GOING HOME by Bobby Barresi

I promised myself to keep away from this topic, but I constantly lie to myself, it’s easy, like Little Feat sang in Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, “Momma said keep away.”

Going home from Vietnam the second time was a bitch. But going home the first time was a friggin’ adventure!

June 1968, the Tet Offensive was in my rear view mirror, the “post mortar attack confession” to the Chaplain was now becoming a “story.” I decided, somewhere flying over the international dateline that I got 30 days at my disposal before returning to Battery B, 71^st Air Defense Artillery, the jewel of the 97^th Artillery Group attached to the Americal Division, aka the 23^rd Infantry Division from the people who brought you the “Mi Lai Massacre” but don’t fuckin’ blame me. Bobby was in Singapore on R&R #2 with Miss Nancy Keong. Ask Paulie Glass. We were both spending our five-day rest and recreation in the humid, Britishy, too-close-to-the-equator paradise…

So the genius decides to visit Joyce Altman in St. Paul before flying home to Mom and Dad in Brooklyn, also the Deer Head Bar and Grill and the stickball games in the schoolyard et al.

The orange-colored Braniff Freedom Bird lands in Oakland. I get processed out quick because I’m just visiting America. Much head-scratching. Put on my newly starched khakis replete with the current insignias and flashy ribbons, polished shoes – “Sorry, Sergeant Kennedy, you can’t see your face in them,” – and on to the Aerodrome I go. Only I left here in June 1967, and now it’s Oakland 1968… WHOA!! Momma, what the fuck?

Heckle, heckle, little scumbag baby killer, how many kids you kill yesterday, GI? Yikes! We gotta get outta this place if it’s the last thing I ever do. It’s 12 o’clock and it’s time for lunch so into the men’s room I creep. Thankfully, I had my civies from R&R in my sand-stained duffel bag. Off with the military khakis. On with the paisley cotton button-down and khaki chino slacks. Only the military black shoes could be a giveaway, but it was a chance I needed to take.

I stuffed my duffel into one of those airport lockers, 25 cents I think, bought a pack of Tareytown filters and one pack of Camels, just in case. I needed to look cool for Choice Joyce. Oh, did I mention she sent me a Dear John in March of ’68? Like just after the fuckin’ Tet? Yes, she did. Said she was with child and would I please send her some money to help bring little what’s-his-name into a better life. Later, after much beer, Doyle explained to me that if I sent her money that I was the asshole of the decade. Greeno seconded it, and Monk explained that “you white ofay motherfuckers aint got no soul.”

So I wrote back that I aint sending her no money. A week or so later THE NON-SCENTED, NO S.W.A.K. ENVELOPE ARRIVES.

Back to the cab ride to Dupont Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota. I get out in front of her old apartment. Hot day. June in Minnesota. All the snow is thankfully gone. A lot of gopher holes in the fields. But this part of St. Paul is metropolitan, near all the right stuff. Up the wooden steps. Nice memories here. Beer, cigarettes, Burger King Whoppers, Pete’s 1965 Mustang. Pete, Becky, Joyce, me…

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Orange. Orange who? Orange ya glad ta see me? The door opens and I’m looking at a much younger version of Joyce. It’s her younger sister. I cannot remember her name, but as she finished up cleaning the dishes I question her about Joyce.

“She’s at work. Be home about 6,” she says.

“Oh,” is my reply. “Did she have the baby?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Uh, like, where is the baby?”

“Well, Joyce gave him up for adoption to the convent down the street.” (In Minnesota they say “down the street.” In Brooklyn it’s “down the block.” Nevertheless…)

“Can you please take me to the convent?”

“Of course, Bobby. Joyce told me all about you.”

UMMM? What could that devil woman from hell have told her baby sister that might even remotely have a friggin’ amoeba-length of truth about me? UMMM?

What a beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed little Norwegian looking bambino he was. I did the math. June 1967. June 1968. No way, José. Not mine. But……………

STORY by Eli Morales

My first conscious feelings of terror, doom, and the apocalypse came from watching SCUD missiles and fighter jets fly through the air on our push button Trinitron T.V. I knew that there was a war going on but it wasn’t until I saw the images of the Gulf war that I understood what war might be.

That night I lay in my bed wondering when the bombs would start falling and seriously considered my death and the end of everything I knew. I was ten.

Ten years later. My cousins entered the Army to pay for college. I was slightly jealous, or perhaps nervous that the family would see them as men, doing men things, doing their duty, while I, only half-Puerto Rican, went to college and did soft, unmanly things.

My cousins, twins, my age, finished school and were shipped off to Korea and Iraq. I finished college and moved to Oregon to work in public service. Family reunions were yellow-ribbonned affairs with lonely fiancés talking about the future plans for their soldiers. News of the twins traveled around the room. They continued their tours and I continued living my life.

Frequent e-mails from my aunts about how to support the troops conflicted with my feelings that they shouldn’t be there. One of them came home from Korea. The other was wounded in Iraq. He came home and showed everyone his scar. Entry and exit wounds. For some reason everyone was proud of him. For what? Getting shot?

My family seemed to glorify his experience as a triumph and a sign of the right thing to do. But months later as his brain broke down, pondering the meaning of jumping into cesspools and following orders that lead to the death of his friends, I could see that his journey was no glory to him. His wife asked if I could talk to my ex-girlfriend’s father, a congressman, about getting him help for PTSD.

My family struggled with their own misunderstanding of what had happened. The war did not seem to make him into the theoretical man that emerges from battle. Hollywood was wrong. The actual man went through life wondering about its meaning, and wishing war had never come.

Separately, he and his brother called me to say they wished they had parts of my life, mostly the part where they didn’t go into the Army. We talked about living on one’s own and what freedom was like. They wanted my advice on how to figure out their new lives as civilians. We were 26, but they had just got out of college.

NOBODY SAW IT COMING by Cassia Berman

That morning I actually wanted to clean the house, which happens very rarely. I forget what I had in my hand when he called, I just remember I didn’t want to put it down. But the inner voice said very firmly, “Sit down and enjoy this call,” so I did.

He could talk endlessly about himself, his memories. That morning he was entertaining. He told me a story I had never heard, that his father, who worked in the jewelry business, used to go to nudist colonies. His mother never went along. One time, when he was still a boy, his father took him to one. He said it was remarkably asexual. People were doing the ordinary things they would do on vacation, they just did them without wearing clothes.

He talked about his family, as he often did, occasionally veering off to talk about Paris, where he lived for a few years in his twenties or thirties. And we talked about his health. Less than two months before, he had a respiratory ailment that didn’t go away, and after several weeks his partner persuaded him to go to the doctor, where he collapsed, his lungs filled with fluid from the malfunctioning of his heart. The same thing happened the first time he had a heart attack—he had it in the doctor’s office. (Since then, he’d been joking about how dangerous it can be to go to the doctor.) As with the first one, they were able to get him to the hospital and take care of him. The doctors wanted to do surgery this time and put in a stent, but he didn’t like the idea of having something foreign in his body and he didn’t like the idea of surgery, so opted not to. At any rate, he couldn’t wait to get out of the hospital. Some of the people in his life agreed with his decision, because at his age, 82, anything could happen once they put you under; some people thought he made the wrong decision.

We both agreed he’d made a great recovery. He sounded so strong, so full of life that morning. “You sound like you’ll be around for years to come,” I told him, and he told me, as he often did, how his mother lived far into her nineties, and his uncle even older. His father died relatively young. He told me about his father’s passing, but I don’t remember it now.

At some point I looked at the clock and saw two hours had passed; it was getting close to the time I had a class to teach, for seniors, actually. I told him, and he raised his voice to a false, strident pitch, saying, “Okay, goodbye then—as usual you haven’t let me get in a word edgewise,” and we both laughed at his acknowledgement of his tendency to go on. Then he said “Goodbye, dear,” and hung up, a more abrupt ending to our conversation than I would have liked, though it gave me a few extra minutes to get dressed to go out.

The next morning a mutual friend called me to say he had passed away the night before. His lungs had filled with fluid again. His partner heard him coughing and called 911, but by the time they came he was unconscious, probably dead already, though they took him to the hospital.

To say nobody saw it coming is an understatement, even though he was in his eighties and had had those two previous incidents. I found out later that in the month or two since the last one, he had phoned almost everyone he knew, his large, multi-generational family, his large circle of friends, and talked to each at length. In retrospect, it seems like even though on a conscious level he felt like he had many years to go, on a deeper level he must have known his life was ending. I was moved and honored that I was one of the last people he’d spoken to, that we spoke on the very last day of his life.

So many people I’ve known have died in these last ten years or so, people younger than me, people older, and it’s always awesome when that last page is written, the story of that particular person concluded. But his passing was a shock—he was so alive and so filled with the joy of it, it seemed like he would live forever.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED? by F. M. Edison

In my 58^th year – and, in my apparent never-ending quest for that elusive “LOVE” to rock my world – I recently joined yet another online dating site. This one is called Plenty of Fish – and yes, there truly are.

In the first few days after uploading my photo and 200 words encapsulating my best character and personality traits, likes, dislikes, life story line, ideal man of my dreams, perfect first date, favorite movies, foods and reality shows – I received quite a few emails from other fish floating around in these stale and murky waters. Two or three of them seemed almost promising – at least, enough so for me to consider giving one my phone # (he lives in Rochester, so a phone chat or two would be required to inspire -- or not -- a desire to move forward), and making a loose-ended agreement with another to work out details to try to meet soon (he lives in Hudson NY). A third fish – a musician from the Rhinebeck area, was also on my growing ‘maybe’ list.

And, then…I got an email from Rick. His profile didn’t say a whole lot about him, just something about his proudest moment being the time he did some kind of small environmental clean-up project in Vermont. Well, that’s kinda’ cool. But, it was his photo that really appealed to me. I’m not proud to say this– but, I never move on to reading the profile if the photo doesn’t first capture my attention. Plus, he lives right here in Woodstock. We exchanged a couple more brief emails, and agreed to meet on Thursday at the Muddy Cup in Saugerties.

“You’re pretty” were his first words.

“Well, you’re really cute. You kinda’ look like Marlon Brando in his thin period. But, ya’ know, you’re dangerous for me…I have a weakness for good-looking guys,” I told him, flashing back on that near-decade of my life -- in my forties -- a period I’m still struggling to understand ten years later -- of my out-of-control psycho-sexual obsessional attachment to the dashing, elusive, some-might-say emotionally sadistic Englishman, David.

“Oh, really, do I make you weak?” he grinned.

“Yes, you do.”

We sat down with our coffees on 2 brown leather chairs and he gave me the 5-minute version of his life story and I did the same. I divulged my real age to him -- as opposed to my online age. Acknowledging our 10-year age difference, he says, “You’re a little older than me, but I like you.”

“I like you too…will you be my boy toy?”

He’s from this area originally, but has been living for several years in a small, rustic cabin in Vermont that he built with some friends, ever since IBM transferred him there, and staying after the company offered him some kind of early retirement deal. His step-father recently died, and he’s back here for awhile to be close to his mother. He also spends a few months each year in the Florida Keys, where he has a boat he’d like to convert to a live-aboard. He says he’s kind of a nature boy who likes to live close to the earth. “Will you ride on the back of my motorcycle with me and hold my hand?” (“You bet!” I thought.)

“Hold your hand while you’re driving!?” I said.

“I’m a very safe driver.”

He told me that he had scheduled another appointment to help out a friend in New Paltz, so he couldn’t stay long at the coffee shop with me, but he’d like to see me again and will call tomorrow. I gave him my card and he gave me his: it was a 4x6” flyer-of-sorts, with his name, cell phone and Vermont land line numbers, that indicated he was a responsible, motivated individual seeking a house-sitting or caretaker situation in the Woodstock area.

The next day was Friday, and Rick called as he said he would. He told me he was thinking of taking a Tai Chi class with some friends from Phoenicia that evening; I told him I was going to a political meeting in Kingston, so I wouldn’t be able to join him.

On Saturday, Rick called in the early afternoon. He asked what I was doing. “Not much….just got home from my writing class.”

“Can I come over…see your place and meet your dogs?”

“Well, I guess so.”

“What should I bring?...need milk or something?”

“Nah.”

He parked near my red barn and peaked inside. For a few minutes, he took in the steep rock outcroppings bordering one side of my property and then the deeply recessed gully bordering the other side. I gave him the requisite tour of the small 1800s house I had restored a few years ago. He loves old houses, too. He admired the old wooden ceiling beams running throughout the first floor. He liked my kitchen table made of 3 long pine planks, and told me he’s made several similar tables, even sold one or two. Hmmm…I’ve also liked a man with carpentry skills.

We sat on my couch. I asked if I could read him one my essays from writing class. He said he’d like to hear it. I read. He was an attentive audience. Later, he was still on the couch. “Come over here. Give me a kiss.”

“No, not today. Don’t be a bad boy. Don’t tempt me to be a bad girl. Behave yourself.” But, of course, he didn’t. And, alas, neither did I. Kissing him was delicious. But, he’s making me delirious. Feelings reminiscent of those I had with the Englishman. We escalated from kissing…but, stopped way short of…well, you know. Yeah, this guy can rock my world.

We returned to the dining room/kitchen area. I show him the mock-up of the book I’m planning to write, focused largely around the Englishman. It’s tentatively called, “A Recipe for Obsession.” He noticed I had a carton of Cocoa Crispies on my fridge – you know the one with Fred Flintstone on the box. He said he loved those; I prepared a bowl for him that he devoured with the gusto of a trucker enjoying his Lumberjack breakfast special at Ihop after a 16-hour haul. Then he engaged my dogs in the best play date they’ve had since – well, probably ever. Rufus, the sweet Golden Retriever whose only demand in life is that you pet his head and never stop – was almost satiated with head pets. And Rick gave Otis, the funny little pugnacious pug, the lengthiest deep tissue all-body doggie massage he’s ever had, and surely ever will. Yes, Rick transported these guys directly to canine heaven.

Before he left my home late Saturday afternoon, Rick announced that he’d like to move into my barn. “ My barn?!? I know you like to live close to nature — on your boat, in your rustic Vermont cabin, but -- nobody can live in that barn. Except maybe the porcupine and the ground hog that make regular appearances out behind it.” Yeah, I thought -- there’s electricity in the barn, and my ex-boyfriend Bob used it as a seasonal office in the warmer months – but he wants to live in it?!

As I -- along with my dogs -- was by now completely smitten with this near-stranger who wanted to move onto my property, into my energy field, into my lonely life -- the part of me that was not incredulous was, well -- simply, elated.

On Sunday, Rick called and told me he’s going to build me a wood shed, using the wood planks I had stored in the barn. I had told him I had intended to have a shed built last year, but aborted the project. As he talked about pine boards, my hormones were raging like a teenage boy’s. I was now in a state of perpetual excitement, flying high.

It’s Monday. He calls. “Hi cutie” …the dogs really miss you. Me, too…shit, dammmmn,” I say.

“Ha,Ha” says he… “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“I dunno,” I say. “I’m in danger,” I think. He tells me he’s going to Vermont to meet with his accountant to settle his taxes. He’ll call again when he gets back into town.

“Hi, cutie pie,” he says, when he calls on Tuesday. It’s just after a power surge has corrupted my Vonage router and my internet service, which means that that I’ll be spending the better part of the day speaking with a tech support person from my cell phone. Ya’ know…the modern-day version of hell on earth.

He tells me that his trip to see the accountant in Vermont had been postponed. Can he come over and check out the barn -- ? I tell him of my descent into computer hell, and that I’m too frazzled today to deal with it (and him, I think) and that we should speak about the barn thing tomorrow.

He calls Wednesday early evening to tell me that he made the trip today to Vermont, saw the accountant. While in Vermont, he’s grabbing some photos of a wood shed he had built that’s similar to the one he’s planning to build for me. “Yeah, bring the photos. But, you know, we still have to talk about this. Like, the rent – you know it’s going to be $1200 a month, PLUS utilities,” I joke. (“Are you my boyfriend? Are we dating? Will you love me?,” I think.) “Let’s go out to dinner soon to talk about this.”

“Okay,” he agrees, and adds, “Tomorrow night.”

“Garden Café,” I suggest…“6:30.”

“Okay, get dolled up…me, too,” he says.

We don’t speak on the phone anytime Thursday. Neither of us calls to confirm. I wonder if he’s going to show up. He does.

We order dinner and wait for its arrival. He’s had a headache all day and has been feeling ‘frazzled.’ I give him an aspirin from my purse. He opens the manila envelope he had placed on the table and shows me its contents – photos of the wood shed in Vermont, of the slab wood tables he has built, one photo of him on his boat in the Florida Keys, another of a beautiful sunset from that locale.

And then -- I ask him the question – “Will…we…be...lovers -- ?”

His demeanor changes… dramatically. “Don’t make me feel boxed in. I don’t want to feel possessed.” And, then, he says...“I want to go.”

We ask the waitress to wrap up the dinners to go. She does. We leave. In the street, he’s silent, begins to drift away…”That’s it?! You don’t want to talk about this?” He stops, we talk. “You know, pretty boy, you don’t go onto a dating site to do a real estate transaction.”

“I’d be paying you some rent, and building the shed…and you couldn’t handle making love with me, anyway.” I know that last part is true, of course.

I knew I wouldn’t, couldn’t, really let this happen — open the floodgates and allow those feelings to spurt and clench me tight in their tentacles again… couldn’t allow that bottomless need and overpowering hunger to surface again, overtake my life – render me unfocused, incompetent, incapable of controlling my thoughts and my emotions –because all of these thoughts and emotions would be fixated on him...compulsively, frenetically. I have too much at stake -- my work that sustains me financially and mentally would be on the line; in dire jeopardy. I’m not a teenager now who can cast her fate to the wind.

I knew it was irrational, unhealthy, made no sense; I was being played by the male equivalent of Blanche DuBois, who went through life “always depending upon the kindness of strangers.” I guess I was being used by an emotional con man not lacking in charm – they never are. But, that’s his issue.

Me – I’ll be attending my first Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meeting with the other powerless love junkies any day now.

ENDINGS by Billy Herman

Endings matter but I don’t know how much. Is a fake happy ending worth more than a humiliating one? And how long do you hold on to the memory of how a big nothing ended? Or was it more than that? How long do you live in an ending?

It’s like oh man that hurt. I think I’m just going to think about that for a while. Then I see decades going by and I’m still thinking about how that thing ended. And it’s not really a happy thought.

Maybe I can change the focus to what happened. I was offered a shot at love and I blew it. I rejected her or she rejected me. But in between wasn’t there some kind of tenderness? Wasn’t there some kind of yearning for a dream to come true?

She had a husband and four children. She took five hits of LSD years ago because she thought she would see God. But so what? I loved her. I steered us away from an affair until it became too late. Now it is too late and thinking about the sweet feelings between us only makes me sad. Something happened with her marriage and with her sanity. She called me a long time ago declaring she wasn’t going to play any flirting games with me anymore. She didn’t know that in between I had completely broken down and would need years of mending.

There was one ending at a bus depot but it was so long ago I don’t care about it anymore. She wasn’t that great. For years she blazed as the big great one, but who says?

Wasn’t there some kind of tenderness? Wasn’t there some kind of yearning for a dream to come true?

I have lost you in space and time. You who I liked, maybe loved I have lost. It seems so devastating. Liked, maybe loved? I was crazy about you. Or maybe I just thought you were hot. I’m not an idiot. I don’t have to act confused.

Alyssa as a beautiful woman inspired all kinds of fantasy, but she did not like me. And that would be all there is to it if I didn’t keep hanging on. I became addicted to the dream. Yeah, we had some kind of delightful parting. A parting in which I was informed that I was not enough of a man for her. But you know how women are when they are telling you that. She’s giving you some kind of fantastic punishment. She’s lying about you. You have to escape from her lies.

Wasn’t there some kind of tenderness? Wasn’t there some kind of yearning for a dream to come true? I have lost you in time and space. With my arms around her or at some old bus depot isn’t it all the same kind of thing? It’s some kind of lie about me. It’s some kind of disgrace and worthlessness. What man can live that way?

It’s a January snowstorm. I have lost some women in time and space and I feel like I can’t get over it, but I know I can.

I HAD NO CHOICE by Jay Wenk

Occupation duty began with a bang when, in different days of the week, we would sally forth before dawn from the Kaserne in Amberg, with loaded weapons, riding in 6 by’s. It was always chilly. We drove to small villages in the countryside which we surrounded. Some of us were on guard on the perimeter, some searching every house and barn and shed, looking for hidden weapons and soldiers, primarily SS. The job of searching was preferred because that was an opportunity to look for loot; Leica’s and Luger’s and anything else we considered valuable. Occasionally picture books of the Nazi regime, its leaders and its works would surface. I remember one that had blank spaces beside the text where the German civilians could glue in photos they purchased to aid the war effort. Never anything about concentration camps. Never anything about the disaster in the east.

The people in the homes we invaded were mainly resigned, stoic. A few were frightened but never crying. Not a word was ever said by any of them. Always, wherever we searched, in small farmhouses or larger blocks of homes, every place had lots of stuff that German troops sent back from all over Europe: things like ashtrays from Norway, fur-lined gloves from Russia, tableware from France. What goes around comes around.

On one occasion we came to a tiny hamlet, not even as large as a shtetle, seven or eight little cottages. The place was deserted. Every one of those cottages was crammed with unopened packages of food from America to GI prisoners of war in German camps. We had no idea how all those gifts to GI’s came to be there, but we called our trucks to come up from headquarters to take the boxes away. We were outraged and vengeful. We had seen Dachau and Flossenburg , but this was in our face, this was very personal. We burned very house to the ground. That’s something we never did deliberately during the war; you don’t destroy potential cover.

The rotation of guarding and searching was handled fairly evenly. I had my share of doing both. On this morning, I was guarding on the outskirts of town. There was a small sawmill close by and some piles of lumber next to it. The red glow of the rising sun made the world look pretty but not yet warmer. I saw a man slip out of a nearby house, furtively making his way from one pile of lumber to another, moving away from the town. He didn’t see me, he was facing the other way. He had a large green rucksack on his back. His clothes were typical of the time: ill-fitting army pants and jacket and the grey forage cap that all the men of every age wore.

As I wondered what he was up to, a feeling of lassitude invaded me. I knew he could be a war criminal trying to escape. My M1 was heavy in my hands. I wondered why I didn’t stop him; that was my duty. It was as though I was watching a movie, not having a part in it. I wondered if doing nothing was a protest against all the insanity and degradation that was involving me.

Finally, when he was about 80 yards away, still well within my rifle’s range, I moved into a position that gave me an unobstructed field of fire whichever way he might move. In the chilly stillness I yelled, “Halt, Hande hoch!” He stopped, put his hands up and turned towards me. Almost immediately, some of my brother GI’s came running, weapons ready. Harold Thane, who we called “Heavy” had the BAR but with very little ammo, and all were relieved that there was not going to be a fire fight. The German, who was about my age, was Landswehr, not SS, trying to make his way home from the front. He had no papers, of course, hardly anyone did then. The war had ended only two weeks before and there was no system set up yet to deal with returning German soldiers and all the DP’s.

He was frightened and sullen. I’m sure he was afraid that we, the victorious army in his native land, would throw him in jail. He started to relax when he realized that we were not going to beat him. His rucksack contained some bread and cheese, ragged clothing, an extra pair of worn boots, and a lot of letters and mementoes from his dead comrades that he wanted to bring to their families. This was something we could relate to, this was something we would want a buddy to do for us. We gave him a few packs of cigarettes that came with our C rations – I think there were three butts in each pack – and some matches. He had no weapons, not even a breadknife or a spoon, and no watch. Watches were commonly traded then for food and clothing.

He was placed in the Captain’s jeep with the Sergeant to guard him. I never saw him again, though I knew he would be taken back to rear echelon to be interrogated and eventually released, perhaps given a job assisting HQ in some way. There were hordes of Displaced Persons all over Europe then, all of them needing food, shelter, clothing, doctors, translators. Many Germans and other Europeans were employed in this work, and almost everyone was involved in the Black Market as well; it was a necessary fact of life then, for survival.

I still have no understanding of what came over me before I stopped that man. Something tried to keep me from doing that, though stopping him was the right thing to do. I never told anyone that I almost let him go. I knew that I would have been shunned forever. Why did I hesitate?

ESCAPE by Bennett Neiman

When I was in high school, the major conversation that went on between me and my friends was about getting pussy. Of course, it was all talk. In the summer of 1964, in Cincinnati, Ohio, there really was no place that any of us knew, where pussy was hanging out ready to be gotten. And, even if there were such a place, neither me nor most of my chums would have much of a clue about what to do with it once we had it—except perhaps Carl, who was the cool one of the bunch.

Nonetheless, talking about such a place, did occupy quite a bit of our time. I’m not sure how it got started, but one of us must have seen the old movie, “Shangri La,” about an exotic, hidden paradise island—because we started referring to that amazing place where pussy fell like rain from the skies—as Shangri La.

So imagine our joy when one of us—Kenny Baker be exact—announced that he had accidentally stumbled into Shangri La the past Saturday night. We were all so excited, or so it seemed. I, myself, was. “What if they find out I’m a virgin,” I thought, “or what if they discover that I had never even seen a pussy, much less know what to do with one?” But, there was no backing down. I had to go on this exotic adventure with my brethren, whether I liked it or not.

So, it was decided that the next Saturday night, that the four of us: Kenny, Carl, Marc and I, would get into Kenny’s car—he was the only one who had a car—and take the majestic journey to the place we had been fantasizing about for at least the past year.

Kenny told us that Shangri La was down by the Ohio River on the Eastern side of Cincinnati, a place where none of us had been because it was know for being a very rough red-necked part of town.

We had all been on Columbia Parkway before, the highway that overlooked the river basin area in which Shangri La was nestled into—but none of us had actually been down there. The only reason Kenny had found it, was that he made a wrong turn off the Parkway, and found himself down by the riverside.

Kenny described the place to the other three of us as a small town filled with bands of gorgeous high school girls who looked very cheap and tawdry, who just roamed around like sexual predators, looking for who they could give the next blow job to. Kenny, who we knew was prone to exaggeration and hyperbole, told us that he was certain that these packs of divine, nasty goddesses were certain to throw us all to the ground and have their way with us, just as soon as they spotted us. Even though we all knew Kenny was spinning a tall tale—we made him repeat his prognostication again and again—on our way to high school boy paradise.

When we got on Columbia Parkway, I felt my heart jumping. I was so scared that I almost started crying. I thought, “What if I jumped out of the car at the first chance—maybe I could make up a story later about why I had to leave.

At first, it appeared that I was going to get a reprieve. It turned out that Kenny did not really remember exactly where he had made the wrong turn before and, consequently, didn’t know how to get down to Shangri La. But Carl, who was a very street-smart, clever fellow, figured out how to get off the Parkway and down to the river. Fuck you, Carl. Once down there, Kenny had no trouble finding the place he had been to before. Fuck you, Kenny.

Since we didn’t know exactly what to expect, it was decided that we would park the car up on the hill road that ran parallel to the river—and then walk the several blocks down to Main St. of Shangri La. I was very nervous as we descended into the village.

Well, it turned out that Kenny had been half right. This was clearly an edgy red-necked place, populated by former and current inhabitants of trailer parks. And, on this particular summer Saturday night, much like the one of Kenny’s first visit—there was, indeed, a roaming gang of high school age girls—mostly gorgeous—and all very cheap and tawdry. And, it was pretty clear to us that probably every one of them gave very good blow jobs.

What Kenny did not tell us—which he swore later that he never noticed—was that accompanying the pack of felacio-addicted female rapists, was a pack of dangerous looking, greasy hoods with cigarettes rolled-up in their t-shirt sleeves—looking very capable of brutal mayhem.

By the time we realized what we were walking into, it was too late. The pack of cock-suckers and future wife-beaters had spotted us and moved their way toward us. I looked around to assess our troops. Let’s see….we had Marc, the intellectual, who I doubted had ever been near a fight.…Kenny, a big lug of a guy, who looked like a small sumo wrestler, but was unfortunately more like a Jewish teddy bear….Carl, the ladies man, who might have been very familiar with pussy, but not much good to us now, unless the girls decided to fuck us to death. Then, there was me—certainly the weakest link of the bunch. My mind went into red alert. I looked up and saw a little old lady starting to cross the street. I quickly ran over to her and said in a very loud voice, “Excuse me, ma’am, let me help you cross the street. I figured no one could beat up a guy who was trying to help a little old lady cross the street.

My friends quickly caught on and came over to assist me. There we were, four frightened high school boys from the suburbs, helping a little old red-neck lady cross a small street with absolutely no cars in sight—to avoid being attacked and brutally injured.

When we got half way across the street, one of the young Shangri La maidens yelled out, “Hey, they’ve got granny and they’re taking her away…what are they going to do to my granny?”

With that, things broke into chaos. The mob broke ranks into a full attack, and the four of us turned and ran like we had never run before. Kenny yelled to us, “Meet me up on Columbia Parkway!” Carl took off in one direction, Marc in another. I went with Marc, I think because he was my best friend, so when I started crying and pissing and shitting in my pants, I wouldn’t have been as embarrassed as I would have been with either Carl or Kenny.

None of us were caught that night. I never looked back, so I don’t know what happened. I could imagine no one trying to get Kenny, because of his size—in that his Jewish teady-bearness was not distinguishable in the dark night. Why the rest of us got away, I’ll never know. I was never known for my speed. In fact, I believe granny could have caught me if she wanted too.

Anyway, we did escape, with everything but our egos in tact. Eventually, we all made it up to Columbia Parkway. Marc and I first met up with Carl, and it wasn’t too long before Kenny drove up and we all got into his car and made our getaway.

None of us mentioned Shangri La again. Not the place down by the river, nor the imaginary one. It wasn’t too long after, that I lost my virginity—but it wasn’t to a gang of horny girls. I escaped puberty and made it past adolescence into young adulthood. Now, I’m 60 years old. But, the truth be known, for a long while, I stayed open to the possibility and fantasy that someday I would stumble into the real Shangri La, that is, until I fully grew up and embraced the beauty of true love as the true paradise and the other as only fools gold…….that was about a year and a half ago...….some fantasies last a long time.