The music ends and Tom and Liam are over there at the bar laughing over something and I don’t know what to say or do with Emer. Should I stand in the middle of the ballroom and wait for the next dance or should I lead her over to Liam and Tom? If I stand here I’ll have to talk to her and I don’t know what to talk about and if I start walking her toward Tom and Liam she’ll think I don’t want to be with her and that would be the worst thing in the world because I do want to be with her and I’m so nervous over the state I’m in my heart is going like a machine gun and I can barely breathe and I wish Tom would come and cut in so that I could laugh with Liam though I don’t want Tom to cut in since I want to be with Emer but he doesn’t anyway and there I am with the music starting again, a jitterbug or something, where men throw girls around the room and up in the air, the kind of dancing I could never dream of doing when I’m so ignorant I can barely put one foot before the other and now I have to put my hands somewhere on Emer for the jitterbug and I don’t know where till she takes my hand and leads me to where Tom and Liam are laughing with Liam telling me a few more nights in the Tuxedo and I’ll be a regular Fred Astaire and they all laugh because they know that could never be true and when they laugh I blush because Emer is looking at me in a way that shows she knows more than what Liam is talking about or that she even knows about my heart beating and making me short of breath.
I don’t know what to do without the high school diploma. I drag on from day to day not knowing how to escape till a small war breaks out in Korea and I’m told if it gets any bigger I’ll be drafted into the U.S. Army. Eddie Gilligan says, Not a chance. Army’s gonna take a look at your scabby eyes and send you home to your momma.
But the Chinese jump into the war and there’s a letter from the government that says, Greetings. I’m to report to Whitehall Street to see if I’m fit to fight the Chinese and the Koreans. Tom Clifford says if I don’t want to go I should rub salt on my eyes to make them raw and I should moan when the doctor examines them. Eddie Gilligan says I should complain of headaches and pain and if they have me read from a chart to give them all the wrong letters. He says I shouldn’t be a fool. Why should I get my ass shot off by a bunch of gooks when I could stay here at the Biltmore and rise in the ranks. I could go to night school, get my eyes and teeth fixed, put on a little weight and in a few years I’d be like Mr. Carey, all togged out in double-breasted suits.
I can’t tell Eddie or Tom or anyone else how I’d like to get down on my two knees and thank Mao Tse-tung for sending his troops into Korea and liberating me from the Biltmore Hotel.
The army doctors at Whitehall Street don’t look at my eyes at all. They tell me read that chart on the wall. They say Okay. They look in my ears. Beep. Can you hear that? Fine. They look in my mouth. Jesus, they say. First thing you do is see the dentist. No one was ever rejected from this man’s army for teeth and a good thing because most of the men who come in here have teeth like garbage dumps.
We’re told to line up in a room and a sergeant comes in with a doctor and tells us, Awright, you guys, drop your socks and grab your cocks. Now milk ’em. And the doctor looks at us one by one to see if there’s any discharge from our dongs. The sergeant barks at one man, You, what’s your name?
Maldonado, Sergeant.
Is that a hard-on I see there, Maldonado?
Ah, no, Sergeant. I . . . a . . . I . . . a . . .
You gettin’ excited, Maldonado?
I want to look at Maldonado but if you look anywhere but straight ahead the sergeant barks at you and wants to know what the hell you’re looking at, who told you to look, buncha goddam fairies. Then he tells us turn around, bend over, spread ’em, I mean spread your cheeks. And the doctor sits on a chair and we have to back up with our arses open for inspection.
We’re lined up outside the cubicle of a psychiatrist. He asks me if I like girls and I blush because that’s a silly question and I say, I do, sir.
Then why are you blushing?
I don’t know, sir.
But you prefer girls to boys?
Yes, sir.
Okay, move on.
We’re sent to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, for orientation and indoctrination, uniforms and equipment, and haircuts that leave us bald. We’re told we’re no-good sorry pieces of shit, the worst set of recruits and draftees ever to come into this camp, a disgrace to Uncle Sam, lumps of meat for Chinese bayonets, nothing but cannon fodder and don’t you forget it for one minute you lazy ass-dragging gang of dropouts. We’re told straighten up and fly right, chin in, chest out, shoulders back, suck in that belly, goddam it, boy, this is the army not a goddam beauty parlor, oh girls, you step so pretty, whaddya doin’ Sattaday night?
I’m sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey, for sixteen weeks of basic infantry training and we’re told once again and every day we’re no good hup ho hup ho hup hup hup ho, get in line there, soldier, goddam it, kills me to call you soldier, goddam pimple on the ass of the army, get in line or you’ll get a corporal’s boot up your fat ass, hup ho, hup ho, come on come on sing it sound off
I got a gal in Jersey City
She got gumboils on her titty.
Sound off, cadence count,
Sound off, cadence count,
One two three four
One two three four.
This is your rifle, ya listenin’ to me, your rifle, not your goddam gun, call this a gun and I’ll ram it up your ass, your rifle, soldier, your piece, got that? This is your rifle, your M1, your piece, your girlfriend the rest of your army life. This is what you sleep with. This is what comes between you and the goddam gooks and goddam Chinks. Got that? You hold this goddam piece the way you hold a woman, no, tighter’n a woman. Drop this and your ass is in a sling. Drop this piece and you’re in the goddam stockade. A dropped rifle is a rifle that can go off, blow off somebody’s ass. That happens, girls, and you’re dead, you’re fuckin’ dead.
The men who drill and train us are draftees and recruits themselves, a few months ahead of us. They’re known as training cadre and we have to call them corporals even if they’re privates like us. They yell at us as if they hate us and if you ever talk back you’re in trouble. They tell us, Your ass is in a sling, soldier. We got your balls and we’re ready to squeeze.
There are men in my platoon who had fathers and brothers in World War II and know everything about the army. They say you can’t be a good soldier till the army breaks you down and builds you up again. You come into this man’s army with all kinds of smartass ideas, think you’re big shit, but the army’s been around a long time, all the way back to Julius fuckin’ Caesar, and knows how to deal with shitass recruits with attitude. Even if you come in all gung-ho the army will knock that outa you. Gung-ho or negative all means shit to the army because the army will tell you what to think, army will tell you what to feel, army will tell you what to do, army will tell you when to shit, piss, fart, squeeze your fuckin’ pimples and if you don’t like it write to your congressman, go ahead, and when we hear about that we will kick your little white ass from one end of Fort Dix to the fuckin’ other so that you’ll be cryin’ for your momma, your sister, your girlfriend and the whore on the next street.