I’ve been shooting the bull the past several weeks with JhanaJian, of whom I thought was this “Asian guy” from Vietnam. Turns out I was wrong. Dead wrong about everything I thought I knew about JhanaJian.

   Illusions Sometime Make Us See a Different Reality

     And now, I’m wondering if that is what life is really all about. Illusions of what our senses and pre-conceived notions tell us we want to believe, and/or what we have been conditioned to believe.

    You see, I assumed that JhanaJian lived in Southeast Asia, particularly with the type of hat I saw from a “mugshot” at the blog site, Walking in the Mountains. You know that thing WordPress calls a “gravatar” like the one of the garrulous Greek — me — shown above. JhanaJian was wearing the type of hat I remember many farmers wore in Vietnam.

     I even have pictures of a “mama-son” I met some 50 miles outside of Saigon who wore similar headgear. The pictures, stored away in a scrapbook, were taken when I was in the US Army and on a break from “humping” the boondocks with my infantry platoon.

     I assumed the “mountains” that JhanaJian wrote about were of Asian origin, possibly from a homeland. Turns out JhanaJian resides nowhere near Southeast Asia, or even at some romantic place like the Himalayas in northern India.

JhanaJian Lives Right Here in America

       And JhanaJian ain’t even Asian. Would you believe a person with the name of JhanaJian was actually of northern European descent? Now, I ask you, take a good look at the mug shot, particularly at a post like Saigon lady serves up smile & forgiveness.

     Scrawl down to the comment by JhanaJian. The words are insightful, touching and very moving, leaving me to believe that I have met a “soul buddy,” a guy that might understand the guilt and the grief many of us veterans feel about war and a nation trying to dominate another people, another race.

    I felt I could “tell it like it is” to this JhanaJian, maybe even share stories about the Saigon nights and that beautiful, doll-like woman who took me to paradise in a small, cramped bedroom cordoned off by sheets hanging from ceiling to floor to allow four separate GIs  — in the same room — to make love between hits of highly charged “smokes,” climaxing with the best sex I have ever had in my life. Was it because neither spoke the other’s language, or that I was facing possible death in the “field” the next day? She gave to me herself that wonderful Saigon night, and dozens of years later, I am still “grateful.“

And What of My Feelings Toward JhanaJian?

     I can’t share that story now. It has nothing to do with trust or any “disillusions” I might have developed with a person I recently only “met” through the Internet. You see, I don’t think JhanaJian would truly understand how a man feels away from home for the first time, not knowing if he would be alive the next day, the next week. Not knowing if he would ever be the same as he was before becoming a “man.”

       Before giving up his last bit of youth, his last connection to . . .  I don’t know, maybe still feeling like a “kid.’ You gotta grow up really quick when you find your Self leading men in combat at the ripe old age of 21.

     JhanaJian. Thanks for telling me I made a mistake when I called you “my man.” I hope you don’t mind me sharing with others the rest of the story . . .

Please see Part II, by clicking this hyperlink:

Gender ‘illusion’ fools a macho man