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:
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.
June 5, 1966
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.