R and R in Hong Kong

Yesterday, in desperate need of a lead-in to the monologue, I picked on an innocent nameless Romanian housewife attending to her morning job of doing tidy-up to the pavement. 

 By lascivious allusion, I created an imaginary cuckolding tryst of her with Bela Lugosi; and then exercising the impunity of literary license, I transformed her into a naked cleaning woman in an Italian whorehouse wearing naught but a pair of lime-green panties.

My sincere regrets to this lady wherever she is this morning; and whosoever’s bed she occupied last night. I hope it was good for her, too.  The morning hose job, that is.

And as long as I am in ash cloth and sashes, I feel a need to make groveling atonement for my rather crude disclosure of Reagan’s speech to the VFW Convention in 1980 (Viet Nam Syndrome).

He was, after all, only following the characteristic ploy of disinformation by the artful use of distraction--through half-truth: a time-honored tradition of his party since Hubert Heever’s day.

How can you disparage a person for doing the political doo of natural inclination?

So, to all Republicans, dead, living or near death: I apologize.  Make that a profuse apology. 

I wouldn’t want any of you to think I was insincere.

Well!  I feel much better now.  How was it for you, my dears?  May I light your cigarette?  Get you an aperitif?  Wash your feet?  Only tell what I can do for making you mentally traipse through the fecund wasteland of my imagination.

I’ll do anything…except yard work.  Allergy to intense physical labor, you know.  Under doctor’s care for a remedy.  Have you met Dr. Scholl’s?  Lovely man, despite of his foot fetish.

Moving on:

“I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy.  It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.”

-Margaret Atwood-

   

Frosty and I strolled out of the President Emeritus and miraculously came across a bar in Hong Kong.

This one had free-flowing drinks at a discount and a lot of Chinamans’ daughters for lease or rent.  We sat down and began our five day lavation of the place from whence we came.

Soon after our first round was set in front of us, two girls arrived and seated themselves at our table…without an invitation or anything.  We looked at them; then we looked at each other and broke into a fit of laughter.  We were happy.

This, we thought, was going to be good.

Before we could enter negotiations, the bar’s Madam sat down, also without leave to do so.  She was Eartha Kitt gone oriental; of indeterminate age, obviously too old to be anyone but in charge here.

She said, “Are you looking for companionship?”  I thought, ‘No. We’re looking to get laid often and well’, keeping my wiseass retort to myself. 

We smiled.  She smiled back.  The deal was made, the particulars of price and protocol escaping me now.  Frosty landed on one and I the other, like two boys out test driving used cars. 

Used.  I felt a forbidden thrill at being customer number 2879; I don’t know why.

We drank enough of I-don’t-remember-what to adequately lubricate our joints and our loins.  We took our used cars back to the hotel and bid each other goodnight.  We were anxious to begin our test drives.

I can’t remember how Frosty made out that first night, but it became apparent from the get-go that I was driving a lemon.  She was talkative in the way that women are when they would prefer to avoid coitus.  When we finally got down to it, she was listless, she was languid, and she was a disappointment that cost me $30.

The next morning, I paid her and bid her scram.  Frosty and I went to a men’s only breakfast and tooled around, took naps and generally waited for nightfall.

Following one of the best steak dinners of my entire life, we went back to the same bar.  The girls were both there, but I wasn’t having any more of mine, literally or figuratively.

As we sat there, a girl came into the bar and went straight to the jukebox.  She leaned forward with her slender arms bracing herself on the machine, and began moving to the music and her unseen muse.  I was attracted.  I was wanting a test drive without putting up the top.  It was a real now-now-now-I’m-ready kind of sensation.  She was from my perspective a cut way above the attendant does.  She was…so beautiful.

I beckoned to Madam Eartha to come over.  She sat to hear me tell her of my dissatisfaction with girl number first night, and nodded towards what I hoped would be girl number next.  She went to the jukebox and whispered in the girl’s ear over the boisterous noise of rock and roll.

Madam brought the girl back to our table, said something in Cantonese (It had to be Cantonese. We were in Hong Kong, right?) To the reject.  She got up and left without a look back or a word; and Christina took her place.

Her name was Christina Kwan; and her Chinese name was Kwan Foo Mong.  I was to learn this intimacy later; for now, she was simply…Christina.

We began with her protestation over me switching used cars like I did.  She told me this was bad form and would create a problem between her and the deal’s cancelled date.  The girls expected to remain with the man for his entire stay in Hong Kong.  Doing a switch like this made her ‘werwee ahncomfulable’.

I dismissed her misgivings with an airy I-don’t-give-a-shit; and by the second round of drinks, the awkwardness had vanished.

Frosty departed for the hotel with a girl.  I didn’t notice if it was the one from last night or not; and I gave a rat’s ass either way.  He and I were to keep loose contact for the remainder of our stay; but from this moment on, I was with Christina.

She was bratty and haughty.  She was sultry and sensuous.  She was mine.  I never actually thought of her as a sex-object plaything.  That is because, without having once yet dipped my wick in her bowl of universe, I was in love.

We left and she steered me to an upstairs apartment.  I began to learn that everything except the bars were upstairs in Hong Kong.

We had a delightful second of fumbling, she showing me how to pull the ties of her pink panties loose at the hips.  After that, I swelled beyond the swelling of all that long nine months of loneliness;  and took her with a wild abandon that has never left me.  Not ever; not even now in my silver-haired old age.

As I write this, that tiny upstairs apartment is once again home and the lithe diminutive pale skinned warmth of black haired Christina lies exhausted and joined to my side.  I wanted that intimate universe to be for always.  I still do, whenever the wind blows from the west.

In the morning, she demanded, “Give me ahhrr yor’ money.” The lips of the hotel manager nothing but a silent movement, I at once handed my money over, but judiciously held back Dad’s $400. That wasn’t mine to give, I silently reasoned.

Into the daytime of this last of Her Majesty's Crown Colonies we ventured.  I quickly saw what Madam Eartha had meant by ‘companion’.  Christina as my sole guide, we ate in (upstairs) restaurants with no sign hanging to alert the hungry. 

We toured.

The Peak, Tiger Balm Gardens, Ferry to Hong Kong Island; Gawd! It past before me in a dazzling flash of sights and images unimaginable. 

One evening, she led me down to the water, to a tiny sampan steered by a lone old woman. 

Between working the single rear-facing oar from a raised dais, she served our dinner as we watched the skyline and spoke in the diminished tones of lovers everywhere.  

At one point, a large three-masted junk glided near silent between our sampan and the wall of lights across the bay.  For a brief moment, its black silhouette with all those millions of colored lights as background burned a wonderful vision into my brain; a postcard from wish-you-were-here.

On the last day, after another delectable meal of unknown substance, I told Christina that I was going to the Duty Free exchange.  She looked at me with puzzlement. She had all the money, did she not?  No, I finally revealed my cache of $400.  She immediately demanded that I give it to her.  When I refused, she turned and began to walk away.

I knew she wouldn’t really leave me on the sidewalk, nevertheless, holding to my guns came as a dreadful test of my will; rather, my weakness to refuse her anything.

I began walking in the opposite direction.  Seeing my resolve, she came back and walked in silence, no doubt brooding about the cash that got away.

The China exchange contained more items for sale than Gimbals.  With the express deliberation of the prepared, I selected the stereo system—tuner/amplifier, turntable, tape deck and speakers in about ten minutes.

It was made so easy: purchase completed, the components were crated in wood, wheeled around the corner to the U.S. Post office, Customs forms filled and stevedores tipped; it was already on its way back to my parent’s house in Rockville.  From selection to out the door had not consumed forty minutes.

Christina left to go do whatever she did out of my sight.  Agreeing to a rendezvous at the bar, she went, probably disgusted at the spectacle of me spending what she saw as her money.  Women!  I could probably write more than a few monographs on my lifelong feud with women over money.

Shit.

Astonished that I still had over $150 left, I decided to buy some clothes and a watch.  To the in-house tailor’s shop, seated on a sofa with a proffered drink in hand, the two Chinese guys brought forth bolt after bolt of material.  I chose two pairs of slacks, a pair of shoes and a pink Tom Jones big-blousy-sleeved shirt in pima cotton.  While I waited the hour it would take to run up all these custom-fitted threads, I progressed to the watch store.

That took up the entire hour’s wait.  Not hundreds but thousands of watches were on display.  After anguishing deliberation, I picked a Tag Heuer with more dials than a submarine’s com.  Beautiful!

Resplendent in my new duds, I arrived at the bar, to be hustled back to Christina’s apartment for a home cooked meal of duck eggs stir fried in a well-used wok. 

It was cozy, Frosty, the two girls and smitten me. 

Frosty took his girl back to the hotel; Christina and I lingered there until dawn.  As the hourglass ran out of sand, I wept and declared that I would be back, no matter what.  She teared up and choked, “This is werry strange”.  And it was over.

We boarded the aircraft, everyone on the plane done in.  The only on-board entertainment was a large black guy who called himself the Big Apple and spoke in the third person. “Way dey duh Big Apple’s seat?  Way dey duh Big Apple gon’ sit?”

He finally found the last open seat on the aircraft and wedged himself in.  The Special Forces guy was across from us again, placidly reading his paperback.

After five days of eating Chinese food with zero nutritional value, I was so weak I couldn’t lift the forkful of scrambled eggs to my mouth and save my life.  Pathetic: that was what I was at that parting moment; and that was what I would remain for all the time left to me.

The bus rumbled away from our barracks leaving us in the dust and heat of Viet Nam again.  Frosty let out a bark of laughter at the irony of what we had just been through.

I didn’t laugh. 

I was still back in Hong Kong…with her.  I remained in a stricken despair for the last sixty days in-country; and in a profound way, I am still there on the Kowloon side, sick with longing for someone and something that could never be.

I would show you all the picture I carry with me of Kwan Foo Mong; and tell you that this is the woman of all my dreams; but you cannot see what lies buried inside a broken heart.                                          

Rest and Recreation (R&R)

“For too long, we have lived with the ‘Vietnam Syndrome.’ Much of that syndrome has been created by the North Vietnamese aggressors who now threaten the peaceful people of Thailand. Over and over they told us for nearly 10 years that we were the aggressors bent on imperialistic conquests. They had a plan. It was to win in the field of propaganda here in America what they could not win on the field of battle in Vietnam. As the years dragged on, we were told that peace would come if we would simply stop interfering and go home. It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause. A small country newly free from colonial rule sought our help in establishing self-rule and the means of self-defense against a totalitarian neighbor bent on conquest. We dishonor the memory of 50,000 young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt as if we were doing something shameful, and we have been shabby in our treatment of those who returned. They fought as well and as bravely as any Americans have ever fought in any war. They deserve our gratitude, our respect, and our continuing concern. There is a lesson for all of us in Vietnam. If we are forced to fight, we must have the means and the determination to prevail or we will not have what it takes to secure the peace. And while we are at it, let us tell those who fought in that war that we will never again ask young men to fight and possibly die in a war our government is afraid to let them win.”

-Ronald Reagan, addressing the VFW Convention, August 18, 1980-

I shamelessly made emphasis with the italics.  Please allow me to provide you with an executive summary of this ignominy:

The goddamn Commie weasels poisoned the minds of the American people, which caused us to lose heart and eventually the War.  But don’ warry!  We will never ever repeat the mistake of Viet Nam.

Well, AH bleveit; howbout YEW?  Yew bleve yore Presidents when they talk at yew thisaway? Ah doo. I do-I do-I do believe!

I do believe I’ll get the hell on with my monologue.

Kali is the most affectionate of my three cats.  Indeed, she is the most demonstrative of any feline in a long history of cats.  Straddling a thigh with her hinny, legs over a saddle, she clings to my shirtfront while I administer the scritchiest scritch to head, neck and backbone.

When I pause to try and type around her, she ever-so-slightly digs her foreclaws into my skin, to advise me that she hasn’t had enough scritch yet.

All the while (Since I can’t work with this furry calico chest-stole attached to my torso), I study my desktop National Geographic photo for the day.  It depicts a small town in Transylvania; central focus is a housewife hosing off her front pavement, babushka-wrapped head—a study in attention to chore-at-hand.

She is wearing a lovely green apron, which looks to have been cut from her parlor drapery—possibly a leftover thatch (Where could I acquire such a precious?)

She has a strong Slavic face (In ourwah own South, we call this havin’ good bone stwuckcha).  Her thick dark hair is peeking coquettishly from the head scarf.  She is middle-aged and has gone to Winter Flab. 

Naturally, no ardent vampire would use such an awful term.  He would, instead, running his hands through the Vaseline on his hair to caress her tresses, murmur sweetly in her tiny ear of her voluptuous woman’s body, while moving to round her quivering nethers with his oily hands.

She is fiction come to life.  She is Yossarian’s passion.

Heller’s protagonist Yossarian, in Catch 22, brought his entire considerable ardor to bear on the cleaning woman in the squadron’s favorite whorehouse.  She mopped and cleaned wearing only a generous pair of lime-green panties. 

Spurring all offers from the prostitutes, he would demand only her.  The image of her rolling those lime-green panties down off her big hips and fat thighs is a treasured literary moment in yet another great novel dedicated to hypocrisy and farce.

Now begins Part I of a helluva farce of a blonde headed yeoman’s tale:

As the ninth month in-country rolled on, I was trying very hard not to think of lime-green panties or any other spur to my horniness.  Alas, I failed every damn day.  Not thinking of sex when the testosterone is overflowing is a bit like hearing a suggestion to not think of monkeys.

My need for…monkeys…was misery incarnate.  

There were not enough chemicals within my grasp to anesthetize the monkeys that swung and chattered around my youthful brain.  In desperation, I decided, finally, to drop that tab of Purple Haze that Delancey had mailed me months earlier.  On my next day off, I went to my clothes pantry and rummaged for that tiny triangle of sponge holding that hit of acid.

Shit!  Shit-shit-shit-shit!!!  The sponge was there, but the pill was gone.  In and around the pantry were abnormally high concentrations of rat shit.  I hope the stinking vermin got off before overdosing. 

It was in one of these moods of emasculation that Frosty began his campaign to persuade me to take R and R.  I saw later that he would not go unless he had someone with him—specifically me.

It took him days, weeks to get through to me.  It was five days out of here, it was free, and it was going to be…fun!  I remained stubbornly unconvinced.  I had already launched into a lifetime of denying myself the pleasure and relief of vacations.

Only with the persistence of my parents, and later my wives could I be dragged away from whatever excuse I deemed reasonable for my reticence.  I’m still doing it now, with retirement and all the time available: can’t leave the dogs, the cats, and the blog. I can’t afford it.  Too hot, too wet, too cold, too seasonal; it just goes on and on.

The corrosive fearful thread within that kept me in this condition from Da Nang to the present day is a deep-seated conviction that I do not deserve it.  Boy!  If you think chemical addictions and bad habits are a bitch to evict, take a good look at the lifetime habit of denying oneself pleasure, fun and affirmation.

Back to Viet Nam and Frosty’s continually jerking my chain.  I finally conceded, not for my sake, but for the altruistic bullshit that I was doing it for him.  Interestingly, I had to bring my parents in on this.  I let them know I would be in one of the shopping capitols of Asia; what would they like me to get for them?

We mulled over our selections of where to go.  Many married guys automatically chose Hawaii in order to spend time with their wives and family.  The other locations were too distant from mainland America for them to consider: Sydney, Tokyo, Singapore, Manila, Bangkok and Hong Kong.

In the end, we picked Hong Kong.  We trotted down to personnel and filled out our chits for two weeks hence.  

Dad sent me $400 to purchase a top-line stereo system. $400 in tax-free-duty-free-postage-free Hong Kong would go far to buying something with a lot of juice to it.

It’s a mystery to me even now, but at the time, I didn’t think about touring, wild sex or other debauchery; all I could think about was getting that system for my Dad.  Oh, and giving my buddy a travelling companion.  Dipshit to the core!

The big day came; we struggled into our Donald Duck whites and stepped aboard the bus to Freedom Hill.  The road skirted the far side of Da Nang airbase and was an area foreign to my extensive explorations.

One section of road passed between the airbase and a Class C village the Marines had named Dogpatch.  To my way of thinking, all gook villages were Dogpatch.  This one was harmless enough by day; at night, many rocket attacks came from there, raining down on the adjacent Marine camp.  The explosions could be heard over on our far side of the harbor.  Most of the time the rockets didn’t hit a hooch. Sometimes they did…

We rocked along with no time for Dogpatch, gooks or five days from now.  Our heads were already in Hong Kong.  We cleared the Hill and took a second bus ride down to the waiting Braniff 707.  No mickey-mouse hitchhike in some military transport!  We were going in style! 

Settling in and clicking seat belts, I looked across the aisle and saw a Special Forces guy reading a paperback.  I didn’t bring any books with me.  I couldn’t force-feed a reading just then; so why was he thus engaged?  I looked at his fruit salad: top of a full three inches of ribbons was a Silver Star.  This was not his first tour and this was not his first R and R.  I left him to his read.

Hong Kong International Airport has its runway jutting out into the water.  Our approach took us around the surrounding peaks and brought us in with the ass-end of the aircraft scraping the jutting part; at least that was how it felt.

As we taxied to the terminal, we caught sight of a Pan American 747 on its maiden flight around the globe.  None of us had ever seen anything this huge in a civilian jet.  It was very impressive.  When this same Jet Clipper was hijacked in September, the sight of it blowing up on a Cairo airstrip must have been pretty impressive too. 

Back then, hijacking an airliner was easier that stealing a car.  

Nowadays, thanks to the terrorist pricks that brought hijacking into vogue, grandmas and babies get strip-searched looking for a C-4 pack wedged up their toots.

Shit.

Last hurdle: Customs.  We were warned that possession in the Crown Colony would be met with…harsh penalties…harsh.  Frosty and I had reamed our gear and clothing back at Tien Sha, taking serious heed of this warning.  We didn’t want to get collared with a seed in our skivvies or something.  Luckily, we had no concerns about hidden roaches.  We had no roaches in Viet Nam.  If we didn’t smoke it down to a finger-scorching nub, then we just flicked it over the side.  More plentiful than cigarettes; cheaper too.

Each disembarked tourist grunt was confronted with his personal Hong Kong policeman.  My Chinese host scrutinized my military I.D., looked into my face, looked down at the card again; then leaned across the counter and squinted close to my face.

“You have…marijuana?!” said in a Chinese-inflected English.  My eyes widened as I shook my head a vigorous negative.  “Enjoy youself here, don’t try to buy drugs!!”  Another round of negative-affirmative head wagging, and I was through Customs.

Frosty and I were taken by motor coach to our hotel on the Kowloon side, the President Emeritus Blop-Blop-whatever.  Before being shown up to our rooms, the ten or so of us brought to this location were gathered in a semi-circle and addressed by a large Chinese gentleman I took for the manager:

“We want you to have a good time here and we are sure you will.  Now, please (small laugh) don’t give your room key to your young lady and do not let her hold onto your money” said with an inscrutable smile and slight bob of respect.  He didn’t say, ‘Don’t bring your whores in my hotel!’ or any such thing.

Frosty and I went to our rooms, changed into civvies and set off for drinks and a look about.

There was a Great Adventure afoot; and before it was all over, this R and R would cost me in more ways than one.  I had no idea…how much.

The End of the Boathouse Pirates

Stick is nibbling her Kibble snack here by my side on the living room couch.

I have taken a geographic cure from the office to my new workspace in the living room—the coffee table for the machinery; the big leather sofa for my tushy. Now I have light! More cubits of air to pollute!  The Dorks in happy communion with Daddy!

The office is a comfortable niche.  It is also a cave. 

As I write, the stories and memories coming to the fore, the fear and desolation are leaving me.  I am finally emerging from the forty-two year isolation of my Allegorical Cave.

Time to leave both caves behind, the physical and the spiritual.  The sticking points of past experience each come to attention before my mind’s eye.  They solemnly salute and request to take their leave from their duty station.  I forgive each and every one of them, grant them leave and blessings.  They go below and change to their civvies, happy to be free--as I am to see them go.

I remind them, in passing, that should I wish to re-visit them, I need only click on my monographs to see them afresh.  They are no longer beneath my consciousness: grease stains, cum spots and blood marks on the Blanc Plumage of my soul.  We are free at last. Free to amble forward into an uncertain future, secure in the certainty of this moment.  This newly awakened present of infinite possibilities.

Oye!!  Wake up, you somnolent bored readers out there! The morning gush of exuberant crap is over!  I still gotta lotta Crapoola to unload on y’all; so listen up, forcrissakes!  I’m kicking Ed and Holden outta the rack, to turn to and go back to work here!

The days in-country dragged by, with no change of weather; and no relief from deadly ennui.  The sight of Freedom Hill was yet too far in the distance.  To even think of my Freedom Flight only increased the burden of waiting for it.

One by one, my buddies donned their Donald Duck whites and climbed aboard the bus that was their first leg back to the world; and away from all…this.  Delancey went donkey’s years ago; next was Oertling, then Earl the Pearl.  Franklin got moved to another division and Lebreaux—Scott had him reassigned to Dong Ha--for his stubborn refusal to shut up about the war and other ‘hippie things’.

If nothing else, lifers were a vindictive lot.

For those of you with a recollection of Apocalypse Now, the scene at the Do Long Bridge could have been filmed at Dong Ha.  Every fricking night there were rocket attacks and ground assaults.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Dong Ha was the war that nobody wanted; certainly not gentle pacifist Lebreaux and most assuredly not the blonde headed yeoman from San Antonio, Texas.  I kept my head down and my mouth shut…I would have prayed if I could have figured out how.

With Lebreaux’s reassignment, the Boathouse Pirates were no more. I was as lonely as that first miserable sweat-drenched moment, standing outside the Tien Sha Barracks about a million years ago.

Increasingly, I had nothing to do.  The radio net would go silent for days on end.  The skimmer taxi service ground to a halt.  Calls from China Beach stopped because HQ was preoccupied with matters far more pressing than arranging a pleasant means of transport for chaplains, ship’s pilots and the like.

Errands for supplies to China Beach petered out, as the reduced manpower was making fewer and fewer demands.

With all my friends gone home, I began taking the cattle car at workday’s end back down to Tien Sha; eating hot chow for a change; and sleeping in my own bunk.  The hooch had lost its charming appeal, now that the Season of Drunk and Disorderly was no more.

I think what I missed most were those interludes when, in an advanced state of tipsy silliness, I would do homage to Lenny Bruce and slip into an outrageous character from a closetful of creative mayhem.

The outstanding favorite of the gathering was Art Malone, BM-1, 29 years in the fuckin’ Navy!!  The guys would lure him out of me by calling to him, “Art? You in there tonight, you old fart?”

Art came out with a signature violent finger jabbing at his (my) left sleeve, “See them hash marks, Mother Fuckers?! 29 years in the Fuckin’ Navy!”  

The hilarity would escalate as the guys would ask various questions of Art.  One night, while everyone else was catching their breath, Ray quietly said,  “Art………are you a head?” “Ahead o’ WHO?” Art roared back in his whiskey-rough Boston brogue.  Everyone, including me fell on the floor in convulsions.  Sometimes, the characters surprised even their source.

Well, one of the saving factors of moving back to the barracks was being in daily contact with Ray and Don; joined at this time by Frosty.  Frosty was, at the end, the best friend I had in Viet Nam; the very best. He saved my life—at a moment when my life needed saving.  That story for another day…

Ray approached me on a mutual day off (I now took my tenth day off with regularity) and invited me to join them for a visit to some civilian guys on their own boat anchored in the harbor.

Never one to slough an opportunity for a bit of foolishment, I grabbed my cover and we were off.  We went straight to Security Division where Ray and Don blithely took a skimmer and headed out.  By this stage of the war, requisition chits were exposed as the laughable jokes they had always been.  Nobody asked, nobody challenged, nobody cared and nobody made themselves a tattle-tale.

Besides, who was there to say my buds weren’t actually on duty?  Noooobody.

As we approached the boat, my jaw dropped.  It was a two-masted schooner, about 50 feet long.  Climbing aboard to the cheerful welcome of the occupants, we looked around and died a little with envy.

It was solid teakwood and brass fittings; with a spacious cabin adequate to accommodate all seven of us.

(I have attached the above photo of a craft very similar to the one described herein)

They offered us bourbon which we eagerly took off their hands.  We brought out our dope, which, for safety’s sake, they were reluctant to keep on board.

Ray and Don made their initial acquaintance in the course of a protocol stand and board search, a common security occurrence.  Others might come aboard with less than the cavalier attitude of stoners.

We sat and drank and smoked.  The three men were Americans who simply described themselves as ‘contractors’ they were wearing the camos of the Tiger Division; the absolute coolest garb in-country.  I had never seen them on anyone but the Korean Marines.

To complement their classy clothes, the walls were adorned with their classy weapons, slung on hooks between cabinets and ports.  No standard military issue, there were a variety of sub-machine guns: Schweitzer Machine Pistols, Mauser MP-57’s—I wondered where they could have acquired them; but I didn’t ask.  Some questions would naturally violate the universal code of talking of jobs handled in-country.  The taboo was not limited to us military scuts, naturally. 

I had seen similar ‘civilians’ sauntering through the China Beach area, with the metal stocks folded or collapsed and their sub-machine guns slung crossways and nestled in the small of their backs. 

How cool was that?

Struck like a country boy at the county seat on a Saturday, my wonderment never got around to the question of why the fuck they would be over here...of their own accord?  The easy answer was the money.  People were making fortunes in brief spurts of time and getting out with it.  Better than an undetected bank job, the money and all.

The other reality was that they were living The Great Adventure; not the same as that ‘Adventure’ imagined by assholes like Jurgensen and Hanover.  No, these guys were doing the real deal. The real McCoy of an experience for a lifetime.

We inquired politely of our guests what was up?  They had apparently just concluded their ‘contract’ and were weighing anchor in the next few days.  Where to, we politely asked? They had no idea--or weren’t in the mood for disclosure to four unknown sailors.

I chose to believe that they really had not made up their minds on their next port of call (Que romantico! Port of Call! Aye que sabor!) They had a few choices that encompassed half the planet; from Bombay to Vladivostok.  They had the boat, the stash and the freedom of choice.

We took our leave and wished them well.  I left with a sad pang of heart.  I wished I was going with them, like Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate , salt spray in the face standing the helm, riding before the wind.

But I was honor bound to duty. 

On the night of the day I received my orders for Viet Nam, I sat in a Navy Laundromat and seriously contemplated getting on a Greyhound bus to Vancouver.  The burned bridge aspect frightened me; but in the end, it came down to honor.  I could not disgrace myself thus; nor could I bring that disgrace down upon my family, my friends, my country.

I have reflected on these two roads-not-taken and have decided that I’m just a goddamned coward when it comes to a Great Adventure.  What amazing travels I have experienced in my life, I owe to my ex-wives and Frosty McCleod.  Without their urging and persistence, I would have clung to whatever cave I happened to find myself in at the time.

At least I have my fond memories of the places we went. 

I think mebeee it’s close to talking about Hong Kong.  That may have to be a two-reeler!