Sons (46 page)

Darling Wat,

I sometimes get the feeling it’s all an enormous put-on.

Do you remember my once telling you that there were really no such places as Cairo, London, Rome, etc.? When you go up in an airplane, the stage crew on the ground merely changes all the scenery, moving around the sets and the props, and however long it takes to transform New York into some other place is exactly how long they figure the “flying” time will be. Actually, you’re just circling Kennedy for seven hours, and when you come down,
voilà
— Paris! An extension of the One World theory, my love, and worthy of a doctorate. Is there really such a place as Cu Chi, and is Wat Tyler really there? Oh darling, if I could just go up in a jet and have them change the scenery below to Vietnam, so that when I landed you’d be there waiting for me. I miss you so much.

I don’t know if you get news about what’s happening in the rest of Vietnam, but I guess you know about the various immolations there this past week, starting with the Buddhist nun who burned herself to death outside the Dieu De Pagoda in the old capital of Hué, wherever that is. Dieu De being French for God of, Pagoda and Buddhist being of course Oriental, gasoline being five gallons of American-made, origin of match unknown. Have them change the scenery, Wat,
please
have them change the scenery to a peaceful island in a sunlit sea where we will lay (sic!) on the beach and count floating coconut shells. Nine suicides in a week, all in protest of Premier Ky’s treatment of the Buddhists in Danang, and all our beloved leader could say on Memorial Day was, “This quite unnecessary loss of life only obscures the progress that is being made toward a constitutional government.” Just before the big weekend, Wat, they were warning motorists about holiday accident tolls, and forecasting the number of deaths to be expected this year if we didn’t drive carefully enough, while at the same time the New York
Times
runs weekly figures on the boys being killed in action over there. It is all so ludicrous and so senseless. Come back to me safely, Wat, I love you so terribly much.

I was home over the holiday weekend to visit my parents (reading days happily coinciding), and I called your mother in Talmadge to say hello. Your father, I guess you know, has been in Los Angeles talking to Ronald Reagan about doing a picture book on his career, it being at least a fifty-fifty chance he’ll be elected governor of that progressive state come November, in which case your father will have stolen a march on the competition. But your mother didn’t know quite what to do about renting the Rosen house on Fire Island again because if your father
does
get a go-ahead on the book, he’ll naturally be spending a lot of time in Los Angeles with the old Gipper. Apparently a man named Matthew Bridges in Talmadge (your mother said you would know his daughter) wants to rent them his summer cottage at Lake Abundance, but your mother feels this wouldn’t be much of a change, i suggested that perhaps she might be able to talk your father out of the project
entirely
by reminding him that Reagan is an avowed Goldwater Republican who flatly refused to repudiate the John Birch Society. But she seemed to think the prospects of
that
were pretty slim indeed. Anyway, we had a very nice conversation. She told me you’ve been writing regularly, which is only what I expected of you.

Hey!

I saw a great piece of graffiti in the 86th Street stop of the Lexington Avenue subway:

We are the Black Knights,
We travel by the night lights.
The moon and the stars are our guide,
The night is the time that we ride.
We are the Black Knights.
Lawrence (the poet)

And just below that, Wat, written in another hand in a different colored ink was:
Fuck you, Lawrence.

Critics everywhere.

Write soon. I adore you.

Dana

My darling Wat,

Question of the week: What is a boonie?

Runner-up question of the week: What is a hootch?

Here I am about to take my last final, and all you can do is prattle on about your boonies and your hootches and your deuces-and-a-half — which reminds me, what’s a deuce-and-a-half?

Has anyone ever told you that a person could fall asleep reading your mailing address? The Army should simplify it. I have an excellent idea on how they can do that. They can discharge you tomorrow. Then your mailing address would become Talmadge, Connecticut, and I’d wrap myself naked in Saran Wrap and send myself to your house. I may send myself naked to Cu Chi, anyway, as a surprise for your E-8. Which reminds me, what’s an E-8?

Carol is afraid she’s going to flunk Descriptive Astronomy. I don’t know what gives her
that
idea, Wat, since she hasn’t yet bought the text for the course, and has attended only four classes since February. Just paranoid, I guess, completely out of her boonies, if you take my meaning. One of these days, I’ll give her a kick right in the hootch which is even better than frontal lobotomy for certain types of mental disorders. Have I told you that I love you insanely? Here I am — just a minute, let me count — (is runner-up one word or two?) 231 or 232 words into my letter, and I haven’t yet told you? Just for that, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.

Insanely.

Try
that
on your old deuce-and-a-half, baby.

You remember my telling you that for Intro to Fine Arts (a real crap course) I had to make these charts graphically illustrating the various periods of architecture, sculpture and painting? Like, you know, Hellenistic and Renaissance and 17th Century and all that jazz, with examples of each type, a very hairy project, Wat, considering how few credits the course is worth. Anyway, it was due Friday, and when I carried it over to the school, it was naturally pouring bullets, so I had to wrap it in the plastic cloth from our kitchen table. The architecture chart got a little messy, but I think I’ll get a good grade, anyway. I’d
better
get a good grade, after all that work. I’ve been at it steadily since the beginning of April, almost two months, I guess. You have no idea how great it feels to be
finished
with the damn thing.

Carol turned in an English paper at the same time, so we both went out to celebrate. Her boyfriend is in the Navy, and we are known far and wide as The Celebrating Celebrated Celibates, which is not a bad name for a rock group, what do you think? (Never mind, I
know
what you think.) Anyway, we went over to the North End for a
great
Italian meal, and it was too beautiful outside to go to a movie afterwards, so we wandered over to the docks and bought a six-pack and sat smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and looking out over the harbor and at Logan Airport across the way, and just talking. She’s a really decent kid, Wat, even though she leaves the apartment looking like a boonie, if you take my meaning. We went shopping afterwards, each of us deciding that we deserved a reward for turning in our respective projects on time, and for having done such a hootch job, besides.

1st Soldier: What do you call a hootch in a town eighteen miles northwest of Saigon?

2nd Soldier: A Cu Chi hootch.

Carol is a nut for rings. I think she got the idea from Ringo, she’s an absolute Beatlemaniac, plays their albums day and night and drives me out of my flak jacket. (I
know
what that means, smartie.) She bought this beautiful old ring that fits on her pinky and has a tiny snippet of braided hair behind its glass face. The woman in the store told us it was a mourning ring, you know, with the hair being from a
corpse
— enough to make the blood run cold, Wat, mine anyway. Carol didn’t seem to care at all, though. She’s going to take out the hair that’s in the ring now. and replace it with a lock from her boyfriend’s head, which seems terribly morbid to me, and also somewhat like tempting the fates, though he’s not in any particular danger stationed as he is on Treasure Island.

I have to study now.

I love you, Wat. Be careful, darling.

Dana

Wat, my darling,

I am absolutely limp.

I just got back to the apartment after the most awful exam I’ve ever taken in my entire life, bar none. I was up cramming half the night, figuring it would be either multiple choice or true-false because that’s what he gave his other section. I got there with my head full of facts, certain that if anyone accidentally jostled me in the hallway I’d start spilling campaigns and elections, bills and laws, state legislatures, and government finance all over the floor, and I sat down, and he handed out the exam, and it was a
discussion
-type question! He wanted to know all about the House of Representatives, structure and organization, officers, party leaders, committees, procedure, etc. I’m sure I flunked it, and I’m sure it’s because I lost my study hat.

Wat, I feel totally and hopelessly miserable.

I’m going to take a hot bath, and wash my hair and put it up in rollers so I can enjoy being a girl. Then I’m going to eat a full pound box of chocolates and read
The Magus,
which was my present to myself for having turned in the Art project. Still no grade on that, by the way. I’m entitled to a rest, don’t you think? Tell me I’m entitled to a rest, Wat.

Wat: You’re entitled to a rest, Dana.

Thank you, darling.

I have a late nomination for the Tyler-Castelli Award for April, having picked up a back issue of
Vogue Magazine
in the dentist’s office last week. Trumpets. The envelope, please. Nominated for the Tyler-Castelli Award for Cramming Two Commercials Into A Single Sentence While Managing Besides to Spell “Colors” With Vast Affectation
— Vogue Magazine
for April 1, 1966, in its PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT feature: “People are talking about... The Bleached-out girls of
The Group,
the new movie of Mary McCarthy’s novel so Cloroxed that it took out all the author’s grit and hard colours, leaving the design so faded that there is little to watch except Shirley Knight who has crammed a portrait into the gesture of reaching for a Kleenex.”

Please cast your vote early.

Oh my God, I almost forgot to tell you about the kitten! We’re not supposed to keep pets, you know, our landlady would throw a fit if she found out. But do you remember that terrible rainy Friday when I delivered my tablecloth-wrapped masterpiece? Well, on the same day, Carol found this bedraggled, half-drowned kitten cringing and mewing under the front steps, and she hid it under her raincoat and brought it upstairs. It is a piebald cat, which doesn’t mean having very little hair, Wat, as I’m sure you know with a hootch intelligence like yours. Nor does piebald apply only to horses, as I’m sure you also know with your boonie education and your big deuce-and-a-half, not to mention your M-16 — which reminds me, what
is
an M-16? Piebald is having black and white patches, which the kitten has. Because of her distinctive coloration, we call her Rusty. I think she’s cross-eyed, and I also think I’m allergic to her fur, but she’s so adorable you could die from her. She peed all over Carol’s bed last night. Carol did not find it too amusing.

Off to my tub! I’m going to soak for an hour and a half, and then go read my fat book. Oooooh, what a marvelous time I have ahead of me! You’ve cheered me up already, my darling, and I adore you.

Dana

P. S. Why are the people in
Vogue
always talking about things nobody I know is ever talking about?

Darling Wat,

You
figure my grades.

Fine Arts project, on which I worked my kishkas to the bone for close to two months: C minus.

Intro to Modern Government, for which I studied all the wrong things: B plus.

English Lit, casual studying, no sweat: A.

French Lit, full night’s cramming, much Dex: C.

Haven’t yet received a grade in Renaissance Lit, but I’m fearing the worst because I studied hardest for that one. Do you think I’m paranoid? (That’s what they keep whispering all the time, Wat, following me in the street and watching every move I make. I know they’re after me, and wouldn’t be surprised if they’d reached all my instructors and faked up all those cockamamie grades.)

Bumper Sticker of the Week: USE EROGENOUS ZONE NUMBERS

I don’t want you to think that bumper stickers are becoming a fad here in Boston, but a lady got hit by a Cadillac the other day at the top of Beacon Hill where Joy crosses Myrtle, and imprinted backwards on her behind they found the words:

Hilarious?

Ho-ho.

Rusty the cat just looked up at me appreciatively, so I guess
she
thought it was pretty good.

Wat, I don’t know what to do. Because of the big snowstorm we had back in February, with classes being canceled and all that, the semester’s been extended almost two weeks beyond what’s usual. But in spite of the grace period (school ends this Saturday), Carol and I
still
haven’t found an apartment for next semester, and she’s beginning to kvetch now about “Do we have to move, it’s so nice here, etc?” She’s got a point, in that we do have a lovely apartment in a nice old building, and close to the school besides. But she’s such a slob, really. I love her dearly and all that, but I’m getting tired of tripping over her panties and books and records on the bedroom floor, and I thought I’d convinced her at last that it would be nice if we could find an apartment with a larger bedroom so that we wouldn’t constantly be getting in each other’s way. At first she said she didn’t think her father would spring for the possibly higher rent, but she finally got the message, and we’ve been actively looking since the beginning of May. But now she’s starting to waver, especially since it appears we’ll have to stay over to keep looking past the 11th. I’m not too happy about
that
prospect, Wat. I’ve already arranged a lift down with a girl from Brooklyn who has a beat-up old Buick station wagon with lots of room in the back, and I’ve begun packing my clothes and things, and I honestly don’t feel like hanging around Boston for however long it takes to find a new place, especially when Carol no longer has her heart in it. What to do, what to do. I’m sure this is all terribly fascinating to you out there waiting for somebody to say at least I love you.

At least, I love you.

In fact, I adore you.

To be perfectly frank, I am hopelessly attracted to you.

Is there the slightest possibility that you’ll get that R and R to Hawaii, because if there is, I’ll beg, borrow or steal the fare and meet you there. As it now stands, I may have to spend July with my folks on the Cape (do you know any psychiatrist in the entire world who doesn’t spend his summer vacation on Cape Cod?), but I’ll change plans, rearrange plans, hijack a jet, do
anything
if you can get away from that damn war for a while. Please let me know.

I love you very much.

Dana