The Enterprise - 63

The United States embarked on a foolish war in the Middle East that would have horrific consequences for untold millions living there and for the men and women sent away to fight. A nightmare world emerged, formed of brutal setbacks, perverse alliances, and collateral damage. Back in New York City I went out with a lawyer who’d been representing Martha Stewart in some civil litigation. We met after work, she in her proper attire, and shared a bottle of red wine on the Park Avenue median, which she referred to as the “meridian.” She told me she used to be a lesbian. I went out with a woman with short, dark hair who was going to school for construction site management. In the cab on the way home she told me about her art installation at the Limelight, an expanse of cotton balls pressed to the stained-glass with wire mesh. Something to do with clouds. The Haitian cabbie’s radio crackled with French news about young Algerians joining the fight against America. I went out with a woman my sister set me up with, the daughter of a fashion designer she did some PR for. She was a summer associate at a law firm. She wore frosted lip gloss. She asked me questions all in a row without a trace of curiosity as to the answers. I accompanied her to the Midtown supermarket where she needed to buy some things and we parted forever with a peck on the cheek.

Sometimes at night I heard what sounded like a giant whirring and clacking machine outside the bathroom window.

Shock and awe, I’d sometimes think to myself like a mantra. Shock and awe.

Day 7

I must have lost consciousness for twenty seconds or so on that floatie. I found myself on the other side of the roped-off area. In the neighboring zone, with its different swimmers and different beach. I propelled myself back with my hands. The sky looked the same.

In a land far away they’re lining up for rifles to shoot at the rampaging invaders from the East.

They’re playing The Song now, I’ve heard it twice. Everything goes to hell eventually.

Day 3

I should avoid all news while here, let it be an intriguing, unpleasant surprise upon our return, the aftermath of a brutal invasion depicted on the array of CNN screens at JFK immigration. But instead I’ve been compulsively checking the Times and the Post.

We went to the mini mart this morning and there were stacks of Red Stripe cases, so now there will be two eras of this vacation: the bottle and the can.

An older guy on the beach came up to me pulling a baggie out of his pocket. What do you need mon, that rap, and I said yeah but I don’t want to spend much, what can I get for ten. He wanted to sell me two for thirty, two for twenty-five. I said twenty, he said fine. A light rain began to fall and he led me to a covered space nearby. He ground a bud into a paper and made small talk, where you from, who you with. At the mention of the word wife he said it’ll make you real hard mon and I said you don’t need to tell me that and he laughed but what I really meant was, you don’t need to tell me that. You don’t have to sell this shit. It’s fucking marijuana. It sells itself.

I rejoined my family buying trinkets from a woman displaying her wares from a scarf in the sand.

Every time I peel potatoes I think about the Holocaust. In the comfort of my well-appointed kitchen. Why is that? Is it some movie, “Sophie’s Choice” or “Schindler’s List”? Is there a potato-peeling scene in one of them? In both? Of an attractive Jewess who’s been adopted by the sadistic camp commander and who, in the midst of horror, has the chance to peel and fuck her way to survival? Such a European food, potatoes. So plain and dumb and useful. Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, fry ‘em. The food of kings and pawns and Nazis. I think I also read that the peels were desperately coveted by starving prisoners. Forced to grovel for scraps, like dogs. I think about them with each flick of my wrist.

We are, in fact, fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here. What we are actually doing is sacrificing the lives of two or three young American soldiers (not to mention Iraqis; I'll play the ol' American interests game for now) each day so that we don't have to "fight them here." There's no progress we can point to over there, no measurable weakening of our enemy. On the contrary, they have thrived on the growing public outrage against us, on our botched and aimless measures, on our grief; they are gleeful to see us waist-deep in the mire of our pride. In fact we are feeding them with our own flesh and blood. Or more specifically, the flesh and blood of generally less privileged members of our society, often minorities, whose limited opportunities make this dirty work a decent option. We are, every day, leading a couple of them to the slaughter, simple as that. Virgins to be offered to the gods of terror so that we may carry on playing Xbox, leasing cars and watching "Lost." We'll feed the monster as long as we've got willing, wide-eyed sacrifices – consider them our martyrs if you will, our not-so-willing suicide bombers, sent down the gullet of that dark and hungry volcano. But their mission is really to appease, not to disrupt. Never mind whether this can or should sit well with us today. What will happen later, when we run out of other peoples' sons and daughters and the gods are hungrier and angrier than ever?

The Big Dance

In the basketball tournament, the Big Dance, every nine-to-five slave has a tenner in a pool and consequently we find ourselves identifying with these players and places and we match our momentary emotions to the haphazard, pan-state scattering of places our teams are from, Kentucky and Kansas and Texas and Eastern Tennessee, and at the very same time there are soldiers sitting in a barren room in Iraq telling their Iraqi interrogators where they come from: Texas, New Jersey, West Texas, Kansas. 

At way past eleven a silhouette in the all-night grocery store, reaching to the shelf.

Went out with C. and her ex from Hungary. He's a heavyset man with red hair in a pony tail who speaks very quietly and hesitantly and smokes Camels nearly all the time. There were times when he was trying to say something and C. would lean over to him, lean in a little, and grin, sort of taunting him or cajoling him, spit it out. I was kind of manic and generally dissatisfied. We were at the Knitting Factory to see Luna, a good band but it was kind of a mistake. They play droning, soporific indie rock. The kind of music that, on a Thursday night for Christ's sake, makes you feel like a little kid with your parents in a museum or something, rocking back and forth on your cramped feet with your jacket on.

The lead singer said he'd played with Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs recently and Tuli said, "The war against Iraq will be very short but the war against America will be very, very long." No one really reacted to this. Should we applaud? Yes? No? Wait. The singer broke the pause by saying, "That's what he said!" and there were some relieved guffaws. 

I'd been thinking, in the rain on the way to the club, walking the footbridge over Varick, scared by the soaking-wet corrugated metal steps. I thought, this is the age of the American Empire. We've had the British Empire, the Spanish, the French, the Austro-Hungarian, the Ottoman, the Chinese, the Greek, the this, the that. Now for better or worse it's the age of the American Empire. And the trouble is, an empire is never good. It may think itself well-meaning, aligned with God, a defender of justice – was this not the British imperial view? – but it can't be. By virtue of its power and its dominion over others it is immediately corrupt.

But beautiful too. And doomed.