Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

—Jimmy Webb

Dan decided to bake a cake.

Dan hadn't baked a cake since he and Denise tied the knot 33 years ago when Dan was 19 and wanted to evade the draft. Denise was a year older. He had asked her to his junior and senior proms, but she turned him down on both occasions because she decided to become a nun after going to an early anti-war rally with Dan, led by one of the Berrigan brothers. At the time Dan was 16. He had been hawkish until then because his favorite cousin, Tony Talio, was in Vietnam receiving decorations for bravery and valor in combat. But just a week before his tour ended, Tony was killed in action.

Now Dan was worried about his country calling on him to fight the Taliban or other evil terrorists and guerrillas as amorphous as the Vietcong were.

"I hope they don't try to draft me again."

Denise laughed. "Don't be crazy, honey. You're in AARP now."

"I'm looking forward to being published in My Generation."

"They're not going to like your unreconstructed paranoia anyway."

"The Pentagon or AARP?"

Denise just laughed.

"Dissidence isn't paranoia," said Dan.

Denise tweaked his beard. "When are you going to shave again?" she asked.

"There might be a loophole. If I could get you pregnant again."

"Oh, Dan, that would be lovely!" said Denise.

Dan and Denise had just one daughter, Mary. At 33, Mary was an activist Jesuit nun in Guatemala. Mary grew up guilty hearing her Mom and Dad's '60s love-war story replayed.

"So if it wasn't for daddy about to be drafted and going to Vietnam, you would have become a nun and I would never have been born??"

"That's right, honey!" said Denise.

Dan had a vasectomy right after Mary was born.

Denise was still waiting for menopause. Early in the marriage they both completely (or conveniently) forgot about Dan's vasectomy. They were convinced it was God's will they had no more children and didn't have to worry about watching the calendar. Denise was a radical and devout Catholic.

"God must be anti-war too," Denise said to him one out-of-rhythm night after intercourse.

"Sometimes there's cause for war. Not every war is unjust," Dan countered.

"But who's really ever to know whose side is right and whose is wrong? I mean, the enemy thinks our side is just as terrible and evil or more as we think they're evil and terrible."

"That's true. War is certainly always a big moral puzzle and paradox for both sides. But I can't be a total pacifist like you . . ."

Dan smiled at her, arching his eyebrows. "I'll shave right after I finish baking this cake."

"Should I play MacArthur Park?" asked Denise.

"I haven't heard that song in fucking 29 years!"

"Why do you have to talk like an ex-Marine?"

"Because, as you know, I did my best and finest work to dodge the draft and not go to 'Nam."

Denise grinned at her adolescent middle-aged husband, shaking her head. "He'll certainly never write for Modern Maturity!" she thought to herself.

"And like your pal Rush Limbaugh you didn't vote for Clinton because of it," she said. The hypocrisy.

Dan had never voted again after the Black Panther Party folded, until he voted for Ralph Nader and the Greens in 2000. Denise, in contrast, was a committed Democrat, even a white Blue Dog on occasion.

"That's not why I didn't vote for Bubba like Limboob."

"Oh right. You would never lie about inhaling pot just to get to be president."

"Damn straight. Clinton proved he has no principles right off the bat there."

"Adolf Hitler had principles."

"So. If I were forced to vote for somebody, I'd vote for Hitler over a sleazy prevaricator too."

"How delightful."

Dan dropped the Duncan-Hines cake mix box all over the kitchen floor. "Jesus Christ! Did you see that?"

"Yeah. It just kind of leaped out of your hands. I'll go get the vacuum."

Dan bent down to pick up the box. Rising, he looked around. "I bet Bubba has us bugged and Rosie O'Donnell is listening to everything we say in here."

"Oh, Dan. Don't start that again. Clinton isn't president anymore and Rosie O'Donnell doesn't steal your jokes."

"I never said she did. They're out of her bush league, way too intellectual and deep. But she's a whacko."

"I think you're a whacko."

"Say what you want, Denise. It's a conspiracy and it's REAL."

They heard behind them a deep nondescript otherworldly voice of neither male nor female character.

"Peace on earth and goodwill . . ."

Copyright © 2001 Art Kasmz. All Rights Reserved.