This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.

Farewell, Uncle Ho

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

Chapter 89 (Friday, July 14, 1967)

"Actually, there are two reasons, why I humbly wanted to approach you." Our assertive Mr. Chung sounded apologetic for his mere existence. This was the first time I'd ever noticed his carrying over Chinese syntax into an English sentence, denoting his own unworthiness.

I decided to insert a concise Cantonese sentence, addressing him as 同志, literally meaning, Comrade, to stop his unnecessary groveling by putting him on an equal footing with the rest of us. Jules snorted and nodded, revealing his political leanings and/or his sexual orientation, since now, following the onset of the Cultural Revolution, some Chinese Queers outside the People's Republic had also started addressing each other with 同志.

Comrade Chung's expression of knitted brow, at first suggesting confusion, slowly transitioned into relaxed recognition. "Thanks, Ben." He drained his drink, giving him time to mull things over. "I have two things to discuss with you. Both are rather delicate."

"Okay, shoot." I finished my drink and put the four empties onto the oval, stainless-steel tray.

"Would you permit me to photocopy those CIA files, that were in the box?" He was looking at the papers, which Gerry had left neatly stacked on the coffee table, next to the tray of empty glasses.

A thick cloud passed above the building, cutting off the weak rays of evening sunlight, stopping the crystal glasses on the counter in the kitchen from refracting weak light into washed-out rainbows throughout the entry. They listened to the whirr of the ceiling fan and the buzz of traffic, while waiting for my response.

"I don't think so." He glanced up at me, with raised eyebrows, seemingly disappointed. I smiled and qualified my rejection. "That is not my decision to make. We have to get unanimous consensus from everybody involved.

"Having said that, though, as far as I'm concerned, you can take them for keeps." I grinned; Comrade grinned. "I seriously do not want them among my belongings. To judge by the break-in, there are far too many people interested in that shit. By the way, was that fucker who broke in here named McPherson?"

Comrade nodded in the affirmative, as both Gerry and Jules vocalized their permission on the spot, more than likely since we all knew what they contained. But we still had to get Yvette's and Linh's approval. "I don't think that Yvette would have anything against it." Comrade blushed.

"How can you judge that?" I wondered, getting up to take the glasses to the kitchen.

Jules broke out laughing, and Comrade showed embarrassment, as he got up to follow me. "Um," He glanced between the three of us. "because she and I have been sort of, um, a couple for, um," He counted on his fingers. "on and off for about ten years. I'm why she didn't leave with her parents in '56."

***

I'd fixed another round of drinks, trying to keep from feeling threatened. Chung was watching me in the kitchen, but must have sensed that I didn't want to talk until we were back in the living room with the others. As opposed to earlier, he did not take two glasses but left me to carry all four on the oval serving tray.

"Are you upset with me?" Comrade wanted to know, as I distributed the drinks.

"No." I handed him his and patted his muscled upper arm before sitting down on the overstuffed armchair. "I'm just trying to piece things together."

"Let's start out at the corner of Allen and Canal in Manhattan." This got my undivided attention. "I'm sure you know Chung's Piece Goods Store." Now, this also got Gerry's undivided attention.

"Isn't it Chung's Sewing, Needlework, and Piece Goods Store?" Gerry corrected him, and I was astounded that he would remember something so insignificant, but I was able to keep a straight face.

Comrade glanced at Gerry and then at me. I chuckled quietly at the clash of cultures. "He's German; he notices little things." I thought I could put Comrade to the acid test. "He also has a keen ability to smell bullshit."

Comrade Chung gave what Gerry and I'd just said some serious thought. "Okay, Ben, go ahead and ask me some questions about events during your childhood that I would have to have known."

"Okay," The ultimate test question popped into my mind. "you had an insane collection of comic books. Who was my favorite comic-book hero?"

He burst out laughing, shaking his head. "If I remember correctly, you didn't have one, since you thought that comic books were total trash, and refused to even pick one up."

I joined in laughing. "Now, I have a question from more recent history." He nodded for me to continue, still chuckling from the comic-book thing. "How did your brother, Eddie, die?"

He looked stunned, as if he'd just been hit by a drive-by shooter. Tears shot out of his eyes, with his expression still that of shock. Gerry took his drink and put it on the coffee table and grabbed him into a hug. His sobs were high-pitched and violent; the grief was real. "I didn't know he was dead."

***

"As far as I know, he didn't suffer." Of course, Gordon hadn't given me any such information. But I figured that I had to try, at least, to repair some of the emotional upset, that I'd caused. "He'd joined the Philadelphia police force along with his boyfriend, Mike Healy. They died together."

"Boyfriend?" Comrade, whose actual first name was Wade, seemed surprised as he wiped his eyes.

"Yeah, according to Gordon, Mike's brother," Gerry explained, offering cigarettes around. "Eddie and Mike had been a little more than best friends, after your parents moved to Staten Island."

Comrade Wade shook his head, showing regret. "There you have it. I didn't even know that they'd moved."

"And, other than the store, they virtually broke off contact to the neighborhood when they left." I added. "My mom thought that living on Staten Island had gone to their heads. For me, it was like they were hiding something. At least, Eddie didn't seem comfortable any more with talking to me."

"They were probably hiding me." Wade still had tears in his eyes. "They broke off all contact, after I left in '52."

"Were you dodging the draft?" I wondered, letting Jules light my cigarette.

"Yeah, they were calling up anyone, who was still breathing, as cannon fodder for the Korean War." Wade exhaled a lung full of smoke, while talking. "And I had other plans for my life."

When he went to wipe his eyes once again, Gerry offered him his clean and still folded cotton handkerchief. Wade waved it off and chuckled. "Here in Vietnam, we consider blowing our nose on a piece of reusable fabric, sort of like carrying around reusable toilet paper in our pockets."

Jules was shocked but nodded. Wade smiled. But Gerry and I went limp from laughing.

***

I was still laughing, when I came back with fresh drinks. Wade was telling us of how he'd taken up contact with his dad's family in Cholon, asking for help in avoiding American military service. They had been eager to help, since they'd hoped to re-establish contact with Wade's dad. Since after he'd married Wade's gwei-lo mother, a debutant from the Hamptons, he'd let contact to his native Cholon lapse.

When Wade arrived, Cholon was still the economic hub of Saigon. The Chungs had, at the time, heavily invested in arguably the largest casino/brothel/opium den in the world, Le Grand Monde, as junior partners to the main concessionaires from Macau. Not only was Le Grand Monde the control center of gambling, it also controlled prostitution, wholesale drugs, gold and dollar contrabands, as well as the counterfeit industry. And Bao Dai, the Emperor, had the say in granting the lease, every other year.

Wade chuckled ironically. "To say that Le Grand Monde was profitable would have been to deny reality."

Both Wade and Jules laughed, and Jules, the economist, continued. "It was so profitable that the concessionaires very willingly paid the then State of Vietnam a daily fee of 400,000 piastres, which, on the black market of the day would have been just about 7,000 US dollars." Jules paused to calculate. "That would have been somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 dollars a month. And there was still enough left over to make a lot of people very wealthy. Not to mention that there was enough to finance Bay Vien's private army."

"Wish we had that kind of backing." Jules offered us a round of expensive, Turkish cigarettes from a tin.

Wade lit up, nodded sadly and went on to tell us how Saigon had been the capital of the State of Vietnam; Bao Dai was the playboy Head of State, and after a total of five Prime Ministers, Prince Nguyen Phuc Buu Loc took office, and the world around Saigon was a profitable place to be for any Chinese business family. And it became even more profitable in 1951, when one of the private armies of the region, run by Bay Vien, whom the French had given control of Saigon-Cholon, provided he'd rid the area of communists, came up with the idea of organizing the richest Chinese families along with the most influential Corsicans to take Le Grand Monde away from the Macanese.

"And since he did get rid of the communists--" Wade was cut off by Jules.

"--or so he made the French believe." Jules was emphatic.

Wade picked up his thread. "... by using his private army, known as Binh-Xuyen, the French promoted him to Major General and let him rule as a warlord, charged with staffing the national police."

Jules grumbled then laughed sarcastically. "The French Government thought very highly of him, since they were scraping the bottom of the financial barrel, and he was financing his own private army out of his share of the profits from Le Grand Monde. The national police force didn't cost them a cent."

Wade laughed again, looking at Jules. "Then, in 1954, when the French fucked up at Dien Bien Phu, they cut their losses and ran. This was the beginning of the end not only for Le Grand Monde but for the State of Vietnam."

Jules adjusted his bubble butt in his seat and explained in French, since it was too involved. I translated for Gerry and even caught Wade listening in. "Mind you, we, uh, the French, had already pulled out of the North, and were preparing to leave the South, when the CIA arrived to call the shots." He laughed back at Wade. "And since the Americans were so shit scared of the communists, they were bankrolling both the French and the South Vietnamese. They removed Prince Buu Loc as Prime Minister, and replaced him with their own fascist puppy dog, Ngo Dinh Diem. And by the first week of August of '54, Diem's brothers, Can and Nhu, had formed their secret terror group, called the Personalist Labor Revolutionary Party, modeled on Hitler's brown-shirt storm troopers, and financed by the CIA, who called them Special Forces, since they were footing the bill. But no matter who called them what, their sole purpose was to keep brother Diem in power."

At that Wade snorted. "And which were later used to persecute the Buddhist majority. Their terror politics also incited several monks to set themselves alight in the streets of Saigon."

Jules nodded his agreement. "And with their support, it didn't take any time at all for fascist Diem to get rid of the Binh-Xuyen police chief during a midnight raid. And he followed that up by illegally using the Vietnamese National Army to destroy the entirety of Bay Vien's private forces, headquartered at Le Grand Monde."

He sipped the last of his cocktail and lit another cigarette from the tin. "This became known as one of the many Battles for Saigon. It lasted a week, leaving a thousand dead, the corpses of whom were strewn about in the streets of Cholon to rot, many wounded and twenty thousand, mainly Chinese, had become homeless. But in fact this had been a proxy war between France and the United States. The Binh-Xuyen was fighting for the Corsican French Captain Savani, the head of the Deuxième Bureau, while Diem's ARVN backed Colonel Lansdale and the CIA."

Wade sighed in frustration. "And it was what drove quite a few of the law students, me included, to join the united front, which eventually evolved into what's now the National Liberation Front."

Then he became more animated. "Diem moved fast to impose his sister-in-law's brand of morality, which was more than acceptable to the bible-thumping Americans, thanks to whom he was able to rule for quite a while with only a neglectable constitution, but leaving the election of a rubber-stamp National Assembly, which was ultimately required by the Americans to give the appearance of having checks and balances, But by then, Diem had outlawed gambling, prostitution, abortions, falsies, dancing the twist, and, above all, drugs, although his own brother, Nhu, was an opium addict, remaining true to his fundamentalist Christian leanings, Roman Catholic in flavor, just like Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler. However, as profitable but outlawed endeavors are wont to do, they went underground, being protected again by private armies, such as the those of various religious groups, and, of course, the Viet-Minh."

Jules now felt compelled to throw in his French opinion. "Now, the Viet-Minh posed other social problems, like that unsavory skeleton in the Americans' Vietnamese closet. As our American friends would love to forget, the United States had funded the Viet-Minh during World War II, since they were fighting the Japanese, no matter how naively short-sighted that may have been."

He and Gerry laughed. "Also the Viet-Minh provided a social infrastructure to the rural areas of South Vietnam. So, in a propaganda stunt, some of them were rebranded as Viet-Cong, since, according to Diem, the Viet-Minh weren't all commies, but the Viet-Cong are."

"And the reason, why most of the people, I know, think this was a propaganda coup by Diem, reported in the reactionary rag, Times of Vietnam," Wade laughed along with Jules, who obviously knew where this was going. "was because the actual designation for Vietnamese communist is Cộng sản Việt Nam, But 'CSVN' was not as usably cute, when shortened to 'CS' or 'CV' or 'CN'. So, some savvy propagandist, probably at the CIA, decided on 'VC', also probably because of its alphabetic proximity to 'WC' and 'VD', and besides, 'Victor Charlie' rolls much more readily from the tongue than does 'Charlie Sierra Victor November'."

***

Yvette and Linh arrived in a gust of enthusiasm. Linh almost swooned. "It was such a moving story." Of course, this was, as Gerry and I had both predicted, his opinion of The World of Suzie Wong, the movie, which they'd just seen at the Eden Cinema. Linh did a headcount and disappeared into the kitchen.

Yvette gave Wade a peck on the cheek and sat down between him and Gerry. I went to the kitchen to call in Linh and proceeded to ask each individually, if they agreed turning over the documents to Wade Chung and consequently, the NLF. The vote was unanimous in favor of it, and Linh disappeared once again into the kitchen.

"Damn," Wade leaned toward the coffee table to grab the stack of documents. "you guys are going to change my opinion on Queers. You're all men of your word." He then blushed at his slip of the tongue and looked at Yvette.

"Don't look at me." She chuckled and blushed in solidarity. "You let it slip; you explain it."

Chung's face turned almost mauve. He loosened his necktie and stood to remove his jacket. "Well," He looked at me. "you know what the attitude was in New York in the 'fifties about Queers' being a bad business risk."

"Afraid not, Wade." I started to laugh. "I was eight years old when you left in the 'fifties." The others joined in laughing. "But I know what it's like, now." I became serious. "You can't hold hands anywhere, not even in a bar that caters to Queers; that would be grounds for arrest. Two men won't be served in a restaurant without the presence of a woman, except for places like Howard Johnson's or Schrafft's."

Not deliberately, but my voice did go gravelly. "And that Fuck-Face ex-Mayor, Robert Wagner, tried to rid the City of Queers in the run up to opening the World's Fair in '64, by revoking the liquor licenses of Queer bars and sending out undercover cops to entrap anyone, who would bite the bate." I tensed at the thought of several of my own close calls at City College before going off to Paris but managed to chuckle. "Hell, everybody's so uptight about Queers that pigs are arresting each other. According to Greenwich-Village grapevine, back in '62, Washington DC park police arrested several undercover dicks from the vice squad who were trying to entrap people in Lafayette Park by acting like a bunch of fairies."

"My goodness," Yvette shook her head in disbelief and took the cigarette Gerry was offering. "this country has become a moralistic, fascist, police state, since the French left, and nothing like that would ever happen to you here, especially not in Saigon."

Gerry and I both gave her a look of incredulity. Wade took her free hand. "In this country's almost half-a-million-year history, homosexuality has never been against any law."

"Are you sure?" Gerry wondered skeptically.

"Pretty much," Wade chuckled, getting up off the couch to pick up the M1911 Colt pistol, which I'd taken away from the CIA intruder, and which was partly sticking out from under the arm chair, upon which I was seated. Wade smiled kindly at Gerry. "Um, I'm a lawyer." He placed the pistol on the stack of documents. "And I wouldn't advise your keeping this either." He chuckled with a hint of irony. "It could be used against you in a court-martial."