be out of the question, anyway too much industrial Navy coffee and cigarettes in the blood. And the amphetamine dream just rolled on, day after day, message after message piled up in foot-high stacks: "The PLO says that…..unconfirmed sources claim…..a usually reliable high military official says the situation is going to shit…..CIA analysts predict……" And the puzzle of Afghanistan began to emerge on our boards. "Yep, Looks like this week. Wonder if this is the Big One?

"Could be. Care for another cup of coffee or eight?"

Then: "Tito is dying. They are definitely mobilizing troops in Eastern Europe. In my opinion, war has never been so much a possibility as right now….."

I have never felt so alive as when we were on the edge of the Abyss, looking down and throwing rocks to listen to the sound as they rattled down and down into the depths where no man can see. Thanks God our leaders are both corrupt and incompetent. Any other mixture might have provoked us into doing something rash. Like the right thing, maybe.

I looked up the other day. The ship was back in port. (Land? I thought that was a verb?) The Japanese workmen swarmed over the old haze-gray lady, sandblasting everything that didn't move. Painting and reapplying the noxious smelling non-skid to the deck, hammering and chipping, removing the scars of five months continuously underway. Someone handed me a set of orders. I should have known better, but I reached out and took them anyway.

"Congratulations" the letter read. "You are now an Indications and Warning Team Leader for the Joint Staff, United States Forces Korea."

Korea, I mused. That is where they have coups and crazies. Cheap prices on tennis shoes. This could be just what the Doctor ordered to get my nerves back in shape. After all, the North Koreans are miles away from my new home. Heck, the tunnel entrances must be cross-town at least. Why sure! I like it out here!

There is a clause, however, that specifically entitles us minions of the Foreign Legion an expense paid trip back to our scattered Homes of Record to reacquaint us with the United Snakes. To see women with round eyes and fair complexions. Big tits. Large automobiles and things like newspapers. Far out. Thus saying, I have arranged to get the hell out of here on the 27th of this very month. I will rocket off the pointy end of this roving vale of tears in the back seat of an aging but still game F-4J Phantom, and go the speed of sound upside down on my way to pack sundry luggage. Then, in eight days, I depart for the land of the Big PX.

Plans are still up in the air. I am confident that once I have the opportunity I will commence drinking heavily and let things sort themselves out. I have only got three weeks, and I plan to maximize the experience. Which of the three blondes in the Bay do I see first? The crazy lady, the serious lady or the married lady? What about the other two in Detroit? How do I resolve the scattered affairs…..do I buy the land Up North? Should I take the giant Oldsmobile out of storage for a last triumphant cruise along the $1.50/gallon highway?

And who am I these days, anyway?

Well, you see the dilemma. There is much to experience. I suppose I will just wing it, as usual.