Read Online Dragon Lady by Gary Alexander - Free Book Online
Authors: Gary Alexander
Tags: Historical
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South Vietnam was going to become the fifty-first state. That rumor was now on everyone’s lips, and the majority view was that it couldn’t come soon enough.
Mama-san’s was an easy three-minute walk, down an alley across from a bicycle repair shop, in an unmarked building with a blanket hanging in the doorway. Mama-san wore black pajamas and a black-toothed grin from chewing betel nut for the past century. She charged the standard two-hundred piasters (approximately $1.60) for a short time. You were literally in and out.
Mama-san ran a quality cathouse. She maintained an orderly row of curtained cribs, and she changed sheets kind of frequently. Her girls were cute and they got weekly penicillin shots. Since we were regulars and mama-san liked us, we could take our shoes and pants all the way off without worrying that somebody’d rifle through our pockets. That was as close to romance as it got.
Thanks to Mama-san and her dedicated staff, Ziggy lost his cherry straddled by a ninety-pound wisp of a trollop who’d ridden him expertly, a rodeo champ on a bull. For him to be on top was unthinkable. I suspected that Ziggy’s ideal woman was a winged, bat-eared Martian siren, but Mama-san had none of them to offer at any price.
Mama-san’s was where we’d made friends with our Vietnamese buddy, Charlie. His relationship to Mama-san and his Vietnamese name were unknown. Charlie was a “cowboy,” a young Saigonese male who raced around town at night on a Honda motor scooter with his buddies instead of serving his country in the South Vietnamese Army--officially the Army of Vietnam (ARVN)--fighting or pretending to fight a fearless, fanatical, and terrifying enemy.
Charlie and Ziggy and I were of a consensus that confronting monolithic communism and propping up the domino were noble callings. We simply didn’t want the goddamn thing falling on our sorry asses.
Cowboys liked to buzz by a GI on a sidewalk and snatch the Seiko right off his wrist or to roll one for his wallet and kick in his ribs for the fun of it, but Charlie had not a mean bone nor the gumption for pure cowboy behavior. If he’d ever bent to peer pressure, his heart surely was not in it.
We hit it off immediately. Charlie spoke good English and spoke his mind with a sense of humor. When we first went out for beers, we learned that we smelled like butter to him, and he learned that he smelled like fish to us. He claimed he didn’t live on fish heads and rice as we’d believed most Vietnamese did. In fact, he’d developed a taste for hamburgers, hold the onions.
We all looked alike to him, even Ziggy.
“Me?” Ziggy asked. “I look the same as Joey and Westmoreland and every other round eye?”
“You look same same Joe, same same Westy, same same LBJ, same same Elvis, same same Beatles,” Charlie told Ziggy, looking him up and down. “Only you have more of you.”
I didn’t blame Charlie for dodging the South Vietnamese draft. ARVN soldiers were treated like week-old dog shit. Their commanders skimmed their pay, the piaster equivalent of fourteen Yankee dollars per month. What Charlie did when he wasn’t out goofing around with us, I hadn’t the foggiest. Charlie didn’t try to hustle us, and where criminal activity was concerned, well, you know the old saying about those who live in glass barracks.
“Hey, Zig, wanna go by just to see if Charlie’s there, see what he’s up to?”
Same grunt, different verse.
I asked, “The captain and his special assignments, what else do you think we’re gonna have to steal for him?”
“Dunno.”
“Enough air conditioners to drop Indochina ’s temperature ten degrees going into the Annex is nuts, but this is the army, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What are they building in there that has to be so cool?”
“Dunno.”
“Price is no object, you know. Whatever it is they’re doing, they’re at the front of the requisitioning line.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They have their reasons even if
Mama-san’s was an easy three-minute walk, down an alley across from a bicycle repair shop, in an unmarked building with a blanket hanging in the doorway. Mama-san wore black pajamas and a black-toothed grin from chewing betel nut for the past century. She charged the standard two-hundred piasters (approximately $1.60) for a short time. You were literally in and out.
Mama-san ran a quality cathouse. She maintained an orderly row of curtained cribs, and she changed sheets kind of frequently. Her girls were cute and they got weekly penicillin shots. Since we were regulars and mama-san liked us, we could take our shoes and pants all the way off without worrying that somebody’d rifle through our pockets. That was as close to romance as it got.
Thanks to Mama-san and her dedicated staff, Ziggy lost his cherry straddled by a ninety-pound wisp of a trollop who’d ridden him expertly, a rodeo champ on a bull. For him to be on top was unthinkable. I suspected that Ziggy’s ideal woman was a winged, bat-eared Martian siren, but Mama-san had none of them to offer at any price.
Mama-san’s was where we’d made friends with our Vietnamese buddy, Charlie. His relationship to Mama-san and his Vietnamese name were unknown. Charlie was a “cowboy,” a young Saigonese male who raced around town at night on a Honda motor scooter with his buddies instead of serving his country in the South Vietnamese Army--officially the Army of Vietnam (ARVN)--fighting or pretending to fight a fearless, fanatical, and terrifying enemy.
Charlie and Ziggy and I were of a consensus that confronting monolithic communism and propping up the domino were noble callings. We simply didn’t want the goddamn thing falling on our sorry asses.
Cowboys liked to buzz by a GI on a sidewalk and snatch the Seiko right off his wrist or to roll one for his wallet and kick in his ribs for the fun of it, but Charlie had not a mean bone nor the gumption for pure cowboy behavior. If he’d ever bent to peer pressure, his heart surely was not in it.
We hit it off immediately. Charlie spoke good English and spoke his mind with a sense of humor. When we first went out for beers, we learned that we smelled like butter to him, and he learned that he smelled like fish to us. He claimed he didn’t live on fish heads and rice as we’d believed most Vietnamese did. In fact, he’d developed a taste for hamburgers, hold the onions.
We all looked alike to him, even Ziggy.
“Me?” Ziggy asked. “I look the same as Joey and Westmoreland and every other round eye?”
“You look same same Joe, same same Westy, same same LBJ, same same Elvis, same same Beatles,” Charlie told Ziggy, looking him up and down. “Only you have more of you.”
I didn’t blame Charlie for dodging the South Vietnamese draft. ARVN soldiers were treated like week-old dog shit. Their commanders skimmed their pay, the piaster equivalent of fourteen Yankee dollars per month. What Charlie did when he wasn’t out goofing around with us, I hadn’t the foggiest. Charlie didn’t try to hustle us, and where criminal activity was concerned, well, you know the old saying about those who live in glass barracks.
“Hey, Zig, wanna go by just to see if Charlie’s there, see what he’s up to?”
Same grunt, different verse.
I asked, “The captain and his special assignments, what else do you think we’re gonna have to steal for him?”
“Dunno.”
“Enough air conditioners to drop Indochina ’s temperature ten degrees going into the Annex is nuts, but this is the army, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What are they building in there that has to be so cool?”
“Dunno.”
“Price is no object, you know. Whatever it is they’re doing, they’re at the front of the requisitioning line.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They have their reasons even if
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