Author: tomglenn3

I interrupt my exploration of No-Accounts and its origins to talk about Memorial Day, a holiday more important to me than any other in the calendar. As I’ve reported earlier in this blog, I spent many years in Vietnam providing signals intelligence support to U.S. combat units, both army and Marine, during the war. Men fighting by my side died as I watched. I’ll grieve for them as long as I live.

Yesterday I joined other members of the American Legion Post 156 (of which I m a proud member) offering poppies to passersby who contributed to the charities that the Legion supports.

Two observations:

First, I was impressed with the generosity of ordinary people. I always asked contributors if they were veterans. The answer was almost always no, but they said, in various ways, that they recognized that veterans had sacrificed so that citizens could enjoy the freedom and liberty of the American way of life.

How different it was when I and the troops returning from Vietnam were met by crowds who called us “baby killers” and “butchers” and spat on us. U.S. consciousness has changed, especially in the past few years. Veterans, even those of us from Vietnam, are now honored.

Second, I remembered why we use the poppy as a symbol of those of us who have died in war. The practice is inspired by a poem that came from World War I:

In Flanders Fields by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Written May 3, 1915

As I said yesterday, the novel No-Accounts resulted from the five years I spent taking care of AIDS patients. Each of my seven patients was different from all the others. And yet, I found in all of them a kindness and generosity that surprised me. They didn’t fit my stereotype of gay men as self-centered and mean-spirited. They expressed concern for my welfare and went out of their way to thank me for the help I gave them. But mostly they had great empathy for other men suffering from AIDS.

In No-Accounts, I tell of the intervention of Peter, the principal gay character dying from AIDS, to stop his friend Billy from leaping to his death from the Calvert Street Bridge in Washington, D.C. after Billy is diagnosed. Billy is on the bridge railing. Peter stops Martin, his buddy, from approaching Billy. Peter knows Billy will let go if Martin gets too close. Instead, Peter, who’s too weak to pull Billy from the rail, grabbles himself on the rail and tells Billy if he lets go, Peter will, too. Peter leans forward as if to hurl himself from the rail. Billy, horrified, stops him and in the process falls back onto the pavement of the bridge. Peter has saved him.

I witnessed events like that several times with my patients. And their caring for others was a common trait among them all. I concluded that their closeness to their own deaths relieved them of the focus on the self that is so natural for us human beings and gave them the grace to put others first.

I wrote yesterday about how I turned to helping others as a means of coping with my Post-Traumatic Stress from Vietnam.

But there was another reason I was drawn specifically to helping AIDS patients. When the epidemic first hit, the population was terrified of the disease. We didn’t know how it was transmitted. People, including health care professionals, were afraid to go anywhere near a person sick with AIDS. Landlords wouldn’t rent to them. Hospitals wouldn’t accept them. Some doctors and nurses refused treat them. The result was that there were literally men dying on the street because no one would take them in.

I watched what was happening, and I couldn’t tolerate it. I wanted to volunteer to take care of AIDS patients. I told my wife that there was an unknown likelihood that I’d contract the disease. If I did, she would, too. She told me to go ahead.

For the next five years I was a buddy to AIDS patients. I did everything for them because they could do nothing for themselves. I fed them, bathed them, dressed and undressed them. I was often the only human being caring for them. They were abandoned except for me.

I came to love every one of them. And when they died, I grieved.

In five years, I went through seven patients. They were all gay, and they all died.

Just at the time when I decided I couldn’t face another death, medical science isolated the means of transmission—bodily fluids—and discovered medicines that ameliorated the conditions brought on by the disease to the point that the death rate began to decline. I ceased being a buddy. I worked for several years with the homeless, then spent seven years caring for the dying in the hospice system.

But my experiences with the men who died of AIDS changed my life and outlook. The result was the novel No-Accounts.

I received word yesterday that my novel No-Accounts was given an Honorable Mention in the 2017 Eric Hoffer General Fiction Awards. In a review cited by the Hoffer site, the US Review of Books calls No-Accounts “An engrossing portrayal . . . . Highly readable and emotionally intense, this gritty and truthful account is both raw and powerful.”

The award made me realize how little text I’ve devoted to No-Accounts in this blog. Some months back I wrote one post to explaining why I wrote the book. I was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) from my Vietnam experiences, and I turned to helping others as a way to quiet my psyche. I discovered that when I concentrated my attention on people who needed my help, my memories receded into the background. I learned that compassion heals.

More tomorrow

Monday, Memorial Day, I’ll join other veteran authors and poets in reading our work as part of the Veterans Writers Project on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The event will take place in a tent near the Vietnam Memorial.

I’ve written before about my bond with veterans. It’s even stronger when my fellow vets are writers and poets. I can’t get through these sessions with dry eyes. The other men and women reading move me deeply.

It won’t be any better when I speak. I haven’t chosen yet what I’ll be reading—something suitable for Memorial Day—but I’ll almost certainly read from Last of the Annamese. If I get through the reading without choking up, I’ll be surprised.

Immediately after my last post, my laptop computer stopped working, so—thanks to the lightning strike and double computer failure—I was unable to post blogs. Today my laptop started working again (who knows why?), so I’ll be posting again

I spent last Saturday at the Gaithersburg Book Festival hawking my books.

The aura of Vietnam was palpable. The table next to mine was manned by Richard Morris, another Vietnam writer. As I wandered around the festival area, with its many pavilions set aside for speakers and authors reading their work, I heard the word “Vietnam” mouthed by those talking to audiences. Several times I overheard snatches of conversation from passersby. “Vietnam” was audible in their speech.

And I sold a respectable number of books to readers who professed an interest in the Vietnam war. I even sold books to a Vietnamese lady who was charmed by my speaking to her in native language.

I suspect that the uptick in my book sales, not only at the festival but at other places, is the result of a growing interest in the country and the war. I hope so. We could have learned so much from the ending of the Vietnam war, but we didn’t. We repeated the same mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe we’re ready to learn from our past errors.