DISCLAIMER: This story deals with a protagonist who happens to be a Vietnam veteran. Since I couldn't think of a veteran who doesn't swear at least some of the time, I used explicit language and drug references to create what I thought would be a more authentic mood. Mature audiences beyond this point, please.
If there's one thing you need to know about my life, it's that I've never shot at anything that couldn't shoot back. Or didn't shoot first. That's the important thing.
I'm not one for the sickly-sweet or the condescending, so let me tell it to you the way I see it: you don't know fucking shit.
This isn't personal, by the way. It's just that you weren't born when American soldiers - people like me - were killing children in Nam. You don't know what a LURP is, or why an M16 isn't any better than a pop-gun. You've never been in a war, never even seen one for all I know. You're the new breed, the one that thinks life is a game, with rules you can play and a God you can touch.
Case in point - my brother was four years younger than me when I got shipped, which meant he beat the draft. He got a free ride into college. I lost my flip with fate and ended up finishing a degree in mech. eng. somewhere out in Charlie's country. The day I came home, my brother was waiting for me on the steps just outside our home, surrounded by junk. It took me a while to realize it was all my junk - baseball pennants, books, records, the whole deal. He must have stripped clean my room.
I almost didn't recognize my brother too, because he'd also grown his hair long. His eyes were glassy, like he'd been smoking too much dope, like he was maybe dead inside. I couldn't believe my eyes. I just kept staring. Even when he spat on me, and told me I wasn't welcome anymore.
So, technically, yeah, I guess you could call my brother and me the same generation, although it's hard enough remembering sometimes that we're the same flesh and blood.
Nam wasn't the sum total of my life either, important as it was. Sure, I went into rehab, but I never whacked out the way some other vets did. Thirty years on, I'm a professor in State Colorado. I've written children's books and fantasy novels and biographies about long-dead kings. I teach people like you things that I think you want to hear.
People often overlook the fact that tragedy is what makes life worth living. Pain salves over the wounds, makes us remember better things. There's no light without the darkness, to coin a cliché. That's why some lives are lead for the better and some for the worse, and who's to say which life is worth living more - the one without pain or the one with the greatest? Maybe someday, you'll know the shape of your life. But by then, it'll probably be too late.
I'm not a bad looker, I've been told, but I'll never married. I'll never have kids. Just thinking about the way my brother turned out is enough to make me feel like I've made the right choice. He tried to call me last night, by the way, maybe the sixth time in so many years. Turns out he'd spotted some article I'd written in the papers. I hung up before he could say my name. Recently, I've been thinking about death a lot. What it'll be like, what it'll feel like. I'm not suicidal, at least I don't think I am, but I've been playing a lot of Russian Roulette in my dreams; every time the barrel clicks and I know it's the bullet for me, snap! I wake up and it's back to life. I should probably talk to someone about this. In fact, I know I should. But something stops me just short of actually picking up the phone. Y'know that old saying? - shrinks are for the crazy, counselors for the rich and fortune tellers for the dying. I'm not ready to go that way yet.
I've been thinking about getting a gun recently. A .45 automatic. Just to get the feel of Nam again - y'know? - the slick sweat of your palm in the leather grip, and just because there's no point in getting something I can't use. I think it's starting to affect my work. I walked out of a lecture the other day. It just felt so hot, up there on the stage, a hundred eyes centered on me and any one of 'em Charlie. I must have muttered something into the microphone because the word 'gun' came up several times, and that's when I knew I'd flipped. I tried to walk out real nice and slow, like it was a jungle and not a room, but I got out of there so fast I slipped on the floor. I think I made it to the bathroom without throwing up.
Anyway, I don't think there's anything really left to say. I've been a writer long enough to know that you'll make up whatever bullshit story you want from this anyway. Nam wasn't the end for me, but then again, neither was it a beginning.
I can’t say I know the meaning of life, and I don't think anyone else on this earth has the right to say they do either. But the meaning of life is something vastly different from the trick to living it, and that's the one thing I do know, and can share.
The trick to living - is knowing when to stop.
