Browse Topics

Dark Honor: Vietnam Remembered

Both men were probably in their forties, tending their fields like the men of their village had for a thousand years, defending their families and their livelihood and their land like men everywhere. In a few hours or in a few days they would be dead — after the ARVN beat confessions out of them, or applied electrodes to their balls and sent jolts of concentrated anguish through their bodies until they wished to escape by dying, by being shot in the head or dragged behind an Amphtrack or thrown from a helicopter, anything to make the pain stop.

Secret Power

A generation of men, wrote Homer, is like a generation of leaves.

A Kind Of Power

Then, a mist drifted up in front of my eyes. It started gray. It began to burn, to get redder and redder and the words I heard rolling from my lips were like the words my grandpa knew. They were holy words, words of the old prophets. Wanton. Strumpet. Whore. Sister of the serpent, angel of evil, Satan’s bitch, vessel of filth, pestilence of desire, demoness eater of the soul.

The God Of My Childhood

Killing God; discovering orgasms; feeling connected by a giant, invisible web linking all things

A Meeting

A woman sitting alone raises her glass and smiles. This has never happened to Rabbi Feltman before. He is not sure how to react. After a moment he decides to nod in acknowledgment and raises his own glass.

Men

Beating Off In Mexico

It bothers me to age; I won’t deny that. I am bothered by what time does to my notions of invincibility. I am not bothered by the inability to remember — but by the inability to forget.

The Sixties

Investigating conscientious-objector status, attending a rock festival, plucking strychnine tufts from a bag full of peyote buttons

Sunrise, Montana

My God, he was a beautiful man. The way he sat on a horse. Or the way he rolled a cigarette. Charlie Freeman. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Plum Island

One of Quick’s students is fishing at the foot of the beach beneath the shack he rents on Plum Island. The dog wants walking. There is no escape. The girl’s name is Harley and she is barely passing Spanish.