“Did the baby come?” Elvis asked his ex-wife.
“It never came,” she replied. “It never came.”
“Why?” inquired Elvis, a little mortified.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
This is a daily conversation here in the VA mental ward. Pretty soon Elvis will be doing the ‘Jail House Rocks,’ on the main doors to the ward. He will then be put in the strap down ‘quiet room,’ while chemical restraints kick in. When he wakes, he will watch movies from gothic gen-Xers still young and fertile on the 4:3 TV, like Christina Ricci. Elvis can watch movies like Beatle Juice without sleep for days on end. Sometimes he is pregnant. Sometimes he spills a cup as his water breaks. One giant bowel movement later, he gives birth in dark hilarity.
Elvis knows me. He tries telling nursing students I am Jesus because I listen. I’m horrified. I’m nobody’s martyr. I’m a nobody; at best a criminologist missing his son. I’m slipping from reality myself at times. I was part of a mission nobody talks about. Our air force leveled the country. I didn’t die. I wasn’t of the mentality to kill. The decision to bomb the country flat was made for soldiers like me. The only reason I stopped killing myself with alcohol and other drugs was because I knocked up a woman from a bar in a one night stand. My son gave me a reason to struggle forward again.
I was emaciated over there. I gave too much slop to kids and blame it on a First Sergeant who was in Vietnam to help me ‘acquire’ what I needed. It’s beyond painful to write this. I wish I could write about heroes and villains instead. I wish I could bury my entire history and who I am as an individual. I can’t. Elvis went lucid before I left. I wasn’t Jesus. He started telling his ex-wife I was an intellectual the night before he left. When he hung up with her, he told of a young girl who came to his hut in Vietnam. Sometimes the military heroically commits to the cause. Nobody talks openly about it. His squad gave the girl some food, noting she looked hungry. She took it and threw a grenade on the way out. I know why First Sergeant helped me. I know why ‘baby killers’ cry when hippies attack. Boots on the ground do what they do. No court should ever judge us. The point of military ethics is hard in a nihilistic world. Many war fighters are horrified at the absurd waste of life.
Many vets are hurting when people thank us for our service like empty words to stories getting shut down. Sometimes I want to shut down myself. It’s not PTSD. Sometimes, I think I am Jesus. I’m scared they are going to kill me for political reasons. Schizoaffective is complex in here. It can be induced with drugs, a lack of sleep, or just simply a perceived lack of humanity to the world. I wish I could leave here and see my son. I am out of reasons to live.
Joker's Wild 