Nam

I have not met my Vietnamese cousins.   Not one of them.  I think there are four.  I think that because of some vague memory I have of their names (grotesque hybrids of Vietenglish) scribbled on pieces of paper to be thrown into the ceramic blue pitcher so that my mother and here mother can draw names for the Christmas gift exchange.  An awkward formality for the sprawling ten tribes of Gustafson, this ritual was performed in mid-summer infusing some hot July afternoon with a premature anticipation of the holidays.  I remember a visit from the youngest of those ten siblings (the eleventh was dead by then)  upon his return from Nam.  This was the first intersection of real life and the news  that I experienced, the soldier in our living room opening a trunk of exotic presents from an exotic land.  In the years to come, these objects sat with permanence on dusty shelves while the war and my idea of the war evolved and adapted to reflect both my hopes and my convictions.  Nam.  Beyond the defeat--the drama of the helicopters hovering above the embassy, the legacy of lost men, bearded and hollow-eyed on street corners begging for the impossibility of peace, the glut of ugly films about the conflict that crowded my youth--there would be something....  A man-crush of mine has gone to Viet Nam.  To say it sounds creepy to me.  Still the lacquered anxiety of another generation's experience informs the way that phrase sounds.  I do not imagine a rickshaw ride through a bustling capital or the luxuriant rest on a hammock on a tropical beach. I see his bare flesh cut open and Hollywood having its way with the tragedy.  How little drama there is in the peace on the other side.