Alcock’s Autobiography 1.4
4 May 2011
From what I could tell in the mirror behind the bottles in front of me (I was in the habit of taking off my glasses when eating or drinking), by ignoring this in-my-face challenge, I had merely elicited a sly smile; he seemed to have taken my silence as a challenge, the last thing I wanted.
Over the next couple drinks he launched into a discussion of the Vietnam War. It had been six or seven years since the war ended but for most of us, it was still a fresh topic, especially as a sounding board for political views, patriotism, morality, dick size… things like that. At this point in the bar night, it was usually prelude to a fight or if you said all the right things, man-love for a new drinking buddy.
He was talking to me through the girl. She would respond with mild anti-war talking points such as what a waste it all was, but because this was coming from a woman and they were indeed mild, it did not violate his world-view of who should think what, and he would flash a glance at me and then argue with her. But confused by more booze, she slipped up once or twice, saying under her breath something about ‘baby killers’ and ‘murderers’, and he thought she was referring to our brave troops. Finally, my silence provoked him to fire a major salvo at me.
“What did you do? You look like a hippie dude. Say you were queer?”
Without hesitation I shot back, “I fought.” emphasizing the initial fricative, and hitting him hard with a double entendre. It was a short-lived victory. He meditated on his glass of whiskey and soda for a while, then drained the last third of it in one gulp. He was trying to decide if I was bluffing because if I really fought in the war, out of respect for my service, he probably didn’t want to beat the shit out of me. But if I was faking it, he certainly did.
For my part I had already realized that the fucker hadn’t actually fought in the war. From his bullshit I had gleaned a few key pieces of information, namely that he was most likely in the merchant marine and that the closest he got to combat was being fired on a few times as his ship made it’s way up the Vung Tai Channel to deliver Corn Flakes and Cheerios to the MSTS docks at Saigon. So he had been lucky enough to escape the draft by working on a freighter at double pay for being in an active war zone.
I was about to covertly suggest once again that we go back to our room and merge while we were still sober enough to find the requisite body parts when he pushed himself away from the bar, empty glass in hand, and started, I thought, to lurch in the direction of the head. But no sooner had he started in that direction than he came to a full stop, directly behind us. I got a blurry glimpse of the arm with the glass reaching out toward the bar. My first thought was he was setting his glass down, my second that he was going to hug her. This was followed instantly by my third thought which turned out to be almost correct. The mother-fucker was going to hug me! But instead of doing that, he gave the glass a sharp crack on the bar and, pulling his arm around me, drew the newly serrated edge of the glass sharply across my left forearm, right below the rolled back cuff of my tie-dyed shirt. The bartender, alerted by the sound of breaking glass, screamed at him, “Kevin what the fuck are you doing!” Followed definitively by “I’m callin’ Larry!”
Kevin backed away, still holding the broken glass.
“They’ll lock you up, you dumb shit!” She yelled.
My instant reaction to being attacked was to rear up off my stool and whirl around ready to kill, like a rattlesnake. As a runt growing up in Montana, I had learned this survival technique along with a curious fact: big guys don’t usually feel an ordinary fight is a life and death situation. I think they see it more like sport. Not so in my case. For me it was always a matter of life and death and I had learned how to convey this message. Maybe it was a hunkering down, an intense narrowing of focus, the adamantine hatred in the look in my eye that projected intent to kill. They might be bigger than me, but by God if there was any chance in hell, I’d kill ‘em. I was precisely at the point of locating my specific target when I realized that “Larry” meant the cops; she was about to call the cops. Not a good idea.
With momentarily frozen Kevin five feet away, I relaxed a second and told her that wouldn’t be necessary, just if she’d please get me some band-aids or gauze and tape, I’d be fine. And maybe some disinfectant?
“I just got Mercurochrome,” she said.
“Well, get me a pint of Everclear then. I’ll pay for it.” I said. “And a clean towel or something. It’s bleeding all over the fucking place.”
By then, several of the other men had eased up to Kevin and were talking him down and gently moving him away from the scene of the crime. My partner was frozen solid, her back pressed hard against the edge of the bar, eyes wide open.
In the end the bartender didn’t call the cops, they sent Kevin home to his wife, we went to our ice cold room, and didn’t make love, although there were a few desultory gestures. And out of the deep compassion in her heart, the bartender said the pint of Everclear was on the house.
The next day, we left early, the place was so cold and depressing. We both had bad hangovers which rode shotgun for us on the drive back to my house in Missoula. Her ex-boyfriend didn’t expect her back until five, so we spent the next five or six hours together, hanging out in the big house. At some point we got in bed and pulled each other close but feeling a little worn out, I didn’t follow my Daoist regimen of not reaching a climax (more on that later). I just came inside her like any other dumb clod.
That was about the last time in my life that I could have given up booze or have relegated it to a minor role before it started to ruin my health big time. That I didn’t do so for another dozen years is one of my top ten regrets.
Now when my arms get burned in the sun and I’m driving with the window down, the three parallel lines stand out on my left forearm, each about two inches long, and I remember that night with Anna in Butte, and the guy named Kevin who put them there. [Dick: Remember, for a man of my age and temperament, the hug would’ve been worse. Uncle M]
Anna would float away within the coming couple months, replaced by L___, the most intelligent woman I met in Missoula who upheld her half of one of the deepest, if short-lived, sexual liaisons I would ever have. And she by Kuniko, an intelligent, sensitive, libidinous, thirty-year old who would end up capturing my heart as well as my loins for the coming eight or nine years. Their stories follow.
END of Chapter 1.
