It’s 1963 and the word is out: there’s a war on.
It’s in a small country I’ve never heard of—Vietnam. A former French colony in a part of Southeast Asia, formerly known as Indochina. Previously portrayed in Hollywood Geography 101 as a place where slit-skirt Eurasian beauties seduce world-weary Soldiers of Fortune at the behest of devious Oriental spies.

The French are gone now, worn down by a ten year insurgency , which ended in a humiliating defeat at a place called Dien Bien Phu by a Communist revolutionary named Ho Chi Minh. Ho rules North Vietnam and has launched a guerilla force called the Viet Cong to conquer the south.  All this is news to me.  And to the orators in Union Square Park. They’ve been so busy channeling Mao, Trotsky and Che they didn’t even notice this slight man with his wispy beard and black pajamas creeping out of the jungle.  

South Vietnam is ruled by a family of decadents, druggies, orgiasts and dragon ladies. Christians oppressing Buddhists. Despised by everyone, including its C IA handlers. But they are fighting Communists and JFK launches  an uncertain military adventure to prop up their regime.  His strategists  are anonymous for the moment—the  Bundy brothers, William and McGeorge; Robert McNamara, Walt Rostow, Dean Rusk, William Colby. Soon their names will become anathema. They’ve been sneaking troops and dirty tricksters into Vietnam for over a year. Now the force has reached critical mass and gotten the world’s attention. Peter Arnett, an AP reporter, is  on the scene when American “advisors” suffer their first defeat at Ap Bac. When the dictator Ngo Dinh Diem invades a Buddhist pagoda, slaughtering a thousand monks and nuns. When a monk sets himself on fire to protest Diem’s persecution of Buddhists and sets off an epidemic of immolations across the country.

I’ve been a radical by style, not conviction. I’m good at alienation. I find the role of the disaffected rebel a successful romantic strategy; you can’t get laid waving a flag in Greenwich Village. But secretly I believe Americans are the Good Guys. We provided sanctuary for my grandparents.  Beat Hitler and freed Europe. We gallop to the aid of the oppressed.  Overthrow dictators. Restore democracy and freedom of worship. I get chIlls at ball games. when I hear the Star Spangled Banner. 

Now I’m confused. Are we supporting dictators who kill monks? Who torture dissidents and fix elections? Union Square is a circus, but suddenly, the clowns have become prophets. Morris Krieger, the ancient anarchist in the Florida shirt with alligators chasing bathing beauties, gumming his wife’s cheese sandwiches while he predicts that “Camelot will have its war.” Lonnie, the one-eyed wino in the fatigue jacket, guzzling Gallo sherry and talking about the “secret assassination missions” he undertook in Guatemala and Lebanon for the “Special Forces.” The Nation of Islam preacher who says the war is a plot “to keep restless black men under military control.” The twin brothers with deranged grins who walk through the park talking in tongues and brandishing signs reading USEFUL IDIOTS FOR THE CIA. 

The pimply kids at the Communist Party bridge table, who everybody says are really FBI agents, have a new speaker—a crew cut Southern boy with a US ARMY tattoo, coiling snakes, screaming eagles…

“Who is the most expendable person in the world?” he demands in a strident twang. “The common soldier. They give you forty days of trainin’, but most of that is learnin’ how to make your bed and about face and obey orders no matter how dumb. What good is marchin’ in step and havin’  a neat foot locker when you’re in combat against troops who have  spent years under arms on their own terrain? The Army’ll drop you in the jungle and hope you outnumber the enemy ’cause you sure ain’t gonna outfight him. Oh you’ll get good at it if you live long enough. But you can’t win. You ain’t  fightin’  human beings, you’re fightin’ history…” 

I’m  working as a copyboy at the New York Post. I come in at 8am, just as the trucks are pulling out with the Late City, the first edition. The lobster shift editors and rewrite men shuffle blearily past me  The city room is the size of a factory floor. It fills quickly as the day shift begins. The clatter of a hundred typewriters, the voices calling, the rumble of the presses bringing the news—and I’m part of it.

Every morning I sharpen a few hundred thick, black One H pencils. Make hundreds of “books”–three sheets of copy paper, two of carbon paper for the reporters. Run down to the luncheonette on the first floor for breakfast orders. Saul, the owner, knows everybody’s breakfast; all I have to do is say a name. Run stories from the city desk to the copy desk. Run page dummies to the printers in the composing room. Pick up the galleys from the proof readers. Run up to the mail room to get a stack of the next edition– fifty papers which I deliver to all the offices all over the building, ending up at the 15th floor aerie of the publisher, Dorothy Schiff. The paper changes eight times a day, stories added or rewritten, front page recast, until it is “put to bed” with the “Final Market” edition, which gives the closing prices on the Stock Exchange. On my first day I was told: “everybody in this room is your boss.”  I go on personal errands. Get clippings from the library or the “morgue.” Run last minute headlines or rewrites out to the composing room as a new edition is going to press.  I change typewriter ribbons for lady reporters who don’t want top get smudgy. Make liquor runs; get soda and ice for the editors’ cocktails. Get lunch orders: it’s amazing how these people eat the same lunch every day as well and Saul knows them all. I bolt a turkey sandwich with Russian dressing while I’m waiting. 

At 4:30 I leave work with a copy of the last edition still warm from the press. I’ve got carbon paper and graphite smears on my face, blisters on my fingers from the pencils. If it’s hot I sweated through my shirt and smell myself on the subway. I go to the Cube Steak House on Sixth Avenue for meat loaf with mashed potatoes and baked beans. Spread the paper on the counter and read every word. Then after rice pudding and light coffee with four spoons of sugar I hit the street. Within a half hour I run into someone I know—sometimes it’s even a female. We go to one of the four art houses in the Village to see an old movie. 

It’s not the war. It’s not the capitalist oligarchy. I just don’t want this life to end. 

Curt, the chief copy boy, got himself declared 4F, “permanently unfit for service,” which means they’ll never bother him again.

“Tell ‘em you’re queer,” he says. “My girlfriend gave me a good idea. Polish your nails and then scrape most  of it off so it looks like you were trying to hide it.”

I get the polish, but chicken out at the last minute. Ditto the eye shadow and the cheap perfume.

Selective Service Headquarters on Whitehall Street has  a fortress vibe. Broken pickets are scattered on the sidewalk, along with scraps of signs and a torn flag, the remnants of an anti-draft demonstration the day before. Two Shore Patrol guys (Navy MP’s) stand guard at the door checking draft cards. There are more  non-coms inside, walking up and down the line.

The first time there was silence. Now there is nervous talk in the ranks. One kid who enlisted says the recruiter told him to volunteer for the paratroops. “You get special treatment,” he says. “Plus 16 dollars jump pay the Sergeant told me.”

An older guy in gray-green Army underwear shakes his head. “You won’t make it, you’re too short.” 

Another kid says he and his friend are going in on the “buddy plan” where they’ll get to serve together.

“That’s just a come on,” the older guy says. “They’ll put you were they need you…”

“But they signed a contract,” the kid says. 

“You have no rights in the Military,” the older guy says. “You’re under the Military Code of Justice. Bend over, spread your cheeks and kiss your ass good bye…”

He is approached by two MP’s. “You back again?” He turns away.  “This is a public building,”he says. They tell him to step out.  He refuses. “I wanna see the OD,” he says. “I wanna speak to an officer. I have a right to express my views.” They grab him by the arms. He breaks away. “Don’t fall for their lies,” he shouts. Two more MP”s run down the corridor. They carry him, flailing and yelling: “Don’t give them your lives…Resist…Resist!” Then he’s gone behind a slamming door and we move on in uneasy silence. 

I had stared at “homosexual experiences” on the form for  minutes until a Sergeant prodded me, “let’s go” and then hurriedly checked it off. Every medic along the line sees it and gives me a quizzical look. 

They send me to cubicle at the end of the corridor. A kid brushes by me with his head down. An old man in a white coat, looks over my form, hands trembling. 

“You live in Greenwich Village?” he says with a slight German accent.

“Yes.”

“This is the homosexual quarter, no?”

“Yes.”

“They have special bars with code names, right? A color and an animal means it is a gathering place for homosexuals. Like Pink Pussycat. Or Green Parrot. Right?” He looks up at me with beagle-brown eyes.” Do you frequent these places?”

He’s trying to trap me. “I can’t afford to go to bars,” I say.

He nods, appreciating my answer. 

“So…Do you do fellation?” he asks. 

“What?”

“Do you take a big penis in your mouth?”

Say yes, what difference does it make?

I shake my head.

“Do you like a cock rammed up your anus?” he asks. 

Say yes, for God’s sake, you have to say yes to something.

“ I don’t…”

“Maybe a fist?” he says. “This was a popular practice in the Turkish forces…”

Can’t do it.

“Foreign objects? In the military hospital we found the most amazing things in rectums…”

“No,” I say.

“So,” he says, tapping his pen on the table. “Sado-masochistic? Devices of restraint and punishment. Whips…Cock rings? Very popular with the SS… Do you know what a cock ring is, Mr. Gould?”

“I uh, am not, uh…”

He looks past me, irritably. A small line has formed outside his door.

“What is the dream of many homosexuals, Mr. Gould…?”

“I really don’t…”

“To be surrounded by young men, correct? To train with them, eat with them, sleep with them, take showers with them. To be at sea with a thousand handsome young men in sailor suits. In other words, to be in the military…Wouldn’t it make sense that some homosexuals would pretend to be heterosexual so they could get into this wonderful paradise?”

“I don’t know…”

He cuts me off, impatiently. “Have you ever considered a career in the theatre? Don’t.”

I rise, sensing the interview is over. The old man writes on my form, saying: 

“The American military has a theory that any young man who is so anxious to avoid military service that he will pretend to be homosexual, should not be given the privilege of serving. So, anyone who walks through my door is automatically exempted. But soon there will be a need for manpower and so the theory will be modified to fit the necessity. In other words—” he waves his pen and says loud enough for the kids outside to hear:

“Next year this little trick won’t work.”

NEXT: A PERFECT JOB FOR A LIAR

It’s 1962 and the State is closing in on me.

A few months after my eighteenth birthday I get a letter from the Selective Service Agency, enclosing a draft card, registering me for military service, with the command: “You must carry this on your person at all times.”

To me it’s just a drinking license. I don’t need phony “proof ” anymore. I can walk into any saloon head held high.

A month later I get an ” Order to Report for Armed Services Physical Examination” where “it will be determined if you qualify for military service.”

I’m a student and get an automatic “2-S” deferment.

Six months into my freshman year at Brooklyn College I drop out and go to Paris to write the Great American Novel. When I return, having barely managed to write a few postcards begging my parents for money, there is another “Order to Report.”

I complain to my mother. “They didn’t tell me they were canceling my deferment.”

“What did you expect, a personal letter from the President?” she says.

There is also a notice from the Department of Motor Vehicles, stating that I owe $300 in outstanding parking tickets.

And a letter from the State Board of Regents demanding that I repay my $800 scholarship because I didn’t complete a year in college.

“If you don’t pay they’ll hound you for the rest of your life,” my mother warns. “You can’t get away from them.”

But I’m convinced they will never find me. My sub basement on Barrow Street in Greenwich Village is an illegal residence so I have no lease. I pay the super $53 cash a month and $15 extra to use his phone and hook up to his electricity. I’m making $90 a week, $110 with overtime so I’m rich. I have no bank account. Willie, the shylock at the Park Circle Lanes bowling alley cashes my paychecks from the Riverside Memorial ChapeI. My chauffeur’s license has my old home address and a teenage photo of me, but I look completely different now–long hair, Fu Manchu mustache…

“There is no record of me anywhere,” I brag to Naomi Krieger as I follow her around Union Square Park. ” I don ‘t exist.”

“That’s very existential,” she says.

Union Square is a meeting place for radicals of every stripe and Naomi is its temptress. While orators mount benches and makeshift podia to harangue passersby with predictions of doom, indictments of America and fervent espousals of their one true cause, she glides through the crowd, handing out Anarchist leaflets. She has a mountain of brown hair, rimless glasses, fierce black eyes and moves with lissome grace. “Revolution is accelerated evolution,” she chants. “Force is the weapon of the weak…”

I join the ranks of the smitten, who follow Naomi on her rounds, hoping to get her attention. Some try to show their erudition, but she knows more about Marx and Engels and the Second International and the flaws in Dialectical Materialism than any of them.

Others try flattery. “You are the avatar of Vera Figner,” a bearded East European gushes, invoking the Russian who helped assassinate Tsar Alexander II.

She laughs. “Do you mean I’m the mythic device of an oppressive religion? The incarnation of a woman who devoted herself to a corrupt ideology which she repudiated later in life…? Thanks a lot…”

She is airy, unapproachable. Trotsky’s implacable intellect on Audrey Hepburn’s body. I’m humbled and exhilarated just to be in her presence.

Then, one afternoon, she walks across the park to the bench where I am eating a Sabrett’s hot dog with “the works.”

“Have you ever read any anarchist texts?”

I am caught in mid bite and spray mustard, ketchup and onions on my Dickey carpenter pants.

“No…”

“Here…” She hands me a pile of mimeographed leaflets–ABOLISH THE WAGE SYSTEM, THE BETRAYAL OF SACCO AND VANZETTI, THE MYTH OF THE DEMOCRATIC STATE, all written by Morris Krieger.

That night I try to plow through the dense, smudgy single-spaced pages of anarchist theory. The next day she is on me like a teacher checking homework.

“Did you read the material?”

“Oh yeah…Interesting…I was always taught that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent…”

“Because you came from a Communist household, am I right? Liberals made them innocent to hide the fact they had committed the robbery as a propaganda by deed to inspire others to attack the Employer Class and overthrow the wage system…Come meet the author…” She takes my hand and leads me to a bridge table where a bald, old man with a battered fighter’s face and sleeves rolled up over brawny forearms is hectoring the crowd.

“Who protects you in this wonderful Democracy? Your government which taxes you and forces you to fight wars to enrich its oligarchs? Your boss who exploits you? Your landlord who raises your rent and cuts off your heat? Your family that extorts money and guilt with emotional blackmail…?”

The crowd enjoys baiting him. “Are you a Communist or Capitalist, Morris?” someone shouts.

Morris scoffs. “Communism, Capitalism. What does it matter who coerces you, the state or the Corporation? Krushchev and JFK are merely cult totems for the ruling class.”

“But they are enemies.”

“They are collaborators,” Morris corrects. “The Cold War is window dressing. Authoritarian systems secretly cooperate to oppress their subjects. The Hungarian Revolt, the Bay of Pigs were planned to fail. The CIA conceived them, funded them and then aborted them…”

“Our Lord Jesus will judge us,” a wild-eyed man shouts.

“Your Lord Jesus said ‘render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,’ Morris says. “He was just the first Capitalist propagandist.”

The crowd laughs and wanders away to seek amusement at another bench.

Naomi smiles proudly. “He’s brilliant. Makes you see things in a new way.”

“Morris Krieger,” I say. ‘Is he your grandfather?”

“He’s the father of my mother, according to Mildred, her mother,” Naomi says. “But since bourgeois morality forces women to lie about their sensuality who can really say and does it matter?”

“It doesn’t matter at all,” I say, eager to agree with anything.

Morris calls us over. “Naomi, bring your friend…So young man, is your father a party member?”

“Democratic party.” I say.

“FDR was an admirer of Mussolini, did you know that? Joe Kennedy, the President’s dad, loved Hitler.” He points to a livid scar above his eyebrow. “Lepke’s goons gave me this, the day the gangsters took over Local One of the Bakery Workers. The same day Hitler was selling out to Krupp and Stalin was starving the Ukrainians. And that Democratic Party stooge Sidney Hillman was having tea with Eleanor Roosevelt…”

I turn to Naomi. “Who’s Sidney Hillman?”

Morris shoves a pile of books in my chest. “We strive for the administration of things, not people. Educate yourself. Free your mind…”

“They’re heavy,” Naomi says. “I’ll help you carry them.”

I fly the two city miles to Barrow Street, borne by Naomi’s relentless rhetoric. The wind is on my face. The world races by as if seen from a passing train.

Naomi feels her way down the metal stairs to my pitch black sub basement.

“This is a magic place,” she says. “You could plot great deeds here…”

She brushes my hand away from her shoulder.

” Do you have to play the chivalrous rapist?”

She pushes me down on my unmade bed and presses her cool, dry lips against my neck.

“Can you imagine yourself a female?” she whispers in my ear. “Welcoming…? Receiving…?”

I can. No problem.

In the morning Naomi scours the food-crusted pots on my stove, washes my underwear in the shower and makes me get out of bed so she can soak my sheets in the super’s work sink.

“Don’t confuse this with an atavistic domestic tendency,” she says, merrily. “I clean because it gives me pleasure. I am not a slave of a peer-controlled feminist ideology.”

In the afternoon I plow through the Anarchist texts, scribbling statements I’ll be able to quote to Naomi.

Bakunin: “I am truly free only when all men and women are equally free.”

Stirner: “Society is a chimera. Individuals are the only reality.”

Kropotkin: “America shows how all the written guarantees for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression. In America the politician has come to be looked on as the very scum of society.”

True enough, but I’ll be able to tell her what I’ve observed on the streets of Brooklyn: Only the thieves and hustlers who live outside the law are truly free. I will impress her with my knowledge of the real world.

I run to Union Square. Morris is at his bridge table, offering the same books, the same replies to the same jibes.

“Naomi’s back at school,” he tells me.

“School?”

“Sarah Lawrence. She was just here for her vacation. She’s leaving next week for Paris for her junior year abroad to study French Literature.” Morris smiles proudly and I see the family resemblance. “She’s got a full scholarship.”

I go to Whitey’s Bar on Sixth Avenue. Nobody asks me for “proof.”

Next morning there are four envelopes on the steps outside my door.

One from the Division of Motor Vehicles stating that a warrant will be issued for my arrest if I do not pay what has now grown to $425 in parking tickets.

Another from the Board of Regents that “Collection Procedures will be initiated” if I don’t repay my $800.

Something from the NY State Department of Taxation that I am “delinquent” in submitting my return.

And a notice of “Failure to Report…” from Selective Service, warning that I face “imprisonment of up to five years and a fine of $10,000″ if I do not appear for a physical on the specified date.

My cover is blown. Someone has informed on me.

I call home and my mother confesses:

“I gave them your new address.”

“You?”

“The letters were piling up,” she says. “All these official envelopes. You could get into trouble.”

“But I am in trouble now that they found me,” I say.

“What are you going to do, hide like a mole in that cave?”

“At least I’d be free,” I say.

“Free? Who’s free? Free to be what? A bum?”

“You betrayed me…My own mother betrayed me…”

I hear my father’s voice. “What’s he yelling about?”

And my mother’s muffled reply. “He’s very upset…Sounds like he’s crying.”

NEXT: I AM HELD HOSTAGE BY THE MOB

It’s the summer of ’57. America has never been more prosperous–or more paranoid. The serpent of Communism lurks in our post war Eden, threatening to tempt us, corrupt us, brainwash us, conquer us by force or subversion. Thousands have been fired, blacklisted, even imprisoned on the mere suspicion of Communist association. John Wayne rules the Box Office battling Commie spies. Sci Fi movies warn about aliens who take over our bodies, post-nuclear insects that enslave humans–invaders from outer space whom we appease at our peril–all metaphors for the Commies plotting against us.

My woodshop teacher claims that the Panama Canal was built to allow Communist invaders easy access to the US. Once a week an air raid siren sounds and we have to take cover under our desks. When we giggle and horse around our Home Room teacher screams: “Wait until the Chinese are bayonetting babies on Coney Island Avenue. You won’t be laughing then!”

Our biggest shock is yet to come in October when the Soviets launch sputnik. Now we will live in fear of Hydrogen Bombs raining down on us from outer space.

And to top it all off the Dodgers have left Brooklyn…

I am fourteen and a half years old and ready for my first real summer job. But because I’m a minor I need the approval of the State of New York. Getting my “Working Papers” trumps Confirmation and compulsive masturbation as the true rite of passage to manhood. I feel very grown up as I buy a NY Post at the subway station. I try to mimic the same bored, weary expression I see on the other passengers.

The State Department of Labor is in a hulking gray stone office building on Livingston Street in downtown Brooklyn. I am buffeted in the swarming lobby by people who know where they’re going. A Post Office cop slaps his billy club into his palm at my approach. I ask where I can get my working papers. He gestures toward the elevators.

“Go get your physical on the tenth floor.”

I walk down a dimly lit, film noir corridor, past offices with smoked glass windows, until I come to a door with a sign reading State Dept. of Labor. Typewriters are clattering in a large office. A man gets up from a desk with a surly “Can I help you?”

“I’m here for the physical for my working papers,” I say.

He’s fat red-headed guy with bloodshot blue eyes, his tie askew, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth.

“Let’s go to the examining room,” he says.

He walks me into a smaller office where three men look up from their desks.

“Kid’s here for his physical,” he says. He pulls me toward a table. “Sit there…” Stubs out his cigarette. “Open your mouth.” Pulls my jaw down. “Wider…” Looks down my throat. “Say Ahhh…Do you get tonsillitis?”

“I had my tonsils out when I was a little kid,” I say.

He turns to the men in the office. “It’s okay, he had his tonsils out when he was a little kid..Good.,” he says to me. “That could have been a problem.”

Next, he pries my eyes open. “Wear glasses? Suffer from pink eye or wall eye…?”

Before I can answer he twists my head and pulls my ear down. “You’ve got serious wax deposits , son. Do you wash your ears?”

“Every day,” I lie.

A man rushes out of the office, head down, coughing and sputtering.

“You oughta take care of that asthma, Doctor Mulrain,” the red-headed guy calls after him. ” We may have to have you come back with clean ears so we can check on your auditory canal,” he says to me.

My mother had told me to take a shower the night before. I’m thinking of what lie to tell when I come home empty-handed.

” Stand up and face the wall,” he barks.

I obey numbly, still worrying about my mother.

” Bend over and drop your pants,” he says.

My mother had told me to change my underwear. I didn’t and now I’m hoping the stains don’t show.

“Underwear, too,” the guy says.

I hesitate.

“You want your working papers or what?”

I pull my jockeys down.

“Okay,” the guy says. “Now spread the cheeks of your ass…C’mon spread ‘em, this isn’t a fashion show.”

I’m fourteen and a half. Nobody has ever seen my ass before. I’m mortified. The red-headed guy walks up and down.

“Okay, pull ‘em up..” He turns to the men in the office. “Okay?”

“Okay,” they say.

He takes me outside to his desk. “You pass,” he says. Scribbles a note and hands the folded paper to me. “Give this to the nurse across the hall.”

This door has a sign that reads New York City Board of Health. The office looks more like a doctor’s waiting room. A chill of suspicion spreads through me. A nurse at a desk is putting on lipstick, puckering into a compact mirror.

“Yes…?”

“I just took the physical for my working papers,” I say, and give her the note.

She reads it, shaking her head. “Fat red-headed guy across the hall give this to you?”

“Yes…”

“Did he examine you?”

“Yes,” I say and realize from her look that something is horribly wrong.

“Wait here,” she says, and walks into an inner office.

I dive for the note. It says: “Lunch? Blarney Castle?“

A minute later the nurse comes out with an elderly man with a droopy gray mustache. “You’re not in mama’s kitchen now, sonny,” he says in a thick Yiddish accent. “You have to know where you’re going, who you’re supposed to see and what you’re talking about. ” He takes a gold pocket watch out of his vest pocket. “I’m going to lunch.”

“Those guys played a mean, stupid trick on you,” the nurse says.

“But the guard downstairs told me I needed a physical.”

“He was wrong,” she says. ” All we need is an adult’s consent.” She hands me a form. “Fill this out and have your parent or guardian sign it. Then bring it back or send it in…” She sees my stricken look. “Those guys are big jokers. Workman’s Comp claims, they have nothing to do all day long…They’re jerks. Forget it.”

Humiliation is felt sharply by the very young. I go out into the hall, sick with the memory of what just happened. I want to get out of that building and never come back. But in 1957 Brooklyn is still under the Napoleonic Code. Honor must be defended, insults avenged. I barge back into the fat redhead’s office to have it out with him.

The office is empty, phones ringing, cigarettes still smoldering in ashtrays, like everybody ran out in a panic. Just a typical lunch time in the Civil Service.

I go to the guy’s desk bent on retributive damage. A typewriter–I could bend the keys. A stack of forms–I could tear them up. I open a drawer. There is a fountain pen case. On a red plush bed is a Parker Pen. It’s the new 61 model, gold cap, red body, “self-filling by capillary action,” the advertisement says. It’s the coolest pen brand in the world. William Holden, the epitome of suave, is its official spokesman. This guy obviously loves the pen. He keeps it in its case on its red plush bed.

I pocket he pen and snap the case shut. The corridor is empty. The lobby is teeming, but I know exactly where I’m going. Outside, I pass the Blarney Castle on the way to the subway. The redheaded guy is laughing it up with his buddies at the bar.

I used that pen for twenty years. Every time I wrote a note or signed a check I thought of that redheaded guy trying to figure out who had stolen his precious Parker 61. When its capillaries couldn’t suck up ink anymore I put it out to pasture in my desk drawer as a reward for services rendered.