The funny thing is this: I took Hank to the grocery store that night, just before it closed, and I let him eat chips out of the bag before we paid for them, and zoom through the aisles using the cart as a race car. And I also let him buy whatever the fuck he wanted. We filled the entire cart and then we dined at home on sugar cereal after his bedtime on a school night while Jessica sobbed in her studio. It might have been the best night I ever had with Hank—the closest I ever felt to my son.
We didn’t know what horrors were just around the corner. All the signs were there, but we chose to ignore the obvious.
I’d give my life in a heartbeat to go back in time and tell my wife she never had to go to the fucking grocery store again, and that her art was the best contribution to the family that she could ever make.
But I can’t do that.
So I have to live with my civilian guilt too.
7.
I may deploy colorful language from time to time, but I am not a racist, nor am I a bigot, despite what my son says about me.
Because he doesn’t know shit about my life, Hank’s eyes fell out of his dumb liberal head when my good friend Sue Wilkerson came over to his house one night for dinner.
Sue is genetically Vietnamese, although she is mentally American with a real red, white, and blue heart, on account of her being raised here in the United States by a Vietnam veteran named Alan Wilkerson, whom I respect unequivocally.
Ten or so years into postwar civilian life, Alan decided to rescue an orphan from Vietnam. Maybe he got to feeling sorry about whatever the fuck he had done in the war. That was none of my business, so I didn’t ask him. Just an educated guess on my part. No one went into the jungle and came out clean. That’s a given. If you were there, you did exactly what all of the rest of us did to survive, which wasn’t pretty.
What Alan told me was this: he didn’t want to procreate himself, because he’d been exposed to too much Agent Orange and therefore was afraid of impregnating his wife with a genetically altered baby. If a man’s sperm supply is supposed to look like sunny-side-up eggs, Agent Orange sticks a fork into the scrotum and makes scrambled. Basically, that nasty batch of chemicals is a wild card. We still don’t know exactly what the fuck Agent Orange does to human beings, because our government is run by cowards. But we do know that Alan’s fear is one hundred percent warranted.
There are a lot of people here in the States, and even more in Vietnam, who are grotesquely deformed because of that shit the US government and motherfucking moron politicians made us spray everywhere. Kids born with four arms and no legs. Two torsos attached together at the belly button. Elongated alien heads. Bulging eyes. Nightmare shit. Just type “Agent Orange Babies” into the Internet. You’ll see the horrors that men in three-piece suits with no fucking understanding of war can unleash from a stateside desk.
They told us it was perfectly safe. Wouldn’t hurt humans. Our sperm would not mutate. Fuck them. Every American politician during the Vietnam War who said Agent Orange was harmless should be forced to gargle with it until their tonsils glow.
I truly feel bad for the fucked-up kids in Vietnam, but those people were mostly the enemy. The American Vietnam vets whose kids have inherited problems related to Agent Orange—those heroes should be given millions by the US government. But Uncle Sam is exceptional when it comes to fucking over vets. His screwing-veterans record is impeccable, and yet he never seems to have any trouble getting new recruits.
Be all you can be.
Army of One.
Army Strong.
Can anyone tell you what those slogans actually mean?
Doesn’t matter.
No one really gives a single shit about these things, I’m aware, but I have to keep saying all this anyway until the day I die. Too many American patriots and heroes have gotten fucked in the ass by Uncle Sam, who to this day is still doing a lot of ass-fucking when it comes to our psychologically and/or physically wounded veterans. If you don’t believe me or think I am exaggerating, visit your local VA. The horror show is on display daily. But you won’t go. No one goes. No one cares.
I met Sue in spin class over in the city. I like spin class. Lots of hot, tight young female bodies in spandex. Great workout too. None better.
My spin class instructor is named Timmy. He’s off-the-charts gay, definitely the woman in his gay homo relationship, and so I call him Gay Timmy. But before you go stereotyping against him, believe me when I say he has the body of a Navy SEAL. You would not want to fight this gay motherfucker, trust me. You might think I hate the gays because I was in the army and am a registered Republican, but you’d be dead fucking wrong. I respect those people.
Gays always contribute something positive to the community. You never see gays move into a neighborhood and make it worse. No, you always see them renovating old fucked-up houses, adding value, making things look better, starting businesses.
Don’t get me wrong. I could never willingly hold hands with another dude, let alone put another man’s dick inside of me. No homo here. Heterosexual and proud of it. I’d march if we straights had a parade.
But consenting adults can do whatever the fuck they want to each other as far as I’m concerned. That’s what freedom means. And Timmy is the best spin class instructor in the city. You have to sign up for his class years in advance or know someone who can get you in if you want the privilege, and believe me when I say it absolutely is a privilege.
I have driven BMW for decades and own—outright, no mortgage—a South Jersey suburban house valued well over eight hundred thousand. I’ve made many millions in my lifetime—but the truth is that most people are more impressed with my spot in Gay Timmy’s spin class. That’s how much respect this exceptionally fit homo commands.
I did some noteworthy real estate transactions with Timmy’s homo lover, who is a big-time player in the Philly real estate game and the man in their gay relationship. The gays only say “life partner” instead of “homo lover” to people they think are uncomfortable with their gay lifestyles, by the way, and I’m comfortable, so I can say “homo lover.” I’ve been given clearance, if you’re one of those uptight liberals who keeps track of these things.