The next morning I collected over nine thousand dollars in back pay and I went out to the bus stop with my seabag on my shoulder. A master sergeant came by, and I asked him what time the bus came. He told me that I could not leave the base until I got a No. 1 haircut and I told him to forget it, that I was a civilian. A moment later a jeep pulled over and a captain with an M.P. band on his sleeve hopped out. I showed him my discharge papers, the jump wings on my set of blues, the Navy Cross and the two Silvers, and he said, “Big fucking deal. You got a General Discharge, Sergeant. A psychiatric discharge, Sergeant. I want you off this base immediately.”

“Well, give me a ride and I’ll be glad to get off the motherfucker,” I said. I was beginning to see cockroaches crawling through the wet sawdust inside my skull, and I kept wiping my nose for fear they would run out and brush across my lips.

“You’re a psycho,” the master sergeant said. “Go out there and wreak havoc and mayhem on the general population, and good riddance.”

“You could cut me some slack,” I said. “I was a real Marine, not some rear-echelon blowhard, and by the way, fuck the Corps. Eat the apple, and fuck the Corps. I curse the day I ever joined this green motherfucker.”

“I want you off this base and I want you to hump it off this base,” the master sergeant said.

“You mean I don’t have to get a haircut after all?” I said in my best nellie voice.

“Fucking hit the road, Marine. Haight-Ashbury is that way.”

“Well, fuck you,” I said.

“And fuck you. Go fuck yourself.”

I threw my seabag down and was about to fight when a Marine in a beat-up T-bird pulled over to the bus stop and asked me if I needed a lift. Without another word I tossed my seabag in his back seat and hopped into the car. Before I could say thanks he hit me up for five bucks in gas money. “It’s twenty-three miles to Oceanside,” he said. “And I’m runnin’ on empty. I ain’t even got a spare tire, no jack, no nothing.” He looked at me and laughed, revealing a mouth filled with black cavities. He said, “Hey, man, you wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?” I handed him my pack. “Hey, thanks,” he said.

“That’s all right,” I said.

He lit the cigarette and took a deep drag. “You want to hear some strange shit?”

“Why not?” I said.

“I just got six, six, and a kick.” The Marine took another pull off the cigarette and said, “Six months in the brig, six months without pay, and a Bad Conduct Discharge.”

“What did you do?” I asked. I was trying to stop the vision of bugs.