Tue Apr 23 12:13:06 2002 Submitting Host: 65.102.222.153 visitor_name: billy email: billy type: Article submit: This is an article
*** Tue Apr 23 12:15:36 2002 Submitting Host: 65.102.222.153 visitor_name: billy email: billy type: Article submit:
This is an article
*** Thu Apr 25 13:01:49 2002 Submitting Host: 65.102.222.153 visitor_name: Billy Bob Thorton email: billybob@ugly_jolie.com type: News submit:
I have come out of the closet, and 'You sure do have a purtty mouth'
*** Sun Jun 16 15:04:15 2002 Submitting Host: 12.245.102.181 visitor_name: Rachel (also known not-so-widely as Limada_Sargu) email: emy1823@mailbolt.com type: Creative Piece submit: I stepped back, slowly, not quite sure of what I just did. I hit a solid object behind me and stopped moving. I was shaking, and I was confused. All the while I was staring at the girl. She shrank away from me, scared. She leaned against the wall opposite from me. She had one hand holding herself up against the wall, the other one clutching her upper chest. She watched me and I watched her, both of us with the same expression of wonder and disbelief at the other, She wore a yellow dress, the collar dripping with her blue blood underneath her hand. I wore jeans and a red t-shirt, both dripping with the same blue color. She sank to her knees on the floor, and I took one step towards her, my hand outstretched. She looked at my hand like one would look at a poisonous snake who was ready to attack. And maybe, that?s all I was. I took back my hand, and stepped back once more. I brought my other hand to my face, and dropped what it was holding suddenly, like I didnt know it was there. The object narrowly missed my foot. I choked back a loud sob, as I heard her speak her last word. ?Why?? she whispered quietly, so only I could hear. I shook my head in disbelief. I did not know why. She fell over. I stood shaking. I didn?t know for how long. Suddenly, a bell rang off in the distance. I looked up, realizing it must be time for classes to change. I couldn?t stay here though. I had to leave. To get away from the scene. I glanced around quickly and suspiciously. I wasted no time. I had no time. I ran out of the room, and into the sinks. No one was there yet, but it wouldn?t be long. I rushed out of the restrooms, and into the hallway. Luckily, no one saw me come out, and I walked as quickly as I could out of the building. No one suspected anything of me yet, and I smiled a fake smile at a few people I knew when I passed them in the parking lot. I walked right over to my mother?s car, and got in. I always carried an extra key to her car. My mother worked half days at the school teaching an astronomy class. Nothing she taught would have prepared me for his. I started up the car, and started to drive away, but not before I heard screams from inside the horrible building I just fled. Tears poured down my face as I thought of the terrible day. I drove off. I didn?t really have my liscence yet, since I wasn?t eighteen, but I knew how to drive, and I wasn?t that bad at it. As I drove, I thought. My father worked as some sorta government person, but I never knew much about his job. My mother just taught astronomy at the school, a job she started just this year. She never taught before, but she was always knowledgeable about the stars. When I was really little, she had a job, but gave it up when I started 3rd or 4th grade. I wasnt in elementary anymore though, I was in 11th grade, and I knew more...or so I thought.... She never taught me anything that would have helped me outside of school. She never taught me for this, but somehow, I think she knew about it. Especially when she told me to make friends with the new girl Taliah. I can still remember my parents talking about stars and the sky and other mysterious things like that when I was younger. I never listened to their conversations. Whenever anything like that was brought up, I would roll my eyes, and they would laugh at me. How I wish now that I had listened to them! Them and their crazy conversations! The tears fell silently down my face as I came closer to my house. Turning into my driveway, I burst out in sobs. I must have cried for five minutes before it occurred to me to go somewhere more safe from the public than in the car. I crept into the house, hoping no one had seen. I went into my room and packed necessities. I packed food, and clothes, and other things that would help keep me safe. I was just about to leave my room, and I swung open the door, figuring no one else was in the house. But someone was. I screamed, and ran away, but the person was too fast. They caught me, and held on tight. It was my mother. ?NO!!!? I screamed over and over. ?NONONONO!!! Let me go! Don?t turn me in!!!!? I struggled to get away from her grip. She tried to speak to me, but I wouldn?t listen to her at all. I just kept screaming. Finally, I wrenched myself from her tight grasp, and made it to the window. I opened it, and was ready to climb out of it, when I looked back at my mother, who was sprawled on the ground. I saw what I had done to her. All I had done was knock her onto the ground, but it showed a lot. Neither of us believed in violence. She reached her hand out to me. ?You dont understand...? She whispered desprately. I shook my head, and jumped out the window. I landed with a crunch, but at least I had gotten away from her. I carefully stood up. I didnt think anything was broken at the moment. Other than me. I was in pieces. ?You?re right, mom, I don?t understand.? I said tearfully to the window that held nothing at the moment but the memory of me. I started to run. I needed to get far away. I had protection, but it wouldn?t be enough. I needed somewhere to hide. It had to be far away, but not too far away. It had to be secret. Somewhere where I could buy food today, but not tomorow, because tomorow, they?d know who I was. Today they didnt. I ran. It was first contact. I had made it. I had destroyed it. And soon, the whole world would know. *** Sun Jul 28 20:41:44 2002 Submitting Host: 205.188.209.77 visitor_name: Amity email: ALF9009009009@aol.com type: Creative Piece submit: About nineteen years ago an acquaintance of mine, Felix, stumbled upon this attractive young woman. He described her in a most animalistic manner which took me, as well as my fellow comrades, by surprise. This hard-working, diligent man had fallen recklessly in love with a flight attendant, Desdemona, during one of his routine trips to Greece. Not only had Felix abandoned his first priority, his work, but he also threw away his propriety and for six days booked himself on every single one of Desdemona’s flight routes. By the seventh day she accepted his proposal and they were married in Karpenissi. Ask me where that is and I will tell you that I still am uncertain. However, I do know that Desdemona’s father was a resident of Karpenissi and made a living off of feta cheese and spent the majority of his profits doting on his only daughter. Once married, Felix brought his new bride home to us. We warmly received her into our address books. By the time the couple had settled down, Felix had not only accepted her into his infamous bachelor pad but also his check book, will, and established for her unlimited credit at some of my favorite places. Anyway, Desdemona took up English and a new name, Mona. Throughout their first five years together Felix focused on two things, his wife and his work. All emphasis was directed towards triumph. Felix had proven himself to be a loyal husband that fulfilled all of his obligations to his wife and home. Felix, being away on business, never bothered Mona for more than a few weeks at a time. She passed her time by furnishing their house, pampering herself, and attending the social events expected of her as Mrs. Felix Randall II. Confrontation was avoided only by Felix’s ambition accompanied by his adoration of his wife’s searing magnetism. Obvious to all but Felix, Mona was slowly depleting their funds. Finally, with enough courage to face his love and force her to end her frivolity, Felix sat Mona down to discuss their future and the consequences of her current behavior. Before he could make his intentions known to her, Mona interrupted Felix with the news that she was pregnant with their first child. She knew this would not only bring joy to her husband, but dignity and establishment among his peers whom, themselves, had families. Money was never mentioned again. Felix drove himself harder to produce. By the ninth year of their marriage, Mona had yielded Felix 2 children and was late in her third pregnancy. Her eldest, a daughter of three years, Mona had named Kaethe after her own deceased mother. But to everyone besides herself, Kaethe was called Kay. For all the world knew, there had never even been born a Kaethe. Mona’s second child was a healthy young boy, Felix Randall III. He had just celebrated his second birthday and clearly resembled his mother. He had inherited from her a fierce, straight nose and a delicate chin that came to a softly rounded point. From his father he had been given only his name and fortune. At first, none of us even supposed that Kay and Felix were related. Kay was, in appearance, the polar opposite of Felix. There were even rumors that the Randall’s had adopted before Kay’s features revealed those of her father. Had it not been for the few who actually witnessed the pregnant Mona, I would have bought into the hype myself. Kay was her father from head to toe! Her thick, light ash blonde hair drew contrast to her brother’s silky, jet hair. Though both children shared the chestnut brown eyes of their father, Kay’s lids had the slight graduation of her father’s arches while Felix’s resembled Mona’s: a high, stylish curve that sloped abruptly at each end to meet the calligraphic swoop of the bottom lid. Nevertheless, Kay was attractive and Felix was striking. We all found it astonishing that a marriage between two strangers could last through nine years and two children. As another year passed, or a new child came - even when a dinner party was thrown at their home, we all would speculate that this would be it – the breaking point would be reached and divorce papers drawn up. Erroneous. Still, we thought it was only a matter of time. It was more than just the gossip we could formulate that kept our interest of the Randall’s climaxed. I admit there was considerable jealousy of either person. Felix was at the top of his game at work; he would even laugh at the times when he thought his wife’s expenditure would be his demise. Mona was the perfect mother with her children, wife with her husband, and woman amongst her many, social friends all harboring secret rancor on account of her confidence that was her beauty. No doubt their children will be marked for that same resentment. Roderick was born. Their family was complete. For the next seven years Felix remained in his station, neither moving up nor down. Mona continued to raise her children who were growing old enough to reveal their own individuality. The glamour of the couple’s formative years was featured in albums and throughout conversation but reined no longer. The Randall’s were one of us by time, not decision. Mona’s features were masked by motherly attention to her three children, now eleven going on twelve, ten, and eight. Felix was forty-two and Mona was forty. My family had always been close to the Randall’s. My mother had grown up with Felix’s mother and together they forged a lifelong relationship that would pull our two families together throughout the years. Felix and I have always been cordial. He, being five years my senior, would accompany me to dances and all sorts of functions when I was young. My protector – my mother just loved it. Between us there was friendship – an alliance that, when called upon, would stand strong. We were each other’s scapegoats at family picnics, weekends, and reunions. So you can imagine the desertion I felt when Felix picked up with Mona and did not contact me. I do not want you to get the idea that I was jealous – I was not and am not – but we had always been open with those kinds of things. Anything that involved family approval was game to be passed by each other. Since he was married, I naturally stepped away from that point on. A friendship between a man and a woman can easily be turned into a situation when one of those friends is married. He sought me out first. I had just moved to the city because of a man who I thought would turn out to be the love of my life. Instead, I ended up alone with a down payment on an apartment too big for one person- and it was in New York City. After all of my furniture was delivered and had unpacked, I had amongst me a visual confirmation that A, there was a void, and B, I was not big enough to fill it myself. I had left a stable job at a newspaper in Boston to come to New York where I only had responsibility without security. In vain, I searched for a job at another newspaper. Finally I conceded to the other side. They hired me at an up-and-coming magazine directed towards the new age lifestyle and alternative options for everyday living. I was not thrilled at first, since my whole life was spent in a love affair with reporting (what I considered to be news news). My education of how to live life properly (properly according to my life) began at the magazine. I was bitter when I became conscious that I had spent thirty-seven years of my life absorbing and regurgitating the life around me without actively experiencing and savoring it for me. I had given up on the idea of children. Each day in passing I would drink my coffee and send my condolences to another wasted egg. It wouldn’t have bothered me so much if I did not have the overwhelming desire to become a mother. May be for the best since I love my carcinogen-packed coffee and probably don’t eat enough cruciferous vegetables. Come to think of it, sometimes I don’t even wash fruits and vegetables before I eat them. God/ Fate must fancy me an ill-equipped manufacturer of his/its Children. Anything that comes out of me will either be poisoned or lack a vital organ…like a heart. God can’t chance it on me seeing as baby sacrificing is now illegal. During one of my self-loathing moments by the computer, with a book on the Theravada and Mahayana traditions next to me, my telephone decided to disturbed me. I was in the middle of a chapter entitled Yana (Buddha’s raft), which is principally used as a metaphor of the spiritual journey as the raft represents the philosophy that could bring one closer to enlightenment. Roused from my work so suddenly, work that I had been entranced with, caused me to be in somewhat of a slow stupor once thrown back into reality. I haphazardly answered the phone and had almost forgotten to say hello; my eyes were still glued on the book. “So where ya’ been all my life?” A chuckle and pause followed. When I did not respond, “Christie? It couldn’t have been that long.” Was I supposed to be happy about Felix contacting me? I wasn’t then. I was just a little curious and very surprised. A practical stranger, Felix and I had not met for well over fifteen years. Sure, my mother had kept me and the rest of the family informed of his life path, but what was he up to now? “Felix.” I tentatively stated. “Why are you calling me?” I thought that I might as well be up front with my reaction. No need in exchanging formalities. We had always been past that. “Well, I have to stop in New York for a few days – you know, business. My mother told me you had moved out there and so I thought, what the hell…I haven’t seen you in so long and…” Right. That worked. My curiosity was at an all time high. So, for days leading up to his arrival, I waited in every sense of the word. Any activity that I did was only to pass time, whether it was work or entertaining friends. And then the day came, and he was let into my apartment building. He stood in the elevator and walked down the hall, and, touching the white paint of my door, tapped. I allowed for him to step into what was mine and, in turn, he carried across the threshold, bright yellow roses- which I hated. I instantly demanded to see pictures of the family and gushed over each one. I complemented him on his wife’s beauty and praised him for the accomplished children he had produced. He went on about how independent I had become. Conversation was turned to our parents, our work, even some of our old friends. Felix urged me to change my mind and come along for his mother’s seventieth. He told me about how his younger brother, freshly out of a bad marriage, had asked interrogated his Mother for information of me last Christmas. He would be there. I finally agreed and immediately afterwards needed him out of my space. I did not know why, but there was something a little too corny…or maybe…I just didn’t like him. He left under the pretense that I had an article to finish, due early the next morning. I wouldn’t see him again until our flight left on Saturday morning. By the time we reached Connecticut I was very excited to see my sister, Gail, if not for a friendly face, for the fact that she constantly carried with her aspirin to kill the headaches produced by our mother. After a flight of feigning sleep, I was mentally prepared for the occasion. I took a separate taxi to my own home, not wanting to stop by the Randall’s before I absolutely had to. I just remember feeling this overwhelming sensation of confusion (why on earth had I come- I didn’t even like Felix) and a foreign magnetism dragging me on. My three sisters had already arrived and were arguing with my mother over her persistence in refusing to take Heparin, for her CAD. My arrival interrupted them from their dispute; my mother was relieved and they were distracted. Gail was my eldest sister and the first to tell me that I looked much better than she recalled. The next to comment was Libby, also older than I, who suspiciously said that they had not even dreamed I would show up…not in a million years…ever. Lastly, I was greeted by the baby of the family, Emily, who couldn’t have cared less the reason of my being there, but was genuinely happy just to see me. My father was out with Dr. Randall I. Both were squeezing in a game of golf before the party. My father claimed that it was just too beautiful an April day to waste indoors. My mother bought it. After my appearance took them by surprise, I again shocked them by revealing that I had traveled with Felix. A fleeting meow came from Libby, but I fought the jumping eyes back where they belonged, but seldom where they were, by professing my love for some John Doe back in New York. That shut them up about Felix. They wanted to know all about my little lie guy and I left them befuddled for a shower. I was refreshed, dressed, primped, and geared up Gail and her husband, Mark, had left the kids at home back in New Jersey and were planning to take the Mercedes with my mother, father, and myself. Libby’s whole family was here, Aaron and both of the boys. Emily would wedge herself in the back with them. We were stuffed in two cars; one that had a drunk golfer spewing 20% proof spit, and the other with two twin boys interested in just how far snot could fly out of the nose. The drive over was the serene appetizer to a piquant meal. We were among the last to arrive and that pleased my mother who loved to be the center of attention. She has always been more inclined to be the one received rather than the one receiving. I could sense jealousy when it was I who caught the guest’s eyes rather than my mother’s new pearl brooch. The evening went on without a hitch until Felix and his brother, Bernard, stood to make their toast. Dr. Randall I had already graced us with his presence once and that has been the extent of his interest in his wife’s affair. As first born, Felix attributed all his “early success in life” to his parents and the “guidance” of his mother…blah blah blah. When it was Bernard’s turn, he sarcastically raised his glass way above his head and firmly spoke of how his mother taught him to be “self-sufficient”… for how else would he have made it with “a mother so incredibly preoccupied with her first born”. Bernard stepped around to the front of the table where his mother sat, her face remained unaffected by the public humility her son was creating but she brought her hand up to Felix for support. “I am so thankful- gracious- as Mother puts it, that I learned this lesson so early on in life. Better now than never! Or am I wrong?” His question had been violently directed towards Felix who now stood uneasy beside his mother. “I think my brother is angry with me!” Felix appealed to the guests with a laugh that only intensified the anger of Bernard. “Bern, why don’t we discuss this later. Do not project the anger you have towards me on Mother.” “No, of course. She only created the hostility. You sustain it. Who are you, anyway? What- perfect husband and model of what a businessman should be? What a man should be? You are certainly not being promoted anytime soon, or hadn’t you noticed that the board meetings you are not asked to grace with your presence are growing in number?” “You are going to stop or I will-” Felix was cut off short by Bernard who was two steps ahead of his brother’s every word. “You will never be able to shut me up now. It is my duty as your brother to finally provide the truth to all those little uncertainties that you harbor deep inside of your scared, little heart. Your wife, she married you why? Oh did she fall as madly in love with you as you did with her? Your lust and her greed did nothing more than produce those children you keep cooped up at the house. What are you afraid of? That they will fall victim to people like your wife? Have all that you have set up for them crumble by the appetite of their own lovers, partners, spouse’s? And now you bring in Christie! You’re hiding under as glass table buddy. What the hell business do you have in New York- how many times in your life have you ever traveled there for reasons other than pleasure…never! Christie is here, look at her. And there is your wife.” “My wife and I are not your concern. Our love for one another is not lust- nor is it out of greed. Why bring Christie into this conversation? She has nothing to do with this. Always making a scene, Bern-” Mona had focused her eyes on the fork bellow her and had not flinched.” “I’m not bringing Christie into this – you are! I just thought that while I had the chance I would say what everyone is thinking. Me! Felix! Me! You invited her to kick me down again! You obviously weren’t thinking of your wife when you hopped the plane to New York. Trying to punish her for not loving you maybe? Or are you just trying to stop me from…I have been the one who cared about Christie my whole life and you always grabbed her up before I could even get the chance- ” “What, now you are blaming me for your lack of confidence? If you wanted her badly enough then you should have tried harder. I don’t want Christie. I have someone, I have a family, I have a job that people would cut their right hand off for, I have a life. Do not condemn me for yours!” Bernard stepped back from Felix , closing his eyes, and he removed himself from his anger. “You are absolutely right. I should have done more. What can I say- you were always the best. You are such a success Felix. I am just jealous.” Stillness. I had never heard of, certainly hadn’t witnessed, such a display, besides those scenes in the movies at weddings or funerals. And all I wanted to do was disappear. Everyone was looking back and forth at Felix, Bern, and me. Then there was that short glance at the person next to them to make sure that what they felt and saw was shared. Even the most basic of insecurities cannot be abandoned, even by another’s disaster. I didn’t want to move because it would only draw their attention to me. I hadn’t done anything. I also now avoided looking down since I knew it would be interpreted as guilt. So the next best thing was to look at Bern, not Felix though, with the rest of the party. The brothers remained standing until, finally, Felix took up the role he was meant to play and apologized for his brother’s behavior as well as his own. He made a point of saying he “should not have responded to the ridiculous statements of Bern”. And, steadily, the dull roar of the party sprang almost to what it had been. If it wasn’t for the empathy everyone felt for Mrs. Randall, as it was her party, then I am certain the stupefied and static state would have remained for the entirety of the party. Once a buzz was created, I slipped out and with the kindness of Gail’s husband, took his car keys to return home. They promised that they would find another means of getting home and I finally allowed myself to leave. I was grateful for this. Right as I was about to slip the key into the car and be granted access to refuge, someone caught up with me. I suppose with the same idea as myself, to get out while he could and escape any further humiliation. “Oh god, I am sorry you got into this. I never wanted you to- ” “No, no. It’s fine. It is my own fault for agreeing to come back home against my better judgement.” I tried to mollify the situation- and I really didn’t feel anger. I felt uncomfortable. “Thanks.” Pause. “So I was just about to get out of here…you too?” Uneasiness. “Yeah.” I looked down at the pavers bellow me. “I can drive you home, you know.” “That would just make it all too real. Rather not put any more to what was said in there.” I turned, facing the car, and let escape a long overdue sigh. We stood there for an eternity. “We…” I left the Gail’s key with the valet as we drove away. What, was that two years ago? I don’t know whether these two years have gone exceptionally slow, or I have just raced through everything I have done since. In any case, my decision to leave with Bern was the paramount choice. Undeniably. By no means can I now accuse Felix and Mona a relationship based solely on lust- or at least not haste. Bern and I were married just three months after that night. He had come back with me to New York the following Tuesday. Though neither of us plan to go back home, we amusingly have kept in touch through holiday postings. I love to play over in my mind how my mother and sister’s must have reacted when they opened the It’s A Boy! announcement. Thank god Jack was born right before Halloween (a year and three months after we were married), for if he had not been born around a holiday my family would have never believed it was truly me sending them mail and probably would not have opened it- just in case someone was trying something funny. My mother suffers from “heightened nerves” and refuses to allow those around her the right to say paranoia. I often incorporate events in my life to the magazine and when, in passing, I had told my little love story to a fellow writer, he told me that I should find some relevance to the Buddhist work I had been doing and write an article about how Buddhist teachings could be used as metaphors for anyone’s life. I thanked him for the tip and took on the challenge. I hadn’t gone far before I stretched the metaphor of Yana as far as I possibly could. I reasoned that Felix had been the bait to get my onto the Yana, or raft. Traveling home to the party, and then my experiences that historic night, were all what brought me, finally, to Bern. And just as enlightenment was the destination for Buddha, love in the form of Bern was my own. This all might be a little far fetched, I agree, but I don’t think that it was just harmless happenings that brought me to Bern and gave to me other love, Jack. I have since given coffee up for tea and stock the refrigerator with cauliflower. I don’t think I am in any position to chance it. *** Mon Dec 30 20:48:42 2002 Submitting Host: 207.69.99.145 visitor_name: Robert Stevens email: xxrsxx type: Creative Piece submit: Robert Stevens The Family Buisness Chapter 1 Part 1 Setting Long Beach, New York November of 1987 To some people, family has nothing to do with anything. Well, different people believe different things. For example, some men stay out at work all day and spend no time with their family. Well to the people of the Giorgio family, they aren’t real men. They are just people wasting away their lives working. To Anthony Giorgio, you don’t spend time with your friends and family, you’re a dead man. In the long run, you’ll end up a dead man. It is 1987, November the 23rd, Thanksgiving. Anthony Giorgio is at the dinner table with the whole family, with the exception of his own son. His wife, Francesca, sets the turkey down on the table. “Now all we need is Michael,”said Anthony. “He’s probably out with Maria,” said Francesca. “Ah let him have fun while he has the chance,” said Anthony Giorgio the first, known as Grandpa Tony. Then they heard a door open, and it was Michael. He was with Maria and he took off his coat and put it on the hanger. Maria came in and hugged her boyfriends Mother and Father. “Why is there a cut on your eye?” asked his mother. “I slipped on the road from the rain outside,” said Michael. The whole family was sitting down at the table, including Maria, and Robert Vazzi, who wasn’t a member of the family(or not yet for Maria). There was Anthony, and he was at the head of the table. Sitting next to him was his wife Francesca, and next to her, their 21 year old son Michael. Sitting next to him was Maria, and next to her, Grandpa Tony. Later on, Uncle Christopher, Aunt Carmella, and Cousin Stevo came. Then Following all of them, Anthony’s most trusted friend, Robert Vazzi showed up, who was like a member of the family to them. Finally they were all there, and before they started to eat, Anthony Giorgio raised his glass and said, “Salute”. Everyone else raised there’s responding. Anthony Giorgio is the head of the Giorgio Italian Seafood company. He owned five resteraunts just in New York. He gets Seafood imported from Sicily. He has power in New York, New Jersey, and in Sicily where his buisness expands, and also where he gets his food. He took over the buisness from his father, Anthony Giorgio the first (Grandpa Tony), after his father retired. He plans to get his son to take over in the family business, once he retires. Which Michael is also the only Giorgio son of Anthony and Francesca, which is odd for an Itlaian family. Anthony is also head of the Giorgio crime family. It was once Grandpa Tony who was the boss, but once he retired, he also made Anthony the boss of the family. Anthony was middle aged, well built, dark skin, dark hair spiked backwards. Chapter 1 Part 2 Once they were finished eating Thanksgiving dinner, Anthony Giorgio was in his home office with Robert Vazzi, Grandpa Tony, and Uncle Christopher. “What are we gonna do about this buisness with these mexican gangs?” Anthony asked. “They’ve been all over the streets screwin’ around. They already messed up some of the Vito families resturaunts spraypainting their spanish crap on the back walls. I don’t want it happenin’ to my resturaunts. Make that one of the first things on your list.” “Yeah ok,” said Robert. “If we find it once, we’ll get rid of it them the next time.” “There isn’t gonna be a next time,” said Anthony. “That’s what I need you for. To make sure there isn’t a next time. Or a first time.” “OK, I’m on it,” Robert replied. HOURS EARLIER Michael was walking behind one of his fathers resteraunts in a short-cut to get home from his girlfriend Maria’s house. He spotted a car with blaring rap music and a big group of people around it talking. They had spray bottles of spray paint and started writing things like “f**** Italians, and “Italians should die.” Michael walked up to them. “Get outa here right now,” he said calmly. “Trust me, I’m doing you a favor.” “What the f*** are you gonna do about you spagetti eatin’ b****?”asked one of them in a spanish accent. “I’m doin you guys a favor. I don’t wanna see you guys white washing this building with your head up your ass.” “F*** you!” he shouted back. They grabed Michael and slammed him against the wall. He put one hand to his throat, and with the other, punched him in the eye. He released his grasp and Michael dropped to the ground. They all started kicking him. Then Two of them lifted him up and held him. Then the leader of the gang spit in his face and punched him in the face once more, and then they all got in the car driving away, leaving Michael lying on the ground alone in the dark behind his father’s resturaunt with spraypainting’s all over the back of it. THE NEXT DAY The next day, Anthony was going to work. The building that the gang ruined was a different one than he was at now. He was in his office, when his phone rang. “Yeah.” “Ey Tony. It’s Frankie. The spiks hit our resturaunt. The one on Victoria Lane.” “Oh my God. I’ll be there in five minutes.” Less than five minutes later, he arrived at the resturaunt. Frankie Rizzo and Johnny Fontana was waiting for him outside the door. Anthony quickly got out of his 2002 black ford exphidition. “What the hell happened?”he asked as he threw away his ciggerette. “This way,”said Frankie. They walked around to the back of the building and he saw all of the spraypaint everywhere. He looked at it with anger. Johnny took out a cigar and started to light it. “Take the stupid thing out of your mouth big boy,”said Anthony as he snatched it and threw it on the ground. “We got a lot of work to do.” Chapter 1, Part 3 Michael Giorgio attended NYU. He was a junior, and worked a grocery store called “Bucks”. He was tall, slightly skinny, but still very stong. He had brown eyes and olive colored skin. He had just finished class where he saw Maria. So he walked up to her and gave her a kiss. “How’s it goin’ babe?” “I’m fine,”she said smiling. “I’m off from work today. Wanna do somethin like go out to dinner or somethin?”he asked. “Sure. Why don’t you pick me up at six?” “Yeah that sounds good. Until then I gotta study for this semester exam coming up for antient philosiphy. I’ll see you tonight. Love you,” he said as he gave her another kiss. “Love you too baby. See you tonight,”she said. It was that evening while they were both out at the Giorgio’s fancy italian seafood resturaunt, when Maria finally noticed the scar by Michael’s eye. They were eating and she was looking into his eyes when she noticed. “What the hell happened to your eye?” she asked. “Oh. I got jumped on my way to my parents house. Then I got jumped by some Mexican gang that was messin up one of my dads’ resturaunts. “Oh my God!”she said loudly. “Well are you okay?”she asked held his head and kissed it. “Yeah I’m fine don’t worry about it, baby.” They looked up and Anthony Giorgio came into the resturaunt storming into the back in his black leather jacket, black shirt, and red tie. “Does your dad know?” she asked. “No. I don’t want him to go crazy about it. I know him.” Just after he said that, Anthony walked up to his sons table. “It’s on the house,” he said smiling. “You kids want some shampagne?” “Sure dad,” said Michael. “Ey! No balls! Get me a bottle of shampagne!” he yelled out to the back as all the customers around that area looked over at him. “Ya’ll enjoying your dinner?” he said to all of them. Frankie ‘no balls’ Rizzo came walking quickly with a tray of shampagne and two glasses. “Here you guys go,” he said setting the tray down. “So Mikey, when are you two gonna get married? Seems like you’ve been dating for years!” he said with energy. “When we think the time is right,”said Michael. Michael strangly noticed that his father looked like he was in a very good mood. Had he even found out abuot the building? Had he found out and then taken care of it all already? He wonderd what could have happened. Anthony said on Thanksgiving day, that there would be no next time, and he meant it. He had the back wall of the building whit washed, and then he had hitmen guard all of the resturaunts. It just so happens, that the old car full of Mexicans showed up again. They showed up where the fat bodied Johnny ‘big boy’ Fantana was. Fontana pulled out his machine gun and gave his men behind him the signal, and within minutes, the old cadillac car had shadderd glass and blood everywhere. Anthony was in that same building that the action was going on outside of, and he heard it. Once it was over he raced over to the resturaunt Frankie and Robert were at and he stormed through the door to bring the news to them, as you saw before. That’s why they were in a good mood. Because they had the idea that they had gotten rid of all of the harmful Mexican gangs, or all of that perticular gang. “This is good. We’ve taken care of the punks that did it. But there’s probably more of them,” said Robert to Anthony in the back of the resturaunt, in Anthony’s office. “Yeah, so what? We’ve gotten the one’s that dared to mess with us, and that’s all that matters,” said Anthony, comfortably. “Alright, I’m gonna go out and say bye to my son and his girlfriend,” said Anthony, walking out of the room. “Well you go on and have fun at your college,” said Anthony to his son. “Okay, dad. I’ll see you soon.” “Yeah you take care, Adriana, ya hear?” said Anthony smiling at his son’s girlfriend. “Bye.” Chapter2Part1 Michael Giorgio was at school, leaving, going out to the parking lot to his car. He was about to put his keys in his car when a group of about four people stopped him. “Alright boy you an yo Italian punks have done enough. We’re gonna put a stop to this right now,” said one of them, in a strong spanish accent. Then he pulled out an knife, and they started beating on Michael. Michael this time, fought back throughing one of them onto his windsheild. Then he punched the one with the knife. He fell to the ground, and cut Michael’s hand. Then he picked up the knife and he pointed it at them, stopping them with their hands in the air. Then before long police were there from a teacher who had spotted what was going on. Michael was not put in jail, for self defense, but he was expelled from college. He was at his fathers home. He was sitting on a sofa with a bandage on his hand from the cut. “Is that all that happened? The Spanish people jumped you at your car and you defended yourself and then you got expelled because of that?” asked Anthony. “Yeah that’s about it.” “How did they know you were my son?” “See the cut over my eye? The ones who did the spraypainting to your resturaunt jumped me.” Anthony was shocked at what had happened to his son. He had lost his job too. “We’re on your side about all of this, Michael. I can get you another job, trust me. I don’t know what we are gonna do about school though. Did you call your girlfriend?” he asked. “No.” “Do it.” Maria was in her dorm with her room mate studying. Then the phone rang. “I got it,” she said. She picked up the phone. “Hello?” “Hey baby. It’s me.” “Hey. Everything ok?” “Not exactly. Something happened. Can you come over my parents house?” “Um..If it’s that important.” “Thanks. Somtething happened to me and I can’t tell you from the phone.” “Are you okay?” “Yeah I’m fine.” “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Bye baby.” “Bye Maria.” Maria showed up at the Giorgio house. Robert Vazzi was also there. She saw Michael, and she was shocked. “What happened to you?” she said as she ran over to him and fell into his arms. He told her about everything, and she was upset that he had been expelled from school, and was extremely worried about him. “I’m gonna be working for my father now Maria,” said Michael. “I’m probably going to work for my father now. He has given me the oppurtunity to be a big deal in the company. Don’t worry, I’ll still be around.” “Michael, what is going on with you and this gang?” she asked wanting to get straight down to the problem. “I have no idea. They jump me first, then try to attack me again at school. I think they jumped me at first just because they are rascist, but the second time must have been for another reason. I think someone else is behind this. My father.” Chapter2Part2 Anthony was angry at the school for expelling his son after they said he was defending himself. But they said he had later threatened the others with a knife. So Anthony gave Michael a job. Since Anthony ran the buisness, he decided to put his son up to manager of a new resturaunt being built of his, in the bronx. He would be making good money. So, Michael was now in the family buisness. He purposly did not want to be, and stay out, knowing that his father was in the mob. But now he had no choice. It was dark outside, and behind a building a group of teens met. One of them pulled out a joint. He lit it, and inhaled. “Alright. Those stupid Italiano punks are making me loco. They are pissin me off. We jumped that one kid again in the parking lot and he got us back. Now what we are going to do is attack again before they can get us,” he said as he was smoking. “What are we gonna do about it Luis?” asked one of them. “Well, did you see their new resturaunt being built down the road?” “Si.” “We’re gonna make sure it doesn’t get built. Tengo hambre. Lets go to a resturaunt eh boys?” The construction site was due to be completed soon. The new Giorgio Italian seafood family resturaunt was up, and they were just finishing it. That evening, Anthony, Michael, Robert, Frankie, and Johnny, were all checking it out. “This is gonna be yours son,” said Anthony. “We’re gonna try to figure all of this out and what is happening to you with these gangs. The Vito family has had them mess with them, and they haven’t been able to stop them.” “We gotta keep gaurds everywhere. We can’t risk loosing someone, or another resturaunt,” said Robert Vazzi. “If they find anything else out,” “Wait a sec,” said Anthony cutting off what Robert was going to say. “I hear something.” They sat quietly. Then Tony looked and saw a gut in a bandana holding a tape recorder, listening in on their conversation. They all pulled out guns chasing him. Anthony hit him in the back, and he fell. Then Johnny picked up the tape recorder and shot it. It burst into pieces. Michael looked shocked because it was the first time he had seen his father kill someone.Then before they knew it, there were a whole pack of gang members by their cars with machine guns pointed at them. “Oh my God,” said Frankie “no balls”. “What we gonna do?” he asked. Then he looked behind his shoulder and he was the only one standing infront of the building. Everyone else had ran away. So as fast as he could he started running away. Then after they all left the gang tore apart the resturaunt. The glass was broken. All of the brand new items placed in the resteruant had been destroyed. “Now this is war,” said Anthony Giorgio in a very angry voice to his consiglieri, Robert. Chapter2Part3 The leader of the gang, Edwardo Tochila, had been very proud of his gang. He had been walking home with his right hand man, Alexander Hernandez. “Things are now going very great. We are under control of this problem. I’ll see you tomorrow, Alexander,” said Edwardo. Alexander walked into his buetiful home in the suburbs of New York, and said hello to his Grandmother, who he lived with. “Hey I’m home,” he said. “What are you doing getting home so late again?” she asked her grandson. “Oh nothin. I’m gonna go to bed. Buenas noches.” Then to her surprise, their front door slammed open. Men in all black and in dark sunglasses and black hats that looked like italian gangsters burst into the house with machine guns. Then gunshots ran through the whole house. The grandmother was dead. Alexander heard it and was hiding somewhere in the house. He called to get some help from his friends. They quickly arrived to help Alexander. But before they knew it, gun shots rang again, and his help was dead. So Alexander grabbed a gun and charged out firing, but it was no use. Soon bullets ripped through his body, and he was coverd in blood. He fell to the ground and one of the italian gangsters kicked him in the head. Then they ran into a car and drove away. Robert Vazzi, over the past month, found out a lot about this gang. He found out that their leader was named Edwardo Tochila, and found out all about what they have done. Anthony Giorgio was ready to strike fast, to prevent them from getting back at them from doing the hits on Alexander Hernandez, and the other gang members who came for help. Before all of this started, there was about 20 members in the gang, and now, it was only down to 11. The Italians had destroyed their gang, and they were so angry, that they were going to plan another attack, only this time they would tear up the resturaunt with the italians in it. The gang would not allow another tradegy to happen to them. A very desturcive war between, thug gangsters, and organized crime gangsters, was unleashing, and the bad news for the spanish gang, they were terribly outnumberd, espicially with the other families of New York behind the Giorgio family. Maria DiMela had been very worried about Michael. Then one day, she was out at the mall, when her cell phone rang. She picked it up, and Michael wanted her to go out to dinner with her, espicially because it was around the holidays, and he wanted to take her out. Only this time, he smartly, didn’t take her to one of his fathers resteraunts, aside from his own which had gotten rebuilt. He had decided to take her to a fancy resteraunt more into the city of New York. She accepted, and was happy to spend more time with him. Michael drove by and picked up Maria. She got in. “Hey baby,” he said smiling at her. “Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry I havent been able to spend much time with you lately. I’ve been really busy at work lately. I’ve missed you,” said Michael. “I’ve missed you too.You don’t know how much I’ve been worried about you from whats been going on,” said Maria. Michael, looked into his girlfriends eyes with a deep love, like it was the most buetiful women on earth, and he was so lucky to have her love him back. “I’ve been okay,” he said. “All of that stuff is over with.” Maria knew that Michael loved her truly. She always saw it in him whenever she was with him. She had never been more happy with any other man in her life. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. They arrived at the resturaunt. It was extremely fancy, a french resturaunt, and they sat at a table with two candles lit, and a red table cloth. They had wine, and their meals. “I really asked you to come to dinner with me, because I want to get something out. I just want to tell you, that you’re the woman that I have been waiting for my whole life. Your buetiful, caring, and everything I have ever dreamed of. I would rather die than not be with you. When I’m with you, its like the happiest moments in my life. So, I decided to get you an early christmas present. He pulled out a small black box, with a red ribbon on it. She pulled off the top slowly, and saw a golden ring with a dimond on it. “Maria, will you marry me?” said Michael. Tears started rolling down her cheeks. “Yes Michael, I’ll marry you,” she said as she threw her arms around him. The people at the other tables looked and smiled. The big wedding day of Anthony Giorgio’s son, Michael, took place that winter, in January. There was a lot of people there, and most of them were Italians. On Maria’s side of the family, they were basically a bunch of Italians. They got married at a catholic church, and everyone was there. But, Michael had become a changed man after joining the family buisness. But he decided that he should settle down, and he did that and married the woman of his dreams. After the wedding, they had a cerimony. Michael was dancing with Francesca, his mother, while Maria danced with Giuseppe DiMela (Joseph DiMela), her father. Then finally they danced together to a old Sicilian song played by a mandolin. Anthony was very proud of his son, and he had high hopes for his future. After all of this excitement, he had forgotten about all of the buisness with the gang. He called Robert Vazzi over. “I wanna talk to this Edwardo guy. I don’t care how rascist he is, I’m gonna try to settle all of this. I don’t care how, but get him to me. Michael and Maria were together on their way to their honey moon. They were going to take a plane and go to Sicily. They would be gone for three weeks. Michael had said his goodbye’s to his family and they said that everything would be under control there. “You just go have fun,” said Anthony. Michael and Maria stayed at the best Hotel in Sicily, and had a great time drinking home made italian wine that Michael’s Uncle Chrissy had sent him. Then they went out with the bottle, and two glasses, and walked through the hills of Sicily on the cool grass, with nothing but the moonlight shining down on them. It was Michaels best time of his life. They sipped wine talking. “Baciami, mi moglie. Tu bellissima,” said Michael in Italian to his new wife. They made love into the night. Chapter3Part1 Back in New York, things were getting pretty dirty. “Edwardo said that he does not want to discuss anything, and he’s not in ‘organized crime’,” said Robert to Anthony. “I don’t think this is going to be pretty Tony. I think we should stop this character. He’s the main guy to hit. If we do, we don’t have to worry about our resturaunts anymore, or anyone else getting killed,” said Robert to his boss. “Yeah your right. We can’t risk loosing anyone important.” “Who should we give this one to?” “Give it to Big Boy. No Balls doesn’t have enough balls to handle something as important as this. Make sure that Johnny gets the job done, though.” Robert Vazzi was on his way home. He finally arrived there, and immidietly closed the door, and ran to see what happened. There were police lights all around his house. The night was silent, except for all around the Vazzi house. “Whats goin on?!” he said to a police officer. Before the cop could answer, he saw his wife in tears screaming at detectives, and police men. Then she spotted her husband. “Robert! Robert!” She ran over to him and threw her arms around his neck. “What happened?!” “Our son is gone! He’s been kidnapped!” Anthony sat on his back porch with Grandpa Tony, smoking a cigar. “Hopefully the job would be done by tonight,” said Anthony to his father, the former boss of the Giorgio family. “You should have gotten rid of all of it the moment the problem hit, Anthony,” said his father. “Yeah, and that was my mistake. I just didn’t know what I should really do with this gang buisness.” “They got dirty buisness. You should have wiped them out from the beginning. They won’t hesitate to kill anyone, and that’s dangerous. Your lucky to still have my grandson in one piece after whats happened to him.” “Yeah I know, pop.” The phone rang. “I got it.” “Ey Anthony. It’s me.” “Robert? What is it you don’t sound good. Did everything go to plan?” “No. My son’s gone. An I just called to tell you that I’m going over to get him back. See ya later.” And just like that, there was a click, and Robert was off to get his son back. Chapter3Part2 Meanwhile, in Sicily, Michael and Maria were having the time of their lives. Michael was a little worried about everyone back home, but he was sure, that they were probably all fine. They were walking and they stopped at a small resteraunt. They both sat at a table, and a man came up to them. “What would you like?” asked the waiter in italian. “Vino con pane,” said Michael. “I love this. I love being with you. And I look forward to doing it for the rest of my life,” said Maria with a smile. “So am I. I Feel like the luckiest guy in the world to be with you.” Robert was driving crazy, and fast, is if he had just gotten back from a bar at 2 in the morning. He had a gun in his jacket pocket and he held it in one hand, and drove with the other. He pulled over by a building, pulled his gun out, and ran into an alley to see men beating on a 7 year old boy, Robert’s son Jimmy. Robert ran up to them. He hit one in the head with his gun, and then shot him in the head. Then he fired on another twice in the head. But once Robert saw one of them pull out a gun, he ran behind a trashcan shooting his gun at them. “Run Jimmy!” Jimmy took off , turned the corner and up the road. Jimmy was injured, but now safe. Robert on the other hand, had 9 gangsters with guns pointed at him, and faces with disgust. Edwardo looked down at him. “You punks make me sick,” he said and he kicked Robert in the head, causing him to fall back. Soon they heard sirens, and they had to think quick. So they fired. Bullets ran through the body of Robert Vazzi, and he lay on the cold, wet road with a puddle of blood under him. Soon, Police cars, ambulences, and a black SUV pulled up. Anthony got out of the SUV. He ran over to Robert. “Oh my God.” The police brought a strecher, and then Anthony turned to see Roberts wife Paula holding Jimmy looking at their dead father, and husband, being taken away. There was no chance he could still be alive. Michael was taking a shower with Maria, having the time of his life again, only this time they were interrupted. The phone rang. “Oh Mikey, just ignore it baby,” said Maria. “I’m sorry, it might be something important baby. He kissed her and stepped out of the shower grabbing a towel. Maria didn’t like the fact that he always took phone calls when they were having fun. But he always did no matter how important. He answerd the phone. “Pronto.” “Ey its your dad Mike. I got bad news…. Robert’s dead.” “Oh my God,” said Michael, after a few seconds of silence. “What’s goin on?” asked Maria. Michael held his hand up in motion to hold on. Then Anthony told him everything, and after two weeks of staying in Sicily, Michael decided to cut short his vacation and go home. Robert had been like a second father to Michael, and he had known him all of his life. Chapter3Part3 Michael got back to America, and met his father there. They had a plan, and they were sure that it was going to work. There was no way it could not. Edwardo was behind a building that night, waiting in his truck for something. Then a young spanish man came up to him with a brown paperbag. “Ey man I got the stuff,” he said walking by the window. “Lemme see it,” said Edwardo looking in the bag. “That’s good. That’s good stuff. I’ll take it.” He handed him money from the window, and the stranger accepted it. But then with another hand he pulled out a gun, and shot Edwardo in the head with it three times. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Just like that there was blood all over the whindsheild of the car. Then the stranger stole all of the rest of the money that Edwardo had, and quickly walked away. But as he did, he looked to his right, and saw another car, and inside, someone was watching the whole thing. He stopped. Then the driver gave a nod. The stranger smiled. “Pay Day,” said the stranger walking off, as Michael Giorgio drove home. Thanks to the end of Edwardo, there was no more trouble. Michael and Maria lived a peacefull life, living in a nice home, and Michael was a made man. They had a kid, and expected to have more on the way. Anthony controlled the family buisness, and had rarely any trouble after the incident with the gang, and was respected by many. Grandpa Tony went back in the family buisness, only this time as a entertainer for the guests at the resturaunt. He sang songs, and did stand up comedy acts, and made a big hit. He got all of the places roaring with laughter. The Family Buisness was all good, and the whole family lived the way they should. Together. Written in fall/winter of 2002 *** Sat Feb 1 23:41:14 2003 Submitting Host: 12.208.4.104 visitor_name: Javier Brenes email: javi_slam@latinmail.com type: Creative Piece submit: My angel I heard from my friends that it would be a great chance to find a summer love or a great relationship.But I was nor interested neither believing that was possible.I had a duty in front of me, and that was the only thing in my mind. What was it? Something so noble, that it has a story of its own(story that I wont tell this time) . Did I believed in love?Yes, I believed in God’s love.Had I been in love with a girl?Not me, I used to be the sort of guy that dated lots of girls(the kind that like to talk to you only when you look good) and never had a real or serious relationship.That nice guy that its just fine as a friend but its too shallow for something else.My friends said I was “lucky” with girls, but everything was so fake that I got tired of it, and stopped seeking for a sweetie.I was better alone. I knew that my task in a country somehow hostile , was no easy task, but it was really benevolent.So I signed up.And followed all the directions of the persons in charge the best way I could, to be assigned later to a certain group of youth people to work with. The first day passed with no real difficulties, and I saw a good future for this job. The second day I arrived at the headquarters as early as possible and was assigned to a new group of people .How was I supposed to do friends or form bonds if I had to be with a different group every day?! Anyways, it didnt really mattered, I wasnt there to make friends. My new group was leaving and surprisingly, the only other helper was a young kid, leaving a great responsibility on my shoulders.We worked together and had a stressful but amazing morning. As it was time for lunch , we arrived to the house of one of our friends.In that moment I was swimming deep in my thoughts,until I started working on my social life and began chatting with some of the young guys and girls. Trying not to form bonds, I started thinking in the rest of the day, and how to work better. Suddenly my thoughts were disturbed by the most amazing view. I know I had seen many pretty girls in my life, but this one had something different , something I try to explain , but there are things that cant just be explained.No!!! it couldnt be happening!, not to me!, not possible!I had to concentrate in my job and only my job... ... But I knew that probably I wouldnt see her the next day, so I had to know her name. I started staring at her face, trying to make eye contact, until it actually happened.Her eyes were a reflection of God’s perfect creation, so beautiful that I loss my breath for a second and started feeling something funny in my stomach. This couldnt be happening to me!Not to Mr insensibility! I asked her name, and she answered.A pretty name for sure, but not important for the effects of this story.When I asked where was her home and she told me, I realized that she lived thousands of miles away.That striked a low blow and sent me back to reality. We arrived at the headquarters and I had dinner with my friends , talking about all the day’s experiences, and enjoying the good food. When I finished, I went straight home and wondered which was going to be my group the next day. The next morning I was the first guy ready for duty. And I was assigned to my friends from the day before. The day was fine ,and when we were back at the base I realized that it was the group’s free afternoon and they were going to walk around the city. “What a great chance!” I thought for myself. And rushed to offer my help as a guide to the group of people where the girl was. We started walking through the city ,so I stood behind, trying to take care of my new friendsSurprisingly the girl started walking by my side, giving me the opportunity to know her. As the days continued, we had many chances to be together, and I started to feel something that I had never felt before, what was it?!, what was I feeling?!! I couldnt take her out of my mind!!! I know she was pretty: a little smaller than me, with beautiful short brown hair, and with a smile capable of conquering any man.But besides this, her way of speaking ; of looking me into my eyes, every single bit of her personality, she was driving me crazy! I was crazy for her! The time passed and the communication between us never ceased. The feeling in my chest grew bigger and bigger every day, and eventhough I had never felt that before, I started realizing what it was.I loved her. I loved her with my heart. In a way I never thought possible. Not for me. It was like a dream. Every moment I spent with her is stored in my heart like the most amazing treasure. Every single moment!I know that she probably though I was crazy every time she realized I was staring at her. Just staring. I couldnt really give her an explanation. “If somebody can be so beautiful and wonderful, I wonder how angels are” I thought many times for myself. She ment so much to me! One night we were together . I was just holding her, close to my chest.I smelled her hair and sighed, as I always do when Im truly delighted. The only light around us was the tender light of beautifully colored candles. I had my angel close to me.It was one of those moments that everybody experience only a couple of times in life.One of those human moments that are made to last forever. Slowly, I placed my face close to hers, being careful not to destroy the magic of the instant. I felt her soft respiration, and her warm skin in contact to mine. Our faces moved in a delicately manner until our lips connected. We kissed in the most affectionated and gentle way. It wasnt my first kiss, or neither hers, but I will always remember it. It was better than any other in my past, by the fact that it was straight from heart, with the only girl that Ive ever loved. I felt happy inside because I had found an angel, but I was sad because I knew I had to say goodbye. The days and the hours flew away until that very moment. I was heart broken, and inside me there was a fire burning.Then I looked at her.And her tears started tearing my soul apart. Oh! If I only had the power to change the things in order to stop her suffering... The fact is that she is not with me right now.But, no matter how far or near we are, my feelings for her will be the same. And Ill be waiting for the day when I can see her again and tell her: I love you. *** Sat Feb 1 23:42:55 2003 Submitting Host: 12.208.4.104 visitor_name: Javier Brenes email: javi_slam@latinmail.com type: Creative Piece submit: My angel I heard from my friends that it would be a great chance to find a summer love or a great relationship.But I was nor interested neither believing that was possible.I had a duty in front of me, and that was the only thing in my mind. What was it? Something so noble, that it has a story of its own(story that I wont tell this time) . Did I believed in love?Yes, I believed in God’s love.Had I been in love with a girl?Not me, I used to be the sort of guy that dated lots of girls(the kind that like to talk to you only when you look good) and never had a real or serious relationship.That nice guy that its just fine as a friend but its too shallow for something else.My friends said I was “lucky” with girls, but everything was so fake that I got tired of it, and stopped seeking for a sweetie.I was better alone. I knew that my task in a country somehow hostile , was no easy task, but it was really benevolent.So I signed up.And followed all the directions of the persons in charge the best way I could, to be assigned later to a certain group of youth people to work with. The first day passed with no real difficulties, and I saw a good future for this job. The second day I arrived at the headquarters as early as possible and was assigned to a new group of people .How was I supposed to do friends or form bonds if I had to be with a different group every day?! Anyways, it didnt really mattered, I wasnt there to make friends. My new group was leaving and surprisingly, the only other helper was a young kid, leaving a great responsibility on my shoulders.We worked together and had a stressful but amazing morning. As it was time for lunch , we arrived to the house of one of our friends.In that moment I was swimming deep in my thoughts,until I started working on my social life and began chatting with some of the young guys and girls. Trying not to form bonds, I started thinking in the rest of the day, and how to work better. Suddenly my thoughts were disturbed by the most amazing view. I know I had seen many pretty girls in my life, but this one had something different , something I try to explain , but there are things that cant just be explained.No!!! it couldnt be happening!, not to me!, not possible!I had to concentrate in my job and only my job... ... But I knew that probably I wouldnt see her the next day, so I had to know her name. I started staring at her face, trying to make eye contact, until it actually happened.Her eyes were a reflection of God’s perfect creation, so beautiful that I loss my breath for a second and started feeling something funny in my stomach. This couldnt be happening to me!Not to Mr insensibility! I asked her name, and she answered.A pretty name for sure, but not important for the effects of this story.When I asked where was her home and she told me, I realized that she lived thousands of miles away.That striked a low blow and sent me back to reality. We arrived at the headquarters and I had dinner with my friends , talking about all the day’s experiences, and enjoying the good food. When I finished, I went straight home and wondered which was going to be my group the next day. The next morning I was the first guy ready for duty. And I was assigned to my friends from the day before. The day was fine ,and when we were back at the base I realized that it was the group’s free afternoon and they were going to walk around the city. “What a great chance!” I thought for myself. And rushed to offer my help as a guide to the group of people where the girl was. We started walking through the city ,so I stood behind, trying to take care of my new friendsSurprisingly the girl started walking by my side, giving me the opportunity to know her. As the days continued, we had many chances to be together, and I started to feel something that I had never felt before, what was it?!, what was I feeling?!! I couldnt take her out of my mind!!! I know she was pretty: a little smaller than me, with beautiful short brown hair, and with a smile capable of conquering any man.But besides this, her way of speaking ; of looking me into my eyes, every single bit of her personality, she was driving me crazy! I was crazy for her! The time passed and the communication between us never ceased. The feeling in my chest grew bigger and bigger every day, and eventhough I had never felt that before, I started realizing what it was.I loved her. I loved her with my heart. In a way I never thought possible. Not for me. It was like a dream. Every moment I spent with her is stored in my heart like the most amazing treasure. Every single moment!I know that she probably though I was crazy every time she realized I was staring at her. Just staring. I couldnt really give her an explanation. “If somebody can be so beautiful and wonderful, I wonder how angels are” I thought many times for myself. She ment so much to me! One night we were together . I was just holding her, close to my chest.I smelled her hair and sighed, as I always do when Im truly delighted. The only light around us was the tender light of beautifully colored candles. I had my angel close to me.It was one of those moments that everybody experience only a couple of times in life.One of those human moments that are made to last forever. Slowly, I placed my face close to hers, being careful not to destroy the magic of the instant. I felt her soft respiration, and her warm skin in contact to mine. Our faces moved in a delicately manner until our lips connected. We kissed in the most affectionated and gentle way. It wasnt my first kiss, or neither hers, but I will always remember it. It was better than any other in my past, by the fact that it was straight from heart, with the only girl that Ive ever loved. I felt happy inside because I had found an angel, but I was sad because I knew I had to say goodbye. The days and the hours flew away until that very moment. I was heart broken, and inside me there was a fire burning.Then I looked at her.And her tears started tearing my soul apart. Oh! If I only had the power to change the things in order to stop her suffering... The fact is that she is not with me right now.But, no matter how far or near we are, my feelings for her will be the same. And Ill be waiting for the day when I can see her again and tell her: I love you. *** Wed Dec 28 09:39:48 2005 Submitting Host: 4.245.149.166 visitor_name: Jerry Vilhotti email: VILHOTTI@peoplepc.com type: Creative Piece submit: "UPON BONES" "Johnnnnnnnnnny! Johnnnnnnnnnnn! Waaaaaaaana diiiiiiiiieee!" his ten year old brother Tommy Tom Tom crooned from the opposite sidewalk - way across the big street Fordham Road that was begun as a path by American-Indians beginning from the Hudson River ending at Pelham Bay and then one day they were attacked by the gun toting English-American taliban and became no more - as he pretended to be eating something inside the palms of his hands. disliking the fact this sibling crash landing among them out of the body of a thirty-nine year old mother replacing him as the baby of the family and becoming their father's; favorite. Four year old Johnny tried to ignore his screeching voice; to look away from his hands possibly hiding candies, from the corner candy store where the syndicate would send a pretty woman up for the owner making book for them gleaning moneys from a people who were starving, among arachnid moving fingers. No way would he cross the mighty Fordham Road where skeletons of dead Indians lay beneath wet cobblestones upon which Edgar Allan Poe had walked while being chased by his inner screaming demons. Johnny would not attempt to beat roaring trailer trucks and their crunching wheels that were as big as cars trying to make time by cutting across The Bronx and then later to use the side streets when traffic became so heavy subtracting from making good time which was money and so taking the life of a five year old Johnny's friend whom he had stayed with for a long time until the boy's eye's became chunks of ice which did get his father and other fathers to stop intrusions upon the innocent which did get the truck drivers to drive over the bones and footsteps of the past when told they would be hanging from the top of telephone poles by their genitals Johnny would not acknowledge Tom's frantic soundless waves and crazy Lon Chaney faces that spoke volumes of terror for him. "Johnnnnnnnnny!" Tom shouted as he sniffed into his hand that was against his chest preventing a falling of nothing. END 12-28-05 *** Sun Feb 19 20:09:14 2006 Submitting Host: 207.200.116.6 visitor_name: Robert Flynn email: netcatalog2@aol.com type: Creative Piece submit: Vietnam Notes by Robert Flynn This story took place in Vietnam, but it's about any violent conflict. And it's not about me, it's about the very real nightmares we can find ourselves living if we don't reason things out for ourselves, and continue to let movies, television, and the violent fantasies of others do our thinking for us. For the year I was there, my job mostly consisted of driving a truck and slinging sandbags. No close friends died and I never killed anyone. There is still a feeling of guilt for not having suffered "enough" even though what I experienced puts me through almost overwhelming grief sometimes for the people involved in what I saw. It's senseless, but it's almost as if by having more pain I could somehow lessen the pain of others carrying horrors that would make my memories seem like welcome relief to them. There were some who went through much more, and some who went through much less, but in the end what matters is that we try to learn from all our experiences and then use them to benefit ourselves and others. At times I'm filled with anger and resentment for the stupidity and gullibility of a major part of the human race. The vast ocean of shallow, psychotically romantic hype fodder called humanity that doesn't have the sense to see the reality of pain, grief, and horror of war and death. Even those are all just words that don't begin to convey the convoluted tangle of feelings involved. Then I remember that if I'd known then what I know now, I'd never have gone to that miserable place myself. But I didn't know. I couldn't have known what is so obvious to me now until after the experience. I don't mean to imply that I think the world could destroy all its weapons and then everything would be paradise. Evil is a very real thing and sometimes must be fought. I doubt for example that a loving note to Hitler would have changed the fate of six million Jews. But "the young want to die nobly, the wise, to live humbly". Evil takes many forms, and one of them is the willingness of governments, religions, businesses, and individuals to corrupt and steer youthful naiveté, exuberance, and strength toward terrible destruction because of petty dedication to their own purposes, no matter what the cost, as long as the cost doesn't seem to be directly their own. I'd only been in country for a few weeks when a couple of guys and I went into the village of Duc Pho to get haircuts. We were excited and sort of mesmerized by the fact that we were actually in a tropical country, in a war, and all on our own. Sort of like going to Disneyland for the first time and finding a sign inside warning "assassins in the park, enter at your own risk." We walked into the town orphanage which was a small, high walled schoolyard with a large rambling building inside where the barber was located. I sat down in a rickety chair, laid my rifle up against the wall next to me, and the barber began cutting my hair. Suddenly he jumped aside as another Vietnamese grabbed my rifle, jacked a round into the chamber, put the muzzle inches from my nose and shouted "NOBODY MOVE!" My friends could do nothing. As he glared at me over the top of the sights, I clearly realized that my time on earth was over, that I was a dead man. I remember being suddenly sick with sadness for myself, and thinking that it wasn't fair. It just really wasn't fair at all! We looked at each other for what seemed forever, and then he smiled. He said "Everything OK, no problem, nobody shoot!" Then he lowered my rifle, handing it to me, and said sternly "You no do! You no leave weapon alone, ever! No do ever, or you maybe die!" He was in civilian clothes, but turned out to be an officer in the South Vietnamese Army. It may come as no surprise that I always remembered what he said, and especially the way he said it. For the first time I realized that it was no game, it was all too real. Nothing and nobody can save me if I get careless. Whatever our age, childhood is over the day we lose that sense of immortality, and it never comes back. It's odd how sure we are that we're aware of everything, until we suddenly get shocked into the reality of how little we actually perceive. One night I was sitting in a bunker watching a battery of 105mm Howitzers during a fire mission. They were about 100 yards away and firing right over a group of huge boulders that had a bunker sitting on top which was in a perfect spot to watch the perimeter. As they fired again, an unexpected flash and boom split the night, and a billowing mushroom of smoke and dust shot from the bunker on the rocks. Somehow a round had been fired point blank into the bunker from one of the cannons. We didn't know whether anyone was in the bunker or not until a minute later when the most agonized, piercing, terrified scream I'd ever heard cut through the dead silence that followed the explosion. At least one man, no doubt badly wounded, was buried in the collapsed bunker. For a while there was horrifying silence, then another awful, long, anguished scream. Then silence. Then another scream, then whimpering. This went on for what seemed like a couple of hours, although I doubt it was actually that long, with the sounds slowly growing weaker until they either got him out, or he passed out, or died. We never knew which it was. We'd just crawled into our cots after another exhausting day of digging holes and filling sandbags (we usually called them mudbags for good reason) when a series of jarring explosions put us on our feet grabbing for boots, rifles, ammo, and set us running from our tents to the bunkers. I'd only been in country for a short while and other than a few incoming mortar rounds, nothing much had happened in that time. As I ran out of the tent more explosions went off, and then I saw something that still sends chills up my spine. The bunker out on the perimeter in front of me, full of guys in my company, was exploding with huge sprays of sparkling fire jetting from the door and windows, and everyone was running for cover in total confusion. We grouped up and formed a secondary perimeter behind any cover we could find, but the attack was over as quickly as it had begun and then the cleaning up began. Luckily I didn't have to pull the dead and wounded out of the bunkers, but was in one of them moments later to replace the guys they had hauled out. The dirt floors of the bunkers had been drenched in blood and it created patches of gooey mud with a chilling odor. The sandbags and wooden bracing had been blown apart, and my fear was more that it would all collapse and bury us than that the VC would attack again. But the rest of the night while very scary, was uneventful. We saw what had happened the next day. The VC had crawled across rice paddies in front of us, crept in through concertina wire, trip flares, and claymore mines, jacked apart some metal bars covering a drainpipe, using the pipe to crawl under a dirt road, and crawled up and down a weed filled ditch behind seven or eight bunkers full of wide awake men on a moonlit night. They then simultaneously began throwing three and four satchel charges into each bunker and as the charges exploded made a quick and clean escape. But that wasn't the end of it. After a couple of days in the high heat and humidity, the blood saturated dirt began to rot. For the next couple of months while we were in the area we had to sit in those damaged bunkers at night surrounded by the overpowering stench of rot and death. Several times as we were heading to the perimeter to pull guard duty we were told that intelligence had been received that we should expect a massive offensive with the possibility of being overrun by a "human wave" attack. That didn’t happen or I wouldn’t be writing this. But add up the horror of that smell with the fear of the attack and you have nights guaranteed to last your nerves the rest of your life whether anything happened or not. I slammed the shift into a higher gear, bouncing and laughing with my "shotgun" rider and flying down the road toward somewhere. It didn't really matter where, we just hoped we could find some cold beer and a safe place to sleep. As we barreled through villages we could tell how the people there felt about things. If they smiled and waved they were friendlies. If they frowned and threw rocks they were VC, or VC sympathizers. Hopefully all we would get was a dent or two from rocks. It could always be worse. We usually drove in convoys. Long lines of trucks sometimes joined by tanks or armored personnel carriers for protection. Every so often a helicopter gunship would scream low overhead with a deafening roar as it patrolled the roads, guarding the convoys and looking for a little something to do. Like unleashing the unbelievable firepower they carried in the form of rockets, grenade launchers, and most impressive to me, miniguns, which were super machine guns with firing rates so high that when they went off all you saw was unbroken red lines of tracers and all you heard was a continuous burp so loud your ears would ring for quite awhile if they were close enough. At the other end of all that was hell on earth. Hauling ass down a road in a truck with an M16 at your side and gunships and tanks around, or sitting in a bunker surrounded by a considerable selection of deadly weapons could make you feel powerful and invincible at times. That was a very welcome fantasy. Most of the time I had the much more realistic and stressful awareness that I was in a very dangerous place, and if it was my turn to get it, no attitude or weapon in the world would save me. But the attitude was also valuable. We had to try to convince ourselves that we were dangerous too, and anyone with a gun really can be. Sometimes feeling that way was the only way people stayed sane, but it's an exhausting way to live. The bunker was ready for the night. The machine gun, claymore mines, grenade launcher, hand grenades, ammo and flares were all laid out and ready to go. The four of us were sitting back in the relative coolness of the early evening, watchful, but just talking and relaxing after a long hard day. Our shifts of staying awake all through the night on guard would start soon enough. This was the best time of the day. I felt lazy and comfortable just talking with friends. Then one of them got an idea. "Lets shoot a few flares into the village. That'll wake 'em up!" I was always uncomfortable around that sort of thing, but what the hell, we shot them at each other now and then as a sort of sick joke. Why should the villagers be exempt? The instigator cut off the little parachute attached to the flare so that it would really fly, and smacked the cap to launch it toward the houses a few hundred yards away. Much to our surprise, he actually hit a house, and in no time at all quite a little fire was in progress on the roof. A crowd of villagers quickly gathered, running and yelling and trying to put out the fire. I felt kind of guilty, but couldn't help but laugh a little as my buddy did a little victory dance and whooped it up. I don't know when it all really started, but what had begun as a little joke soon became something else. We were inside a bunker which is a tiny building built of sandbags, with its confinement able to amplify gunfire into hammering explosions inside that could actually be felt as concussions in your body. What had been a relaxing, friendly evening abruptly turned into a horrifying nightmare as without warning the machine gun went off, quickly followed by an M16 on full auto, and the hollow "thunk" of the grenade launcher, all accompanied by bright flashes and unbelievable noise. While I had been sitting by the back door, my buddies had begun a killing frenzy up front, and as I looked up I saw a vision straight out of Hell. As I write this it seems almost like a joke to try to describe those emotions and perceptions with words. That's something that could never be done. As I realized what I was seeing, I remember bringing up my rifle with a raging elation, and a desire to join in and KILL THE DIRTY BASTARDS! As quickly as the feeling came it disappeared, thank God, before I pulled the trigger. And I have thanked God thousands of times since that night. The rage was replaced with a terrified, paralyzing fascination while tracers ripped into the crowd, grenades exploded around them, and horrible shrieks, screams, and cries of agony from the wounded and dying men, women, and oh my God, children bored into my brain and scorched out gaping wounds which will never, ever, ever be gone from my memory. All of a sudden the firing stopped with a shocking silence. And then even with gunfire deadened ears, the sounds of wounded and dying human beings cut through the night air in a crystal clear, sickening wail. I just stood there in a stupor unable to move or think a coherent thought for what seemed like a long time. What happened the rest of that night is gone from my memory. Thank you God. The story was told of VC being shot at, and the casualties were blamed on the village being too close to our perimeter bunkers. The story worked just fine for the record. But we knew. And so did they. The next day the village showed up in all its funerary finery. Led by the elders, the people held a procession by the bunker that had, in just a few sickening moments, destroyed so many people. So many precious, irreplaceable lives and stories. They were dressed in beautiful, richly colored silks that flowed around them in the breeze. They carried many festive, brightly colored caskets on their shoulders. Red, gold, blue, green, yellow. The whole thing was unreal in its color, beauty, and dignity. The bright sunlight shone down on this dream and made me wonder if it was all real. And then I noticed how small some of the caskets were. They were too small for a real person. Why was that? Oh! They weren't too small! They were for the children! I remember feeling rather clever that I'd figured it out. So very clever, until my mind couldn't bullshit me any more. Until the whole reality hit me. Then, even though I hadn't done anything, the knowledge of what I'd seen, and of how close I'd come to being a monster out of my nightmares kicked me into a place I wouldn't be able to leave for a long, long time. Although not the only reason for the self destruction to follow, when the walls finally did begin to crumble so many years later, the process came close to killing me as it has so many others with the self medication of alcohol and drugs. When I see scenes on television of people in pain from war or anything else, it's not just pictures for me. The people in that village were not saints. Some that died may have even been the enemy. But all of them had been living human beings. And now they were dead and gone forever. Just like the thousands of young, bright, hopeful Americans and others who made the one way trip to their doom. All I know is that from that night on my life was never the same. One of the lessons I learned then is that we may feel that life is precious, but we are all capable of terrible evil if the time is right. And that until (God forbid) the time it happens, most of us are ignorant of it, and would deny it to the grave. Which is probably just as well. Knowledge like that can be a very heavy burden. Too heavy for the many who give mute testimony by their choice to be absent from this world. I sat on a sandbag with a cooling monsoon breeze flowing by and the fresh smell of growing things perfuming the air. Huge, white, billowing rain clouds drifted overhead with wide patches of pure blue sky standing out between them. The village looked like a tropical island in the rice paddies, with little toy palm frond houses and palm trees everywhere. It was so beautiful and alive I wanted to cry with happiness. Villagers walked on the dikes between rice paddies so green that emeralds look pale in comparison. They talked and laughed among themselves and I found myself wanting to join them. What a wonderful place to be, and a beautiful day to be alive. Then I got up, lifting my rifle, turned around and headed back to the war. As the truck dropped the six of us off alone on the side of the mountain near Kontum, I couldn't help but wonder at the insanity that had put us there. A new firebase would be built here and we had been "volunteered" to start cutting it out of the jungle with axes and machetes. Eventually the engineers were brought in with heavy equipment to really do the job, as there was no way that the amount of growth that needed to be cleared away could possibly be done by sixty, let alone six men. As the years have gone by, many mysteries about the happenings in Vietnam have cleared up for me, but why our lives were risked out there remains a puzzle. We decided to check out the trails close by to try to put a little insurance on our safety while working. None of us were used to any sort of recon patrol, so we were pretty nervous. It was a good thing we were walking slowly, because a little way down a trail I suddenly felt my boot snag a tripwire, and I froze, gritting my teeth, expecting to be blown up by my blunder. Nothing happened. Afraid to even talk or move, I quietly called to the guy in front of me to wait up. He turned, puzzled, and stopped the others. I said "I'm hooked on a trip wire. Try to find out what this damn thing is!" At that point their eyes got wide, and they all began backing away from me down the trail. When I realized what they were doing, I as carefully as possible brought up my rifle and said "You better get back here and help me quick!" I was too scared to be really angry, and doubt that I'd have shot anybody, but thank God they didn't know that. Itchy sweat was pouring down my whole body in that miserable, scorching humidity, and my muscles were shaking and about to cramp up by the time they finally found the ends of that wire. When a voice said "No sweat, it's only a trip flare!" I almost collapsed, puked, and cried all at once. But of course I only said something like "You assholes better not punk out on me again like that!" or some such swaggering bullshit. It was a very good lesson though. You never know what people will really do until the pressure is on. And that changes from day to day. It was that way for them, and it's that way for me too. It seems that Vietnam veterans are all supposed to be brave, dangerous, trained killers, primed and ready to show the world that they're not to be messed with. I'm sure that some came back just like that. But training in itself doesn't make you brave, dangerous, or a killer. I, for one, went to Vietnam not feeling particularly "brave", and I surely came home with many more fears than I left with. And I learned that being able to kill someone doesn't necessarily have anything to do with courage. If you take the goodness and love out of courage, what remains is merely insanity. Insanity is nothing to be proud of. I only wish more people knew that. Garbage detail again. Damn. Oh well, better that than burning shit. Burning shit was much worse. Our latrines were outhouses with the bottom half of an oil drum used in place of a hole in the ground. Disgust and disease prevention demanded that we pull the drums out, pour diesel fuel into the mess inside, light it up and stand there stirring it up occasionally to make sure it all burned away. Lots of fun and fragrant too. Like I said, garbage beat shit anyday. We would load up four or five large metal trash cans brimming with rotting garbage and trash and heavy enough to need three men to comfortably lift one high enough to slide into the bed of a truck. Then we'd drive out of the firebase about a mile to the dump area where a crew of Vietnamese would be kind enough to unload it for us and put the empty cans back in the truck. Of course they did get paid. Their pay was that they got to eat that slimy, stinking, rotting garbage, swarming flies and all. And that they did, handful over skeletal handful in a horrible, frantic, disgusting way. These people were starving to death. We'd bring a little food along to help them, but it didn't make much difference. There were just too many of them. As I'd stand there watching all this with a sickened fascination I'd wonder how they could live like that. They were the homeless in a place where "homeless" was a deadly serious thing. I came to the awareness that the reason I was in the truck with a full belly and a place to sleep, and they were just feet away actually dying of hunger with no place to go, had nothing to do with deserving anything. It was fate. Or God's will. Or luck. Whatever you called it, it had little to do with "fair". There are always those wanting something for nothing, or feeling that the world owes them something. I'm not speaking of them, and I certainly don't have all the answers. But years later when I came close to taking our version of homelessness as my only option to deal with a life I'd turned into a nightmare, I felt those feelings of frustration with mankind's selfishness even more. Anyone can end up there. But most of us have to end up there ourselves, or come very close to it, in order to see that truth in our hearts. Maybe someday we'll evolve far enough to feel enough compassion to actually do something about the unnecessary suffering of a large part of humanity without having to suffer ourselves to do it. But that isn't how it is now. And although I have much more faith in our future now than I once did, it just isn't going to change anytime soon. I pulled the truck up next to a bunker out on the perimeter. It was an unusual vehicle. It was a 3/4 ton truck with armor plate welded to the front of the bed rising above the cab. A machine gun mount was placed in the middle allowing the gun to fire over the top of the cab. I had been ordered to take the truck to the bunker line to add the firepower of the machine gun to the already formidable line of weapons facing the rice paddies and cane fields outside the wire. On hindsight this wasn't a very good idea. While far from impregnable, a bunker is a very hard structure to destroy and can be rebuilt quickly and cheaply. A truck on the other hand is a relatively valuable, easy to destroy, and very tempting target. I got out and hopped up into the bed to get things ready for the night. Since I had to pull guard duty anyway, the thought of spending the night in a nice, dry, relatively clean truck sounded much better than the usual damp, dirty, rat infested bunker. I loaded a belt of ammunition and settled back to begin another long, tense night. The gun mount had a spotlight on both sides of the gun so you could see what you were shooting at in the dark. This was undoubtedly designed by someone who had never thought the situation through. I had no intention of ever using them to aim, as doing so would be about the same as drawing a bull's eye on your nose and shining a light on your face. But the lights were good for surveillance. I would duck below the armor plate, flip on the lights and look through a small hole drilled in the plate while swinging the gun back and forth to illuminate the landscape. The night was very dark. I had just flipped on the lights and started moving the gun, when right in front of me almost to the concertina wire a VC sapper jumped up and started running. I was startled for a second, but yanked the charging handle, swung the gun around on him, and totally forgetting what an easy target I made, started shooting. As the tracers caught up to him, he dove below one of the dikes of a paddy. By this time someone had popped a hand flare, and the landscape was bathed in the eerie Halloween glow of its flame. The only sound was the hissing of the flare drifting down from far above on its little parachute. Suddenly the man jumped up a short distance from where he had disappeared and began zig-zagging away across the landscape. I started firing, following him with tracers, but every time the rounds caught up to him he would dive and disappear again. It was impossible to gauge the location and direction of his next sprint. This went on for quite a few minutes until he finally made it into the cover of a cane field and was gone for good. If I'd hit him he never showed it. I yelled out at the night "Motherfucker, you DESERVE to get away!" and really meant it. I was laughing with the stress and adrenaline rush, but was absolutely furious at myself for missing him. I was a pretty good shot and I wanted that bastard DEAD! He had been only seconds away from lobbing a satchel charge or two into my truck, and that could have very easily ended in disaster for me. That, plus the sick and all too common conviction men are subliminally taught from boyhood, that killing a man would make me more of one, only added to the anger. Very quickly those feelings were tempered with the awareness that I had just witnessed the bravest thing I had ever seen. That guy had single-handedly crept up to a perimeter of barbed wire, claymore mines and trip flares, backed by bunkers filled with soldiers equipped with quite an array of deadly weapons, and all for the purpose of destroying one lousy truck. Or he had possibly not been alone, but had taken the heat on himself to save his friends. Either way it was amazing. I think we were all stunned by the display of courage and skill we had just seen. It had been something totally outside my previous experience. Then as I began to realize how close I had skirted death, the raw reality of our situation set in once again. It was impossible for me to stay aware of how dangerous Vietnam was on a continuous basis and still maintain the ability to function. But every so often a reminder would jolt me back into the paralyzing fear, and once again I'd just have to hang on and wait until it slowly drifted away. The anger that I'd felt on failing to kill that man, along with many other terrible memories ate at me for years. But slowly as time passed, my mind began to heal, and I found my heart opening to a more loving, kind, and spiritual way of life. The anger turned to acceptance, and then one fine day to gratitude. I am so very glad I don't have the death of another human being on my conscience. He was an enemy soldier fully intending to kill me if he could, and if I had killed him I'm sure I could accept it as just another part of my life and a necessary action at the time. But on those nowadays rare nights when I wake up feeling lost, alone, and afraid, with Vietnam all around me, the relief of not having killed him helps me find my way back to my warm, safe bed a lot sooner than those old feelings used to. Love and kindness are such beautiful, healing things. "Harris" was a friend of mine. He was a tall, lanky, soft spoken black man with an easy smile. A gentle man with a kind disposition and a wry sense of humor. Sometimes we'd pull guard together and talk quietly in the eerie silence of the bunkers at night. Solving the troubles of mankind, or talking about what we were going to do when we got back to "The World" helped ease the fear and tension of our situation and also helped keep us from falling asleep. Harris somehow transmitted confidence to me just by being around. He was one of those people it was hard to imagine God allowing anything bad to happen to, and being around him just felt somehow "safer". He was in one of our bunkers that VC sappers blew up one night. He was also one of the few wounded "lightly" enough to come back to the company out of all the guys that had been in those bunkers. I never saw most of those guys again, but old Harris came walking back one day and I was so very glad to see him. But something was wrong. He was distant and cold. It was like he didn't even know me. He was scary and alien, and from then on I kept my distance. It hurt, but he had been through an experience I hadn't, and looking at him I knew that it must have been much stranger and more horrible than I could imagine. Months later, a few of us had been drinking beer and celebrating our soon to be homecoming. We were staying in a large, relatively safe basecamp at Pleiku in a sandbagged shack my company used as a transit barracks. We were processing out to go home! Home! We couldn't believe it (we had yet to experience the "Welcome Home" of the 1960's for Vietnam Vets). The other guys had gone somewhere, and as I was sitting alone reveling in the awesome feeling that it was almost over, who should walk in but Harris! It was great to see him before I left, and I greeted him with a smile and feeling of love in my heart. He looked at me with a funny smile, then came over and sat next to me on the bunk. He stared at me for a minute and then said "I knooow who you are! I knooow about your kind!" in an eerie, wavering voice. He sounded so much like an actor in a scary movie I thought he was kidding and waited for the punchline. But what happened next was so quick and surprising, I didn't realize what had occurred until it was over. I suddenly found myself with a choking arm around my neck, and a knee in my back with the pressure steadily increasing to the level of very serious pain. Harris began to laugh. But the sound he made was like a horrifying caricature of someone insane. It dawned on me then that this was no joke. He wasn't kidding. He was really, truly out of it, and I might be in terrible trouble. I still couldn't believe it. Then he said "I'm going to kill you now! I'm going to snap your spine! I know who you really are!" and that's when the terror kicked in. He began to slowly push in with his knee while choking me tighter, and the pain became unbelievable. The shock of what was happening was almost worse than the pain. All of a sudden the pressure was released, and I dropped to the floor. My buddies had returned, and seeing what was happening had crept up behind Harris and yanked him off of me. He didn't even fight or say anything, just sat on the bunk and stared at me looking totally vacant and emotionless. He was the most frightening person I've ever seen, then or since. I don't know what happened to him. I don't know what weird place his mind went after the attack that awful night. And I never will know. It's just one of those things I've had to learn to accept. But something I find much harder to accept is that Harris wasn't alone. What happened to his mind happened to many, many more than just him. Who knows how many? And who knows what kind of torturous horrors they've lived with since, and may live with until the day they die? Those thoughts I sometimes find very hard to accept. But as with so many things, I'm powerless over it all. I just try to be thankful to God for the life he's given me. Thankful that I wasn't in that bunker with him. It was very close. Harris was a kind and loving man. I like to think he found his way back. He was my friend, and I miss him. Dust. It was everywhere and in everything. In our eyes, mouths, hair, clothes, food, and water. It was from the medevac helicopters. As the Tet offensive raged on, the choppers just kept coming in one right after the other, many times all day long, bringing in the dead and wounded from everywhere. Sometimes three or four helicopters would be waiting their turn to land so they could go back and tempt fate again to go get more. They were a constant reminder of what could happen to any of us at any time. There had always been medevacs coming in, but never anything like this. It never stopped. Whether we were building bunkers, eating chow, or trying to catch a little sleep, the unending river of pain, agony, and death kept right on coming. The wounded were quickly helped or carried off the choppers in their bloody bandages and shredded fatigues, some quiet, some moaning, some screaming, most just curled up and lost in an agony of pain and morphine. So many of them handicapped and disfigured for the rest of their lives. Then there was the neverending train of bodybags. Bags and bags full of dead men, sometimes only parts of dead men. Hauled off the choppers, dragged out of the way, and laid in a row at first, then stacked as room ran out. Tents with their sides rolled up with surgery tables running down their centers were at the focus of all this. Medics were in constant motion from chopper to table and back again as the worst cases that had a chance, but probably wouldn't make it to a real hospital, were cut and drained and patched and sewn in a kind of horrible, extremely bloody ballet. This went on for days, and days, and days. Be all you can be. Numbing exhaustion. Aching back, arms, legs, and mind. Suffocating tropical heat draining every ounce of motivation. Eye stinging sweat starting at my head, running down my body, and ending up in my burning, soggy boots making the heat rashes sting and burn. It's too humid for sweat to evaporate and cool like it should. How much longer can this miserable day last? Hours later these thoughts must have rolled through my mind a hundred times. Digging holes, filling sandbags, stacking them into bunker walls, digging, filling, stacking, digging, filling, stacking. And the same tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow... Flies… they swarmed through the air by the millions, their size halfway between a housefly and a gnat, their high pitched, infuriating bzzzzzz fraying everyone’s nerves and tempers to the edge as they crawled all over our exposed skin, into our eyes, noses, and ears, and tried to get between our tightly closed lips. Our arms got so tired from swatting we finally had to just let them crawl. We had been in Kontum for weeks now and the heat, humidity, dust and flies made us all feel somewhat insane. But we did have lots of company there. I met them when I first arrived and began digging a trench for our fuel cans. We put the cans in the ground to protect us from a self-made napalm attack that would have resulted from the cans being hit by one of the incoming mortar rounds that peppered the area every so often at night. The idea was that if hit, the blast and fireball would blow up, not sideways into people and materials. Fortunately they were never hit so we didn’t have to find out how well the theory stood up to reality. Anyway, as I began digging, the sickly sweet and familiar stench of death wafted up from the hole. The shovel struck some roots which were somehow covered in cloth. As I tried to cut through the stubborn obstructions, I suddenly saw hair, and became aware that what I thought were roots were actually bones and clothing. The hole I’d dug was a grave. I began digging around the edges trying to find a clear area, but soon realized I was standing in the middle of a mass grave which had resulted from the carnage of a battle fought during the Tet Offensive a few months earlier. I got out and tried again nearby with the same result. I finally found an unoccupied patch and finished the now grisly job. It turned out that the whole area was a site of several mass graves, exactly how many we never knew. The bodies tended to rise to the surface in the monsoon rains, and we were made aware of their presence again and again. A dog chewing on a rotted hand, a thighbone strung on the mess tent sign by a prankster attempting to make light of it and preserve his sanity, a skull unearthed and grinning on the trail to the perimeter, and of course the flies… always the flies… the ceaselessly swarming flies of a corrupted graveyard. Nights on the bunkers when I was pulling my shift as the only one awake, was a surreal, lonely, and sometimes terrifying experience. When there was a break in the clouds and enough of a moon to see, the vegetation would become sinister, seemingly in motion, with strange sounds drifting through the dank, humid darkness. Along with the ever present fear of a real attack would come the eerie feeling that if I were to turn around, my frightened gaze would be met by the leering visage of a rotting skull and skeletal body clothed in the tattered fatigues of one of the residents upon whose grounds we were trespassing. It was strange times. That kind of environment breeds disease, and I began feeling weak and sick one day. A concerned friend said I actually looked yellow and mentioned jaundice, so I went to see the medics and collapsed onto a cot in the sweltering heat of the hospital tent. I was in and out of it for about a week, losing quite a few pounds in the process. One night the survivors of a very bad ambush were helicoptered in and I was laid on the dirt floor to make room for the wounded. I remember drifting in and out of an agonizing world of screaming and crying men and shouts of rushing medics, while the roar of the choppers and shuddering of the tent in the dusty wind from the blades created a memory of being locked into a neverending nightmare that didn’t even seem real the next day. But it was. I was very glad when I began feeling better and could finally leave that place. One day we heard a burst of automatic fire coming from inside the perimeter. We found out that a newly arrived replacement had fired a burst from an M16 into his foot. He was flown back out before any of us had even met him. Maybe he was the smartest of us all. His chiseled features and steely gaze were matched by his powerful physique. His eyes appeared to miss nothing as they traversed the terrain. The impression conveyed was one of immense strength and competence. He was a Westpoint graduate, a Captain in the United States Army, and he also happened to be an idiot. A very dangerous idiot. He had been my company commander and in Vietnam for a very short time. At present my company was moving from the outskirts of a town named Kontum, located on a plateau in the Central Highlands, to a new firebase on the side of the mountains about eight miles away. Most of the move had been accomplished, but some assorted sheet metal and other items of possible use to the VC was still laying around and had to be moved up the mountain to our new area. Several of us had been chosen to drive our trucks back to the old area and do the job. There was quite a bit of junk to load, and by late afternoon it was obvious to us that we would have to finish the job the next day if we were to make it back to the firebase with some daylight to spare. This was very important because Charlie owned the night, and to be on the road after dark was an open invitation to be ambushed and killed. For some reason the Captain had chosen to oversee this job in person, and I mentioned to him that it was getting late, and we'd better be heading out soon. The infantry had dug in to secure the area, and there was no need to worry about the items that would be left. He told me it was none of my concern, and to get back to work. As the sun dropped lower, I figured he planned on staying the night and started constructing a ring of old sandbags to bed down in for the evening. He noticed this, and came over saying "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" I said "I'm building my bed for the night." He replied "Where did you get the idea we were staying the night? As soon as these trucks are loaded, we're heading back up the mountain!" I couldn't believe it. He was serious! I tried to appeal to his sense of efficiency by suggesting that if I stayed until morning I could police the area and have some good light to make sure we'd gotten everything. He told me to shut up and get my ass in gear if I didn't want to end up in LBJ for refusing an order (LBJ stood for Long Binh Jail, a prison near Saigon where your time toward the mandatory year in Vietnam was suspended until your sentence was completed. This threat was fine motivation). That was when I realized what he was up to. He was out to live up to his fantasy of what a brave soldier did in war, and in his own mind he was going to be the epitome of that soldier. He'd be damned if he was going to let a few little slanty eyed gooks scare him. And what better way to show it than to drive alone through the dangerous night with no more protection than a tough expression, his superior intellect, and a 45 automatic. Now this was what it was all about for a real soldier! He wasn't a racist, he felt that he was immensely superior to everyone. I can't describe the chill that went through me at the realization of this insanity. He was enjoying my obvious fear, and so chose me to join him in his juvenile and irresponsible folly in order to savor it all the more. I'm sure that in his twisted mind, my fear proved his bravery. He made sure that the other trucks were loaded and left with just enough time to spare to make it back before dark while holding me back to watch me watching the sun go down. As the sun dropped below the horizon he got into his jeep and said "Follow me!" in a strong and unwavering voice of command. We pulled out toward the road very slowly, and continued at probably 15 mph toward the town. I wondered what he was up to, but figured he'd speed it up once we got onto the road so we could get back to the relative safety of the firebase as soon as possible. It didn't happen. By now we'd reached the center of the pitch black town, and he was still driving at the same speed. Several bursts of automatic rifle fire suddenly erupted a short distance away to my left, and that was the end of this bullshit for me. I sped up and got right on his ass trying to get him to move faster. He wouldn't. Okee doke, I figured. Better to face his wrath later than to continue to tempt fate now. I ran him off the side of the road, hit the throttle, and began one of the most nerve wracking rides of my life. I drove like a bat out of hell with my lights off when the road was relatively straight, but had to use them now and then to see when it got curvy in places. With all the racket that poor truck was making, I don't know how much good my blackout would have done if someone had actually been waiting around to waste any moron stupid enough to be out at night, but it gave me a small sense of security anyway. As I drove, the road and vegetation formed a surreal nightmare of flowing, creeping shadows, and every one of them seemed to make my hair stand on end. There was a Green Beret firebase between me and home, and I was hoping they might let me stay the night and save me the drive into the mountains until daylight. The base was constructed in a circle, and the road went in one side of it and out the other. During the day, the gates were guarded, but open. Now they were closed tight and I was met by chain link fence, concertina wire, claymore mines, and bunkers bristling with barrels and full of Montagnard (the mountain people of Vietnam) troops. A Montagnard soldier appeared and began waving me off and yelling at me in what I suppose was his language for "Get the fuck out of here you stupid GI!". I began yelling back that I couldn't turn around, and needed to be let through the gates to get back to my base. A green beret sergeant walked up and yelled at me to get the hell out of there, he couldn't let me through. I said "Fine, lock me up for the night if you want to, just let me in until morning and I'll be out of your hair". After a few minutes of haggling, he said "Let the sonovabitch through, but make it quick!". I pulled through the base and continued on my way. Finally I reached my firebase but still had to drive several hundred feet by our perimeter bunkers full of what I was hoping weren't trigger happy buddies. I reached the way in, and the wire was pulled aside for me to get inside. I was greeted by "What in the hell is wrong with you? You got a death wish or something?". I headed to my tent, downed about three warm beers, smoked a joint, and waited for my doom. After about a half hour, a guy came in looking wide eyed and scared. He said "Flynn, the Captain wants to see you right now, and he looks ready to kill you! You'd better get over there quick!". I headed to the command tent figuring that I'd be leaving in the morning for LBJ. I was scared, but so enraged at what he had done to me that I really didn't care. I ducked through the flap and entered his lair. He was sitting behind his desk talking to the first sergeant, and made a point of ignoring me for a minute or two. Then he slowly turned a seething gaze on me and just stared awhile, absolutely furious, but also trying to put the fear of God into me. It was somewhat successful, but I'm sure my anger was at least equal to his, so it came far from achieving the desired effect. He began a tirade about cowardice, insubordination, patriotism, and anything else that came to mind that lasted long enough to make me nauseous (I suppose the warm beer and weed didn't help). He then grabbed my rifle, inspected it, said it was filthy, and told me to get my ass out of his sight, clean it spotlessly, and be back in front of him damn quick. I cleaned my rifle and returned, having downed another beer or two in the process. He grabbed the rifle again, didn't even really look at it, and told me it was still filthy and to clean it again. This process went on for four or five times until I had become so enraged with what had happened to me, and fed up with the childish tantrum he was throwing, that when he told me to go clean it again I said "No sir, it's clean." His eyebrows rose in an incredulous face, and he said "WHAT DID YOU SAY, MISTER???". I repeated "No sir." He then began blasting me with threats ranging from bodily harm to jail, and finally wound down, telling me again to go clean my rifle. I said "No sir." and he just sat there looking amazed. After a moment he said "Are you DRUNK?". I said "Yes sir, I imagine I am." He then said "Get out of my sight!", and that was the last I ever heard of what had happened. Sometimes in quiet moments I think of what happened that night. And then visions of all the dead, wounded, and mutilated bodies of the casualties of every war ever fought drift through my head. Visions of human beings and the unique mosaics that made up their lives. All of the precious and lost memories of good times, loved ones, and dreams of the future that existed inside every individual who was ever destroyed by war. I think of how much of that destruction was unnecessarily caused by people like the Captain. People guided by childish, self centered egos, wanting to be some kind of hero to themselves and the world, almost always at the expense of others. And when I think of that, I feel very sad. "Ouch, damn it!" I thought, as the truck hit another deep pothole. Years of removing VC mines and filling the holes of the ones that worked had made the dirt roads bumpy beyond belief. My back and arms are killing me and the choking dust has caked around the goggles on my face and feels gritty and pasty in my mouth. I can't take one more bounce (but of course I'll take that and more because there's no way out). The roar and rattle and banging of my truck has long since numbed my ears to the outlandish racket around me. Driving long enough puts me into a kind of nightmarish trance. Common sense tells me to keep an eye on my surroundings and watch for patches of dirt which could be mines, but it's getting harder to do anything but hang on to the wheel and keep the damn truck on the road. The sides of the road are usually steep dirt walls dropping off into rice paddies and cane fields, so losing it for a second or two can spell real disaster, especially when the roads are slick with mud or a convoy coming the other way forces us over to the edge of the dropoff. Pulling over doesn't exist, and you don't "stop" in the middle of a fast moving convoy with trucks in front and rear and potential ambushes always possible. My God, how many more months will I be here? Will it ever end? I guess I'd better watch what I wish for. "LET'S MOVE 'EM OUT!" was loudly relayed down the long line of trucks and tanks ready to begin the convoy from our base at LZ Baldy to firebase Ross, a little south of Da Nang. It was during the Tet offensive in February 1968. The Tet offensive was a very bad time for everyone in Vietnam. The communist forces launched the biggest offensive of the war and the whole country fell into total chaos for about a month. The effect on my unit was mainly mortar and rocket attacks many times a night, very hazardous convoy duty to supply a tiny firebase nearby, and the most ominous event to us, the halting of mail delivery for several weeks. The lack of mail in itself was a hardship, but for circumstances to be bad enough to halt something with as high a priority as mail, we knew that something horribly bad had to be happening everywhere. I'm certain that the folks back in "The World", as we called home, had a much better picture of the situation through the news than we who were actually there did. In movies and books, soldiers always seem to have a handle on the situation. In real life, I remember not knowing what was happening from day to day, and waking up totally disoriented in pitch blackness to the screaming of "INCOMING!" while trying to figure out where I was and where to go as I grabbed for my rifle and bandoleers of ammo. Many times we slept with our boots on for several days, as to keep trying to find them and put them on every time a mortar attack came in was just too time consuming and exhausting. I got to the point where I'd just roll off my cot and huddle in the sandbagged corner of my tent rather than run across an open area with mortar rounds exploding here and there to find "safety" in a bunker. That didn't seem so safe to me. Not to mention the terrible feeling of claustrophobia I felt when packed into a tiny sandbagged space in pitch darkness with a bunch of guys between me and the door who would pack in tighter and tighter each time the VC would walk the rounds in close. Anyway, as the convoy moved out, the tension increased, and once again I'd find myself thinking of how long it would be before I'd see home again if I ever did at all. The fifteen mile or so round trip to Ross took from early morning to late afternoon. Out front of the convoy was a jeep, and in front of the jeep were guys on foot with sharp eyes and metal detectors. By the time we got to Ross they would have blown quite a few mines in place, and filled part of the bed of a truck with mines that they'd dug up. The landscape we drove through looked like the moon in places with the hundreds of huge bomb craters saturating the area. Gunships constantly flew low and fast over us, startling, but reassuring us with their roaring presence. As my truck was mostly filled with high explosive mortar ammunition, grenades, and rifle and machine gun ammo, I knew that if I hit a mine, there was a good chance it wouldn't hurt. Nothing would ever hurt again. It was actually kind of comforting in a weird way. Once they found a mine out front of a little house next to the road. Why anyone would be living in that nightmare place I couldn't imagine, but there they were, right next to my truck, a family of several women and children with one old man in their midst. A few of our guys were questioning them about the mine, and apparently they didn't like what they heard. They knocked the old man down and began beating him with rifle butts and kicking him while the women and children screamed and screamed with fear and anger, wanting to stop them but knowing they couldn't. It was very vicious and thorough, and he looked dead or close to it by the time they finally stopped. Then they lit the house on fire and walked away. As we moved out I looked back in the mirror. The family was just huddled by the old man's body and crying as they watched their home go up in flames. All that was left on our return trip was a little blackened and charred area with nobody there at all. I walked up and sat down beside him like I'd known him for years. I felt sure he wouldn't mind. We looked at each other for a while and then sort of struck up a conversation. The reason I'd singled him out was because he scared me. For the past few days whenever I had to go down to the bunker line at night, passing by him was a bit unnerving. Maybe if we got to know each other a little better the fear would go away. I hoped so, because I'd always been afraid of people like him even though the fear seemed unfounded. Getting over those feelings would be well worth the effort. There were too many of his kind around to let my fear and prejudice rule me. As we spent a little time together, I began to feel empathy for him. I knew that before my tour in Vietnam was over we might have a lot more in common than we did now. But I hoped not. His life was a story like my own. He'd known happiness and sadness, love and anger, fear and strength. He'd held a girl's hand at night and watched the moon and stars reflecting off the water, thinking of how beautiful life was going to be from now on. Felt all the things we all feel. He'd marveled at a beautiful sunset, and laughed at a silly joke. We were from different countries, but he'd felt alot like me in many ways. As I sat there, his appearance began to be a bit of a burden. The wispy hair, and whiteness of his face. The hollows where his eyes had been, and bits of leather still stuck to the bone. The time he'd spent in a muddy mass grave before one of my buddies tripped over his slightly protruding skull and unearthed his rotted face hadn't done much for him. Still, I was glad I'd taken the time to have an imaginary conversation with him. He wasn't so scary any more. He was a person now. Just another guy like me who wanted to live his life the best he could. That was over for him now, but not for me. It made me want to do a little better. Be a little nicer, maybe smile a little more. After all, things could always be worse. YOU were in Vietnam? I didn't know you'd been to Vietnam. You've never mentioned it before. I guess it just never came up before. It was pretty bad over there, huh? It wasn't good, but it could have been a whole lot worse. Were you at the front doing the actual fighting? There really was no "front". I mostly drove a truck and filled sandbags. Oh, so you weren't in actual combat. That's good. The guys who were really in combat came back pretty screwed up. That kind of stuff can really screw up your mind. You're lucky you got to drive a truck. I've got a friend who was up at the DMZ most of the time. He's really messed up over all that shit. All of his friends got killed while he was there. He was the only one left out of all the guys he went over there with. He still gets pretty bad dreams about it, his buddies dying in his arms and all, but he sure wasted a bunch of gooks to make up for it. Made 'em pay for it real good. Those gooks were really mean, cruel fuckers. You had to watch out for those sneaky bastards. They'd cut some guy's dicks off and stick them in their mouths while they were still alive. I've seen alot of books and movies about it, and stuff like that happened all the time. Yeah, a lot of bad things came out of the war. There was some pretty good exaggeration about some of that stuff though. A lot of cruelty and horrible things definitely went on on both sides, but some of the stories you hear weren't very typical of everyday reality. And sometimes, exaggerated or not, that's all you do hear because of a vet's overwhelming desire to get things off his chest combined with the knowledge that so many people don't really want to hear what's important to him. They just want to feed their fantasies. It's a hard realization when you find that the painful baring of your soul is really just cheap entertainment. One of the reasons people don't talk about it much is because unless you babble stuff full of blood and guts, nobody seems to listen. The important things, the things that tear you apart and really matter to you, just aren't very interesting to most people. It's too uncomfortable for them. As they say, the first casualty of war is truth. And the truth fades as the "boring" things are left out. Oh, I know some guys bullshit, but this guy I know doesn't lie. He really had it rough there. I didn't mean your friend was a liar, I just meant that it's a good idea to have an open mind, but take everything with a grain of salt. And to try to listen to the underlying messages; that war isn't romance, glamour, and excitement, with music in the background and tough guys saying tough and humorous things at just the right time. That love and compassion for others is the true and final solution to every one of our problems. The sad fact is that unless you've been there yourself, it's sort of hard to imagine what "tough" can be. If a story isn't pure, distilled carnage, it sometimes doesn't make much of an impact on people who haven't had a similar experience, and who have been conditioned all their lives by books, television, and movies pushing different versions of "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out". I know what you mean. Did you see Platoon? Man, that showed some of the really gory action that happened to the guys over there! Most Nam movies are crap, but that one showed what it was really like. I've read a lot of stories about it, and Platoon really showed some truth. A lot of stuff you see is like the old John Wayne hero junk. John Wayne was a really good actor, but his movies were made a long time ago. Nowadays movies show a lot more real stuff. The good ones do, anyway. Well, I'm just glad to be home. And I'm glad your friend made it home too. Mostly I'm glad the war is pretty well over for most folks. What? Oh yeah. Me too. Be glad you weren't in combat. You were lucky. Alot of guys like my friend are still real screwed up! Well, take it easy. Yeah, you too. This was written quite awhile ago. Since then I have found that most of the time, the pain of Vietnam is, if not gone, at least tolerable. Life today is good. A great part of that is due to a profound spiritual change, but a considerable amount can be attributed to the writing of the above. I don't know how it works, but putting things down on paper has proven to be an amazingly therapeutic activity for me. If you, like many of us, have memories that seem to eat away at all the good things in your life and keep you from enjoying the blessings that you may not even know you have, try writing about them. Then maybe you too will be able to finally seize your life back from the demons of the past and strive to walk in awareness of the grace of God. *** Thu May 29 07:07:38 2008 Submitting Host: 89.149.242.226 visitor_name: asgnhwirtd email: aglslz@qyrsct.com type: Article submit: wupmXP gmehsytendwc, [url=http://vdlhkpdkzmxi.com/]vdlhkpdkzmxi[/url], [link=http://hcikckexnwew.com/]hcikckexnwew[/link], http://quwttmdglaky.com/ *** Wed May 20 07:47:26 2009 Submitting Host: 121.243.72.102 visitor_name: Kumar Gandharva email: kumar.gandharva@iyogi.net type: News submit:

iYogi Acquires Clean Machine Inc.

Larry Gordon, Founder of Clean Machine appointed as President Global Channel Sales at iYogi

New York, NY, May 11th, 2009 : iYogi, a global direct to consumer and small business remote technical support provider, today announced it’s acquisition of Clean Machine Inc, a provider of remotely administered PC security and performance management services. Clean Machine will operate as a separate brand under the iYogi services umbrella along with the recently lunched Support Dock (www.supportdock.com) and its comprehensive range of 24/7 technical support services for computers, printers, MP3 players, digital camera, routers, servers and more than 100 software applications. Larry Gordon, Founder of Clean Machine is appointed as the President of Global Channel Sales for iYogi.

iYogi will integrate technology and innovation that Clean Machine Inc. has developed for delivering an enhanced service experience by proactively managing the health and security for PC's and Apple Computers. This acquisition also broadens iYogi's access to key markets through Clean Machine's existing partnerships. Larry Gordon's past experience and successful track record will accelerate iYogi's expansion through his focus on global alliances.

Commenting on the acquisition of Clean Machine Inc., Uday Challu, CEO & Co-founder of iYogi, said,

"This acquisition will help iYogi to enhance our customer experience and extend our market reach to the millions of consumers that are challenged by the increasingly complex technology environment. Clean Machine's proactive maintenance and management of PCs in home and small business environment will be our launch platform for building the next generation of managed services for consumers."

"We are delighted to have Larry spearheading partnerships and global alliances for iYogi. His incredible experience in marketing, sales and building global alliances will help forge partnerships with retailers, multiple service operators, software publishers, original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and other such companies that are at the frontlines for managing tech support issues for consumers and small businesses",
added Challu.

With more than 20 years of experience, Larry Gordon has played a variety of strategic roles in marketing, sales and building alliances. Larry was the Executive Vice President at Capgemini and Kanbay. He was also VP of Global Marketing for Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH), a leader in global IT services and Director of Marketing for New York based Information Builders.

"I am excited to join a company that shares a common mission to Clean Machine in creating a global brand for delivering the best technical support to consumers and small businesses. We also share a common approach of utilizing highly skilled talent with leading edge tools, thereby delivering services at incredible price-points, with high margins for our partners",
said Larry Gordon, the newly appointed President of Global Channel Sales at iYogi.

ABOUT IYOGI

Headquartered in Gurgaon, India with offices in New York, USA, iYogi provides personalized computer support for consumers and small businesses in United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. IYogi's 24/7 phone and remote technical assistance, spans across a comprehensive range of technologies we use every day from a wide range of vendors. Utilizing its proprietary technology iMantra , and highly qualified technicians, iYogi delivers amongst the highest benchmarks for resolution and customer satisfaction. iYogi is privately held and funded by SAP Ventures, Canaan Partners, and SVB India Capital Partners. iYogi was recently awarded the Red Herring Global 100 Award, recognizing it as one of the 100 most innovative private companies driving the future of technology. For more information on iYogi and a detailed list of technologies supported, visit: www.iyogi.net.

ABOUT CLEAN MACHINE

Clean Machine Inc. is a NJ-based and incorporated company that helps consumers and small business owners easily manage and protect their computing environments safely and cost effectively. The company is has a unique, powerful and inexpensive PC concierge service. Specifically, each customer is assigned a highly-trained tech concierge who remotely examines their computer system on a scheduled and very secure basis. The PC concierge will immediately fix software-based problems and prevent new threats to the customer's computing environment including offensive pop-ups, browser redirects and slow performance, and then provides a detailed report. Clean Machine's proprietary Radar(TM) technology (Remote Access Detection Audit and Repair) allows its expert technicians to remotely resolve any problems, eliminating the need for customers to go through the frustrating process of speaking with a tech support expert, and still having to do the work themselves. In other words, the Clean Machine PC concierges do it all. For more information on Clean Machine please visit www.pccleanmachine.com.

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[url=http://www.phoenixsoftwares.com/download/video-converter-ultimate-software/][b]Free Download and install Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate[/b][/url] [img]http://www.phoenixsoftwares.com/images/video-converter-ultimate-software/video-converter-ultimate.jpg[/img] [b]Get Movies from iTunes/Amazon/Windows media player/BBC iPlayer to Playbook [/b] The iTunes, Windows media player and Amazon are the main online digital media store to sell music, movies, television shows and Apps. If you've ammased alot Movie resources from these online store over years, it will be a good idea to put these movies to your Playbook for watching. However, most of these movies probably are locked by 'FairPlay(DRM)' or 'Janus(DRM)' to stop you copying them to other devices. With Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate, you can easily Remove DRM from movies purchased or rented from iTunes/Amazon/Windows media player/BBC iPlayer, and convert them to Playbook-friendly video format. 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[url=http://www.phoenixsoftwares.net/download/video-converter-ultimate/]Free Download iSkysoft video converter ultimate[/url], install and run it. [/b][/i] [img]http://www.phoenixsoftwares.net/images/video-converter-ultimate/daniusoft%20video%20converter%20ultimate1.jpg[/img] [i][b]Step 2. Load video files[/b][/i] Click '[img]http://www.phoenixsoftwares.net/images/video-converter-ultimate/load-videos-ultimateguide.jpg[/img]' to select 'Add Video Files' to add video/audio files. You could import almost all the pop videos like [i]AVI, MKV, MOV, FLV, VOB, WMV, AVCHD, Mod/Tod, TP/TRP, TS/M2TS[/i] to iSkysoft for converting to Playbook. [b]P.s.[/b] You can add more than one file and could also check ¡°Merge into one file to get a large one file if necessary. [b][i]Step 3. Edit video files (optional) [/i][/b] Click '[img]http://www.phoenixsoftwares.net/images/video-converter-ultimate/edit-video-button.jpg[/img]' button on the toolbar, and you can crop the frame size, append effects, add picture/text watermark, or edit subtitle. Click '[img]http://www.phoenixsoftwares.net/images/video-converter-ultimate/clip-button.jpg[/img]' button on the toolbar. Simply set the start time & end time to get multiple clips as you like. [b][i]Step 4. Output setting [/i][/b] Select a Blackberry style 9670 friendly output format .MMV or .MPEG4 from the drop-down list of "Profile". Then click folder icon of "Output" to choose the folder your want to save the converted files. [img]http://www.phoenixsoftwares.net/images/video-converter-ultimate/playbook-video-output.jpg[/img] [i][b]Step 4. Start converting videos to Blackberry style 9670 [/b][/i] Now click ¡°Convert¡± button to start converting videos to Blackberry style 9670 compatible videos. Wait till the conversion finished. Luckily the Video to Blackberry style 9670 converter is of high conversion speed and usually you do not have to wait long. [i][b]Step 5. Copy and transfer videos to Blackberry style 9670[/b][/i] (1). Connect your BlackBerry style 9670 to your computer with the appropriate cable. (2). Go to "My Computer" and select your BlackBerry memory device. Go into your mainframe folder and select the "Videos" folder. Keep this window open. (3). Go to your desktop media folder and highlight your converted media. Drag and drop it into your "Videos" folder on your BlackBerry style 9670. Remove the Memory Stick and plug it back in to your BlackBerry. You will now be able to access your videos through your BlackBerry media center. [b]Tags : [/b][url=http://www.phoenixsoftwares.net/convertdvd/article/blackberry-style-9670-video-converter.html]Video to Blackberry style 9670 Converter[/url], Blackberry style 9670 video converter, MKV to Blackberry style 9670 *** Fri Jun 29 23:42:31 2012 Submitting Host: 180.242.29.15 visitor_name: andak email: andakpost@ymail.com type: Article submit: Laku.com Belanja Online Grosir Eceran Murah dan Aman merupakan tempat anda berbelanja yang dilakukan secara online, dan tersedia bermacam produk baju atau pakaian pria maupun wanita *** Tue Jul 3 14:29:08 2012 Submitting Host: 173.11.40.49 visitor_name: Neugent4 email: Neugent4@comcast.net type: Article submit: http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2Fblogger.g%3FblogID%3D2502465186056340165%23editor%2Ftarget%3Dpost%3BpostID%3D4388923323815625286 *** Tue Jul 3 14:31:35 2012 Submitting Host: 173.11.40.49 visitor_name: Neugent4 email: Neugent4@comcast.net type: Article submit: http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2Fblogger.g%3FblogID%3D2502465186056340165%23editor%2Ftarget%3Dpost%3BpostID%3D4388923323815625286 *** Wed Jul 11 05:06:03 2012 Submitting Host: 122.173.188.127 visitor_name: Punjab Newsline email: punjabnewsline2218@gmail.com type: News submit: No. 1 News Portal of Punjab. 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If you need any more help then please call 020 7701 8186. *** Fri May 10 01:49:42 2013 Submitting Host: 122.167.212.132 visitor_name: Prakash Kumar email: bulksmsone@gmail.com type: Article submit: Marketing experts have devised a very powerful way of promoting products and services - SMS marketing. SMS marketing helps brands in retaining the loyalty of their customers. They enable brands to engage with their audiences by encouraging response and feedback, resulting in high interactivity. SMS marketing also helps in informing the customers about new innovative campaigns and product launches. However, before launching an SMS marketing campaign, it is important to know the different specifications involved in it. Today, a large number of small and medium sized businesses are using bulk sms marketing campaigns to market their respective brands. Out of all the SMS marketing solutions, bulk texting has gained the highest popularity among brands, as it is known to save a lot of money and time. After the advent of bulk texting, sending across a single message to a wider audience became easier, thus simplifying the process of mass marketing. Growing more and more popular with each day, bulk texting is all set to take over the SMS marketing domain. Apart from bulk texting, mobile or SMS marketing also includes infrared and bluetooth marketing, MMS marketing and a number of other SMS marketing solutions. Apart from being a great medium of communication, mobile phones have also proven to be an effective marketing medium. SMS marketing, which is the most basic of all campaigns, is an effective marketing tool which can be executed using mobile phones. Today, people may or may not have an internet connection or even a computer at home, but they definitely have a mobile phone. Even people who don't read the newspaper or watch television jump at the sound of their message tone. Bulk sms marketing does not even require a GPRS package to be enabled on a phone, which makes it an effective tool in order to reach a wider base of audience. In bulk texting, a single message can me sent to multiple recipients at the same time, thus eliminating the need to type in the same message over and over again. Another popular SMS marketing tool that is used by companies is sms long codes which is a telephone number that can be used to expand the audience base of a company. This tool has carved a niche for itself, not only in the telecommunications market, but also in the commercial market. Many brands are using long codes to achieve engagement in value added services too. Using long codes is the most cost effective and convenient method of advertising. With sms long codes, a unique keyword is given to each company which helps in directing messages to that particular long code. Today, the audience of any brand can be easily targeted with the help of effective marketing solutions like long codes and bulk texting. However, the wonders of bulk texting and other marketing products are not only limited to brands and small companies. Now, it is also being used by the government in order to reach out to its citizens. bulksms1.com *** Fri May 10 01:50:28 2013 Submitting Host: 122.167.212.132 visitor_name: Prakash Kumar email: bulksmsone@gmail.com type: Article submit: Marketing experts have devised a very powerful way of promoting products and services - SMS marketing. SMS marketing helps brands in retaining the loyalty of their customers. They enable brands to engage with their audiences by encouraging response and feedback, resulting in high interactivity. SMS marketing also helps in informing the customers about new innovative campaigns and product launches. However, before launching an SMS marketing campaign, it is important to know the different specifications involved in it. Today, a large number of small and medium sized businesses are using bulk sms marketing campaigns to market their respective brands. Out of all the SMS marketing solutions, bulk texting has gained the highest popularity among brands, as it is known to save a lot of money and time. After the advent of bulk texting, sending across a single message to a wider audience became easier, thus simplifying the process of mass marketing. Growing more and more popular with each day, bulk texting is all set to take over the SMS marketing domain. Apart from bulk texting, mobile or SMS marketing also includes infrared and bluetooth marketing, MMS marketing and a number of other SMS marketing solutions. Apart from being a great medium of communication, mobile phones have also proven to be an effective marketing medium. SMS marketing, which is the most basic of all campaigns, is an effective marketing tool which can be executed using mobile phones. Today, people may or may not have an internet connection or even a computer at home, but they definitely have a mobile phone. Even people who don't read the newspaper or watch television jump at the sound of their message tone. Bulk sms marketing does not even require a GPRS package to be enabled on a phone, which makes it an effective tool in order to reach a wider base of audience. In bulk texting, a single message can me sent to multiple recipients at the same time, thus eliminating the need to type in the same message over and over again. Another popular SMS marketing tool that is used by companies is sms long codes which is a telephone number that can be used to expand the audience base of a company. This tool has carved a niche for itself, not only in the telecommunications market, but also in the commercial market. Many brands are using long codes to achieve engagement in value added services too. Using long codes is the most cost effective and convenient method of advertising. With sms long codes, a unique keyword is given to each company which helps in directing messages to that particular long code. Today, the audience of any brand can be easily targeted with the help of effective marketing solutions like long codes and bulk texting. However, the wonders of bulk texting and other marketing products are not only limited to brands and small companies. Now, it is also being used by the government in order to reach out to its citizens. bulksms1.com ***
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