While driving back to Longhorn Books to bring Red Kelso up to date on the latest atrocities in my soap-opera life, I'm thinking about when I had my first Gypsy good time, eighteen years ago.
    When I was in the Marine Corps in 1974 I was stationed at Camp Pendleton in Southern California, on my way to fight in the Vietnam War, which, in 1974, we were in the final stages of losing.
    Going to war seemed like a good way to get away from my mother's hysterical drinking binges and escape the lethal boredom of bordertown life.
    The civilian slop chute off base was called Oceanside, a pocket paradise of institutionalized sleaze, fertile soil for bad country-western bands and cheap, ugly women.
    The Tenderloin, the six-block red-light district along the pier in Oceanside, was typical downtown U.S.A., noisy, dirty, locked and barred, a black circus of red neon signs, piles of red neon on top of black buildings, trash in the streets, dark alleys, half of the pawnshops in the world, and maybe two-thirds of the strip shows.  All-night liquor stores that looked like Foreign Legion fortresses illuminated by black-light arrows.  Skin shows and clip-joint bars, enter here by the numbers and exit over there, freshly stripped of all of your cash and what's left of your virginity.
    Outside the bus station, in the hot night, marijuana dealers and pimps, open for business, were strutting up and down the broken white line in the center of the street, flipping fat coins of Mexican gold into the air and jaywalking in front of gliding police cars.
    Squads of Marines in their civvies, teenaged farm boys away from home for the first time, were patrolling the streets, eyes as wide as dinner plates, in search of the Holy Grail, or a cold beer, or, with luck, maybe even one brief forbidden taste of each and every secret and forbidden thing.
    I was walking down a dark street near the bus station on weekend liberty with my bro, Dirty Dan, a skinny, awkward kid from Lubbock, Texas, a cheerful, hopeful, healthy kid with a red devil recently tattooed onto his left forearm, a Marine Corps kid trying like the dickens to grow up, maybe even with dignity, preferably without dying, but definitely without giving an inch.
    Dirty Dan was destined to have his health record turned into a fuck story by an enemy rocket-propelled grenade on some nameless hill north of Khe Sanh.  But on our last night Stateside, before we had been formally introduced to the North Vietnamese Army, Dirty Dan and I were drunk.  I was an old man of twenty-one and Dirty Dan was eighteen.  We were drunk and we were happy.  Happy, it would later be revealed, for the last time in our lives.
    We were drinking Colt-45 malt liquor from six-packs we were carrying around under our arms inside paper sacks.  We had wandered off onto a deserted side street, looking for an alley to pee in, when we were stopped on the sidewalk by two copies of the same gorgeous girl -- twins.
    The twins were maybe sixteen years old, wearing peasant blouses and colorful full skirts.  And they had long black hair and red silk headbands that made them look like Apache squaws.  They were young and warm- bodied and juicy, and they were, we decided, nympho-maniacs.
    Almost immediately, the gorgeous twins rubbed their plump budding breasts against us.  Somehow sensing that we were painfully shy, the girls held on to our hands and pulled down the shoulders of their white peasant blouses.  As we cuddled with them in the shadows, the twins pressed our trembling hands onto their breasts, first one breast, and then the other.  The breasts were hot, slightly sweaty, firm, yet enjoyably soft, and the nipples were black and as small as dimes.
    We liked this treatment.  We could not believe our incredible good fortune.  In gratifying abundance, God was raining down the bennies on the good ol' boys in Recon.
    We were standing in front of an abandoned building, Bob Bayer's Plumbing & Hardware.  The open door of the building was black, like the mouth of a cave in a picture book about dragons.
    "One hundred dollars for Gypsy good time," the girls said.  "Each."
    One hundred dollars was over half a month's pay for buck privates in the spring of 1974, but Dirty Dan and I looked at each other and there was no hesitation.  We both forked over our money to the girls.  It never crossed our minds to protest that we previously had been under the distinct impression that their interest in us, while admittedly spontaneous, was based solely upon feelings of mutual admiration and respect.
    The girls pulled us deeper and deeper into the deserted building.  Inside, the floor was littered with screws and nails and nuts and bolts and metal washers.  Our spit-shined shoes crunched and clinked in the dark, as though we were walking on pirate treasure.
    Dirty Dan and I were careful not to touch anything.  When we went on liberty at the end of the workday we didn't want to waste precious time returning to the squad bay to change into our civvies.  We were still wearing our duty uniforms, short-sleeved tropical khaki shirts with necktie and brass tie clasp, tropical trousers, and, on our heads, piss-cutter soft covers bearing with Spartan simplicity the black metal insignia of the eagle, globe, and anchor.
    If we went back to the base out of uniform -- or smudged or dirty -- the Military Police at the guard post at the front gate would make a federal case out of it -- M.P.s are like that.
    Suddenly, a light came on in the back of the store.  Dirty Dan and I were standing by to make our hat most ricky-tick at the first sign of an angry landlord.
    "Gypsy good time.  Gypsy good time," the girls said, wiggling provocatively, reassuring us.  "We give you Gypsy good time now."
    Dirty Dan and I were confused when an old grandpa dressed as a Gypsy came out and greeted us.  Grandpa Gypsy had a handlebar mustache, a dark complexion, and a very heavy accent.  His baggy clothes were white and he was wearing big black riding boots and a shiny black patent-leather belt.
    Grandpa Gypsy welcomed us profusely with booming laughter and exaggerated gestures, while every ounce and pound and morsel of our sweet and tender Gypsy jailbait, our gorgeous Gypsy twins, carrying our hard-earned money, slipped silently and forever away.
    Grandpa Gypsy led us to a place where stolen motel sheets had been hung over a clothesline.  Grandpa Gypsy pulled the white sheets back, revealing an entire Gypsy clan, thirty or forty people in full Gypsy regalia, some seated, some standing, and others perched on a semicircle of old shipping crates that Gypsy stagehands had dragged into the center of the empty building.  It wasa  fully nomenclatured Gypsy road show.
    Grandpa Gypsy clapped his hands twice.  The Gypsy band began to sing listlessly.  Bored Gypsy men played an assortment of musical instruments while Dirty Dan and I enjoyed about five cents' worth of movement and color as withered middle-aged Gypsy women danced around and banged on tambourines.
    As you can imagine, Dirty Dan and I were dumb-founded.  We looked at each other and said to each other with our distorted faces: What the fuck is this bullshit?
    But before we could express our disappointment in more vigorous terms, Grandpa Gypsy, with flawless timing, and backed up by a fireteam of tough-looking young Gypsy guys, confronted us.
    The Gypsy honor guard was armed with wicked little daggers with multicolored handles, which they wore in their boots, up their sleeves, and at their waists stuck down into red silk sashes.  One false move and the air would be filled with the glitter of knives.
    The fireteam of Zouave linebackers moved in on us, moving the way you move when you're on your way to kick somebody's ass.  Dirty Dan and I were escorted politely but firmly out of the building and back onto the street.
    We were back out on the dark and silent street, scared, horny, and broke, before we knew what had happened to us. Our Gypsy good time had taken less than five minutes and already we were having great difficulty remembering the details.  It was like falling out of a time machine into the middle of a blurred and plotless beer dream.
    And that's the story of how Dirty Dan and I experienced our first Gypsy good time:  They promise you one thing and they give you something else.
    The next day, the president of the United States sent us to Vietnam.