« previous | main | next »
chasms
It’s best you didn’t see me late yesterday afternoon – I was a bad scene. After spending hours in the Worst Store On Earth (Macy’s Herald Square, that’s you kiddo), mostly in the women’s pointy-strappy these-shoes-hate-you section, I stumbled out onto Seventh Avenue bleary-eyed and wallet-lightened with a giant shopping bag (cashmere on sale, I’m sure you understand), legs still aching from our “accidental” hike (read: climbing down 300 feet of wet leaf-covered rocks), and dragged myself ten blocks to Whole Foods to get our Yuppie Supplements (yogurt, chickpeas, garam masala, organic onions, baby field greens) for dinner. I couldn’t wait to get home, collapse on the bed, and prolong that fleeting vacation-y feeling a little longer.
My phone rang, and I eyed it with contempt, knowing that someone or something somewhere was about to keep me from my imminent lazy Zen. I just didn’t know it would be Keith.
***
Keith and I met when I was a freshman undergraduate. He had an impressive blue mohawk, pouty brown eyes, and such an intense sarcastic/bitter/West Coast punk edge that I considered our friendship inevitable. He got me the record store job I wanted; we’d get back after long evenings shelving CDs and watch Steve Buschemi movies at his place, drink Jack, and make pasta the way they did in the prison scenes of Goodfellas (razor to garlic, dry spices mortared and pestle-d, tomatoes simmered to pulp). He graduated before me, and when I went to visit him between his law school semesters I returned with my first tattoo. In his second semester, he faced family shifts and a money shortage, decided he’d had enough and joined the Army. A month before basic training, he caught up with my family and I vacationing in Lake Tahoe. At an uppity restaurant, my father sent back half his steak uneaten in a shameful show of calorie-counting. As the waiter removed the plate, Keith grabbed his arm – “Er, I’ll finish that, okay?” My parents have asked about him ever since.
He’s been in Iraq since February. The Sunni part. The part that shows their distaste for their loss of status with heavy ammunition. When he's not getting shot at, and sometimes when he is, he hires contractors to assess projects like rebuilding demolished schools and sends pictures of happy American children in these schools to Congress. He told me about the showers, the slop, his cot, and how excited he was to see a flushing toilet again. He said they hired an Iraqi guy to give haircuts, and that they joke that they know an attack is coming if he doesn’t show up for work. It was his last day of R&R.
I asked him what it was like to be over there when you are certain it’s an unjust war. He says he tries not to think about it, it’s his job and such thought patterns only make it harder. I wanted to know if he agreed that we don’t have enough troops over there, and he said it’s like a severe staffing shortage at your office – if your office were a place where people shot at you. I asked him when he could go back to Germany, where he has an apartment and some of the dishes in which we used to cook, and he said that it probably wouldn’t be before March. If he makes it, he added. I shuddered.
We hopped from bar to bar, none for more than a drink. Even though he’d missed his California reds, he didn’t relax after three of them. He walked me back to my apartment and we stood downstairs, taking in the amber-blanketed side street, smoking a cigarette. I saw ochre light seeping from our third floor window and knew Alex was waiting up for me. I pictured him sitting on the leather armchair draped with the muted chenille throw watching a game on the big TV while browsing the internets, full on his mom’s leftovers, eager to crawl under the rust-colored duvet with me. I looked at Keith, shivering and always out-of-sync with these seasons, the chasm between our two existences frightening.
You could tell me everything and nothing changes, but I won’t believe you. Boys with blue mohawks shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not they’ll make it to March. I shouldn’t have feel like a spoiled, selfish American because I don’t.
But we do.
We hugged goodbye. He’s on a plane back to Iraq now. I guess that’s all there is to it.
comments (13)
beautiful and sobering.
1 | wendy | November 8, 2004 08:08 PM
moving, warm, smart, beautiful
2 | nils | November 9, 2004 07:39 AM
what a lovely story. Hopefully your friend will be just fine!
Now go to pixxiestails.blogspot.com to see smitten haunted breasts!
Joce
3 | jocelyn | November 9, 2004 07:54 AM
beautifully written deb, and i hope that your friend makes it just fine. a good friend of mine is iraq as well... hopefully you are doing fine too about it all.
on a totally removed topic, the site looks really great!
4 | writersbloc gal | November 9, 2004 08:51 AM
Nicely done; it's easy to forget there's a war going on sometimes, which is perhaps a sad commentary on our society.
Most importantly, best of luck to your friend.
5 | Dan | November 9, 2004 10:56 AM
Thirty-eight years later and the same old feelings. I can still smell the gun oil and boot polish and feel the way my scalp felt when nearly bare. I want them all home very, very soon.
6 | Michael | November 9, 2004 11:11 AM
when I think about my cousins over there, I just cry.
7 | Theresa | November 9, 2004 11:59 AM
Well said. That was just beautiful.
8 | FabGirlie | November 9, 2004 12:41 PM
Lovely, Deb. Best wishes to Keith! Keep us posted about him.
9 | C | November 9, 2004 01:04 PM
This site dosn't look that different from the last, why the change ? Maybe, subtle diffrences are not my thing.
10 | Robert Dobbs | November 9, 2004 02:49 PM
Awesome post, Deb. Makes me view the Iraq war in a much different light.
11 | Howard | November 9, 2004 03:30 PM
probably the best i've ever seen written here.
12 | shae | November 9, 2004 04:49 PM
Deb, my best friends just got back from over there. I know how you feel. Really well written and moving.
By the way, noticed that you've linked to me. I'll link back when I get a chance to update my links. Thanks!
13 | Daniella | November 10, 2004 12:51 PM