Enhanced Interrogations at the Pilot House
G.I. George is positively apoplectic watching the news on the flatscreen over the bar at the Pilot House in the South End Marina. “Torture?” he’s snarling, “they can’t HANDLE torture!!! They’d rather see those *&%!!* Arabs blow us up in our sleep than interrogate the ?!!@*^’s!” Jerry, the night bartender, hits the channel changer and the Senate committee’s report on the CIA becomes Two and A Half Men, Charlie Sheen smirking with a cocktail in his hand and a girlfriend with 38’s spilling into the camera, usually a Pilot House pacifier, but not tonight.
George is threatening to waterboard Jerry if he doesn’t turn the station back to Fox News. Little Jimmy votes with his empty beer bottle for Charlie Sheen and his lady friend and out of sheer contrariness I second the motion. “Who’s with me on this?” George shouts. He’s standing up and he’s ready to hit Omaha Beach – or Tyee Beach in this case – but he’s getting no Takers.
“Call up Dick Cheney,” I prod, “see if he wants any more sunlight on the subject.” Jerry shoots me a warning as he wipes a glass with his bar towel. Politics and liquor, a flammable cocktail. He’s seen too many fires. George is scowling at me now. “You creepy little draft dodger,” he growls.
“Too old for Iraq, George, too young for Korea. I missed all the good ones.” I watch George calculating my age, see if maybe I should’ve been in Viet Nam like all the other drafted patriots, but he’s not certain enough to go for my skinny jugular. George, we all know, lost a brother those last days of the Saigon evacuation and he’s bitter, even after forty years. He’s got two American flags on little antennas off the roof of his Hummer that look like the Star Spangled Banner after 200 years of Hurricane Sandy.
I can see if I say one more wiseass thing, he’s going to waterboard me in the men’s room so I say, “George, let’s agree to disagree, okay?” I know, it’s a stupid cliché and I feel small for saying it, but George heaves himself back down at the bar and sighs. “Jeez, Jerry,” he finally says, “that Charlie Sheen is a total %!@**#.” Jerry pours him another whiskey sour, on the house, and says, “Yeah, but he’s a funny %!@**#.”