Much, much later, when it was all over, when the Cong terrorists had been killed and the Embassy retaken by the Marines, I found a strange sort of perspective in this interlude. The Wise Man had said that history had to be changed if man was to survive. I had tried to change history and I had failed. But history is the past and the affair with the Cong girl is the present. I couldn’t change what had already happened. But what I did in the present-that had to have an effect on the future. Not just me; anybody.
If you dig this, you can mold this ball of silly putty we call the world any way you want to mold it. In a way, making it with the Cong chick while the war went on around us was doing just that. It wasn’t just withdrawing from the situation, it was changing it so that the scene was more to our liking than the scene they made.
If we could do it, anybody can do it. You can do it. It’s simple! Just—-
Make love, not war!
Notes
[←1 ]
Alfred Charles Kinsey (June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956) was an American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and sexologist who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. He is best known for writing Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), also known as the Kinsey Reports, as well as the Kinsey scale. Kinsey's research on human sexuality, foundational to the field of sexology, provoked controversy in the 1940s and 1950s. His work has influenced social and cultural values in the United States, as well as internationally.
[←2 ]
Red Guards were a student mass paramilitary social movement mobilized by Mao Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Cultural Revolution. Despite being met with resistance early on, the Red Guards received personal support from Mao, and the movement rapidly grew. Mao made use of the group as propaganda and to accomplish goals such as destroying symbols of China's pre-communist past, including ancient artifacts and gravesites of notable Chinese figures. However, the government was very permissive of the Red Guards, who were even allowed to inflict bodily harm on people viewed as dissidents.
[←3 ]
As told in Back Home at the O.R.G.Y.
[←4 ]
Buck Rogers is a fictional 1928 futuristic space opera character created by Philip Francis Nowlan in the novella Armageddon 2419 A.D., subsequently appearing in multiple media, especially comics. Flash Gordon is the hero of a futuristic space opera adventure comic strip created by and originally drawn by Alex Raymond in 1934.
[←5 ]
Dale Arden is a fictional character, the fellow adventurer and love interest of Flash Gordon. Wilma Deering is a fictional character featured as romantic interest in the Buck Rogers comics.
[←6 ]
A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest O. Lawrence in 1929-1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. Cyclotrons were the most powerful particle accelerator technology until the 1950s when they were superseded by the synchrotron. The cyclotron was an essential tool in the Manhattan project (From 1942 to 1946), at Los Alamos, producing the first atomic bomb.
[←7 ]
The Hatter is a fictional character in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. He is often referred to as the Mad Hatter, though this term was never used by Carroll. The Hatter and the March Hare are referred to as "both mad" by the Cheshire Cat, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in the seventh chapter titled "A Mad Tea-Party". When Alice arrives at the tea party, the Hatter is characterised by switching places on the table at any given time, making short, personal remarks, asking unanswerable riddles and reciting nonsensical poetry
[←8 ]
Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French biologist, microbiologist and chemist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and prevention of diseases, and his discoveries have saved many lives ever since. He reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax.
[←9 ]
Ringolevio (also spelled ringalevio or ring-a-levio) is a children's game that may be played anywhere but which originates in the teeming streets of New York City, and is known to have been played there at least as far back as the late 19th century, when it was known as "ring relievo".
[←10 ]
The Piltdown Man was a 1912 paleoanthropological hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human.
[←11 ]
The dino’s galloping about with the Neanderthal men must have escaped the mass extinction of 60 million years ago. They do stretch the reader’s credulity very thin…
[←12 ]
Reference to the hippie counter-culture of the late 60s.
[←13 ]
Zorba the Greek is a 1964 British-Greek comedy-drama film written, produced, edited, and directed by Michael Cacoyannis and starring Anthony Quinn as the title character. Based on the 1946 novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis. The film was a smash hit. The film's music by Mikis Theodorakis, especially the main song, Zorbas, has become well known in popular culture. he dance at the end of the film, choreographed by Giorgos Provias, formerly known as "Zorba's dance" and later called Sirtaki, has become a popular cliché of Greek dance.
[←14 ]
George Lloyd Murphy (July 4, 1902 – May 3, 1992) was an American dancer, actor, and politician. Murphy was a song-and-dance leading man in many big-budget Hollywood musicals from 1930 to 1952. Murphy served from 1965 to 1971 as U.S. Senator from California, the first notable U.S. actor to make the successful transition to elected official in California, predating Ronald Reagan.
[←15 ]
Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American actor and trade union leader who served as the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. He became the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989.
[←16 ]
Jack Benny (February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American comedian, vaudevillian, radio, television and film actor, and violinist. Recognized as a leading American entertainer of the 20th century, Benny portrayed his character as a miser, playing his violin badly. In character, he would claim to be 39 years of age, regardless of his actual age.
[←17 ]
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) was an Austro–German psychiatrist and author of the foundational work Psychopathia Sexualis (1886). The last edition from the hand of the author (the twelfth) contained a total of 238 case histories of human sexual behaviour. This book popularized the terms sadism and masochism. Krafft-Ebing also coined the term anilingus in this book. Psychopathia Sexualis was one of the first books about sexual practices that studied homosexuality/bisexuality.
[←18 ]