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A FEW EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOK:
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT! - One Primate's
Search for Intelligent Life
Ft. Bliss Was Blissful – We Weren’t Officers Or
Gentlemen
After
my two weeks of leave from boot camp, I went to Fort Bliss,
Texas. Fort Bliss is an Army and Air Force base, but it was where the
Marines came to train for the Hawk Missile Anti-Aircraft System.
The first thing I did was meet up with our Marine liaison
Gunnery Sgt. Black.
I
came into to his office and snapped to attention, (clicking my
heel together like a good little Nazi), eyes straight
ahead as I tried to sound tough and military.
"Sir, Private Vincent Lazarus Chimera reporting for duty, Sir!
As
he scanned my orders he looked out from under bushy eyebrows.
“Sir, I need to talk to you, sir!”
Gunny Black looked at my papers
once again and said, “Chimera, don’t
call me sir, I work for a living. You’re out of boot camp, now
you only call officers sir. Now, what is it you need, Chimera?”
I explained to him the confusion and guarantee of my
promised MOS.
He said, “Chimera, I can’t help you. You’re going to have
to go through the training and when you get assigned to your
base, you’ll have to straighten it all out with your commander
there.”
I thought,
“Shit! Three and a half months of school before
I can get on with my real mission.”
Juarez Disneyland for Marines
On
the first day we
arrive at Fort Bliss, Gunny Sgt. Black laid down the rules for
us Marines. He emphasized that we were not to go to Juarez,
Mexico for at least two weeks. Gunny said that being a realist - he knew we would
run to Mexico as soon as opportunity presented itself. That’s
why he gave us a list of do’s and don’ts to protect us when we
finally went.
We, of course, true to his
prediction went to Juarez that very night. We were informed that Sunday
through Thursday there was mandatory bed check. We had to be
back in our rack twelve O’clock midnight. If we wanted, we could
stay in Mexico from Friday evening till Sunday at Midnight.
Bed checks were a hassle, but
being motivated and horny young marines, we'd rushed back to our barracks
on those nights, jump under the covers with our clothes on as we
waited for the officer of the day to check off the list of who
was in bed and who was not. As soon as he left the floor, my
padres and I would sneak out and rush back to Juarez to satiate
our teenage libidos.
The Army kept us Marines somewhat separated from their
soldiers. Except for the noncommissioned officers, the army
soldiers had shared a squad bay. My fellow Marines and I were
kept two men per room. I was housed with guy named Private
Ficket, a good ole’ boy from the Midwest.
I said, “This is going to be as fun as Disneyland.”
All of the salts that had been there for a few months
said, “It’s a lot fucking better than Disneyland, Laz!”
Cathouses and Other Clubs
As I already mentioned, we ignored Gunny Black’s order. Instead we went straight
to Juarez the very first night we were assigned our rooms. When we got to the
border, the Texan-Mexican sky was dusky; a sullen looking guard
approached us. “Documentes,
senores, por favor!”
He looked at us with eyes hooded in suspicion, then at our
military I.D’s, scanning back and forth... from the I.D.’s to our
faces and then back again. Seemingly satisfied, his face transform into a bland
official mask, he gestured with almost terminal indifference for us to cross the bridge over the
Rio Grande.
In the movies, the Rio Grande
looks like a wide tumbling river, clean, sparkling, with a
promise of life.
The reality of the ‘river’ between Juarez and El Paso was
instead a foul trickle of sewage rambling through a giant
concrete slue.
From where we stood, Juarez looked like a concrete sprawl,
with a flowering of neon lights sprinkled and laced throughout
the main drag. The patterns of light dwindling down on side
streets radiated away in every direction from the strip
As we traveled the length of the bridge, in my inexperience
mind, Juarez looked like it glistened with a myriad of
potentialities. The city was a cacophony of sounds, a whirling
montage of images, with crowds of people, milling in and out of
stores and traffic. There was the hustling and bustling of U.S.
soldiers, vendors, and tourists, mingling with work-a-day
Mexican citizens.
As we walked on the main drag, the exotic feel of the city
intoxicated me. We mingled in the stores, and markets and the
vendors were glutted with velvet paintings, wallets, purses,
Indian jewelry, watches, lighters, cameras, you name it, it was
all there. Interspersed among the businesses that sold sundries
were restaurants, massage parlors and numerous bars and
whorehouses, set up like flesh-peddling supermarkets.
Juarez was like an unauthorized adult theme park for
servicemen and civilians alike in a quest for gratifications of
the flesh... not to be found describe in any tourist book shelved
at any reputable chamber of commerce.
I felt like I was in a James Bond movie, in Tangiers,
Cairo, or a dozen other exotic places. Life felt romantic! I
imagined this is how my dad felt when he traveled the various
fleshpots of the world. I imagined I was like my dad, and in
some ways I was glad.
The first club we went to was the New Year’s Club. To my
unworldly mind, this club looked like a saloon from the old
west. There was red velvet wallpaper and women lounging around
in their come-hither, open for business lingerie.
The air was also filled with the taste of aftershave,
perfume, stale sweat, spilt beer, greasy cooking and cigarettes
smoke. The place even sounded festive with music, conversation,
catcalls and laughter.
The old seasoned hands that brought us to the club were
educating us greenhorns on the lay of the land. We were told all
sorts of fables from the old salts; they were after all veteran
lounge lizards of the sex shops.
As newcomers we were told that the women would only go for
you if they found you attractive. I found that this was often true if the
girls of the night were very good looking, as these women could
afford to be choosy; at least, in the upscale establishments. We
situated ourselves at an optimal vantage point from which we
could indulge in aggressive voyeurism as we guzzled Mexican
beer. The girls sauntered about, advertising their goods,
signaling their willingness to merge, their devotion to business
extreme.
One beautiful working gal, a spitting image of Charro,
came over and sat next to me. She asked me to buy her a beer as
she started to rub my..... TO BE CONTINUED... MAYBE (EXTREME ADULT CONTENT)
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