Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle (45 page)

"I live here now," I answered. "I'm actually in school."

 

"That's great," Jack said. He took a business card out of his pocket and handed it to me. "Here's my number. You'll have to have dinner with me and Margaret one of these nights."

"I'd like that," I lied. "It's good to see you."
"You, too," said Jack. "Now don't forget to call me."

When he was out of earshot, Taffy grabbed the card from me. "I can't believe you know him," she said.

"I don't really know him," I said. "I met him a few times."
"Did you ever…" Taffy began to ask, looking at me and raising her overly-manicured eyebrows. "No," I said. "I didn't."
"Too bad," said Taffy.
"You don't seem very excited about seeing him again," Alan said.
"It just reminds me of another time," I told him.
"Well, can we still go to dinner with them?" Taffy asked.

I ignored her, taking out money to pay for our drinks as Alan got up. "Come on," he said. "Let's get out of here before she asks to be in his next film."

 

"Oh," Taffy said, excited. "Do you think he likes Asian girls?"

We took a cab home. As Taffy talked excitedly about having seen a real live porn star, I looked out the window at the passing city. Seeing Jack Wrangler again had unnerved me, reminding me not only of Brian's death, but making me think about the unfairness of it all. Why, I wondered, were some of us dying terrible deaths while others were unscathed? Not that anyone deserved it more or less than others. Nobody deserved what was happening to us. But still, I couldn't help but question why certain men were chosen. Were we just unlucky? Had Brian's death simply been a random event? Was John's sickness merely the result of an accident? It bothered me to think so, but it bothered me even more to think that we had somehow brought this on ourselves through some action we'd believed to be harmless. All we'd ever wanted was to love one another. Now we were dying, possibly as a result. I didn't know if I would ever have the answers to my questions or, if I did, if I would be able to live with them. I needed to believe that some things could last forever, that there was hope. I reached for Alan's hand. In the darkness, it was a lifeline to hope, and I held it, afraid to let go.

CHAPTER 44

The granite was cool beneath my fingers, the polished surface broken by the thin curves and lines of the letters carved into it. As I ran my hand down the panel, I imagined cutting each of the 57,939 names recorded on the monument's skin. The names of the dead, written in stone as a testament to the toll of the war in Vietnam. They were arranged in the order in which they had died, beginning with Dale R. Buis, age 37, killed on July 8, 1959, and ending with 27-year-old Richard Vande Geer, killed on May 15, 1975.

Washington is a city of monuments, famous for its obelisks and tombs, its statues and temples built to honor the heroes of years past. It is probably the only city in America where history is immortalized in bronze and marble even as it is being made. To walk its streets is to tour the land of the dead. On November 13, 1982, a blustery Saturday marked by wind and rain, it was the veterans of Vietnam who were being remembered. We were given a parade, something none of us had received upon our original homecomings. Even now, though, feelings of ambivalence and occasional outright condemnation remained concerning the actions of those of us who had fought. The crowd along Constitution Avenue had been sparse, with some blocks of the parade route nearly empty of observers. While those who did attend were mostly supportive, a handful of protesters greeted veterans with cries of "Shame!"

I myself did not march, electing to go directly to the site of the memorial. I felt no need to be either celebrated or forgiven by people I didn't even know. I had come to Washington because I wanted to remember the friends I'd lost, and perhaps to see some concrete evidence that the war was really, finally over. Also, I wanted to see the monument that had given rise to such debate over the past year and a half. Since the winning design had been announced in May of 1981, public opinion had been strongly divided regarding the design proposed by 21-year-old Yale architecture student Maya Lin. Some found the stark black vee cut into a low hillside as ugly and violent as a scar, while others saw it as a simple, powerful statement that encouraged reflection.

I saw it as a role call of the dead. I found the design neither offensive nor uplifting. It was simply a scroll of black rock on which the names of men who should still be alive had been cut with mechanical precision, as if they had been species of lilies or items put into storage. I was glad that they would be remembered, and that the people who had loved them would have a place to come and think about them, but to me it was still a list of victims.

Alan had offered to come with me, but I had said no. I loved him dearly, but Vietnam had been my experience, not his. Besides, I wasn't going there to indulge in memories. I didn't want to play tour guide to my time in Southeast Asia, telling him stories about this person and that occasion, reliving the battles and recounting the long stretches of boredom. I just wanted to see for myself what the lives of nearly 60,000 soldiers amounted to, how America had chosen to symbolize our sweat and blood, our broken bodies and shattered hearts.

It's interesting how we choose to remember. In 1965, North Vietnam had issued a postage stamp featuring the image of Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker father of three who had set himself on fire in front of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's office at the Pentagon to protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The government of the United States had subsequently made it illegal to own stamps (as well as coins) from North Vietnam, but I had acquired one, and I carried it in my wallet (I still do), not because I necessarily agreed with Morrison's position, but because I respected his conviction. The stamp, which depicts the hovering, smiling face of Morrison surrounded by flames as beneath him protesters carry signs decrying the American presence in Vietnam, is a fascinating piece of political propaganda, but it is also a moving memorial to the sacrifice made by one man doing what he thought was right.

In contrast, nearly a quarter of a century would pass before the United States postal service finally issued, in 1999, a stamp commemorating the Vietnam War. And on that day in 1982 when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated, the man whose attention Morrison had been trying to get in 1965 did not even make an appearance. Now the chairman of the Overseas Development Council, and one of the few Vietnam–era figures still active in Washington, McNamara spent the day in his office catching up on paperwork instead of honoring the men he'd been instrumental in sending to their deaths. For all the speeches that went on that day, Americans were still mostly ashamed of the only war we ever lost, and those of us who fought it were still paying the price.

On the train ride from Penn Station to Union Station the night before, I'd compiled a list of the men whose names I wanted to search for the next day. Now that I was at the wall, I found that I didn't want to look for any of them. The list was in my pocket, but I left it there untouched. While all around me others scanned the rows of names until they found the brother, son, uncle, father, husband, lover, friend, or cousin they had come to honor, I stared at the names until they became a blur, running together in one long, continuous ribbon:ORVAL A BALDWIN JACKSON BARNES SAMUEL BOSENBARK

WILLARD CLEMMONS JAMES H DUNN III BENJAMIN W HAIRE DUANE K HIESER JOHN
C REILLY RUSSELL E HUPE VAN J JOYCE STEVEN L MARTIN DOUGLAS F MOORE . They became to me one man, one sacrifice, one offering made to the gods of war in a deal gone bad. I mourned them all, not just the men whose names I held in my pocket, but every one of them. In the way that Harvey Milk had died for all of gay San Francisco, the names on the wall stood for those who had died for the promise of freedom. But where Harvey had helped us fulfill our dreams, the people of Vietnam were still suffering.

There was another reason that I found the wall disquieting. Seeing the names stretching out on either side of me, I thought of those who were currently dying from the mysterious illness ravaging the cities of San Francisco and New York. Would we, I wondered, one day have to build a monument to those it took? Would their names fill a wall five-hundred-feet long? So far the source of the plague had not been discovered, and every week we heard about someone else who had been touched by it. I'd found myself waiting to hear who the latest casualty was, much as I'd waited to learn the fates of the men I knew in Vietnam each time they went out on another mission.

I decided I'd had enough of death. My return train to New York didn't depart until early evening, and so I decided to spend my remaining hours in Washington at the museums of the Smithsonian. Jack and I had visited the Natural History museum several times on school trips, and had been some of the first visitors to the American History addition when it was opened in 1964. I had not, however, yet seen the relatively new Air and Space museum, and I was anxious to do so.

I left the wall and began walking toward the Washington Monument, following the northern edge of the Reflecting Pool and keeping my head bowed against the wind. I was halfway along it when I heard someone call my name and turned to see Andy and Jack. We had just passed within a foot of one another, but I had not seen them. I stood, my hands deep in the pockets of my coat, and looked at them. In the three years since I'd seen them, they had changed little. Jack's hair was shorter, and his moustache was gone, but I would have known him anywhere. Andy, dressed in his fatigues from Vietnam, could have just walked off a plane in Quan Loi.

The three of us stood, not moving, for a long moment, until Andy broke the uncomfortable silence and came over to hug me. Jack hung back as the two of us embraced, and I made no move to include him when Andy released me.

"You came to see the wall?" Andy asked.
"Yeah," I said, glancing at Jack, who was watching us with an unreadable expression. "Me, too," he said. "What do you think?"

Confronted with the question, I found I had no way to answer it adequately. I shrugged. "It's strange," I found myself saying. "I sort of can't believe it's for us."

 

Andy nodded. "We're just heading over there now," he said. "I met up with some of the Cocks at the parade, and we're going to find the guys we lost."

"Great," I said.
"Can we meet up later?" Andy asked me.

"I can't," I told him. "I'm catching a train at six. I'm just going to head over to the museums for a while."

 

"I'm sorry I didn't call or anything," Andy apologized. "We just sort of decided at the last minute, and…"

"It's okay," I told him. "Really. It's good to see you."
"Hey," Andy said, as if something had just occurred to him. "Why don't you and Jack go to the museum while I see the guys?" He turned to Jack. "You don't want to hear a bunch of old war stories anyway, right?"

Jack looked at me. "That's fine with me," he said. "If it's okay with Ned."

Before I could answer, Andy said, "Of course it is. You guys go on. I'll catch up with you at the hotel later." He clapped me on the shoulder. "Take care, Ned. I'll come see you in New York one of these days."

Then he was gone, leaving Jack and me to deal with one another. Jack was the first to speak. "He's kind of like a tornado, isn't he?" he said. "He just tears through and leaves everyone else to clean up the mess."

I smiled. "How are you, Jack?" I replied, still not ready to hug him, but willing to try talking. "Pretty well," he said as we started to walk. "I'm finally done with school, and I have my own practice. Mostly gay men."

"Dr. Grace," I said, shaking my head. "Who would have thought you'd be the one to do it?" Jack laughed. "Not me," he said. "I still don't quite believe the diploma isn't fake." "And you like it?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "I do. A lot of guys in the community are running scared right now. I do what I can to help them sort out how they feel about everything."

"You're okay?" I said.
"So far, so good," he answered. "You?"

"I feel okay," I told him. "But who knows? Without a test, how do we know we won't just wake up one day with something? Fuck, they don't even know what's causing it yet."

"There's talk that it might have something to do with poppers," said Jack.
"If that's true, then we're all pretty much screwed," I said. "What gay man hasn't used poppers?"

"Brian thought he might have gotten it from inhaling all that fake smoke at City Disco," Jack said, laughing a little.

I couldn't laugh. Hearing Brian's name only reminded me of how I'd been unable to forgive him before he died. I didn't even know the details of his death. "How long did he live?" I asked Jack. "After we talked."

"Not long," Jack said. "A few days."

 

I nodded, not knowing how to apologize to Jack for what I'd said that day, not knowing how to forgive myself for letting those last days slip away without calling back.

"I told him you said good-bye," Jack said. "He was happy to hear that."
I stopped and looked at him. "I'm such a shit," I said.
He shook his head. "No, you're not," he told me. "We're all shits. The whole situation was shit." I sighed. "We keep doing this," I said. "You're the therapist. Tell me why."

Jack slipped his arm around mine and began walking again. "Let's start with your childhood," he said.

 

"What was your relationship like with your best friend?"

 

"I'm serious," I said as we walked up the steps of the Air and Space museum. "Why can't we just stop fucking up each other's lives?"

The conversation paused as we entered the building and stopped, looking around in awe. "Is that the Wright brothers' plane?" Jack asked, staring up at one of the many aircraft suspended from the ceiling.

"It's like someone built a museum of our bedrooms," I said. "Only these are real."

I totally forgot our earlier discussion as Jack and I roamed the galleries, our difficulties put aside as we became the 13-year-old boys we'd once been, marveling at the treasures contained in the museum's cases. Every turn of a corner revealed a new surprise, from a ticket for a German Zeppelin to a V-2 missile, real Spitfires and Messerschmitts to an actual slice of moon rock, which we touched with the reverence of pilgrims handling the relics of St. Bernadette at Lourdes. The hours passed swiftly, and when I finally looked at my watch, I saw that I had less than an hour before my train departed.