The Candidate sits there, confused. This is an interview for a legal position. What is the problem with his guy? What kinds of questions are these?
David knows he has to cut himself off and he does. He didn’t become a successful Big Apple lawyer by losing control. But before he became a successful Big Apple lawyer, he spent three days on Hamburger Hill.
David finishes the interview, calls me up, and we have lunch. As we walk back to his office, he stops, rests his hand on a parking meter, and stares off into the crowded canyons of Manhattan. Perhaps he is remembering that long, long walk up Hamburger Hill, with trouble patiently waiting at the top and with fear and hope and time all rushing together in an accelerating avalanche of anticipation until at last the North Vietnamese opened up. Perhaps he is not thinking about the North Vietnamese at all. He begins crying and pounding his fist on the meter and saying over and over, “I hate the rotten bastards. God, I hate the rotten bastards.”
Unlike David, I spend a good deal of time in conscious thought about Viet Nam. I do so because I am a closet schizophrenic. Fred, the name of my other self, is the solid and upstanding citizen I would have become if I hadn’t become a worthless hippy freak.
I’m actually quite proud of Fred, although I wouldn’t reveal such a sentiment to him. He makes good money, reads New York Magazine, goes to church and has a family. However, my relationship with Fred can best be described as a state of deteriorating détente. He bothers me constantly and we argue interminably, especially about life, America, and Viet Nam (Fred didn’t go, what with college and grad school …)
The other day, for example, Fred was berating me because of my admittedly irrational but nonetheless violent dislike for former Iranian hostage Barry Rosen. “Leave the poor guy alone,” said Fred. “So what if he’s being treated like a hero. He is a hero.”
“But…” I began.
“Shut up,” snapped Fred, “and listen. Bitch, bitch, bitch, that’s all you ever do. You veterans always separate the country into two parts, ‘we veterans’ and ‘you others.’ What in hell is your problem anyway? All of us are Americans, aren’t we? That stupid war has been over for years. Forget it and grow up.”
Why the dichotomy “we” and “you” when, as Fred correctly indicates, we are both parts of the same whole? Because a split is there, a San Andreas fault running through this country’s societal personality, a condition unique in American history.