Chapter 9 — Date Night

Kim Ammar had a cute figure and was naturally pretty. She was dressed casually and had on very little makeup, but still, she quickly caught the eye of almost every man in the pizza parlor. Her fresh-faced beauty made her seem like the embodiment of a girl-next-door fantasy. However, after that first impression, the men would notice the pain in her eyes and her stormy walk, and quickly turn back to their food.

She approached Dan, waving for him to remain seated, then slid into the booth across from him. Ignoring pleasantries, she pointedly asked, “So you think you can help me? Do you even know what I went through? Were you ever captured, sexually humiliated, and tortured while you were in Vietnam?”

Dan was expecting a conversation, not an assault. He tried, unsuccessfully, to keep a neutral expression on his face and took a drink of water so he would have time to formulate his answer. “No, I wasn’t. Look, Kim, I’m not here to play ‘who had it worse.’ I know you had it bad, and that what I went through was completely different than your experience. But believe me, I have my own monsters hiding under the bed. I saw things, did things, and had things done to me, that still keep me up at night. I often wake up mornings in a cold sweat.”

He leaned forward, slightly. “Kim, I truly believe the only reason I’m not dead or in jail or in a psychiatric hospital is because I had people to talk to. Not fancy shrinks who have to take a sick day every time they get a hangnail, but real people—people like you and me. People who have struggled to deal with very real pain.”

Kim’s expression softened and her eyes dropped. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me. I didn’t use to be so nasty before, before—you know.” She began mindlessly polishing her fork with a napkin, staring at it as she slowly spoke. “Since I got out of the hospital, sometimes it seems like I’m seeing the world through a pair of Bitch-colored sunglasses.”

Dan wanted to reach out and give Kim’s hand a reassuring touch, but he knew better than to initiate physical contact. “I understand. It comes with the territory. But I promise you that it will get better over time.”

“Sometimes it is just so overwhelming that I sort of lose it for a while," she said, putting down her fork and shifting her attention to her knife, refusing to look at Dan. “Panic attacks. Anger attacks. OCD attacks. Even at my job.” Then, more quietly, “Especially at my job.”

Kim’s voice began to crack. “I have to get them under control, or I’ll be fired.”

Dan nodded his head. “Yeah, you’re in a tough spot, Kim. What you need is a couple of months just laying by yourself out on a Mexican beach with someone named Raoul bringing you tapas and shots of Tequila. Instead, you’re forced to work at a job you hate, where you are little more than a sex object. I understand you don’t have much of a choice in the matter, but that kind of situation doesn’t help when you are recovering from the sort of torture you went through.”

Kim put down the now sparkling knife, wiped her eyes, and decided to change the subject for a while. Dan didn’t stop her because he knew she would only be comfortable working at her own pace. They discussed the menu, debated if pineapple really belonged on a pizza, and then called the waitress over to place their order.

When the waitress headed to the kitchen, Kim was almost ready to talk about her issues. But first, she wanted to toss the ball into Dan’s court and see how he reacted. “So, tell me about Vietnam. What was it actually like over there?”

Dan paused a moment to collect his thoughts. He hated his time in Vietnam, and he wanted to make sure he wasn’t overly graphic without sanitizing things too much.

“Whoever said ‘War is Hell’ knew what they were talking about," he began. “The civilians were trapped between the VC and us, and frankly neither side gave a damn about them. If they listened to us, then Charlie would kill them. If they listened to Charlie, then we would kill them.”

Dan talked slowly, forcing the words out. “Sometimes I saw soldiers kill civies just for sport. We’d be in a helicopter flying over a rice paddy and the gunner would use the farmers and their livestock for target practice.”

“Oh my God!” exclaimed Kim. That’s horrible. And they were allowed to do that?”

Dan gave a deep sigh. “Everyone learned to turn a blind eye. You had to learn to turn off your conscience. You had to believe that the lives of everyone, but your fellow soldiers were worthless. Every time you fired your gun you were liable to kill someone, and you had to be ready to fire your gun at any moment. If you thought too much about who you were killing, if you started thinking of them as regular people, then you’d freeze up. You’d put your life and the lives of your platoon in danger. Unless you were ruthless, you and your friends weren’t going to survive very long.”

After a long pause, he added quietly, “The problems came after the firefight when you turned your conscience back on”.

“Did you do that?” she asked, appalled. “Did you use civilians for target practice?”

“No, but I’ve shot men, women, and children. Over there you never really knew who the enemy was. That little girl could be running up to you to beg for candy, or she could be carrying a grenade and planning to blow your guts out. I was less trigger happy than some, but I’ve shot my share of innocents. Shot them and left them lying in that stinking jungle. Walked off, listening to their screams, because there was nothing I could do to help them, except maybe go back and shoot them in the head. There was no way to make it right. I just walked off. And I hate myself for doing that.”

Kim looked at Dan, unsure if she felt sorry for him or thought he was a war criminal. It was probably a combination of the two. “That’s just fucking horrible, Dan.”

Dan began to forget where he was and who he was talking to. His eyes filled with tears. “I’ve seen horrible things. I’ve seen tanks run over people because the road was narrow, and the driver wouldn’t take the time to let them get out of the way. And when a tank runs over a person it isn’t like you see in a cartoon. They don’t just get pushed into the dirt and pop up when the tank has passed. It’s like they’re a tube of toothpaste, and the tank is squeezing out all of their insides. You hear a popping sound and then their organs just start shooting out of them. Their guts are lying there in the road, like something from a nightmare anatomy class. Their brothers and sisters and next-door neighbors screaming, gagging, staring at the violated body.”

“But I thought we were supposed to be the good guys," Kim said.

Now the tears began to flow out of Dan’s eyes. “You have to decide what is worse: a couple of civilians dumping their guts on the road or a division of North Vietnamese breaking through our lines and killing hundreds of our soldiers. Because believe me, if Charlie rips you in the stomach with an AK-47, your guts will spill out on the road too. And your guts look just as bad and smell just as bad as that civilian’s. Only they are American guts. They belong to you or your brother or your cousin or your next-door neighbor. You can’t let that happen.”

Dan paused for a moment, his emotions turning to anger. “This shit isn’t the soldier’s fault. It’s war’s fault. War is not clean and tidy. It is blood and vomit and pain and screams and death. And we need to understand, because if we pretend that we can be tidy about it then it’s just that much easier for us to start the next war. Here at home, we don’t see the devastation of war. We see chicken-hawk politicians representing big corporations wrapping themselves in our flag and repeating patriotic slogans. We see nightly news propaganda with sanitized images and voice-over videos.”

Dan paused a moment, his mind carrying him to another time and another place, his anger quickly displaced by despair. He quietly sobbed, “I was able to pull the trigger, alright. But afterward, when they were on the ground bleeding out, my conscience would come back. If I looked, I’d see my mother or my father or my sister or my brother laying on the ground, staring up at me, asking me why I killed them. So, I just stopped looking.”

After a minute of silence, Dan slowly brought himself back to the present. His attention returned to the pizza parlor and he saw that Kim had moved next to him. She was hugging him, and they were both crying.

Dan knew that he had slipped into his “bad place” and that he had dragged Kim down with him. He had to climb out quickly, while he still had some control. And just as importantly, he had to give Kim the tools she needed to pull herself out.

He put his hand on her arm. “This is important, Kim. Please do as I say. Close your eyes," he whispered. “Listen to me. Focus on me. Believe in me. I am here to help you.”

Kim stared at Dan for a moment, but then closed her eyes and leaned her head on his shoulder. He hadn’t intended to have this sort of close physical contact, but clearly, she needed it. And frankly, so did he.

When she settled down Dan continued. “Visualize a golden diamond inside of you. It’s the core of your existence. It’s the part of your soul that hasn’t been tainted. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the part you held onto when you were being tortured. Look inside yourself and see it now. Concentrate on it. Leave the rest of the world behind.

Dan brought up the image of his diamond as he waited for Kim. After a minute she murmured, “I see it”.

“Watch it as it starts to glow, as it slowly pushes your darkness away. You can feel the warmth coming from it. You can feel the positive energy radiating out of it. Children playing in the grass. A puppy dog licking your face. The smell of a clean baby. The love you share with your daughter.

“See how the diamond grows brighter when you concentrate on it? Nothing matters now but the diamond and the golden light it generates. Feed it your complete attention. The more you focus on it the brighter it gets. It’s glowing all around you now. It is a golden aura surrounding you, protecting you. Slowly inhale through your nose, drawing that energy into your lungs. Exhale slowly through your mouth, through pursed lips, blowing the nightmares out of your mind.”

When Dan felt Kim breathing as he had instructed, he continued. “The golden aura is changing now. It’s growing solid. You can reach out and touch it. The glow has become a golden shell, surrounding you, shielding you, giving you time to heal. Positive energy flows through the shell, making your diamond brighter. The negative energy bounces off, unable to harm you.”

Dan sat silently for a minute then, without really meaning to, he tentatively kissed Kim on the forehead. “Open your eyes, Kim. It’s okay. You’ll feel better now.”

Kim looked up at Dan. Her face was a mess. The cheeks were streaked with tears and her nose was dribbling on her upper lip. But that didn’t matter to her. “That is amazing, Dan. I almost feel relaxed. I do feel relaxed. Where did you learn that?”

Dan handed Kim a napkin to clean her face, then picked up one for himself. “When I got back from Nam, I spent a year in a hippie commune. Well, it wasn’t really a hippie commune. About half of the people there were vets. Anyways, we would have a guided meditation every afternoon and that was the exercise that gave me the most peace. I thought maybe it could help you, too.”