All the boys were panicked. It was the height of the Vietnam War. Draft numbers were issued. Everyone was talking about their number. One friend checked the box. He was straight, but he didn’t care… he didn’t want to go.
Someone else heard that they wouldn’t take you if you had flat feet, so he practiced jumping off a table onto the concrete floor in the garage to try to ruin his feet. One guy took massive quantities of No-Doze thinking it would raise his blood pressure high enough to exclude him.
Another friend really was gay and he told them… and I mean he was flaming – but they took him anyway. He went through Hell – not just the hazing, but the punishments that meant long hard hours in full gear running in the heat, the rain, whatever. The poor guy had a nervous breakdown. Lost all his toe nails, hair… it took him years to recover. They finally released him after basic due to his mother’s constant pressure and the lawyer that she hired.
Another fellow hurriedly married and got his wife pregnant – not the sort of choice you should have to make at eighteen. Some burned their draft cards, others went to Canada… still others made sure they kept their grades up to get a college deferment. A few joined the Navy, the lesser evil, a few moved to Australia, and other places far from the “I want you” poster.
If their numbers were low or they couldn’t manage a college deferment, they went to Nam. If they were lucky enough to live through it, they came back to an ungrateful nation with the side effects of PTSD or drug and alcohol addiction. People were afraid of them. Just like in any war, they were killers. Our streets are still filled with the remnants of that era.
To all those boys, I bear witness:
- A Native American who stayed drunk to try to forget the women and children he had to kill whose only crime was that they crossed a certain bridge… they could have been Viet Cong.
- Boys whose families either supported them or disowned them in disgrace when they fled to Canada.
- A dancer who ruined his feet and got married at eighteen.
- A drag queen who lost all her hair and toenails to a nervous breakdown.
- A smart boy who stayed in school and kept his deferment.
- A black man who did time in prison and gave up his championship belt.
- Boys who went to prison rather than submit to the draft.
- Boys who didn’t have to care because their numbers were high.
If you were a boy of eighteen in 1969 or 1970, I’ll bet you remember your number. La, la, la, la, la, la… live for today….
(First published 8/17/11)
