“Jesus, what a spectacle,” David exclaimed from somewhere behind me. “I hate to say it, girls, but there’s no sight more disgusting than the British officer class with its pants down. It was men like him who did the dirty on us at Singapore. No wonder the Japs slapped their faces…”

I dropped the trousers to the worn purple carpet and rested against the quilted headboard, stained with the hair oil of a thousand anonymous salesmen. The room had steadied itself, and I could see David lying naked on the next bed, laughing in his happy but slightly crazed way at the two young women who knelt across him, taking turns to suck his penis. In a firm baritone he sang:

“With his mixture rich and his carb heat cold

He got the highest pressures on his manifold…”

One of the women was a strong-shouldered blonde, naked except for the silk stockings rolled down to her ankles. The other, kneeling with the grubby soles of her feet towards me, wore a black slip around her waist. It rode over her buttocks, which David parted with his left hand as he fondled the dark hair and pink combs of her vulva.

“God, yes, Yvette, yes … watch those teeth, for Christ’s sake, this isn’t a lunch counter. I’m going to have to take a leak. Jesus, that stink…”

The women ignored him and continued their efforts over his flagging erection, all the while keeping up a brisk conversation about a local beauty parlour that had spurned their custom. I could feel the bites on my penis and the pain in my anus where an untrimmed fingernail had almost stripped away the mucous membrane. I vaguely remembered having sex with the blond girl, Yvette, while David played one of his odd little games in the bathroom, urging Brigid to slap his buttocks with the soles of her high-heeled shoes as he dropped dollar bills into the toilet.

Friday night at the Iroquois was taking its familiar course. First there were two hours of forced drinking in the bar crowded with NATO trainees and railroad workers, our shirts soaked with the beer that swilled across the counter. Then we took Brigid and Yvette to the two rooms on the second floor. As usual, I was so drunk that I could scarcely separate the floor from the walls. Flat surfaces, some carpeted and others with lamps and switches bolted to them, were forever veering at me and striking my face.