Our Army post was located within America’s Deep South, where the sun beat down, and the roads shimmered with heat waves every afternoon. There were three of us, the fresh meat, straight out of high school and arriving at our permanent unit directly after thirteen weeks of basic and advanced training. This was where we had met, and we were now the replacements for a few soldiers who had left the military, or who were reassigned.
The time was late summer. My pals and I gravitated toward each other during what little free time we had, I think because we were scared, and we were each a familiar face. My two friends and I referred to each other only by our last names. This is how it’s always been done. In fact, I only vaguely remember their first names, and only if I thought about it for a minute.
On payday we headed into town, just to check out the area and for a quick beer, because at that time and place, the drinking age was eighteen. Personally, I wanted to get away from the complications of military life for a few hours and mingle with some regular country folk… maybe there were places where we could meet a few local singles…
None of us had cars, however there was a bus service on the post, and I don’t recall if we had to pay or not. Nonetheless, it carried us into the hamlet located outside the main gate.
Main Street consisted mostly of pawn shops, burger joints, a car dealership and the obligatory bars and tattoo parlors. But whatever their occupation, the citizenry was ready for Army payday -- the day Uncle Sugar comes to town.
“This looks like a good place,” my buddy Elmquist said, pointing at a rundown hole-in-the-wall, sporting a sign in the window -- ICE COLD BEER. Without saying a word, Elmquist, Simpson and I swung the door open and entered.
Various neon signs hung in the small filthy windows, which probably hadn’t been cleaned since World War I. It was dark inside after coming in from the swelter, and a blue stratosphere of cigarette smoke began to encompass us. A half dozen elderly men sat at the bar quietly chatting, nursing glasses of beer, and a few others, younger and clearly from the military, sat here and there at tables and booths. The only woman in the establishment was a tired-looking waitress, busily tending to customers at tables.
“We’ll have a pitcher and three glasses ma’am,” Elmquist said like a well-oiled old drinker after we sat down.
The first beer was great. We lounged quietly in the cool darkness and let it take effect. A country song from the sixties played in the background, and I was relaxed and carefree for the first time in months.
“Okay fellas,” Elmquist blurted out, “who’s ready for some tequila shooters?”
“What’s that?” I said.
“Tequila with salt and lime,” Simpson said in a deadpan, knowing tone. My two pals looked at each other and rolled their eyes, in disbelief of the ignorant rube across the table.
“You boys want another round?” the waitress said overhearing our conversation.
“Yeah, how ‘bout tequila shooters with it this time,” Elmquist said.
“Comin’ up!”
Now -- there is a procedure to this: You slam the tequila shot down your gullet, then lick salt off your hand and suck on a lime wedge - or something like that.
I watched Elmquist and Simpson do it first, then it was me. I popped down the shot of hellfire, (I guess it’s an acquired taste, because it nearly came back out). I then proceeded to lick the salt and suck on the lime. This was the most horrendous thing I’d ever tasted up to that point, and even today, I think the whole thing was a study in unpleasantness.
We ordered more of the same, and after a couple, my fuzzy brain said they were beginning to taste pretty darn good.
After a while, we left the sad little bar and tried looking around for someplace a little nicer.
Once outside, we floated along the sidewalk in town, passing tattoo parlors, payday-loan establishments and more run-down beer joints. The evening twilight transformed the skies crimson and violet, and the air was sweet and clean after spending over an hour in the tavern. We crossed an intersection and happened upon a warehouse sized building, surrounded by a large gravel parking lot loaded with cars. The place looked promising and was emitting deep muffled thumps.
The club was much, much larger than the tavern and geometrically more popular. We entered the front door of the lobby. It was noticeably cooler than outside, and we were met by a doorman taking the three-dollar entry fee, which was a substantial amount of cabbage for an Army Private forty-plus years ago. A huge, monster of a man accompanied the doorman during the sort-of casual shakedown. We each coughed up three bucks, wherein I fumbled around and accidentally dropped my wallet. Coins scattered and rolled all over the lobby. I quickly picked up what I could find, re-adjusted my pants and handed him the money. We were then allowed in with a smile.
The bar was packed with maybe a hundred off duty G.I.s from the post, milling around, smoking, drinking booze, and listening to music so deafening it made it impossible to hold a conversation. We all stood around and screamed at each other. I counted exactly four women, each surrounded by dozens of rutting males, pining for scraps.
We found an empty table off in a dark corner, and you guessed it, we ordered more beer and shooters.
The evening dragged on, and my buddies were becoming louder and looser. Elmquist was slurring, something I’d never pictured him doing before. I wondered if I was doing the same, and I remember making a conscious effort to pronounce my sentences slowly and correctly, with big words, as if I had some sort of expert command over the English language.
There were small basketball hoops in the back area with netting around them with half sized basketballs. We used this for a few minutes but were soon bored and went back to the table and the drinking.
A fist fight erupted on the other side of the bar, and there was suddenly lots of scuffling and shouting. After a few seconds, the giant bouncer from the front appeared, and we watched him grab two guys by the nape of the neck. Sure, they tried to fight back, but it was futile and he single-handedly, almost effortlessly dragged them to the front, clunked their heads together like Moe and Curly, and heaved ‘em out the lobby door. I guess that was that, because as far as I can recall, there wasn’t any more trouble for the rest of the night.
It was about at this point when the night became a blur, and I started losing track of my thoughts. Simpson was crying, and Elmquist was asleep -- head tilted back, slack jawed. For some unknown reason, I may have been on the dance floor at one point in the evening, even though I had never danced before in my life. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, the shock and horror of these memories make me blush to this day.
That’s the last thing I remembered until I woke up in my bunk in the barracks the next morning. My ears rang, and the heavy background thudding from the previous night’s music was still in my head. I opened my eyes, and the familiar bed springs of the bunk on top of me told me I had somehow made it back to the barracks and everything was gonna be okay. I was still dressed in my civies, (civilian clothes), except I was missing my shoes, which I never found.
Strangely, I couldn’t shake a vague, foggy recollection from the previous night of being in a brightly lit room with artwork all around. A strange buzzing surrounded me, and I floated in a kind of dentist chair apparatus. I thought it was all part of a horrible dream.
I got up to use the latrine and inadvertently felt some bandaging material on my right shoulder. I raced into the can, and although I needed to go, I had to see just what was on my arm.
It wasn’t terrible for a powder blue unicorn head, and the numerous asterisks that surrounded the tattoo really helped it stand out. I could hear snickering and open ridicule from some of the others in the barracks.
I skulked around the rest of the day, avoiding direct eye contact with everyone just in case I’d done anything else amusing. It was the day after payday, and I was penniless, with a terrible hangover and a cartoon on my arm. But at least I still had my meal-card for the daily three squares in the mess-hall, and my bunk in the barracks -- that’s all I needed...
***
The time slowly passed, and I settled into Army life. I tried every day to like my tattoo, and would often say, “It’s just exactly what I wanted... I love it.”
But I loathed it and was depressed for months. My pal Simpson said it was the cheapest one and all I could afford that late in the evening.
“You just had to have a tattoo... we tried to talk you out of it... ya stupid idiot.”
Back then, the only people who really had tattoos were sailors, or motorcycle guys, and people like that. It wasn’t the age of enlightenment like today, where everyone and their grandma is covered in ink...
Believe it or not, that little town had a dermatologist clinic and a few months later, I paid them a visit.
“Yes, we can remove that,” the doctor said looking at my arm. ‘We’ll do what’s called a dermabrasion.”
This was a quick procedure, and I was in and out in no time at all. I was required to keep it covered and swab it twice a day with a purple-colored fluid. After a few weeks, the scab fell off and with it went the idiotic cartoon. It did however leave a strange milky scarred area on my arm still visible today. I keep it covered almost all the time... it’s a little disconcerting to look at, but at least the unicorn was gone, and that’s all I cared about.
***
Occasionally, I still dream about those years in my youth, and tattoos are a common theme. In one dream, I’m covered from head to toe with ridiculous, nonsensical tattoos. A bunch of balloons on my stomach, a carousel horse under my left breast, a cartoon coyote wearing a motorcycle helmet on my right arm. Everywhere and every place, the landscape of my body had become a continuous non-sequitur of nonsense. My back was covered too. More balloons here and there, a sailboat, TV cartoon characters and more. They were on the palms of my hands, eye lids and toes. If they were cool tattoos or had some meaning in my life, great. But no.
In another dream, I’m back in that same old crummy barracks lying in my bunk, except it’s now. Elmquist and Simpson were still young, However I’m a worn-out sixty-year-old. But that’s not the worst part. I get up to use the latrine and I stop to look in the mirror. On my forehead are huge rectangular Groucho Marx eyebrows tattooed in place of my regular ones.
“Holy Moses! When did I do that? Now I gotta go through life with this…”
There’s always a sense of relief when I wake up from the nightmare. I don’t know why my brain sometimes goes to this place.
I try to laugh at those days in my life so many years ago. We were kids and vulnerable, even though we didn’t know it. I think about the stupid things we did as teens, and marvel that we’re all three alive, and still in contact. I have since forgiven myself for these youthful indiscretions, and I guess it was all part of being young.
Careers, marriage and life’s complications have since clouded the past. The decades rolled by, evaporating into the ether, and I now have teenage grandsons. They’re almost the same age as I was then, and I often wonder about the things they’ll someday encounter in their future travels.
***
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