Fragments Imperfectly Remembered As Related By Unreliable or Dishonest Narrators For Inattentive, Drugged or Dumbed Down Readers Plugged to Drill Rap While Perched on Cans

[Uncle Ho Lives Forever in Vung Tau, 8/26/24]

Troy Skaggs, “I recently left my section 8 apartment in a majority black neighborhood in an economically depressed city that is over a quarter black. It wasn’t a pretty picture and sounded worse. There are beautiful moments and people in any place, but after an intense police standoff in front of the place on Memorial Day, the inability to walk peacefully in the neighborhood, screaming neighbors, constant window rattling bass and various other urban concerns I decided that anywhere outside of South Bend city limits would be better than the current situation. I was right.

“It’s been a month on the road, stoned as usual, but trying to make it work in the ‘big corn’ of central Indiana. Motels, campgrounds and a few nights ‘roughing it.’ Last night was spent in a baseball dugout in Peru, Indiana next to the Nickel Plate rail trail. Miles of walkable, bikeable asphalt passing through sparsely populated cornfields and small towns. Tonight is a tent night at lake Mississinewa reservoir. Insects, frogs and white people doing peaceful white people stuff. I’m no white nationalist, but this is nice.”

I can read such sketches all day. Ordinary life at ground level has always been grossly underreported. Literature is mostly practiced by bookish nerds with few interactions with car mechanics, dishwashers, cardboard scavengers, nannies, bathroom attendants, soccer moms and fulfillment center associates. To Troy, I suggested:

Introduce us to the people you meet! Let’s hear their voices. It’s not a bad idea to use your phone to record them to get their speech more exact. When we write down what people said, we tend to translate their idioms and cadence into our own, so an actual voice recording can help to correct these distortions.

Emailing an excellent young poet last night, I said I would love to see more language from actual encounters, of people talking and their idioms, “Your facility with languages is book learned, so get into the alleys more and enjoy lowlife motherfuckers!” Hold on, you huff! Didn’t Yeats say:

Dear fellow-artist, why so free 
With every sort of company, 
With every Jack and Jill? 
Choose your companions from the best; 
Who draws a bucket with the rest 
Soon topples down the hill.

Since most Jacks and Jills are at bottoms of hills, any depiction of humanity is flawed without sober accounts of them, as earned from thousands of hours in their company. Orwell’s nonfiction is no less valuable than his political parables.

This is not really about writing or reading, but how to be grounded, so relevant to illiterates even. To be attentive to your immediate neighbors is to reclaim your environment, so eroded and violated after a century of molestation from distant assholes.

The above took me two hours. At 5:30AM, I’m at the café on General Uprising. Big news this morning is a trucker who hit a motorcyclist at a gas station. After pausing for five seconds, he decided to drive on, so squashing that young woman, lying beneath. Raging, Tank Top says the driver had “a cow’s head with a dog’s brain.” Colorful but inaccurate. As usual, his fat son is shooting away. Though constantly told to keep his rat tat tat down, kid must sate his sadism, rage and sadness with a constant stream of loud bangs.

Nearsighted, fat and oblivious to everything outside his tiny screen, kid won’t make it as a soldier 13 years from now, unless he declares himself a woman and moves to the USA. There, he can join the Secret Service to not protect the AI robot who’s pretending to rule over what’s left of a smoldering United States of America. Shivering in husks of office buildings and parking garages, several dozens Americans who can still read will murder each other to get their mutilated hands on the rarest copies, with half their pages missing, of Troy Skaggs’ Last Days of Big Corn, self-published in 2025. Reading “Last night was spent in a baseball dugout,” they’ll curse, “Fuck you, Troy! You had a clean baseball dugout all to yourself!” The ones not blown up quickly became toilets.

Yesterday, I overheard tidbits from an ex Viet Cong or maybe just a VC suspect, “Now, they piss their pants when you bang on the table! They forced me to drink soapy water. They’d hit so hard, they’d break bones, even your spine. They put leeches into vaginas.” Unlike Tank Top, he didn’t say cunt but body’s opening, cửa mình, the most polite term. War unleashes sadism, requires it even. Once you’ve crossed that line, you’ll keep going. That’s why stabbing victims are often punctured dozens of times. You’d think no one could have so much energy, but humpers don’t count how many thrusts.

Leaving the café yesterday, I ran into a neighbor from Minh Thư Hotel, where I stayed for six months two years ago. This Vung Tau native escaped by boat in 1981 at age 19. Lucky enough to make it to Galang, he stayed there three years before being accepted into the US as a refugee. After a series of near minimum wage job, he was hired as maintenance technician by Continental Airlines “Going from $6 to $10, I was thrilled!”

After Continental and United merged, he moved from Denver to Houston. Making $47 an hour by 2022, he retired early with a 75% pension. With that kind of cash, he can be more decadent than Hunter Biden, but his main recreation here is billiards. He also knows where to get amazing food for cheap. On his recommendation, I had the best smoked veal in my life yesterday. Sprinkling the tenderest meat with powdered grilled rice, thính, is a culinary Everest.

In the US, he made such mind blowing dishes at home, his son’s white girlfriend moved into his house. Of course, he charged her nothing. When the couple moved out, he was annoyed she had to pay half their rent, “A psychology major, she didn’t make very much working in a café, so I told my son, ‘Have her pay 40% at most,’ but he said no. It’s 50-50.” Shaking his head, he laughed. “That’s how they do it in America.”

Then, “After I cosigned my daughter’s car, she asked for gas money the first time I asked her for a ride!”

“Has she been to Vietnam?”

“No.”

“But she can fly for free with United Airlines,” same as this man.

“She went to Germany on her last vacation.”

His son has been here several times and speaks Vietnamese well. Last time, he spent just a day with his dad. Americans need more mental space also.

“When was the last time you went back?”

“Just over a month ago.”

“For low long?”

“Fifteen days,” he chuckled. “It was enough.”

I have an American friend, Dan, who’s married to a Brit. Living in Brighton, he dreads each trip home. Last week, Dan emailed me, “Going to Denver then Chicago in three weeks, parents paying for tickets. Wish me luck and the boys not to get shot or knockout punched, etc.” In Barcelona recently, Dan and his kids could roam all over without fear. “It was heavenly. But no American city, no thanks. Just get me the fuck outta there as fast as possible!” Dan spent years in Philly so know all about the infinite charms of urban America.

His blood pressure rising, Dan just sent me this, “Dodging bullets and keeping a sharp eye out for white-hate-filled psychos in Chicago and Venezuelan gangs in Denver/Aurora time is almost here. Must start mentally preparing, and trying to do ten creaky pushups and lift a ten pound dumbbell for ten reps. Should be in fighting shape in three weeks!”

Writing or just speaking is often playful. To joke or jest without malice shows you’re still sane. Unheard and unseen, they seethe.

Raising a son alone, Tank Top sometimes snaps, but his daily rants at the café before dawn prevents much worse. At Philly’s Friendly Lounge, cranky Johnny the Hat rarely talked, but just seeing Dom, Felix, Terrance, Johnny AC and me more or less daily calmed and cheered him, I’m sure.

Tank Top, “Why would anyone want to visit a foreign country?! You can’t talk, so you’re like a mute, and you don’t know what to eat. There’s so much to see inside Vietnam. At 52, I haven’t even been to Da Lat!”

The inattentive or self-absorbed can travel the world yet see and feel much less than those confined daily to a neighborhood café or pub. Yesterday, I had to pause to admire that dark and bone thin seller of lottery tickets. Bogart or James Dean couldn’t have smoked more beautifully. Always serene, she cheers me. Her toothless laughs are wordless haikus.

[Vung Tau, 8/12/24]

[Soviet Donuts in Vung Tau on 8/28/24]

[Vung Tau sneaker store on 8/28/24]

[Vung Tau, 8/28/24]