But at least those lucky bastards had a war that meant something. My war-maybe you’ve heard of it…Vietnam? — was a fucked-up bunch of nonsense and the only thing I learned from it was how to kill without giving much of a shit. Maybe I would have turned out different if I’d settled comfortably back into civilian life with the beautiful California girl I’d married before I shipped over. But it didn’t work out that way.

I was eighteen and fresh off the farm. Well, not really-fresh off the tract-house middle-class Midwestern assembly line, the kind of bland background that makes Leave It to Beaver look like a documentary. So when I got thrown into boot camp at Camp Pendleton, I was putty in the hands of a D.I. whose purpose in life was to wipe out any individuality and make us good little killing machines for God and country.

On a weekend pass, I met Joni at Gazzari’s on the Sunset Strip. She was a typical, fresh-faced mini-skirted California girl-not the beach bunny type, more the leggy Cher variety, with dark brown hair straight to her shoulders, and big brown eyes that seemed startling against blue eye shadow. She was about five eight but seemed even taller, though she didn’t wear heels-it was just the shortness of the minis she wore, making her legs go on forever.

She started coming down to visit me at San Diego, whenever I had liberty, and if I had leave, I’d go up and see her. She owned a little house in La Mirada and we would bunker in and drink beer and eat pizza, and listen to music, Beatles, Turtles, Association, watch Star Trek on TV, and fuck like guppies.

Other times, we went to Disneyland and to Grauman’s Chinese and the Santa Monica Pier, the California girl humoring the corn-fed hick with touristy junk, and we did the kind of things young lovers do that in the movies require a montage and syrupy music… Happy together…