Cyclo and guitar

It happened. Oil and water. Mixing. At the tail-end of the war, Vietnam War. Fifty years on. Still, like yesterday. In-class Tet celebration. Co-ed senior high. My last year in Vietnam. Senior panic. Every moment matters. Knowing we would never see each other and be the same. A sense of premonition. An instant reminiscence.

As Class President, I produced an event: the decoration, the human assignment , the theme and the music. Wait, we don’t have the bass guitar. Send someone. Even the fat guy. To the music store. To rent one by the hour.

I overlooked a small detail (which often comes back and bites you): I did not give him pocket change out of our petty cash. Only that I would pay the rental fees after the event. Lord and behold. The guy took his time! Where was he? Next door, you could hear music and their celebration/dancing. You felt precious time passing. Opportunity missed. Opportunity that would never come around ever. Our equivalent of prom.

When he finally showed, carrying that rental piece of instrument that looked like a big violin (all good ones had been rented out on that busy day), we hurried to put the band together. The mike, the amplifier and the works.

Testing. One, two, three.

Before we knew it, it’s time. Noon. Time to clean up for afternoon classes to set up their celebration. The Head Master went around, unplugging our power chords. Then that didn’t work. He shut down the whole school, leaving us packing.

Had the fat guy not taken a cyclo. Had he hitched a ride on a bike (as I did every day). Had I given him petty cash for the taxi (even then the round-about, conceived and constructed after French urban architectural model, wouldn’t have shaved off much). The split screen would have seen me pacing on the left, while on screen right, my beloved “retard” shielding his Paul McCartney’s-like bass guitar from aggressive traffic.

In looking back, we often remember the good, the bad and the ugly. One of the uglies was at another dance party where it’s my turn to sing; a slow number to give our rock band a break (stirring and settling). It so happened, my girlfriend’s x asked her to dance, leaving me stuck on stage to awkwardly finish out my number: “Love me with all your heart…as I love you, don’t give me your love, for an hour…”

Mark Owen’s 60-minutes interview on “the Killing of Bin Laden” : “here is a guy who told other people to kill, to die , yet he himself did not even put up a fight in the end”.

The point is, it is very disjointing between words and action. I might say, it’s the easiest thing in the world to rent a bass guitar, then hop on the horse and bring it back here. After all. it’s only a mile and a half . Yet it did not happen given Saigon traffic.

Like our Master Mind of the 9/11 attack. When it comes to actual fighting and dying, our strategist and rhetorician found himself short. Quite short, compared to Seal 6.

Those cyclos are now relegated to and pedalled by ARVN vets for US vets to tour, leisurely through Saigon congested streets. Museum piece. Like horse buggy. Like hot-air balloons. Never supposed for timely “Prime” delivery of musical instruments.

Shortly after power got unplugged at my school, the city itself got unplugged at the hand-over of the Independence Palace. Tanks on the street. Cyclos hid behind shady trees. Advancing army, most of them young, real young, marched in formation with heads turned, quite taken with the Pearl of the Orient and its trapping: round-abouts, billboards and trees. (like the Times Square sailor famous kiss). The same scene which my fat classmate took in, I am sure, while holding on to the bass guitar, on his leisure ride, now afforded only by Western backpackers and G.I.’s (most of whom had come home the year before).

The cyclo and the guitar. In my mind. What song would have been played had it arrived as planned? Perhaps “Oh mon amour” by Christophe. I sang that at a previous gathering, on my own, with my guitar and without the acoustic fanfare. Just me, without the accessories and access to an amplifier. That 11-12 noon hour stayed on as one of my longest hours. I could still hear, even now, the sound of my heart-beating without bass guitar. Oil and water. Cyclo and guitar. Words and action. Don’t mix.