Profane Men Read Free Page B

war in Europe. The job he’d described was nothing if not sexy.
    I was on the way in the radio business. From a dollars standpoint I was already “making my age” in yearly wages, and I was a hot young name in the disc jockey business, an unbelievably small world where you wear your latest ratings like a billboard. I was able to “get numbers,” supposedly, which will always be enough to keep a guy in beer and beans. I had a skate. The idea of giving that up for years of stupid Army life, years wasted in some do-nothing infantry shuck, marching around like an idiot for eighty, ninety bucks a month. I couldn’t believe it.
    The only thing that stopped me from running to Canada was I loved my country. Where else but America, bastion of the free-enterprise system, could a skater like me glide through life so pleasantly? No. I was, in my own self-aggrandizing, chickenshit way, something of a modest patriot. I believed that if your country called you, you should serve. But not in some mindless, chump job. I was too good for that shit. I would “get into intelligence,” I decided. (Sigh.)
    Within the week I was lodged in a nearby motel in suburban D.C., with an appointment to talk with “Mitchell Stevens” of agency recruitment. I was relaxed. Assured. For the first time in weeks I had some realistic goal that I could live with. Intelligence.
    The heady rush of that first visit to the huge intelligence monolith. A secretary coming up and — I remember it as if it was yesterday — pinning a laminated Visitor’s ID to my new olive-green summer suit. Being shown into the sanctum sanctorum of my first contact inside the Agency. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and all those fantasies.
    Mitchell Stevens was occupied elsewhere. I drew a steely-eyed no-nonsense type wearing a tweed jacket and an old school tie, who introduced himself as Mr. Thomas and began asking me what seemed like thousands of questions about myself. Since I love to talk about myself, and with my condescending attitude about offering my unique gifts to the agency, I replied with smooth confidence. He didn’t seem to be that impressed.
    Mr. Thomas kept hammering on why —
why
I was suddenly so interested in joining the ranks of the intelligence elite. I wisely opted for a scenario close to the truth. I was sure to be drafted “any day now” and I’d been putting off a permanent career choice until now. But I no longer had the option of time. I wanted the coming years of service to count for something, rather than be wasted in a “lesser” situation. He kept on it.
    He wanted to know all about where I stood with respect to my military service, my philosophy on the war. All kinds of irrelevant stuff like a deep discussion of my years in high school R.O.T.C. An introduction to the military that was at best undistinguished — I’d been a squad leader. Then something in my records caught his eye and the interview took an upturn.
    My senior speech teacher, my favorite high school teacher whom I also had a crush on, had convinced me to enter the national contest sponsored by the American Legion, in which high school students gave extemporaneous speeches on any aspect of the Constitution of the United States. It is a difficult contest, because you must create and memorize speeches that relate to dozens of possible subjects. As always I found it to be a skate and won easily. Mr. Thomas asked me all about my participation in that event as if it had happened last week. His eyes took on a strange glow as we discussed the beautiful complexity of the Constitution.
    When I saw my opening, I played to it. I explained that I was not one of those who found the agency’s image a romantic one (a lie) or that I saw it as easy money (the truth), and was already working in the so-called glamour industries of ancillary show biz for more dough than the GS — whatever starting salary would pay me — but