A Vietnamese dinner--in a Portuguese restaurant in Astoria

"Getting fragged." That term means "getting killed" and it's the slang the troops used in Vietnam in '65. I had dinner with a friend I met a few years ago in Jamaica (the island, not Queens)and we had a really interesting conversation. I learned so much about him that I hadn't known before. He is in his early sixties, a retiree of OTB, grew up in Bed-Stuy; we have very different backgrounds but we really connect as friends, and did from the moment we met. In any case, I discovered that he had been drafted and fought in Vietnam, in Penang (I think) in 1965, just as the war was heating up. He said he hadn't talked about it in 30 or 40 years, it was so traumatic. He described being in a field at night, knowing an attack was coming because you could smell the opium they were smoking. Then they'd just attack with bombs, artillary--he saw people being killed and of the 500 men who'd gone out in his company, only about 200 came back alive. Sounds like he had a serious case of PTSD--he said that no one was in control, everyone's goal was simply to survive, and get as wasted as possible so you could forget where you were because it was so terrifying. He told me about seeing napalm being used (he said if you were down on the ground in an attack you'd be "incinerated" and agent orange. He told me about a very short, underage Polish boy who'd lied his way in and was the pet of the company--he always lagged behind because he was so small but everyone loved him like a little brother. My friend said he had a lot of bravado and felt like he had something to prove, so he signed up for the 101st Airborne--the people who jumped out of helicopters on to the tops of the trees and into the jungle. He was killed 2 weeks into leaving basic training. My friend said "It was 40 years ago but I can SEE him like it was yesterday." He said that a lot of deaths were caused by our own fire because the people in charge were so inexperienced that they would often give incorrect coordinates so our helicopters would fire on us instead of the VC, as he calls them. He also said Vietnan was a beautiful country, especially Penang. He remembered coming back to Brooklyn after basic training in his uniform and have a woman on the street shout at him: "Baby killer!" It was so amazing to hear what feels like history to me in such a personal and immediate way, and the similarities to Iraq are truly striking. Sounds like the same kind of chaos, the same kind of "unintentional" build-up of troops. I was mesmerize. My friend's 89 year old Jamaican mother died 2 weeks ago, and they were very close--he said she was always cooking up akee and jerk fish--so we went from talking about that death to Vietnam. Intense, but I feel as if I've really gotten to know him better and understand his life a bit more. He's in a good place now, but I think post-war, he had a really hard time of it. He said that you couldn't apply for a job and tell people you were a Vietnam vet--people assumed you were an addict. And, he added, you usually were.

In any case, I woke up feeling extremely down in the dumps this morning, and wasn't looking forward to schlepping out to Queens, and I'm so glad I did. We had a sad conversation, but it felt very rich and genuine and it felt good to make a connection and get out of my head. I have to force myself to go out and interact when I'm feeling down because I inevitably feel better afterward; I find interacting with other people mostly energizing.

So, this day which started as a Bad day has morphed into a Very Good day.
Ciao,
Paola
P.S. That's little Mira, above, in Montauk this weekend. She is recently five.