The Fantasy Years

THE VOICES RAGED! Egged on by the shrill boom of Rush Limbaugh’s righteousness, he and his imitators dominated the AM radio dial. His listeners, filled with his words, with his arguments, spoiled for a fight. And Maria, whose family had owned the local pizza for years, said to Ben: “Clinton goes around the country demanding blow-jobs from unsuspecting women.”

“Oh, come on!” Ben said, clutching his pizza box. He was no Clinton-defender. He wasn’t even “into” politics. But the idea Clinton went around the country demanding blowjobs was ridiculous.

“That’s what I heard,” Maria said. “Clinton goes around demanding blow jobs from women. He uses the Secret Service like a bunch of bouncers at a heavy metal concert.”

“Where did you hear this?”
“I have my sources.”
“Rush Limbaugh, huh?”
“Listen to how condescending you are.”
“Right wing radio hosts make stuff up, Maria.”

“So does the liberal media!” she said, vengeance blazing in her eyes. “The only difference is people like Rush and me don’t have fancy Ivy League degrees.”

“I don’t either.”
“So you’ll just have to forgive us regular people for not having the elite education.”

“I don’t have an Ivy League background, either.”
“You went to college.”
“Yeah but I—“

“Even if I don’t have a fancy college degree like you, I still have the right to free speech.”

“I’m not saying you don’t.”

“Oh, I hear you loud and clear. You’re saying toe the liberal media’s line or keep my mouth shut.”

“No, I’m not.” Ben said. Or am I? He wondered, stumbling slightly as he stepped out of the pizzashop’s door.

Sure, Ben reasoned, he’d been a liberal in college. Oh sure, Ben supposed in his heart of hearts he believed in what liberals supposedly believed in.

Justice, equality, freedom and all that stuff. But he’d just wanted to purchase his pizza in peace without being accused of being an elitist, especially because he’d just spent 8 hours in the company of the real elitists.

He turned the corner and headed back up to his apartment.

“Context”, Dennis decided. That was the word. “Context.” Dennis mumbled it and liked the impression it made on his ears. It made him sound, well, as if his readings in American military made him more intellectual. As if they weren’t just rehashings of Khe Sahn, and the Tet Offensive and Operation Linebacker II.

So it was context: that was what was missing between him and Huong. Context could bridge the impossible divide between his 290 lbs of angst and the mystery in Huong’s smile and her rich almond eyes.

People had nothing in common anymore.

They used to.

There was a time in America when a youngish man and a youngish woman would have been able to come together effortlessly at a dance. A time when a guy courted a girl and the conventions were understood. A time when a guy could show a girl his interest through manners.

Through chivalry. There were would have been a functioning society between them. Diverse and wholesome activities to engage in rather than going to country and western pick up bars, or worse, karaoke.

There would have been dances sponsored by clubs and churches. There would be county fairs. Many, many places to encounter each other. Naturally. Without strain. There was context; something we could agree on. Something we could all participate in. There would have been courting.

Whatever happened to an America where regular Americans like Dennis belonged? An America where if a guy liked a girl, he had a place and way to show her without making a fool of himself? It was the Sixties, he decided.

That’s when being cool became the decisive factor. There were cool types. And there were uncool types like himself. And who can you thank for the Sixties? Dennis thought.

The hippies. The fucking hippies and their shiftless offspring: the liberals. Those people broke American culture. There was a time when the country fit together like a big jigsaw puzzle. When everything made a kind of sense.

Now, nothing made a sense. And there wasn’t even one American culture anymore. Just a bunch of multi-cultural PC liberals and everyone else who’d been alienated by them. The PC liberals didn’t break the country into two. They broke it into a hundred different pieces.

Dennis had no idea what kind of life Huong lived. He couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t offend her with his assumptions. And if he couldn’t even take that chance what chance did he have with her?

Huong probably had a boyfriend already, anyway.

Yes, this country was really falling apart.

When a regular good-hearted guy like Dennis doesn’t approach a perfectly attractive and approachable girl like Huong for fear of being alienated for not being culturally PC, then the country really was on the skids, he decided.

Even if Dennis was fat, he meant well and would treat Huong like the princess she was. He knew he would. But he and she were locked in a world where they’d never get the chance for this to happen. They were locked in a PC, multi-cultural world where they never shared enough in common for their relationship to happen.

Thanks a lot liberals, Dennis thought. Thanks a lot, hippies for creating a world where people today can’t even relate to each other.