Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
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with a couple of guys from Inside Plant and then walked to our favorite local<br />
restaurant. I am sure it had an Italian name, but we called it "The Mama Mia<br />
Pizzeria," because the first time we went there we spent two hours talking to<br />
the daughter of the woman who did all the cooking, and the only thing we<br />
understood, this was before Jeremy learned Italian, was that when she got<br />
frustrated with us she would actually say "Mama Mia!" like a New York Italian<br />
in a bad 50s movie.<br />
We had an unspoken agreement to pretend it was a night like any<br />
other. We drank the local wine, flirted with the daughter and the mother, joked<br />
with the father, and when the evening was over ordered several bottles of wine<br />
and two calzones to go.<br />
Also by unspoken agreement, we did not check any of the bars or<br />
restaurants to see if anyone was heading back to the barracks, but instead started<br />
walking down the cracked concrete road towards the base. By about three a.m.<br />
we were only a mile or so from base, and we stopped and sat down in the mid<br />
dle of the road to eat our calzones. To drink our wine. To talk.<br />
"It isn't true. You know it isn't true don't you?"<br />
"I know."<br />
He took a long drink from the bottle and passed it back to me.<br />
"This whole thing is a fucking lie. My roommate says he walked in<br />
and saw me blowing one of the fags from Supply, but it isn't true."<br />
"I know."<br />
"It doesn't matter anyway. The Article 15 doesn't show up on any<br />
civilian record. AU it means is that I go home a few months before you. We're<br />
all going home soon. I heard on the radio in the Mama Mia Pizzeria that they<br />
were tearing down the fucking wall in Berlin."<br />
"The actual Berlin wall?"<br />
I opened a new bottle, and Jeremy tossed the empty over his shoulder<br />
into the field on the side of the rode.<br />
"It's coming down man. The cold war is over. Russia folded. We win.<br />
And, just like after World War II everyone will be going home. I guaran-fuck<br />
ing-tee it."<br />
I could tell Jeremy was pretty drunk. He only swears when he has had<br />
too much to drink.<br />
"You are witnessing the last days of the military-industrial complex.<br />
There is no way congress will keep throwing money at the military without the<br />
Russians to fight-they would have to invent a whole new enemy, and that<br />
ain't gonna happen my friend. That just ain't gonna happen. In three months<br />
you will be stateside and the U.S. will have an Armed Forces the size of<br />
England's."<br />
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