I said, “L.D., man, did you get a load of that Vaseline jar?” He was already three sheets to the wind and waved me off and said, “I’m so horny I could fuck a rattlesnake.”

“You just did,” Ondine said.

Pfieffer made like he was going to biff Ondine on the nose, but the Sergeant had his hands up and the two started grab-assing until the bartender came around back and threatened to throw us all out if we didn’t promise to calm down. In the meantime, the bedbumping and loud groans in Felix’s room were like the high drama of a full-fledged exorcism. Gerber was performing oral sex on the other prostitute on a cramped love seat in the little room without having “officially” negotiated a price. In addition to the black eye, I had that burning prostate sensation that sometimes accompanies an orgasm that is followed by heavy alcohol consumption. Every three minutes I felt compelled to go to the bathroom, even though I wasn’t putting out more than a few drops of urine per visit. It felt like blue flames were coming out my dick. Then I would walk back into a room that smelled so badly of funky pussy I could have done a backflip.

The rum after gin had hit me pretty hard, and although the night was fairly young, I was already seeing double. Afraid that I was going to puke, I went outside. I saw some lights about a half mile down the road and started off in that direction. A bunch of Mexicans were sitting along a curve in the road, and just before I reached them, I fell fully into a six-foot hole in the ground. The fall almost knocked me cold. I heard the Mexicans roar with laughter and I was so pissed I wanted to kill every one of them, but by the time I had managed to crawl out of the hole, I was muddy and covered with sweat. When I got over to the tree where they sat, one of them passed me a bottle of wine and another passed a joint. I could see that I wasn’t the only victim. Two of the men were grunts from the Seventh Marines and they had taken the fall together. “Some kind of road construction, man, and no warning signs either!”

Pretty soon we were all laughing when L.D. came strolling down the road. We hushed up and watched as L.D. took a dive. Then we roared. I was probably laughing harder than any of the rest until I could hear him curse me by name. With that I thought it would be a good idea to make myself scarce.