Ohio Girl

“Think they’re in the Armed Forces?”

“I hope so. That would be some kind of fashion statement.” We whispered as two men in army fatigues entered Billy C’s just ahead of us.

The bar was lined with faces we recognized from our previous visit. They remembered us too, with the bartender smiling extra big at my friend. He remembered my drink and then quickly recalled they were out of Wild Turkey.

“How about Jack Daniels?” I asked. He returned shaking his head no.

“Beam?” I whined.

“That, I think I can do.”

My friend and I played pool—poorly—while the soldiers surveyed the place. I caught them checking us out--conferring with one another. It’s early and we can do better, seemed their consensus.

I have seen lots of soldiers on nights out over the last few years. I’ve seen them in groups with intensely short hair and T-shirts that say, The  few, The proud. Or whatever. They whoop and holler and wrap themselves around the smallest girls in the smallest tank tops.

I’ve seen them more solitary, heads propped on their arms, at the bar. They want to buy you a drink and chat and flirt. Just like everyone else. Then they get torn--between telling the kind of soldier stories that might get them laid, or the kind that once they start, they cannot stop. The kind that sends girls for free drinks from someone else at the other end of the bar.

We switch to darts and the three large televisions that look down on all the drinking switches to Over There--a series about US soldiers in Iraq. Our two, bar-stool-based ones immediately fidget and are soon gone. A fight breaks out over nothing intelligible and we leave too. All of us mining the west-side for better recruits.

In a world where private citizens are illegally wiretapped, the Quakers are followed around like Al-Qaida*, and the President of the Free World brings about debate on the legitimacy of torture—well, I am loathe to complain about traffic cameras in such a world. I will, of course, complain anyway.

It was a grey Saturday. Unseasonably warm. Armed with that hypo manic hopefulness that the New Year brings, I decided to drive out to the hinterlands and take the dog for a hike. Rain be damned!

We set off with water and bananas and good music. Heading down West Boulevard toward I-90, I observed the houses that were still lit for the holidays. The dog had her head out the window and her wagging tail repeatedly smacked me in the face.

In my memory I felt uncomfortable BEFORE I saw the beige boxes perched on poles, lining either side of the street. Like a chill. Like someone watching me. Of course, they were. I checked my speedometer. I was right at 35 mph. I had not run any lights, so all good. I thought about how dirty my car was and if the cameras were picking up my NASCAR bumper stickers. I thought about the silly hat I was wearing. Can they see that? Then I wondered if I should make a lewd hand gesture, or smile, or just act cool. Everything is cool.

The hike was a good one so I forgot all about the cameras. I went home a different way to accommodate some errands. The dog waited patiently in the car. I was appreciating that feeling you get after some exercise and fresh air when all of the sudden they were there again--the beige boxes.

Still obeying the law, I tried to understand why I was having such an allergic response to them. My supple muscles turned taut. I thought of big concepts like freedom and privacy versus safety. I thought about how to express my feelings without using the term ‘Orwellian.’ I worried that someday I would end up barricaded in my house with a tin-foil cap and drawing pictires of black helicopters on the wall.

And then I scratched the side of my head with my middle finger. The best, ambivalent, passive-aggressive, and juvenile response I could muster.

*Once upon a time I was a member of a Quaker congregation. I know they can be irritating with their peace and justice, non-violence, let’s knit our own clothes stuff, but how about spying on a livelier bunch? They sit in circles, in silence, for crying out loud. They do things by consensus. It would take forever to get the blood pumping and the group agreement necessary to do so much as scratch the sides of their heads with their middle fingers.