I teamed up with the two grunts and that was the last thing I remember until I came to in a Pasadena motel room, alone. I did not know how I got to Pasadena from Mexico. A motel manager with beefy forearms and a cigar clenched in his teeth pounded on the door and demanded money for another night. I didn’t have a dime. Not only was I broke, I did not have my wallet nor my military I.D. What I had was a short afternoon to get back to Camp Pendleton. I took a quick shower, then guzzled cold water from the tap, and when I looked up in the mirror I saw a red and blue USMC bulldog tattooed on my left deltoid. Above the bulldog was the name “Shab.” To this day I have no idea what it means. It’s right up there with Stonehenge and Easter Island in the mystery department.

Acutely sick, I hitchhiked back to Pendleton. Two hours AWOL, I was greeted by a look of all-encompassing, universal disapproval. The First Sergeant could make you feel less popular than a burrito fart. For AWOL, I was put on report, had to undergo a series of punishments that were immediate and highly unpleasant, but in the end I suffered less, overall, than my drinking companions, most of whom acquired a case of the crabs or the clap or both. I had a black eye and the tattoo, but these guys were pulling giant red bugs from their drawers.