A tattoo of a flower on her left hip and a brother who was a draft dodger.

We sat staring blankly at the TV. “I saw where there might be an amnesty,” I said.  “With Nixon in there?” Kat said. “Maybe Nixon’ll get impeached,” I said.

VIETNAM VETS BY STEVEN MCBREARTY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 22

Steadfastly, valiantly, heroically, I believed, I manned a stripped-down, gun-metal gray battleship of a work desk in a windowless back room of the Registrar’s Office at the University of Texas, a room filled with filing cabinets and piles of printouts and mature married women who clucked and cooed over me as if I were their grown child, their own little darling office worker. They sheltered me, they nurtured me, they mother-henned me into head-shaking bouts of embarrassed laughter. I confess that I rather enjoyed this special treatment, savoring the attention, relishing the embarrassment, while presenting myself as that rare representative of the younger generation who could be both talented and non-threatening. I wasn’t just about free love or protests—though protest …