Floating across Market Street I saw a skinny hooker stumbling up the sidewalk. Her blonde wig had slipped sideways showing the stubble of her shaved head, her arm was possessively wrapped around a drunk business guy sporting a goatee and a badly rumpled suit. Watching them, I knew I was home. Like Tom Joad said, “Wherever there’s a young girl selling herself to a fat old man, wherever there’s a bad drug deal going down twisted look for me and I’ll be there.”
I found us a room at a flophouse on O’Farrell, across the street from the Barbary Coast and several other strip clubs. If you were in town on shore leave and wanted to see some tits, O’Farrell was your street. Unlike in LA where strip clubs dot the map and piss off the neighborhood improvement folks, up here they concentrate them all on one strip and turn it into a tourist destination. The night manager was a pimply kid with the bone thin body of a long time friend of Sister Morphine. He barely glanced up when I carried the sleeping Cass into the elevator. I tried to wake her in the car but she was out cold, in the small room I put her into the bed. I knew I should sleep but my heart was still hammering away from the speed. Objects in the room seemed to glow with their own interior light source. Through the cheap woven curtains the neon called to me with its candy land colors and its promise of a good time. Oh yeah, this was a town that would love you long time G.I.
Ten minutes later I was seated in the Barbary Coast, slamming down shots of Jack with a beer back. It was bigger, older, and classier looking than Uncle Manny’s club but the game was just the same. A tall Black girl was strutting her rather wonderful stuff on a large stage. She pressed her breasts together creating a soft brown valley of cleavage. Legs spread, ass stuck out, hips rocking to the beat, she sucked on her finger in mime fellatio. She used her moist fingertip to stiffen her half dollar sized nipples. A brass rail surrounded the footlights at the base of the stage, where businessmen sat waving dollars, hoping to get an up close and personal look at her titties. Change the location, change the player, the moves remain the same.
I sat at the bar, next to an old fisherman and a fat cat who was being hustled by a redhead in a short neon blue lycra dress that might as well have been spray painted onto her plump frame. As the room swam around me, I told myself I was looking for traces of Kelly, the truth was…when I was lost, I returned to what I knew, or some psych bullshit like that. Maybe the speed and booze and death had made me horny, who the fuck knows how this fucked up brain worked, not me that’s for damn sure…. A skinny Asian gal swirled out of the haze, her small naturally proportioned breasts were a real turn on in this sea of monster ta-tas. She aimed toward me, dancing up swaying her hips. From a distance she looked like a lithe wood nymph, all legs and arms and the promise of unbridled sensuality, just the ticket for these weary bones. But the closer she got the younger she got, a baby at best, but her eyes were old and cold. She was the walking wounded, one more victim of the life. Sliding up, she latched herself onto my thigh. “Want a nasty, grab-your-cock-suck-on-my-tits lap dance? Come on, big guy?” Behind her smile lurked those dead eyes. “Don’t worry ‘bout the bouncer,” she leaned in whispering into my ear, I could smell cheap perfume. “I know a dark corner in the lap room, I will rock you so hard, baby, I really want to make you come. I want to feel your cock in my hand, between my legs. Come on, baby.” Her tongue licked my ear to show she really meant it, I guess. I decided this was one lonely ride I didn’t need to take. Handing her a twenty I walked out.
I could feel the speed crashing out of my system as I stumbled across the boulevard. I made it to the room before I puked into the toilet, I washed my face and fell into the bed beside Cass. She stirred once then went back to softly snoring. With neon lights blinking on the ceiling I drifted in the deep warm blackness of sleep.
Tijuana is baked hot, close buildings in the centro district make the air pungent with the stink of humanity. Cheap bars and strip clubs line Avenue of the Heroes. After the Root I spent my leave time down here, drinking and fucking and trying to find that blissful play of pure numb. Now it all feels different, gaudy and tarnished. A long snaking line of marines stretches down the street. Some of the soldiers are in their dress whites, others wear sweat stained flack jackets and soiled olive drabs. Many have rifles strapped over their shoulders. Every few minutes the line shuffles forward a few feet, then stands waiting, bored. I move down the line, studying the faces, looking for anyone I might know.
Sergeant Tibs, a jolly Black Marine from the Root, is standing in the middle of a busy intersection. MP’s block the taxis from crossing. Horns blare. I touch Tibs’ arm. He turns his face and I see the hole in his forehead. He took a round from a sniper two days before ship out. His eyes are milky and lacking any shine. He opens his mouth to speak, red dust drifts out past his cracked lips, but no sound.
I run away from Tibs, up the line. In the shacks by the river the head of the line disappears into a tin walled building. A young Muslim woman in a black burka stands guard on the door, her hand tightly grips an AK47.
The line snakes past the front door and down an ally. They are lined up to a back door. I move past them like a ghost. Through a curtain, men are standing around a table, they all have dollars in their hands. Moving through them I see a young soldier pumping away on some girl. I can’t see her face, but I get a queasy feeling when I see her brown curls. The young grunt finishes and the others cheer him. As he climbs off her I can see her face… it’s Kelly.
“Hey baby, how are you,” she says smiling up at me.
I try to speak but my throat closes off.
The next in line climbs on her, covering her face with his chest.
I run out into the street, only now it’s Hooterville, the Lebanese ghetto. Towel-heads point and laugh at me. The crowd parts and I see the little boy kneeling over his dead mother. She sits up and reaches out a bloody hand. She points an accusing finger at me and lets out a high-pitched wail.
I jerked up in bed, my body covered in sweat. The late afternoon sun flooded the room with its painful radiance. Where the hell was I? The dream still felt more real than this strange hotel room. Slowly the last few days came back to me like flashes from a fever nightmare. A rank odor wafted up over me. It smelled like something had died in the bed beside me. Sniffing around I discovered to my shame and disgust that the smell was coming from me. All the poison I had put in my body over the last few days seemed to have leaked out of my pores. My body reeked like a barroom floor on Sunday morning. Flicking my eyes around the room I noticed something was missing, Cass. While I’d slept she must have skipped out. I wasn’t really sure how I should feel about that, pissed or relieved?
A shower, a cup of coffee and some food in that order, and death to anyone who tried to stop me. As the warm water soothed my muscles I thought about Cass. Maybe I didn’t owe her or Kelly anything. Maybe I should drive home and forget I ever met either of them. I made a promise to my fantasy of a girl who never existed. In the only movie ever made worth watching, “The Wild Bunch,” Sikes asks why their friend is hunting them so hard, and Pike says, “He gave his word.” But Sikes says, “To a railroad!” and Pike roars, “It doesn’t matter who you give it to.” Words I lived by I guess. Walking away wasn’t an option, at least not one I could live with.