How To Live, What To Do

They have all shoehorned themselves into the system, each immersed in an ecology with clear, unspoken rules, taboos, heroes and villains. To be evicted from all that has forced me, daily, to encounter a much larger world, and to be freer than ever.

with gratitude to Linh Dinh at Postcards from the End.

Pairing me with Hung Cao, that Unzian wit was juxtaposing an abject loser who had clearly lost his way against an objectively handsome, steely eyed American hero, me, of course, who had risked everything to defend freedom, democracy and the American way. I do feel bad for the Under Secretary of the Navy. Even in a fringe website edited by some cranky Jewjab denier, he shouldn’t be subjected to this humiliation. Should I ever run into my fellow Virginian at the Eden Center, in this life or the next, I’ll buy him a few Bia 33’s to make up for this wound.

(L): Hung Cao and Donald Trump in 2024 ; (R): Brian Robertson

When mentioning my high school buddies from Thomas Jefferson High School in Northern Virginia, I left out the most illustrious, the formidable Brian Robertson. He was, by far, the smartest and most well-read kid I knew. Since I lived across the street from Brian, we spent a lot of time together. We also went to DC to hear Charlie Rouse, Wynton Marsalis, Benny Goodman, Art Pepper and the Modern Jazz Quartet, etc. We went to a Bob Dylan concert in Maryland. We spent days listening to Dylan and Thelonious Monk. We scrutinized paintings at the National Gallery, the Hirshhorn and the Corcoran.

In 1986, I even went to Florida with Brian’s family. By then, our lives had changed radically. As I got drunker and, frankly, crazier, Brian found Jesus. Even before that, he had shifted from left to right. In high school, Brian was already a great admirer of William Buckley, then he started to talk often about Malcolm Muggeridge and Hilaire Belloc. When I moved to Philadelphia, Brian gave me a National Review subscription. On a visit to Philly, Brian must have been appalled to find me sitting on top of my fridge with a girlfriend, both of us fucked up. I still don’t know why we did that. Picking me up at Union Station, Brian refused my offer of Southern Comfort in a paper bag. Since I had swigged that baby on the Amtrak, there couldn’t have been much left anyway.

When Brian told me he had joined Opus Dei, a lay order, I was sober enough to retort, “No, Brian, it’s a no-lay order.” Perhaps it was just the Southern Comfort speaking.

One of the last things Brian said to me was, “What is your relationship to God?” I probably just leered.

Linh Dinh today in Vung Tau, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 8/3/25

With our paths so divergent, we lost touch. For years, though, I did try to find out how Brian was doing, but searches for “Brian Robertson Thomas Jefferson High School” and “Brian Robertson Opus Dei” turned up nothing. Since Brian did publish a book about the harms of daycare, I tried again this morning, with phrases about that topic, so bingo! Brian C Robertson is the author of Day Care Deception: What the Child Care Establishment Isn’t Telling Us and There’s No Place Like Work: How Business, Government, and Our Obsession with Work Have Driven Parents from Home. Reading their synopses at Amazon, I find nothing to disagree with. The removal of babies and toddlers from their parents has caused tremendous societal harms. My own mother was a daycare worker. Since she could barely raise her own kids, to be blunt, she had no business taking care of anyone else’s.

At LinkedIn and elsewhere, I found out Brian has done quite a bit. He founded a literary agency, Crispin, and is Executive Director of Americans for Transparency and Accountability. Under Trump’s first term, Brian served as a Senior Policy Advisor and Speechwriter at the State Department and Department of Health and Human Services, and he was a Senior Policy Advisor in the Joint Economic Committee of the US Senate. He was also the Policy Director for Republican Sam Brownback and Republican Ed Gillespie during their Senate campaigns. Married with three children, Brian has also extricated himself from that no-lay order.

Having tracked down my high school best friend, shouldn’t I contact Brian immediately? Send him an invitation to visit me in Vietnam? Next time, I won’t be perched on any electrical appliance with anybody, I promise!

(L): Nguyễn Quí Đức an old friend who died suddenly at age 65 in 2023; (R): Phong Bui

Two weeks ago, I also rediscovered another old friend, Phong Bui. In a clownish outfit, Phong was attached to an email, with this message, “Maybe you should start dressing like your old bro to get uncanceled.” In Philly, Phong used to sleep on my floor because he didn’t have an apartment. Before Phong left for New York, his friends treated him to a dinner with belly dancers at Jimmy Tayoun’s Middle East Restaurant. (Locked up for 40 months for racketeering, Tayoun would write an excellent book on how to prepare for prison.) In New York, Phong somehow became friends with Meyer Shapiro, Willem de Kooning and so many other big shots. In a Brooklyn bar, Phong introduced me to Dan Simon, thus launching my career as an author. The longer Phong stayed in New York, the more unrecognizable he became, however, but he’d undoubtedly say the same about me, as I drifted further and further away from the American cultural scene, or just America, period. Though Phong’s Vietnamese was better than mine when we were in Philly, I seriously doubt he can manage a conversation now. In 2010, Phong did a limited edition lithograph of Obama. As with everybody else in Phong’s circle, that man is his hero.

In their own ways, Hung Cao, Brian Robertson and Phong Bui have all shoehorned themselves into the system, but who can doubt their sincerity? Each is immersed in an ecology with clear, unspoken rules, taboos, heroes and villains. Since freaks who transgress must be immediately canceled, there’s no point of me getting in touch with Brian, Phong, Hai-Dang Phan or dozens of others.

Speaking to Kevin Barrett last week, I recounted my few days in Bengaluru in 2022. Suddenly surrounded by literary friends again, I was positively giddy, I must say, but pathetically so. To be evicted from all that has forced me, daily, to encounter a much larger world, and to be freer than ever. It’s hard enough to say exactly what you think, know or mean. It’s impossible when you’re not even trying.

About Linh Dinh (@linhdinh):

‘Before being canceled, I was an anthologized poet and fairly prolific author, with my last book Postcards from the End of America. Now, I write about our increasingly sick world for a tiny audience on SubStack. Drifting overly much, I’m in Cambodia.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, I lived mostly in the US from 1975 until 2018, but have returned to Vietnam. I’ve also lived in Italy, England and Germany. I’m the author of a non-fiction book, Postcards from the End of America (2017), a novel, Love Like Hate (2010), two books of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), and six collections of poems, with a Collected Poems cancelled by Chax Press from external pressure. I’ve been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology (vol. 2) and Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, etc. I’m also editor of Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and The Deluge: New Vietnamese Poetry (2013). My writing has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic, Serbian and Finnish, and I’ve been invited to read in Tokyo, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle, Reykjavik, Toronto, Singapore and all over the US. I’ve also published widely in Vietnamese.’

AHH: Please support this wonderful writer on his Substack! Thanks

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