The military, both active and retired, was a major component in any San Diego neighborhood during the Vietnam War. The city boasted the largest Naval base on the West Coast, primary port to the Pacific Fleet. Just north of the city, Camp Pendleton was home to the Marine Corps' First Division, where tall numbers of American youth were being trained for the jungles of Southeast Asia. Needless to say the city was pro kick-some-ass, and virulently anti-gook. Me, I was a skinny liberal arts major at a Lutheran College and had no intention of getting involved in America’s fight against the Communist domino theory. Everywhere you ventured in those days it was a good bet you’d find sailors, jarheads, flyboys or some uniform yet to be posted. When you saw those guys in berets: red, green, or blue, you just kept walking.Certainly, I wasn’t the only college kid in San Diego ducking the draft and playing volleyball in the sand. There were Universities and diploma mills in large supply. We didn’t have Harvard, M.I.T., or Stanford. It wasn’t that kind of place. We had what were usually referred to as “party schools,” God bless ‘em. Local bars were not very stringent about their age code for serving alcohol. We probably frequented favorite bars equally as often as the school cafeteria, at least after we learned the lay of the land. My college was on a mesa overlooking Mission Bay to the West and the long sandy beaches of the ocean just beyond it. Eventually I suppose you hit Japan. Sunsets were the stuff of VistaVision bikini movies, and the smell of jasmine which was planted all around the fake Spanish adobe buildings still gives me pause, no matter where I find it. The late 1960’s found me tanned, spoiled, failing and drunk a great deal of the time. My fellow students and I lived on Der Wienerschnitzel hot dogs, cheap wine you bought in a glass gallon jug, and dreams of fondling the breasts of similarly besotted co-eds from Music Appreciation class. "War? I guess, pass the joint."
THE DUTCH MILL was a sleepy little bar down the hill from my school. It was actually built to resemble its namesake with a two story cupola supporting a rotor upon which canvas was nailed to the blades. Probably wouldn’t fool Rembrandt, but it was painted to look like square granite blocks and even featured little red flower boxes with faded plastic geraniums. The kind of faux highway kitsch your mother used to point out on a driving trip, and which everyone ignored. I knew the bartender, a guy from school who was a few years older than me, Jesse Turnbull. He was a nice guy with an aura of violence about him. He was wide and strong. And although I can't recollect the exact story now, I do remember that he had spent a short stint in jail due to his temper. He’d quit school in his senior year to work full time at the bar and was punctual about driving down each Wednesday afternoon to Tijuana with a few buddies to play golf at the Country Club course, bet on the Jai Lai matches and get drunk on cheap shots of tequila and pitchers of weak, salted beer. A few years later he’d be drafted into the army and die in a helicopter crash somewhere in Vietnam. I never heard the whole story, you rarely did. If you ever heard a detailed or colorful story about someone who had died in the War it was usually just bullshit someone embellished while sitting in a low, torn-leatherette booth during happy hour. Jesse did like those Jai Lai games. Once, he returned from one of his Tijuana outings with a wife--some high-school girl from Imperial Beach. Seems he met her at the Jai Lai games, they won some money, got senselessly inebriated and decided to get married. I saw him the day after, the girl was still at his place. He already wanted an annulment, or just to forget it as a drunken escapade, but the girl was serious. Some guys thought there were young women without many prospects who would target a well-to-do young American guy, but I didn’t buy it. For one thing no-one I knew could be considered well-to-do. She just seemed dumb and thought love tended bar in San Diego. Hell, I’ve been known to fall in love with strangers when drunk, there just wasn’t a convenient, Mexican marriage license handy like there was in Tijuana.
I mentioned that I attended a Lutheran school which might lead one to imagine a student body of missionaries or pastors-to-be. Nope, that wouldn’t be correct. In the late 1960’s small religious schools were the last refuge for students who had failed to get accepted at better, larger schools. The small schools charged a stiffer tuition than many of the academically superior universities, but not because they were exemplary or even very religious. They were popular with C students who didn’t want to get drafted and be forced to kill people who didn’t even own a television set. The girls who attended were also C students, and though they had no fears of being drafted, they usually needed to get away from their parents. Or their parents felt similarly in need of distance and so plopped Cissy in a "safe" environment for a few years. Though once in awhile you did find a legitimate Christian who was on a path toward missionary work, or was sneaking up on delusional schizophrenia.
Sometime after the Tet offensive I took a theology class. It was mandatory for graduation, a token in the curriculum to appease wealthy donors and a few high-minded Protestants on the scholastic board. Fine with me. Better than another Statistics class any day. During one of the theology classes, Dr. Brunner introduced a renowned quote from St. Paul: “Faith without works is dead.” He even chalked it on the blackboard. I remember that it initiated a pretty good conversation among some of the students—the ones who weren’t asleep or busy drawing album art for the next IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY record. The class seemed to split along opposing lines of thought. One group accepted St. Paul’s dictum at face value and believed the phrase to be a linchpin in Christian activism. Others argued that it was a trite sentiment of dubious logic which could be blown out of the water by sermon screamers as far back as Duns Scotus, Meister Eckhart , or Luther himself. Faith in God, they would argue, was the supreme purpose in Christian life, a contract which must be revered as sacrosanct above all else, even the worthiest duties of devotion such as charity, or helping the sick and the poor-- even missionary work. The arguments were lively, though I considered it all poppycock.
Later that night at the DUTCH MILL, I was sipping a tap beer in the neon-interrupted dark listening to the juke box play a FIFTH DIMENSION tune. Jesse was bored and took some darts from behind the counter and began to toss them at a concentric target hung on the rear wall near the rest rooms. There was a small group of older students getting tanked at a table which included two girls I'd been lusting after for some time. There were also some swabbies at a booth talking inane, loud banter about a twin PBR Mark II 50 millimeter something-or-other. Then again, maybe it was Davy Jones' locker. All that nautical stuff sounds like math class. You could always tell the enlisted men. They had those really bad haircuts and their jeans were pressed with creases in the front. They also had that look of quizzical anticipation like someone long used to being beaten with a hose. Those guys drinking at their table had probably never even been on a ship yet, but anybody forced to wear those silly Crackerjack outfits with white Popeye hats on parade was immune from my enmity.
I played a few games of darts with Jesse, he asked about the campus and a few friends or teachers he still knew there. He asked about Professor Brunner. Seems that Jesse had been in a bind about flunking out of school in his Sophmore year and Brunner had saved him. Gave him an undeserved higher grade which kept him eligible to return. I was a little surprised, but that wasn't new. Everyday something surprised me. For instance when I was walking past the table of seniors on my way to the men's room, I think the tall, straight-haired brunette looked me over in an approving, half-drunk way. Her name was Lydia. I'd spoken with her a few times and found myself stuttering, which I rarely did. She used to go out with a friend of mine who belonged to a fraternity, Alpha Delta Rigamarole. In my freshman year I didn't know anyone yet and lived in the dorms; but was invited, on occasion, to attend parties at the fraternity houses. I didn't want to join any of them. The idea of hanging out exclusively with guys in a candlelit room while I drop my pants to be paddled by my "big brother" was a touch out of my area of interest. Though the parties were free and always had kegs of foamy beer. It was also one of the only places off campus where I ran into pretty girls. Like this Lydia. At the time we spoke she was dating Jack Pugh. He had invited me to the party on a Friday afternoon when I ran into him in the cafeteria. He had that method actor way about him. Kind of aloof, like a young John Savage with big Greek letters on his t-shirt. I could see why girls seemed to like him, he was probably fun. Seemed thoughtful, but with a dark streak. It probably didn't hurt that he was a scholarship pitcher on the baseball team and rolled a tight joint. Any girl looking for a real desperado was not going to be enrolled at a Lutheran College spending her weekends with frat boys. However, for the lonely (and I assume horny) women I saw in my classes, Jack Pugh was pretty cool.
After returning from peeing out my last beaker of beer I took up my darts and asked Jesse what he knew about Lydia. "Not much really." He offered. "I think she's from Nebraska. Her dad owns a string of dry cleaners or something." I tossed a dart and missed the inner ring of the target, almost missing the whole thing. "I'm pretty sure she fucked Tommy Vacaro when she was a freshman, but he got to all those new girls." I tried to look nonplussed but inside I was a shade jealous of Tommy Vacaro, whoever he was. "She's sure cute enough and has those great tits, but I think she can get a little bitchy." The slam on almost all girls by almost all guys is that they can be bitchy. Since I couldn't even get girls to speak with me, the idea that I'd reject them for being moody was a moot point. Sometimes I think guys mention a girl's flaws as a built-in caveat, just in case she suddenly dumps him. But I didn't have many friends, and there weren't any girls willing to date me, bitchy or no.
"Does she still go out with Pugh, Jack Pugh?" I asked. "No, I don't think so. I heard that he got her pregnant last year and it fucked things up. He had to fly to Juarez with her Mom and Dad when she had the abortion. Didn't sound like much fun." Jesse was pretty good at darts, and the narrow chalk board was so lopsided in his favor that we quit keeping score. He threw his darts and nailed each successive number soundly. "Last week she was in here with Andy McMillan, that guy on the basketball team, one of the twins."
The twins. Everyone knew who they were. Maybe every school has such examples of superior genetic design. They weren't identical, but both were around 6'6" tall with long dirty blond hair. They were pre-med majors with a taste for mind-expanding drugs who read Nietzsche and Proust and such. Way out of my Richard Brautigan league. Each one was handsome and together they started as tandem forwards on the basketball team, though technically "walk-ons". They didn't dress the same or anything like some twins. And as I recall they weren't too fastidious about hygiene. Their jacket collars were always ringed in saturated dried sweat and they smelled kind of gamey. But, then again, if I were a female hormone I'd probably jump on them and ask for a ride anywhere they were going. It may be indiscreet to peer into the future, but about ten years after my conversation with Jesse in the bar, that same twin (Lydia's romancer Andy) was living with his mother in La Jolla after being released from a mental hospital. Then, upon returning one evening from a stage play they'd attended at UCSD, he stabbed her to death with a carving knife. But remember what I said about stories in a bar, probably bullshit.
The other girl with Lydia that night was Cheryl Mancuso, a curly-topped sprite who by reputation was something of a "screamer." She was small, but had one of those cheerleader type bodies that filled the corridors of my late night fantasies. You could often find her in the company of Lydia between classes at school. She was sassy and wasn't above tossing a little disrespect at any passer-by who, she felt, might get her a laugh. I'd seen her interact with the lower echelon of social life and she could be cruel. But then again, "you pays your quarter you takes your chances." Her popularity among the girls probably owed more to everyone's fear of being chastised by her in public than any great desire to actually befriend her. And guys just like to fuck little wise-ass squealers. Me, I gave her a wide berth.
I knew Jesse could get better competition at darts from others in the room, so I went back to my bar stool and began to draw circles on the varnished wood with water that had collected beneath my glass. They say your college years are the training ground for adult life, well so far I'd made it to drawing rings on the bar with beer sweat, which, if you think about it, is a step past wearing your father's cigar band as a ring on your middle finger, but just barely. "Hey, Mister Snob. Can't even say hello?" It was a voice from behind my ear, and startled me so that when I wheeled my neck around my nose bumped into the face of Cheryl Mancuso. "Oh, sorry." I replied. "I guess you scared me." She was rubbing her cheek where I'd nose-whipped her. "That's okay, I don't need this face anyway." Her repartee wouldn't be mistaken for Dorothy Parker, but up close, she was even cuter than I thought, or else the beer had begun to dull my impeccable standards. "I was watching you with Jesse. My, but you're a shitty dart thrower." Oh Christ, just what I needed. Seems like people who spend most of their waking and dreaming life perfecting self-abasement, which is people like myself, don't deserve public flogging when they're trying to get drunk to forget all about it. "Yeah, well I suppose you're right there." By this time Jesse was throwing darts with another guy, an older chief petty officer who was a regular. The jukebox had begun a Buffalo Springfield song. I nodded to the dart board, "If it's so easy, why not try it yourself." She sat on the stool next to mine and smushed the watery circles I'd drawn. "I hate darts and I hate Jesse." She boldly declared. "Why the fuck drop out of school only to live and work in its shadow? What a loser." I turned to look at her fully. No doubt about it, she was cute. I wondered how deep inside her throat my dick would go before she choked? "What do you have against Jesse. Its just a job. Not everyone is wealthy enough to travel or get a penthouse apartment at . . . at . . . at the beach." She smiled. "Maybe I know him better than you do. Why should you defend him anyway, are you queer or something?" I looked over her head at the table beyond where Lydia was watching our conversation. She smiled and gave a slow wave. "Maybe I am queer, it won't put a dent in our relationship will it?" I responded. Thankful that my stutter didn't return. She snorted. It was a twisted little try at a laugh, but somehow got confused on its way out her mouth and detoured through her nose. "Nice." I said.
She took her wet finger and put it on the end of my nose. "What's the matter don't you like Cheryl? I thought you'd buy me a drink and we could hang out. I have a doob in my purse." Funny that only a year ago no-one I knew smoked pot or took drugs. Everyone drank. Things had changed pretty fast. Most of the marijuana was from Mexico and was comprised largely of stems and seeds. The cultivation of high-powered weed was in its infancy. Bennies and cartwheels were from Tijuana pharmacies. The mescaline, mushrooms and LSD were from God.
"Sure, if you're holding, lets go smoke some." She hopped off the stool exhibiting a certain energy that I could imagine as helpful in curing a boring sex life. Her skirt was short and though her legs weren't runway worthy, she was certainly sexy. If I could just sew her lips closed. I walked over and told Jesse I'd be back in a minute. Not that he needed to know, but I didn't want to follow Cheryl over to the table and run the risk of stuttering all over Lydia.
Once she grabbed her purse, I took my London Fog windbreaker off the back of my stool and followed her out the front door into a sea-breeze coolness that sent little bumps along my arms. "Where's your car?" She asked. This was a sore spot. I didn't have a car. Oh sure I could drive, but on my last night before leaving home to begin my college career as a freshman I got drunk and drove my Corvair into a telephone pole. It was a bad thing to do. There was drama and miles of plastic surgery sutures, then the grafts. Bones had broken all over the place and my face was propelled through the steering wheel, then through the windshield and finally rested on the scalding heat of fresh-crushed metal which had just seconds before had been a gold-flecked front hood. The blood helped cool the metal I suppose. When I tried to say "Anybody hurt?" I realized that my teeth were all gone and I'd opened a new mouth somewhere between my nose and my upper lip. "Don't have a car." I told her. She gave me a sigh and said she'd go get Lydia's keys back in the bar.
I put on my windbreaker, stuck my hands into the pockets and leaned against a streetlamp. Up on the hill lights from the campus buildings glowed a bit in the moist salty air. There were worse things than breathing that delicious chill while waiting for a pretty girl to bring you a joint to share, all while working on the first of your weekend buzz. From one of my pockets I removed a 12 ounce bottle of Romilar, a cough syrup mixture sold over the counter to those of us who liked to chase our beer with Dextromethorphan. I broke the seal and gulped a fair amount, then again. "Faith" I told myself "without works is dead."
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