Honey Ko - A Novel

Book Two, Chapter Seven

Olongapo, Philippines

1968

Frank Bailey

The sun set on another blistering day in the Philippines as our C-130 touched down at Cubi Point Naval Air Station. The war in Vietnam was eight-hundred miles in the past. I could finally relax and put the horror of that last, bloody attack behind me. For the next week at least, I wouldn't have to look for a foxhole to dive into every time a Jeep backfired.

The Hercules taxied off the runway and parked in front of the air terminal. Once we cleared Customs, I gave Petty Officer Sam McBride his orders and told him to report to squadron admin the following morning.

After a short taxi ride past the destroyer and submarine piers, I checked into my room at the CPO barracks. Master Chief Franklin, "Chip" to his close friends and "The Master Chief" to everyone else, had asked me to meet him at Rufadora Bar at eight. I had time for a shower and a quick letter to my folks in Annapolis before heading into town.

Refreshed but hungry, I held my breath and crossed Shit River. I stopped at the corner of Gordon Avenue and Magsaysay Drive and bought several skewers of monkey meat from a street vendor. A scroungy black and white mutt ran across the street and sat next to me with a paw raised. He was pitifully thin, so I fed him a few pieces of meat and contemplated the scene before me.

Testosterone Alley would have been a more fitting name for the zone of pleasure up and down both sides of Magsaysay Drive to Rizal Avenue. Pheromones floated like moths around the little brown foxes clustering in front of every bar and intensified the burning urge for sexual release of young Sailors.

The vendor, a friendly, moon-faced old woman with few teeth

and a fixture on "her" corner for decades, joined me.

"Many Sailor out tonight, yis, yis? Many more soon when aircraft carrier arrives, yis?"

The old woman, known as Mumbles for her lack of teeth, leered at me. "How many babies you tink Sailor and bargirl make? Sailor only tinking about beer and sex when dey awake, yis? All day dey tinking sex with bargirl, and beer. Make good for business for me." She rubbed her fingers together.

"Look." She pointed toward a group of Sailors standing on the corner looking up at the bargirls on the balcony of Daisy Mae's Bar. "Dey looking for girls. Dey want to make babies. Maybe dey marry bargirl and take dem to America, yis?"

"Maybe," I said.

"What about you? You looking for girlfriend?"

"Not me. I'm thinking the same thing you are about Sailors. About young men in general. Food, beer, and sex. That's what drives the world, right?"

"Yis, I tink you are right."

Sailors would spend hours reconnoitering the perimeter of Magsaysay Drive, drinking beer, and looking out for willing young Filipinas ready to help them obey the irresistible urge to couple. In Olongapo, there were no boundaries to hold one back from finding love, planting one's seed, and fertilizing that seed. That release offered hope to the girl and her family. Hope that the seed would grow and bloom and pave a golden road to opportunity and comfort. The girl could bid farewell to poverty. She could forget her fear that one day, a failure at love, she would live out her years as a dry, wrinkled, bitter mama-san watching over a nursery of young barmaids clamoring for their turn to suckle at the teat of the American Dream.

After finishing the last skewer, I wiped my hands on a towel and tipped the white-headed, tiny old woman who rewarded me with a toothless smile. I left her still smiling and walked up Magsaysay, passing Wimpy's Burgers and Apple Disco, a club Sam and I had frequented in the past. I turned the corner at Mariposa's Restaurant, jammed with Sailors and Marines sitting at sidewalk tables, and walked up the hot, dusty side street to Rufadora Bar. A jukebox blasted Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" and several women danced on the balcony above the bar. One of them called out to me. "Hey, handsome, you come see me?"