yustyoking

 

            I once read an interview with Sheryl Crow. The interviewer mentioned that Sheryl was in a hurry to get home to repair her toilet. That was a wake-up call! I can disassemble, clean and assemble my assault rifle in my sleep. Professionally, I repaired hydraulics on tanks, among other things. Yet, I was still calling a plumber to fix a broken toilet in my mom’s house. So I went to Home Depot, where the black African help showed me the various packaged parts that go inside a toilet: handle, flapper, flush assembly. I still don’t do faucets, but I have become a proficient toilet repairman.

            Retired from the U.S. Army, I enjoy the somewhat bitter fruits of a second career: My business partner Boopsie Davis and I write screenplays. We make documentary films. We call our studio Montevideo Films [ Marca Registrada ]. Since the issue has come up regarding the source of our music, the answer is, we’re using a local teen band called The Candy Stripes. That’s them playing their original composition “Purple Pumpkin Eater” in our production The Statue of Liberty Does the Bossa Nova. A simple concept for a three-and-a-half minute film, we used primitive CGI to show the green patina-covered statue on the island in New York harbor dancing to the beat.

            Ba ba boom, ba ba boom, shaka shaka shaka… Bossa Nova!

            These youngsters really know nothing about Brazilian music. We provided them with a Latin drum track and let them do their thing. They’re a punk band. I like the results. God Bless America, it is not.

                        Reachy, screechy, I’m broken down and preachy.

                        Slinky, minky, I feel like a Hostess Twinkie.

                        Gay, fey, I’m goin’ all the way.

                        Look at me fly! Eat a pumpkin pie!

                        Uptight, outtasight, kiss a transvestite.

                        Faces, places, we’re goin’ to outer spaces!

                        A country bumpkin, you’re just a stupid munchkin.

                         I’ll paint you up to resemble a purple pumpkin.

                                                                              (C)  2011, Farnsworth, Smith

            The point is, we pay these kids! We don’t steal music. If I understand correctly, the money is used to cover the rent on their rehearsal space. Anyway, that’s their beeswax. I’ve hooked them up with a music publisher, so they’re not at the mercy of the Internet. They’re good kids, even if the lead singer is only 12 years old. No one in the band is over 16. They’re local, what did we expect? And, yes, we help them with their lyrics. Adult supervision. We could go the other way and use retired rock and rollers from the 1960’s. There are plenty of doo-wop bands waiting tables or sitting on the stoop in D.C. I feel for those guys. Also, they would create better music. But YouTube is a young medium, so Boopsie and I feel safer mining the talents of the youth generation.

            Filmmaking. Fun time. I’m never going to win an Academy Award, but what’s the alternative? I can get my rocks off working for private military contractor Academi as a thrill-seeking mercenary.

                                                           *

            Bitch, bitch, bitch about the neighbors. My mom and I are predisposed to like and enjoy our neighbors. That’s why it’s such a let-down, such a bummer, when they misbehave. Amid the heartache, turmoil and dipshit, the McCluskey’s are an example of how life is supposed to be: I used to see them when I was on home leave. Joe and I are the same age. Back in the day, he loaned me a metal punch to mount an aerial on an MG Midget. I remember when their son Billy was graduating from U. of Maryland in 1996. He told me, “I don’t know what to do with myself.” A Spring day. Two dudes standing on a sunny sidewalk in suburbia.

            “What do you mean?” I asked.

            “I’ve interned summers, but I’m not ready to commit to a corporate position. My older brother’s in the military. I might give it a shot.”

            Interestingly, I never knew Sean, only Billy. “Look,” I told him. “The military is a great opportunity. Try it on for size. It’s a volunteer army. If you don’t like it, you can always resign your commission and return to civilian life. If, on the other hand, it works for you and you thrive, you have an occupation for life. You’ll certainly never be bored.”

            Billy considers that conversation one of the pivotal moments in his life. Sometimes my mentoring works.

            Sixteen years later, Billy is on a three-year tour of duty at the Pentagon. He, his wife and his two kids live in his parents’ house. “My folks are snowbirds,” he tells me. “They spend six months of the year in Florida. They feel it would be a waste for us to rent a house of our own. It’s crazy to live in Maryland and work in Virginia, but considering that my parents are my landlord, the price can’t be beat! I looked at Arlington. The rents are astronomical.”

            Among Oxburg’s dunderheads and backstabbers, the McCluskey’s stand out by a country mile. They like us. Having adopted us, Billy, wife and kids call my mom “Granny.” They call me “Uncle Kevin.” We’re family.

            Billy is a Major in the Army. A “Mustang,” he came up through the ranks. After a year here, he’s getting promoted to Lt. Colonel. Not a Bird Colonel, with the eagle on the insignia, but at least he’s on his way. He invites mom and me to his promotion ceremony.

            We go out to dinner with him, his wife and the kids at the local Chinese restaurant. “You get recommended for promotion,” he tells us, “and then you have to wait your turn.”

            “Why don’t they just give you the medal?” asks mom.

            “The medal’s not the problem,” he chuckles. “A promotion in rank includes a pay raise. The Department of Defense has to budget for these promotions. They can only promote so many people at any one time.”

            Mom admits she hadn’t thought of that.

                                                         *

            The Pentagon. I went to conferences, but I never actually served there.

            I was stationed at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska to eavesdrop on the Soviets and practice the belligerent art of radio jamming. I put in time at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, first for artillery training and then as an instructor.

             I studied intelligence at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. “Fort Hoochy-Coochy” is in the high country. A divorcé, I did a three-year stint. Dig this! I actually lived off-base in Sierra Vista with my famous high school heart-throb Peggy Sue Cockburn! She was twice divorced. Talk about coincidence— you can’t make this stuff up— Peggy Sue’s daddy owned real estate in Sierra Vista. He let us live in one of his two houses. Incredible! Peggy Sue and I both looked so young and sexy, people couldn’t figure us out. That relationship lasted a year and a half. Your Tuesday Weld, all-American blond beauty queen, Peggy Sue was all come-on and no follow-through. Life as endless foreplay. A chain-smoker, she stank the place up terribly.

            Her daddy, Thadeus “Tad” Cockburn, lived the same way when we kids were growing up in the 1960’s. Gung-ho, a consummate soldier, Thadeus had a wife named Maggie who led him by the nose. Also a chain-smoker. Tad discovered her at a roadhouse in Georgia where she was singing honky-tonk with the band. (By the time I met Maggie as a teenager, cigarettes and booze had reduced her voice to a gravelly basso profondo. She still exuded sex from every pore. Peggy Sue’s mom!) A gorgeous strawberry blonde, all her adult life, “Mags” used “Tad” as a doormat.

            Men with a weakness for dominant women.

            When Peggy Sue and I had our final shouting match and broke up, Tad charged me for having the house fumigated and repainted. I rented a room elsewhere with a Latina schoolteacher and her wondrously easy-going family. Peggy Sue moved to a trailer park in Warner Robins, Georgia where she seduced and frustrated the airmen at Robins Air Force Base. It must have felt like a homecoming, considering her mom and all. Tad rented out the house in Sierra Vista to someone else.

             One of the high points in my career was studying Russian under the magnificently opinionated Constantine Orlov. By pure luck, his tutoring made me a perfect fit in the Partnership For Peace with the Red Army in the 1990’s.

              I pulled a tour at Fort Bliss, Texas as part of the 1^st Armored Division, “Old Ironsides.”

              I don’t sound off regarding Bosnia because many vets feel they own that war and their memories are sacrosanct. They are not to be trifled with. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her 2008 presidential run, mentioned being spooked in 1996 about landing under sniper fire at Tuzla. What a hailstorm of criticism that unleashed! Sinbad the actor, who accompanied Clinton on that trip along with singer Sheryl Crow, said the scariest part was finding where to eat next. Even Clinton’s co-pilot countered that the sun was shining and the birds were chirping in the treetops. Her co-pilot! Since no two people remember the place the same, here’s a simple anecdote I hope you’ll love: 

             Bosnia, 1996. It’s a cold, wet, snowy winter. We’re freezing our butts off. The morning fog is a bitch, it will not lift. The local villagers have complained about snipers. I take a patrol into the woods to reconnoiter. We find some firing positions littered with spent shell casings, but no people. Fine. Returning to the roadway, I’m out front. It’s an elevated road. I run up the muddy embankment and a passing U.N. jeep with a Swedish driver clips my helmet, sending me flying back down the hill. My helmet takes the blow, I’m not even knocked unconscious.

            Such a hullabaloo! The jeep driver is screaming hysterically, half my men are lifting me up while the other half hold me down.

            “Don’t try to get up yet, Captain!”

            “C’mon, Cappy, on yer feet!”

            “Don’t you ever look where you’re goin’, Captain?”

            “Are you all right, sir?”

            “I did not do this driving accident on purpose! I am calling for a medical ambulance,” shouts the Swede from up on the road, waving his arms.

            Medical ambulance? Helicopter ambulance must be what he means.

            I pass out.

            …

            “Guys! Guys! I’m okay. Hello! Why don’t I just stand up and all? Where’s my rifle?”

            “Do you have a headache, sir?”

            “No, I don’t have a headache.”

            “How many fingers am I holding up, sir?”

            “What? Now you’re giving me the finger, Jenkins?”

            “Okay! The Captain’s okay.”

            Over each eye, I have an egg-size bruise.

            My “recovery” consists of hanging around the supply depot, checking off inventory. Somewhere, I have a list of the tons of food, supplies, vehicles, fuel (aviation, diesel, gasoline, kerosene), armaments, ammunition, medicine, gear, materiel and assorted hoopla that went into the mission. Some mission! Warren Christopher and The Dayton Accords put us in there. Sheer common sense got us out. Otherwise, we would still be there, trying to keep the ethnic minorities from killing each other.

            Reflections on my profession. 

             What else? I did logistics out of Fort Hood in Texas. I served in a slew of foreign postings. I never did the Pentagon. Pure negligence. Today, I can’t even explain why.

                                                             *

            “You’d best do a dry run,” Billy advises me. “These directions may not be as straightforward as advertised.” The printouts he gives me include aerial photos.

            Since it’s been awhile, I take 270 to 495 and then 495 to the George Washington Memorial Parkway. On my first sweep, I breeze right by the place! The Pentagon is, like, “over there”— I can see it— but I’m on a highway that’s “over here.” I end up crossing the Memorial Bridge into the District. Turning around, I return to Virginia. Some dry run! I make another stab at it. This second time, I come coasting into the Pentagon parking lot— one of many, you understand. My printed directions say “Turn right onto N Boundary Channel Dr.”

              I take a right, drive under a concrete bridge and end up back on the Jefferson Davis Highway heading toward Rosslyn! Something inside me doesn’t want to go to the Pentagon. I’ve just spent a total of 90 seconds there. Frustrated, I drive into Rosslyn and swing around for a third assault. As soon as I reach the parking area, I pull into a space and eye the aerial photos. The ramp I want is by the water. The boats in the marina are clearly visible. “Stick by the water, ass-hole!” I seethe. I start the car and hang a left. There are no street signs, but I find the marina. A cop on a motorcycle is busy checking oncoming traffic with a hair dryer. Actually, a blue plastic radar gun. Pulling up next to him (will he ticket me for blocking the entrance?), I hop out of the car and ask directions.

            “Have they told you what entrance?” he asks. “North entrance? South? Have they said what corridor? Corridor B? Corridor C?”

            “No. It’s just a ramp over the highway.”                                           

            “Well,” says the beefy black cop in his immaculate uniform and impressive helmet, atop a glorious machine, “the ramp is right there behind that construction sign.”

            Tuh-tuh, the nickel falls through the slot. “This is it!” I squeal, perusing my pretty pictures. “This is the parking lot.”

            “Yes, sure, fine,” says the policeman. “I need to get back to what I am supposed to be doing!” Ignoring me, he picks up his blue plastic monitoring device and aims it at oncoming traffic, a red diode on the back shining brightly.

            Parking my car in one of the spaces, I happily parade up the ramp to the guardhouse at the summit. If there’s anybody in there, behind the smoked glass, I never meet them.

            I envision myself pushing my 90-year-old mom around the marble floors of the Pentagon in a wheelchair. That’s how we do it at the airport. On a hunch, I check out Bradley’s, the local mom & pop pharmacy.

            “What you want is a transport chair,” Fran Bradley, the daughter, tells me. When she brings it out, I see it is like a wheelchair, but has smaller wheels. It looks perfect. She shows me how to fold it up— pull on the straps and presto! —so I can stow it in my car.

            The night before the big event, we join Joe and Emily, Billy and Janet, the kids and brother Sean for dinner. What I know about Sean is that his National Guard Reserve unit got shipped out for a one-year tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2008. He wears a little gold badge on his jacket that looks like a Phi Beta Kappa key until you get up close. It reads:

                                                My war = Psy War. 

            “I’m in military contracting nowadays,” he tells me. “I do bad things to bad people.” Which indicates his firm is on the cutting edge of weapon development: drones, electronic warfare, GPS surveillance. “Bad guys know, if they speak one time on a cell phone, they can shortly expect a Hellfire missile up their ass.”

            I thank him for such a succinct description.

            “We’ve just developed a bullet that can follow a laser beam to a target up to a mile away, correcting its flight as many as 30 times a second. This is like manned flight, armies have dreamt of guided bullets ever since the invention of the rifle. Now they are here,” he says, grinning like a shark.

            From anyone else, it might sound like bragging. With Sean, mom and I can see it’s an attempt to share his love of gallows humor:

            “The Chinese only need to buy a product once.

             “The same Pakistani atomic physicist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has helped Libya, Iran, North Korea and maybe Syria with their nuclear programs. The same guy!  He’s a walking, one-man Armageddon!”

            Hubba, hubba, when Billy got to Afghanistan in 2009, he eventually ran into a guy who said, “McCluskey, eh? We had a guy around these parts named Sean McCluskey— “

            “That’s my older brother.”

            “Well, if you are half as good as he was, you are most welcome!”

             Here in Maryland, Billy is a great bread baker. We give him his present, an engraved breadbasket.

                                             The McCluskey Brood

it says on the flap. Another product made in China, although the engraving is done Stateside. Incredibly, for mail order, even the spelling is correct. I wouldn’t know how to spell “brood” without consulting spell check.

            “It’s made of steel,” Billy marvels.

            “Put bread in it,” mom instructs, “not your money.”

            “I was wondering why I couldn’t find a lock on the front,” Billy replies.  

             The next morning, I load up the car. Since it’s the Pentagon, I wear coat and tie: black slacks, Navy blue socks, real shoes (No sandals, ace!), a dress shirt (blue with red stripes), a foulard tie and a powder-blue sports coat. Having shaved my scalp for the Chinese New Year, I look reasonably strack.

            An anomaly of this visitor parking area is the large number of handicap spaces, 36 of them, stretching the length of the wall adjacent to the highway. I understand that they are there for the medical center’s use, but as almost no one at the Pentagon is handicapped, we have our choice of a parking place.

             There are no old people at the Pentagon, everyone is between 18 and 55 years old. So when I come wheeling my white-haired mom to the first security checkpoint, it’s an unusual event. There are about ten people in line in front of us, men in Army and Air Force uniforms, women in Air Force garb and camos. Looking over his shoulder, the gentleman in front of us says, “Oh, excuse me. Soldier! Coming through! Move out of the way!” As I push my mom’s wheelchair up the ever-steeper ramp, officers and enlisted men part before us like we are Moses at the Red Sea. Mom and I are mucho impressed. We are accustomed to waiting in line. We are not accustomed to being given priority.

            “Can she stand? Can she walk through the magnetometer?” the security personnel ask.

            “Oh, yes.”

            Shakily, mom gets up and makes her way through the arch. Bells ring, lights blink, sirens wail.

            “Ah, ha!” I exclaim. “She has a titanium hip replacement.”

            “Yup!” a security officer quips. “That’ll do it every time.”

            Clearing the checkpoint, we wait in the sun by the entrance to the library for our escort to arrive. Off in the distance, by the side of the building, I can see a parked Jeep. Three men congregate around the vehicle, one in a policeman’s uniform, one in a blue military uniform and one in camos. The latter has some sort of scope in his hands, peering at people and objects down the hill.

            “Point that thing at me,” I’m thinking, “I might just fire back!”

            Frank, our guide, a pleasant black gentleman in a brown suit, comes down the concrete apron, shakes our hands and escorts us to the building. 

            As we pass through security, showing two I.D.’s apiece, a group of soldiers pass us going the other way. A blond, 30-something lady in camos gives me a knowing smile and waves. Dumbfounded, delighted, I wave back. That’s when it finally dawns on me: I’ve been hanging around the wrong boondocks! With my scarred face, shaved head, stocky build and stiff manner, the Joes here at military HQ identify me as a fellow soldier and welcome me in their ranks. The innate toughness that makes my Oxburg neighbors so nervous is a highly respected commodity here at the Pentagon.

            Who knew?

            A quandary: If a military lady in camos thinks I look acceptable, why am I knocking myself out chasing after Gunhilde at the bank and all these other exotic beauties?

            I definitely need to change venues.

            The corridors are as bright and endless as an underground shopping mall. The color scheme is silver, white and black. “There are seven floors,” Frank tells us. He seems impressed. Looking around, I’m amazed at the number of people in civvies. I assumed everyone would be in uniform. The Pentagon. All military all the time? Prejudice colors memory. Frank says, “The ceremony will be in the Hall of Heroes. It’s a popular location. There’s a huge demand. A three-star general or a three-star admiral has to put in the request. Bill is lucky to get it.”

            None of us say anything, but it’s one of the worst-kept secrets in the military: They are grooming William McCluskey for a position on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Billy gets whatever he wants.

            Frank tells us he’s been there ten years. “Billy would be chagrined at my relating this,” I reply. “It’s not like he gets lost or anything, but he does find the building vast and confusing.” I laugh. Frank looks embarrassed.

            I roll my mom into the Hall of Heroes. It’s a gorgeous room, brightly lit. Frank moves two chairs out of the way and I park mom in her wheelchair in the front row. I walk around the stage, eyeing the lists of medals awarded to this country’s service men and women. I end at the far left, where a framed list stands on its own.

            “What does that one say?” asks mom.

            “It’s a list of medals awarded by a special act of Congress. Charles A. Lindbergh, the Unknown Soldier of France, the Unknown Soldier of Rumania…”

            Billy shows up with his family. I’ve seen photos, but mom and I have never  actually seen Billy in uniform before. It’s impressive and a little disquieting: Who is this important official? I have to keep reminding myself he’s the kid down the street. 

            In his speech, Billy says, “I’m pleased to have my adopted Grandma Rose Feingold and my adopted Uncle Kevin also joining us here today. When my family was still out west finishing the school year and my folks were down in Florida, it was Granny Rose and Kevin who took me under their wing, plying me with lobster on a regular basis, claws and all. I must say, they helped me retain my fighting spirit!

            “I feel like a spy inside the Pentagon, spying on the military for the military,” he jokes. Everyone laughs. Billy works as an auditor, double-checking military procurement contracts. He makes up in precision what the job lacks in glamour. His is a specialty in high demand: When it’s time to outfit a regiment, Billy knows all the materiel and what each item costs.

            After the ceremony, we go next door to the lounge. Mom tells Rick Picardo, the burly, chiseled one-star general who is Billy’s boss, “I used to come to the Pentagon with my husband and children. Back then, it was a tourist attraction. There was no security. You parked by the building and walked right in. You could visit the garden in the center of the building. They had vendors selling food. You could stop and have a picnic.”

            “Yeah, right,” Rick says, smiling politely. The old lady is gaga, he’s obviously thinking. She’s confused us with the Lincoln Memorial or the Reflecting Pool.

            “She’s talking about when the Pentagon’s concrete was still wet,” I explain. “We’re talking 1945, right after the war…”

            The Pentagon was begun in 1941. It took over a year to build.

            “The time I’m talking about, you weren’t even born!” mom assures him.

            Now he gets it, smiling wryly.

            We all laugh.

            The brass have even sprung for cake.

            Billy passes out Armor of God coins to all the men in his family. I listen as Sean explains a Unit Coin to Billy’s son. “A beefy, blond pilot in World War I got shot down behind enemy lines. He stripped his flight suit of any insignia that might give him away. He also destroyed any documents that identified him as an American. When he reached the Allied lines, he called out, ‘Don’t shoot! I’m an American!’ A patrol seized and questioned him. They looked at his blue eyes and blond hair and decided he was a German infiltrator. They were going to shoot him. The one thing he still had was the Unit Coin from his squadron. He showed it to the troops. Some of them knew people in that squadron. They recognized the coin.

            “That airman felt his Unit Coin saved his life.

            “Since then, military personnel carry a Unit Coin with them at all times.”

            Sean pulls out and shows us the coin from his National Guard unit. I show them my shield from the Allied Command, Europe. It’s an antique. I should carry my NATO coin, but for whatever reason, I don’t do it anymore. Bad memories from Bosnia-Herzegovina?

            Joe and his grandson start flipping their coins. Occasionally, one falls on the floor.

            “When you’re out drinking with the boys,” Sean warns them, “the fellow who doesn’t pull out a Unit Coin has to buy drinks. After that, it’s the guy who drops his Unit Coin on the floor.”

            They stop flipping their Unit Coins.    

            We finish our cake, shake hands all around and take off. “I can push it,” Billy insists, steering my mom’s wheelchair through the corridors to his office. “Starting today,” he tells her, “more of your tax dollars go into my pocket!”

            “Oh, we don’t hold it against you,” she teases in turn— grimacing. “Some things aren’t worth joking about.”

            Rick Picardo, one-star general, says “There are 23,000 people in the building. If I was Secretary of Defense, I’d walk around, stop people and ask them, ‘Now what exactly do you do?’”

            We pass a series of display cases showing weapons from earlier wars: carbines, a sten gun, an M-50 machine gun, an AR-15. I ask Sean if he’s fired Billy’s rifle. It’s an ArmaLite, purchased direct from the factory for hard currency. Sean has fired it. “You like guns,” Sean says, “you’ll definitely have to visit me in New Mexico. I walk out behind my house and have a clear field of fire to the hills beyond. Saves going to the range.”

            “Billy has taken me to the NRA range! I even have a range card!” I explain.

            “In another part of the building, they have a gold-plated AK-47 on display,” Sean points out. “Billy showed it to me on the way in. Forget Tupac, Lil’ Wayne and all those other hip-hop artists and their bling! We’ve got a gold-plated AK-47, a gift from the man himself, Mr. Saddam al-Tikriti Hussein, former leader of Iraq, no less! Trophies of war, my friend. Trophies… of… war! To the victor… go the spoils!

            “I’ve been to Tikrit!” he continues. “Small town, but loyal. The only question remains, loyal to whom?”

             He’s got me in stitches. “Once the Soviet Union fell, there were a lot of AK-47’s up for sale, $200 apiece,” I gasp.

            “That’s a great price!” Sean observes.

            “For some reason, I never grabbed one. The Kalashnikov isn’t much of a precision weapon.”

            “It’s the Russian attitude of throwing as much copper at the enemy as possible. A shit-storm of lead. Spray the battle field.”

            “Well,” I agree, “that’s how they used them.”

                                                        *

            I return the wheelchair to Bradley’s and pay the $55 charge. “It was worth it!” I gush to Fran. “I saw my adopted nephew become a Lt. Colonel at an award ceremony at the Pentagon. I was able to wheel my mom everywhere. No way could she have walked those distances.”

            That night, mom and I go to Doug’s Seafood with mom’s bridge partner Kiki. Doug’s is a chain. We love the 5 to 7 Happy Hour. Dozens of 20-somethings nurse drinks and chatter endlessly, but we go for the cheap food. A cheeseburger + fries for $3.95. Mussels for $4.95. The restaurant chain has been bought out by Cooks International, but so far nothing has changed. We order cheeseburgers, mussels, meatballs, sweet potato fries, quesadillas and blackened shrimp on skewers. We tell Kiki about our adventures at the Pentagon. The ladies drink cocktails. I have a Buckler, a non-alcoholic beer.

              Judy Blue-Eyes and the Hearty Boys have snagged tables outside, smoking up a storm. This unseasonably warm weather has everyone acting crazy. When we finish all that food, we order apple turnover with ginger ice cream for dessert.

            “One,” we tell JoJo, our server, “with three spoons.”

            “Yeah, sure, comin’ right up,” he grins. He loves us, gourmands who tip big.

            “Coffee. Two regular and a decaf for Kiki here,” I explain.

            A colored man from the kitchen brings the coffee and we couldn’t be happier.

            We sit discussing politics for ten minutes and then I signal JoJo that we want the bill. He’s having an altercation with a crowd of drinkers by the cash register. Coming over to us, he says, “I can’t believe this! Each of them wants an individual check. I’ll be right back.”

            Then he disappears to serve drinks and present the bill to the tables outside.

            Ten minutes later, he arrives, wiping his forehead, and gives us our check. “Too much!” he muses.

            “Okay, don’t go!” I shout, but he’s back by the register, trying to ring up the Rowdy Boys again.

            I take mom’s credit card and our check and force my way into the melee. “Ring this up, JoJo!” I command. “We have to move on this thing!”

            He gives me a helpless look and says, “I’ll be right with you, sir!” Then he continues arguing with the young people. He rings up two sales, slides their credit cards, punches in the amounts, presents them with their receipts and marches away to service tables three, four and six in the main dining room.

            I begin to steam.

            Returning to mom and Kiki, I tell them, “This has got to end. JoJo has got to let us pay the goddam bill!”

            I’m so angry, I can hardly speak.

            Five minutes later, an apologetic JoJo approaches me, where I’m standing in the bar. He starts explaining—

            “JoJo! Don’t tell me!” I wail. “Go tell my mom! She wants to pay!”

            JoJo goes and talks with mom. He comes back to me and says, “She wants to talk with you.”

            I go to the booth and take a seat. “WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING NOW?!” I rage.

            “Give me $20 cash,” mom says. “I don’t have any cash.”

             I don’t ask. I give her the money.

             At some point, we get the hell out of there. We drive Kiki home.

             “What the hell was that all about at Doug’s?” I ask.

             “We waited so long, he didn’t bother to ring up our order. I tipped him $20 and he gave us the three dinners for free.”

              “It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “Never again!”

              “You mean you won’t go there?” she complains. “You keep doing this. One bad experience and you cross the restaurant off the list. Pretty soon, we won’t have anywhere to go out to dinner.”

              “Listen,” I tell her through gritted teeth. “I’m a combat veteran. Here I am, the nicest guy in the world. I treat everyone like a prince. I like treating people nicely. But when I am abused, I turn into something less than human. As we said in my squad, quoting the Hulk, ‘Don’t make me angry. You won’t like me when I get angry!’ I’m ready to kill someone with my bare hands. I can do that. Well, I don’t want to go to prison, so I control myself as best I can. But no, I can’t continue to be this nice, amiable guy and accept abuse. That I cannot do!

               “Bad things happen to good people. It’s not fair! JoJo isn’t a bad person and he shouldn’t be overworked. But if Doug’s Seafood has a systemic problem, it’s never going to get any better and we are on the receiving end.”

           Maneuvering the car through night traffic, I am choking with such rage, my voice cracks. I’m not driving aggressively, but my issues aren’t easy to resolve.

               Mom gets the message. She doesn’t argue. Once again, she is being deprived. The perennial victim, she was abused by her parents, she took abuse from her husband, and now she’s taking shit from me. Neurotic as the day is long, she seeks abuse. A classic Freudian conundrum, getting shat upon is what she knows and feels most comfortable with. She watches a nightly episode of Everybody Loves Raymond— complete with commercial breaks— to get her daily fix of neurotic behavior. Those TV characters are endlessly neurotic. My mom is enchanted.

                 I wake up in the middle of the night, gasping for air. She has gotten back at me by spraying the downstairs with an aerosol “air freshener.” A poisonous chemical that fucks with your sinuses, so you cannot smell anything.

                 She’s gone to bed.

                 So, in the dead of winter, I have to open all the doors and windows in the house for, like, half an hour. And the place still smells like a chemical factory and gives me a headache.

                This is how she thanks me for taking her to the Pentagon. But she feels deprived.

                Go figure.

                                                         *

                The National Herald reports that two days after we jumped ship at Doug’s Seafood, a big-ticket contender for the Republican presidential nomination lunched there with this staff. In town for CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in the District, the candidate asked the servers at Doug’s if they stir-fried, pan-seared or charcoal-grilled their sushi.

               “How about,” JoJo answered, “none of the above?”

                Too many voters feel that way about the Republican candidates.                                             

                                                           *

             After their big event, the McCluskey’s spend the rest of the day sightseeing among the war memorials in D.C. and then get shafted when the Metro station at Arlington Cemetery closes in their faces at 7 p.m.

            For repairs.

            On a Wednesday.

            No retreat, no surrender.

                                                             *