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 1961 and the CIA has decided to ruin my life. It wasn’t enough that they created Islamic fundamentalism to overthrow the Government of Iran, provoked, funded and then ignored insurrections in Eastern Europe, slipped LSD to unsuspecting dissidents, destroyed democracy in Guatemala to save United Fruit, masterminded a disastrous invasion of Cuba to prevent it from falling into the Soviet orbit half a planet away, etc. Now the alcoholic Yalies who run the agency have managed to convince new president John F. Kennedy that military intervention in Vietnam is an absolute necessity. Fighting International Communism is just an excuse. They really want to get me in their clutches.

I’m 18, a simple creature, one phylum above a paramecium. My moods travel between hunger, lust and dazed perplexity. During the day I snooze undisturbed in the overheated classrooms of Brooklyn College. At 5:30 I report to the Riverside Memorial Chapel across from Prospect Park. From 6 to 9 I direct visitors to reposing rooms. From 9 to midnight I load a Chevy panel truck with bodies collected from homes and hospitals and bound for the basement embalming room. Sometimes I am accompanied by Marshall, the night porter, a wiry black dude from the tobacco fields of South Carolina. Fastidious as an ancient Hebrew, Marshall refuses to touch a cadaver. He watches, arms folded, as I mummy-wrap two sheets around the deceased before gingerly helping me transfer it to a body bag.

My other partner is Rizzo, a limo driver working doubles to pay his shylock. By his own proud admission Rizzo is a gambler, adulterer and “cat boigler.” He is shaped like an eggplant, his hairline begins a wisp above his eyebrows, his oft-broken nose zig-zags across his face and he smacks his thick lips with glee when recounting a sexual conquest.

But Rizzo is frustrated. “Didja ever wonder why there’s no money on a stiff?” he asks me one night. “You go into a bedroom and there’s no loose change on the night table. Look in a dead lady’s purse. Nothin! A guy in a nice suit drops dead on the subway and his wallet’s empty? That’s not normal. Remember last year when the TWA plane crashed into the United over Staten Island? 100 bodies laying on the streets in Park Slope and not a dime on any one of ‘em. Everybody’s goes out with a little walkin’ around money in their pocket, don’t they? How comes stiffs are always clean?”

I confess I never thought of it.

“That guy who keeled over on the subway,” Rizzo says.” The passengers go through his pockets. Then the cops come and give him a toss. The ambulance guys have a look. And the vultures in the morgue pick the bones. By the time we show up there’s nothin’ left…”

Rizzo shakes his head at the perfidy of humankind. “You think they’d leave a coupla dollars for the sweepers…”

Rizzo brings little things to my attention. The indentation on a right ring finger where a heavy ring had undoubtedly lain for years before it was brutally yanked off. The faded circle on a left wrist where a watch had been. A broochless dress. “Didja ever see one of these old broads without a little pin or somethin’?”

He is especially incensed by Shultz, the morgue attendant at Jewish Chronic Diseases. Shultz is a scowling hunchback, who won’t trade pleasantries and never helps take bodies off the slabs. “He looks like Rumplefuckin’stiltskin, don’t he?” Rizzo says. “Betcha he’s got a nice taste stashed away. Somebody’s gonna hit his house one of these nights while he’s workin, mark my words.”

One night Shultz pulls open a drawer on a big, middle-aged man. Mound of fish white belly, crinkly gray hair on his chest. I’ve been told that people who die suddenly have their last living expression on their faces and this guy looks like he was really happy.

“Prick always puts the fat guys on the top row,” Rizzo says as we horse the body out of the drawer.

On the way out Schultz hands us a shopping bag with the man’s effects. In the truck, Rizzo looks at the crumpled suit, shoes, stained underwear with disgust. The jacket is empty, the trouser pockets have been turned inside out.

“No respect for the dead. They’d take the pennies off his eyes, but they’ll leave the shorts where the poor bastard crapped himself.”

He rips out the soles of the man’s shoes…”Nuttin!” Shakes one sock out. Then the other…

“Hey look at this…”

A ticket has fallen out of the sock.

“It’s from Belmont,” Rizzo says. “The guy played the daily double for Chrissake…”

“Maybe that’s why his pockets were empty,” I say. “He lost all his money.”

Rizzo snorts at my ignorance. “A guy don’t hide a losing ticket in his sock.” But then his eyes narrow and he puts the ticket in his pocket. “Ah, you’re probably right.”

An hour later I’ve smoked a reefer and am enjoying a meatball hero in the embalming room when Rizzo sneaks in. “Can I talk to ya for a second and drags me out to the garage. “Okay, you little prick, ” he says. “I’m tellin’ you because I don’t want you to blurt out the wrong thing at the wrong time…That was a winning ticket. The guy hit the double–Handsome Teddy and Sayonara Baby.”

“How much did it pay?” I ask.

He shoves me with the heel of his hand. “What are you, a big fuckin’ handicapper all of a sudden? It paid thirty-eight hundred, but you ain’t a full partner because I found it and you thought it was a loser. I’ll give you a hundred bucks to keep your mouth shut. And…” He gets a shrewd look. “Another hundred plus gas money if you go to the track and cash it in.”

As always my timidity trumps my greed. “I don’t wanna get in trouble…”

He pokes me again. “No trouble. I’m just busy tomorrow…Alright, you little chickenshit, if you don’t wanna make an extra C-note that’s your lookout…”

The meatballs soon combine with the marijuana aperitif and I repair to the one of the reposing rooms to sleep away the rest of my shift. But I am shaken awake. Two shadowy forms are standing over me. My mind screams. Cops!

“Did you remove the body of Sherman Flinker from Jewish Chronic?”

“I don’t remember the name…”

“What did you do with the ticket you found?”

I yawn and cover my fear with pretend drowsiness. “I didn’t find…”

“Your partner says you found a winning ticket from Belmont,” a cop says.

I calm down. Rizzo would never give me up because he knows I would implicate him. The cops have overplayed.

“I didn’t find nothin’,” I says.

“Mr. Flinker’s wife says he called her from the track all excited ’cause he hit the double,” a cop says. “But she couldn’t find the ticket in his effects…”

Years of lying to parents, teachers and lately to girls have taught me to stick to my story.

“I didn’t find nothin’,” I say.

A cop grabs me by the shirt with a hard hand “Sit up…” He shines the lamp in my face. “You better not try to cash that ticket you little wiseass!”

Next night Rizzo sits in the truck bemoaning his bad luck. “I had to catch a pussy whipped husband,” he says. “He’s probably one of these guys who calls his wife after he takes a shit…”

I feel I have to defend the deceased. “Hitting the double is a big deal after all,” I say.

“So you buy yourself somethin’ nice,” Rizzo says. “You spend the money on a broad. You never tell your wife nothin’ she don’t have to know.”

He stares at the ticket. “We can’t cash it at the track. No bookie’ll take it for us…We got six months before it expires…”

“Why don’t you just send it to the widow,” I say. “It belongs to her…”

Rizzo is outraged. “Why? Because she married the bastard? She didn’t pick the horses. What do you wanna bet she was humpin’ the plumber while he was thinkin’ about buyin’ her a fuckin’ fur coat to celebrate…” He shakes his head doggedly. “I got just as much right to it as she does. I found it, didn’t I?” He gets that shrewd look again. “I could go over there. Offer to split it with her. Didja see her at the services? Nice-lookin’ woman, takes care of herself…” But then he comes out of his reverie. “Who am I kiddin’? She’d want it all for herself, greedy hooer.” He repeats in despair: “Who am I kiddin’?”

Rizzo never cashed the ticket.

It probably fell out of his sock when they were taking him to the morgue.

New York City, Christmas Eve, 1973…Global warming hadn’t become an A-list cause. Ozone layer sounded like something you inhaled at a party.

In Washington, the hottest present was a bootleg White House tape of President Nixon drunkenly ranting about the Watergate investigation to Attorney General John Mitchell. It was played at office parties all over town.

On Dec. 16, with the help of an Eagle Scout and a Brownie, Nixon, planted a 45 foot Colorado spruce, which was to be the first live White House Christmas tree. A few days earlier the North Vietnamese had rebuffed Kissinger’s peace plan. That day the Arab oil producers had announced they were lifting their oil embargo against every country but the US and Netherlands, who they said were being punished for giving aid to the Israelis during the recent October War with Egypt. As he delivered his greetings to the nation, promising to “maintain the integrity of the White House,” Nixon knew that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were running an espionage operation against the White House. Not only were the Democrats crying out for his impeachment, but his own military commanders were spying on him.

It had been a cruel month. On December 17, ice storms had delayed the opening of the Stock Exchange. Christmas Eve, a blizzard was dumping 30 inches of snow on Buffalo. In the city , a dark cloud settled like a wet blanket over the stars. Fluttering shreds of wrapping paper clung to my legs as I walked to the subway. Twin brothers in Santa hats marched outside the 72nd. St. station carrying signs reading “USEFUL IDIOTS FOR THE CIA.”

The energy shortage had curtailed the decorations on the tree in Rockefeller center. Fifth Avenue wasn’t its usual glittering self. The faltering economy, the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal had dampened the Christmas spirit.

Downtown, in Soho, the only way you could tell it was Christmas was that the galleries were closed and the sweatshops had sent their Hispanic ladies home early. The artists emerged from their lofts, hunched in fatigue jackets, with an occasional scarf as a gesture to the cold. Everything was closed. Only one light burned like a beacon in the night–Spring Street Bar.

We had no tree, no lights, no Christmas dinner. And we only had one customer: Kobe, the son of an Admiral in the Japanese Navy. Rumor was that he had been sent packing after he stabbed some guy with his father’s ceremonial sword. Earlier in the evening Mei, the Chinese busboy, had knocked over his drink It seemed like an accident, but then I saw Loq, the Chinese dishwasher giggling in the kitchen doorway. Kobe saw him, too. Now he was downing tequilas and glaring at Mei, visions of the Rape of Nanking dancing in his head.

Marisol was a famous Venezuelan artist, who was having an affair with Jack, my bar partner. She was known for her explosive temper. “Get ready for some shit, I stood her up today,” he had muttered as she lurched in, having fortified herself elsewhere for an epic confrontation.

I watched warily as he poured her a red wine, which she knocked back like a shot of whiskey, while glaring at him. Then thrust her empty glass at him for another…And another…

A couple came in out of the flurries. She was tall, graceful, wet snow glittering on her dark hair and cashmere coat, the kind of beauty who never buttoned her coat, even in bitter cold. He was shorter than she and softly fat. Biology hadn’t given him a break. His face was red and chapped by the cold, just as it would be red and blistered by the sun. He steered her to the bar and glared as I smiled at her. There was a lot of glaring going on tonight.

“What would you like?” he asked her with what sounded like a parody upper class drawl.

“I don’t know…anything.” Her indecision gave me an excuse to look at her. Dark eyes under thick, unplucked brows, were focused somewhere else.

“What was that crazy drink you loved in Venice?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

“Pousse cafe,” he said.. He threw down the challenge. “Can you make that here?”

I had never made one in my life. “I can make it anywhere,” I said, defiantly.

I rummaged in the office behind the bar and found a torn copy of Mr. Boston’s Bar Book. Pousse cafe had six ingredients floated on top of one another to produce what the author called “a striped rainbow of color.”

The liquors had to be floated in the right order, the heaviest down to the lightest. I would have to make the drink in front of her because if I carried it the colors might run.

First, I covered the bottom of a highball glass with Grenadine. Using the back of a mixing spoon I floated Yellow Chartreuse on top of that. Then… reddish Creme de Cassis…White Creme de Cacao…”

A stool scraped.

“Nobody move please,” I said. With a steady hand I floated Green Chartreuse and a final layer of Cognac.

I stepped back and contemplated a work of art, one layer of gorgeous color on top of another.

“This is probably the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” I told Jack.

But the girl pushed it away with a sob. “I can’t.” The drink came apart, its colors sloshing and bleeding into one another. She got up.” I’ve got to go back there.”

“No…” He pushed her down and whispered vehemently. “We’re going to have a Christmas drink just like we said…Then, we’ll go uptown…”

You stand behind the bar and try to get the story straight. This looked like a long term relationship finally crumbling. He trying to hold it together. She desperate to escape.

Peggy, the waitress, sipped the ruined pousse cafe. “It tastes like poisoned candy,” she said.

The girl found a crumpled cigarette. He fumbled with his lighter. “What do you think they’re doing now?” he asked

She took a sucking drag and blew the smoke through her nose. “I don’t know what they do anymore.”

“Your Mom’s making her special egg nog like she always does, right? Well, we can have one, too.” He turned to me with a pleading look. “Bartender, two beautiful Christmas egg nogs…”

We made a classic egg nog at Spring Street. Three parts heavy cream, two parts cognac, one egg yolk and gomme syrup in a mixing glass (we didn’t use blenders back in the day.) Shake vigorously and pour in a tall glass. Sprinkle with nutmeg.

The beauty lit one cigarette off another. Not a good sign.

“Talk to me,” the fat kid said urgently. “What did you do on Christmas when you were a kid?”

“You know…”

“Tell me anyway…”

Another deep drag. “We’d spend a few days in town with Daddy…Skate at the Wallman rink…Then he’d put us on a plane to Aspen to meet Mom and Bart. Mom and Bart would go skiing and Francy and I would freeze in that dark chalet…When it was dark, they’d come back with their friends. Bart would try to get the fire going and everybody would laugh because he was so loaded. Mom would come out of the kitchen. Time for my special egg nog, she’d say…”

Almost on cue I laid the drinks in front of them. He took a tentative sip and brightened. “This is good…Just like your Mom used to make… “

She could hardly put it to her lips. When she did she shook her head…”No, it’s not like it at all …” And got up again. “I have to go back there…”

On second look I saw that her long, graceful fingers were yellow with nicotine. The face under that mass of dark hair was gray. The eyes had the panic of a trapped animal. “Let me go back there, please…”

What was “there?” A pile of coke? An abusive lover? Was this fat, red-faced kid trying desperately to save a tragic beauty he would hopelessly love forever? Suddenly, his face had a suffering nobility. His shoulders sagged and he stepped away. “I’ll get a taxi.”

He slid a twenty under the ashtray.

“Sorry about the egg nog,” I said.

He shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Merry Christmas.”

He stood arm raised in the middle of Spring Street where cabs never came, while she shivered in a doorway.

Peggy took a sip of my spurned masterpiece and made a face.

“More like ugh nog,” she said.

The economy was in recession. Unemployment had risen from 5% to 9% in a year and a half. The prime rate was 10.2%. Inflation was at 7.4%.

Real Estate was in the toilet. You could buy a three-story brownstone in the 80′s on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for $60,000, but they wanted 20% down and nobody had 60 cents worth of collateral.

You moved warily through the city like a mouse rushing from one hole to another. The subways were a no-go after 10 p.m. Mugging was a simple speedy transaction by which money was transferred in exchange for safety. But the hard core pros complicated it by slashing you on the arm or even the face to keep you from pursuing, so you had to run or yell for help or even fight back and that’s how people got killed.

The murder rate was up to 11.5 per 100,000. Blacks were eight times as likely to be murdered as whites. The police shot 54 people to death that year.

We had stopped fighting in Vietnam, but Nixon was still bombing Cambodia. The Senate ignored Kissinger’s heartfelt pleas and blocked funding for the attacks.

Oh yeah, and the whole country was mesmerized by the Watergate Hearings. Watching in astonishment as White House Counsel John Dean ratted out Nixon, saying they had discussed the break-in 35 times.

So now we knew that our President, who had won by a landslide in ’72, was a burglar, a blackmailer and a drunk.

But my big problem was glassware.

I was working at a place called “Maude’s” in the Summit Hotel on 51st. and Lexington. “A commercial caravansary,” W.C. Fields would have called it. A no-frills flop for the professional traveler. The guys with the dog-eared address books and smudged invoice pads…Suits getting shiny in the seat.

The Gay ’90′s red-light bordello theme played well with this crowd. They liked the all- you-can-eat buffets, the sullen waitresses in low-cut leotards, spangles and tights. But they didn’t like the drinks.

In line with the Art Nouveau knockoffs, the Tiffany lamps and the plush booths management had given us their version of period glassware. The rocks glasses were what were once known as “double old fashioned,” designed for a voluminous drink with whiskey, mulled sugar, and soda.They were as big and hefty as cut glass vases. if you threw them against a wall the building would crumble. I could empty a ten ounce bottle of soda into them with room to spare. No way I could make the “house pour” an ounce and a half shot look respectable in a glass that big.

Inverted shot glasses stood on a towel on the bar. We had to pour a shot into the glass right in front of the customer so he would know what he was getting, then pour it into the glass where it hardly covered the bottom. Piling the glass with ice just made the drink disappear altogether.

The waitresses complained bitterly. I was killing their tips. They thought I was short-pouring them to make up for my own larceny. Any hopes of a romantic interlude were dashed.

I actually felt for the customers. They would belly up, bright-eyed and expectant. But even veteran tipplers could be thrown by faulty glassware. If a drink didn’t sparkle or look generous their moods would quickly sour. It was the same volume of alcohol they got everywhere else, but it looked like a squirt in the big glass and they took it as a personal affront.

The cocktail glasses were 8 ounce “double martinis” with thick braided stems. They had a line bisecting the bowl at the four ounce mark. It was the high water mark for cocktails—we surpassed it on pain of dismissal. All the cocktails looked incomplete as if the bartender hadn’t made them properly, when in fact much skill had been employed toeing the line.

The customers would squint pointedly at their glasses while I stood there with a hapless smile, all hopes of a gratuity cruelly dashed.

It was killing the business. Hotel guests were going down the block to Kenny’s Steak Pub where the bartenders free-poured into conventional glassware, making the same ounce and a half look like the Johnstown Flood.

I complained to the the General Manager, a Cornell Hotel Management grad, but he was besotted with the design scheme.

“If we put in standard glassware it’ll ruin the look,” he said.

The bartenders were dying, too. Sure, we were the High Priests of the Sacred Fount, dispensing good cheer, sage advice and the occasional condign chastisement. But we made less money than a plumber’s apprentice.

Shift pay was $30 a night. The union deducted dues for a pension which vested after ten years, (effectively meaning never for an itinerant bartender) and health insurance which gave you the right to spend the whole day in a clinic while screeching children and croaking oldsters were triaged ahead of you.

The servers who we called “the floor” made more money than we did. So did the cooks who we called “the help.” Only the porters made less. But they had the hereditary right to plunder lost wallets and loose change on the floor. Once in a while you’d hear a shriek of glee as a porter reaped a bonanza from a dropped purse.

The bartenders huddled. There were four of us, each with a pressing need for money. I had to make my alimony. Danny had to pay his bookie. Freddie’s daughter was at Iona College. Jack was a cross-dresser and his hosiery bills were enormous. We couldn’t complain to the union, couldn’t go on strike.

The glassware issue had risen from my pocket to my psyche. I was going through life with my head down. Cashiers were short changing me. I was saying “excuse me,” and “sorry” more than I ever had in my life.

I dreamt I was in my high school locker room. The other guys on the basketball team were pointing at me and laughing. I looked down and saw that my penis had shrunk to a nub.

That night the place was dead. I stepped behind the bar, ready for another $20 shift, if I was lucky.

“Hey pal, can we get a cocktail?”

I looked up. “Irish” Jerry Quarry, the “Bellflower Bomber,”who had fought Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight championship, was at the end of the bar with his brother Mike, another ranked boxer and two knockaround pals. Big smiles, twenties up on the bar, getting a head start on the evening.

Jameson on the rocks, VO and Coke and two vodka tonics.

Was I going to short pour these guys?

No way. Let ‘em fire me.

Their eyes sparkled as I filled their glasses to the brim.

“Can I get a whiskey sour?”

I knew that clucking voice from commercials. Standing in the middle of the bar was Frank Perdue, of Perdue Farms, the largest chicken producer in the country. With his pointy head, beak nose and bobbing Adam’s Apple he looked like the world’s largest chicken.

I reversed the recipe. Three ounces of booze to an ounce and a half of lemon juice.

“How ya doin’?”

Two substantial black guys flashing gold from wrist to tooth, slid in. They were members of B.B. King’s Blues Band, I had seen them in the lobby the night before.

“Beefeater and Coke…Wild Turkey with a splash of Seven Up…Just a splash…”

“Just a splash, sir, don’t worry.”

They had never highballs like these, even when they made them for themselves.

The waitresses came up with their table orders. Their eyes widened as I made them huge drinks.

“Is that okay?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Make money my children.”

I hadn’t heard laughter at the bar in months. Everybody was all smiles. I was making people happy.

“Can we get another round?”

“You bet.”

Pretty soon the King sidemen recognized Jerry Quarry.

“Hey champ…”

Perdue looked up from his second sour and squawked:

“Jerry Quarry. I thought that was you…”

Now they were all clustered together, laughing and telling war stories.

“It’s my turn…”

“No, this one’s on me.”

Jerry Quarry leaned over the bar.

“Hey, is it against the rules to buy the bartender a drink?”

“It is strictly verboten,”I said in a burlesque German accent, while pouring myself a triple Hennessy to general hilarity.

At closing I had two hundred bucks in my pocket.

Quarry and Perdue were off to Toots Shor’s. The sidemen were tottering to a gig.

Olga, the Norwegian waitress followed me out into the street.

“You think you can get away with this?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” I said. “I’m sick and tired of those stupid glasses.”

“Well, I did really well tonight thanks to you,” she said.

“Your legs helped….”

“So I’m going to buy you a drink now. “Okay?”

“Absolutely not.”

She laughed and took my arm. She pressed against me as we crossed the street.

Oh yeah…I was a man again.