Читать книгу Straight Life: The Story Of Art Pepper - Art Pepper - Страница 13

4	The Army1944–1946

THAT WAR was a real war. Every day the papers had casualty lists showing thousands of Americans killed. You’d go to movies and see newsreels of bodies. I was praying for some miracle. I was just one little person. Maybe they’d make a mistake and overlook me. And then I got the greetings.

I wish I could describe the feeling. It was as if I’d been given six months of happiness and now I was going to be killed. I did everything in my power to get out of it. I wanted to fail the physical so I kept taking the strips and bennies and drinking. I’d get in the shower on a cold night, put my clothes on, and, still soaking wet, walk around the block barefoot so I’d catch TB or something. I stopped eating. I stayed up for days at a time. I ran into a chiropractor. He checked my heart. I had a slight murmur, and he said I didn’t have anything to worry about. He wrote a long letter to the draft board to take with me when I went to my physical. I didn’t know that the word of a chiropractor is valueless, so I paid him and continued my escapades, and when I went to my physical I was so weak I could hardly get to the place. I went through the first part; they tell you to touch your toes fifteen or twenty times and they listen to your heart. I touched my toes once and was going down the second time and blacked out and nearly fell over. My heart was pounding, and I thought I had it made, but it didn’t work out that way.

I was inducted into Fort MacArthur on February 11, 1944. My dad drove me down, and I went in. I was a loner. Even playing with the bands, I was a loner. The only times I could act out or talk were when I was drunk. Sober I was completely cut off. Now I was in the army. I had trouble going to the bathroom; I couldn’t urinate in front of people. I couldn’t do the other thing.

I stayed at Fort MacArthur having physical examinations and being miserable, and then they sent me to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. You took seventeen weeks’ basic training to prepare you for overseas. We did everything imaginable at Fort Sill. We marched. We drilled. We scrubbed. It was a field artillery base so we fired all kinds of weapons. Whit, one of my stepfathers, had taught me how to shoot a 22, and I was an excellent shot. I got an expert’s medal. After that we threw hand grenades, and then we went through obstacle courses, climbing ropes, and infiltration courses with barbed wire around them. You crawl up onto the course from a trench and you have to stay flat on the ground because .50-caliber machine guns are being fired over your head, four feet in the air. If you raised up, you’d get killed. They had holes with land mines, and the land mines would explode, so you’d feel as if you were in battle. Since we were in Oklahoma there were water moccasins and copperhead snakes. They used to crawl down on the course, and a couple of people were killed while I was there because they ran into a snake, flipped out, stood up, and got shot. You go through it twice in the daytime and once at night, and at night every fourth or fifth bullet in the machine gun clip is a tracer, which means it lights up. You could see these flashing bullets going over your head.

The only other person that wasn’t from the south in my platoon of seventy-eight men was a guy named Dennis from Kansas. All the rest of them were from Texas and Oklahoma and Arkansas, and they really disliked northerners and me especially because I was from California—”Hollywood” they called it. They used to make fun of me so I got into a lot of fights.

Dennis was a real towhead with cowlicks and everything, a Dennis-the-Menace type kid; he was open for anything; he just wanted to have fun; and we liked each other. We used to go into town on weekends, Lawton, Oklahoma. They only had three-two beer, but you could get drunk on it, and every now and then you’d run into a bootlegger who’d have whiskey or gin smuggled in from Texas.

One night Dennis and I went to town and really got wiped out. We came back to the post at about two or three o’clock in the morning and went into the latrine, a big, separate building out in front with showers and rows of toilets and rows and rows of sinks. There was nobody in there but us, so we started acting crazy. We were so uptight and frustrated we started knocking things down. We broke things. Then we took the toilet paper out of the supply room and threw it all over and we lit it; it really started to blaze. We didn’t know what to do then, so we ran out. We snuck out of the latrine and into our barracks.

Reveille rang in the morning. They’d blow a bugle. The sergeants screamed at you to get up. You threw your clothes on, ran out of the barracks, and lined up in the little parade ground. Each group of barracks had their own parade ground out in the middle. We ran out, me and Dennis, really hung over. We lined up and looked at the latrine. It was a mess. It hadn’t burned to the ground but it was burned bad. They had roll call. Then the lieutenant came. The captain came. They started wigging out to see who had done it, and everybody in our platoon looked around at me and Dennis. They said they’d better find out who did it or the whole company would be put on quarantine; there’d be no passes. They dismissed us, and then when we started to go back into the barracks our platoon surrounded us. They said, “Where were you guys last night? We know you did it. You’re the only guys that would do anything like that.”

We all went to the latrine and we all had to clean. Everybody kept ranking us, accusing us. Finally I flipped out. I remember saying, “I didn’t do it, but I wish I had! That’s what I think of you bastards!” They tore our clothes off and threw us in the shower. They gave us a “GI bath” with strong brown soap with lye in it and scrubbed us with big brushes made out of wood sticks. We were hollering and fighting, and finally I told ’em, “Yeah, I did it, you motherfuckers!” Then somebody came and stopped it, one of the officers. And so they put us on KP for a couple of weeks. From then on it was open warfare, me and Dennis against the rest of the platoon.

When I first got to Fort Sill I used to cry at night and think, “How can it be? How can I be here?” I couldn’t believe that this could be happening to me. I couldn’t believe that I might die with these people I hated.

Before you finish basic training you’re allowed a visit. The family chipped in, and Patti came to Lawton. I hadn’t seen her for three months. It’s hard for regular soldier’s wives to get rooms in towns like that; if you’re not an officer they think you’re scum. But Patti had such a nice way about her, she talked a lady into renting her a room in a house in town, and finally the night came for me to go to her.

We had had an especially hard day. I’d had to go over an obstacle course, climbing and running and doing all sorts of outrageous things. I took a shower and cleaned up. I was all excited. I got a bottle of something and went to town; I went to the place and the lady of the house came to the door, a nice southern lady with the accent and everything. I introduced myself and then Patti appeared at the top of the stairs. She had a silky, clinging dress on with all kinds of colors in it; it set off her white skin. She was wearing those high-heeled pumps that made her legs look so pretty, and her hair was just hanging down. Her eyes were glowing and glistening and she was smiling. And when she smiled she had little dimples that showed. Her face looked like a child’s.

I was so happy to see her. I couldn’t stand to have anything to do with the girls I’d see in town. One time I was drinking some beer in a bar, and this little chick that looked nice came up to me and said hello, and we talked, and for a moment it was pleasant, and then she called me “Joe.” I said, “What did you call me that for?” She said, “Well, that’s what we call you soldier boys.” I said, “I’m not a soldier boy!” I got so angry I wanted to strangle her. Joe! I’m not Joe! So seeing Patti I was seeing someone that was mine, somebody I meant something to, and it was wonderful.

We went into the room and had a couple of drinks. We talked and kissed and Patti told me how worried everybody was and how unbearable it was for her: she was so lonely. She cried. Then we got into bed and started making love. Up to this time, so that she wouldn’t get pregnant, I had pulled out. I assumed that that was what I would do this time, and when I felt I couldn’t keep from coming I told her, “I’m going to come!” But as soon as I said that she threw her legs up over my back and held me, and she threw her arms around me and grabbed me, and she had so much strength, and it had been so long since we’d made love, and I was so passionate, and I was fighting her to get out of her, and I couldn’t do it, and so I came. And I remember thinking how marvelous it felt and what a shame we couldn’t always do it that way. And I thought, maybe just this one time, maybe nothing will happen, maybe she won’t get pregnant. But I knew that she would. I knew as soon as it happened that she was going to get pregnant. She held me and told me that they had decided she had to have a baby. My folks had told her to force me to come in her in case anything should happen to me overseas—so there’d be something left of me. And she said that that was what she wanted.

I felt awful because I didn’t want to have children. I knew that I didn’t want to have any children. I had even gone through one of those operations because I didn’t want to have any children, ever; I didn’t want to share Patti with a child. I knew I wouldn’t make a good parent.

The doctor who performed the vasectomy had been a friend of Patti’s mother’s. He had tried to talk me out of it, but I told him, “Man, I want it done!” I got on the operating table, and I had no anaesthetic. They shaved me, put Mercurochrome all over me, and then he made an incision in my testicle. The pain was beyond description. He pulled out the cord with some prongs, and he took a needle filled with Novacain, and all the time I’m going through this the doctor’s got someone he’s showing how he does the operation. I can hear them talking. This person says, “Isn’t the pain bad?” And the doctor says, “Well, it’s just for a moment, and this is the best way, really, to nullify it. From then on, once you get the needle into the cord And so he stuck it in, and after a while it took effect, but while I was still pulsating from the pain he started interrogating me. I’m delerious, and he’s asking little questions. Finally he said, “When’s your birthday? How old will you be?” So he discovered that I wasn’t eighteen, and he couldn’t perform the operation. He sewed me back up without cutting the cord. I didn’t know. I waited to have the test that would tell whether I was sterile or not, and at last he told Patti, and she told me.

I waited until I was eighteen and went back to the same doctor to have him perform the same operation. He cut the cord this time, but he didn’t cut a piece out of it. He tucked it underneath a membrane, in case I changed my mind, so it could be repaired. The cord found itself back together. And later, when I gave a sample of my sperm to see if I was sterile, I wasn’t.

Twice was all the courage I could muster. I couldn’t go through that thing again. But you can see how I felt about having a child, and when I realized that Patti was going to get pregnant I was really angry. I was mad at my folks and at her. That was the only time I came in her, that one time, and she went back to Los Angeles, and she was pregnant.

When I finished basic training they shipped me to Camp Butner, North Carolina, and put me in the combat engineers. And while I was at Camp Butner I heard that Benny Carter’s band was going to be in Durham, and they were having their concert on a Saturday night when I’d be free.

I went into Durham and found the auditorium. I bought a ticket. I noticed the ticket said “loge.” I said, “What’s the loge?” The guy tells me, “That’s upstairs.” I said, “I used to be with this band: they’re old friends of mine and I’d like to be close to the stand, where I can say hello to them.” The guy says, “Well, you can’t do that. Whites aren’t allowed downstairs.” When Benny had told me I couldn’t go with the band down south I didn’t understand it. I had been all around Central Avenue for years as a kid. I couldn’t understand what he was talking about, and my eyes were still closed at this time. I was shocked, and I tried to argue with the guy, but he said, “You either take a loge ticket or you don’t go in.”

I went in and took my seat. I looked downstairs. The whole bottom floor was black. The people upstairs were white. The band started playing, and I started drinking, and finally I just walked downstairs because I had to see them. I snuck through the dancefloor. I walked real fast and as I approached the stand I could feel the people staring at me, and then they started moving and all of a sudden they just closed me in. All of a sudden there was a circle of black people around me and they were saying, “What are you doing down here? What are you doing down here, white boy?” I said, “I used to play with this band. I want to say hello.” They said, “You get outta here!” And they all started yelling. One guy screamed, “You killed my grandparents, you son-of-a-bitch, you white bastard! You beat my grandparents to death, you son-of-a-bitch!” I said, “I didn’t kill anybody! I didn’t do anything!” But they kept raving, so I got mad. I shouted, “I don’t want to hear any of your fuckin’ shit! I didn’t do anything to you!” Someone said, “You better get outta here, boy, if you know what’s good for you!” I said, “Fuck you all, man!” They grabbed me and one guy hit me in the back; another punched me, and I was screaming and swinging around; by this time I was close to the bandstand and the people taking the tickets saw what was happening and rushed out. I was raging, “I used to play with this band!” I think I hollered, “Benny!” And he jumped off the stand and ran down there. The ushers were saying, “You’ve got to get out of here! Someone’s gonna kill you!” Benny comes up to me and says, “Oh, man!” I said, “What is this? What kind of shit is this? I just wanted to say hello!” He said, “This is what I was talking about before. I thought you knew about these things.” I was crying by this time. They despised me. They wanted to kill me. Benny said, “There’s nothing I can do, man. Come around after. We’ll see you outside, around by the bus.” The ushers escorted me out.

I was going to wait to see the guys, but if I had gotten together with one of those black guys from inside I would have killed him or gotten killed. I left the place and found me a jug and drank it and wandered around the town. I was mad. I was really confused. I was hurt. And finally I got on the bus and went back to the post.

I was drafted too late to get into a band. They needed people for combat, not for bands, but I had my horn sent to me anyway, at Camp Butner, so I could play. I was stationed right next to the 225th Army Ground Force Band, and when I realized that, I took out my horn and started practicing in my barracks, playing out the window so they could hear me. They ran over and just wigged out when I told them who I was. They had all heard of me because I’d been with Stan Kenton, and they started a campaign to get me into the band.

It was a difficult thing to do, but there was a warrant officer in charge of the band who played oboe and really dug me. He was a classical child prodigy from a wealthy family. I think he played with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He had blue eyes, blondish, curly hair, a pouting mouth and effeminate ways, delicate hands, long, slender fingers. He had a very refined manner of speaking and was brought up, I think, as a loner, like myself, only he was rich. He didn’t really care for anyone else in the band, and he had found a friend in me; in fact, he was a little overly friendly and I always felt strange around him. He never made any sexual advances, but whenever I’d mention my wife or anything like that he’d get uncomfortable and change the subject. It’s a thing I’ve run into lots of times, guys who liked me with almost a homosexual intensity but with no overt actions. This warrant officer had a lot of pull, and he kept working, and, finally, just before the outfit I was with went overseas, I got a transfer. That was right before the Battle of the Bulge, and most of the people in the outfit I was in were killed, but I got into the band.

When it was time for the baby to be born I got a furlough and went back to Los Angeles. Patti was living with my grandmother on Seventy-third Street. Her stomach was real big, and it was strange to feel the baby move. I was praying she’d have the baby before I had to go back, and just before I was supposed to leave she started getting labor pains close together. We took her to the hospital, and I sent a wire to the warrant officer requesting an extension. I got a wire back. He said if I came right away he’d guarantee we’d stay in the U.S., but if I didn’t come back I’d be AWOL and I’d probably be transferred into another outfit and sent overseas. I had to leave Patti in the hospital.

When I got to the base there was a telegram waiting for me saying that the baby was born, a girl, six pounds, eight ounces. She was born January 5, 1945, the day after I left. I thought, “Well, anyway, I won’t have to go overseas.” But the reason the warrant officer had told me to hurry back was that the band was going overseas immediately and he wanted me to go with them. We were shipped to Camp Miles Standish in Massachusetts and loaded onto a boat in a convoy and sent to France.

Everyone was scared. The war was raging. The trip was okay until about the fourteenth day on the water, when it got stormy. It was a bad storm, and everybody was seasick. In the latrine, the vomit and the urine would roll from one end of this long tin urinal to the other, hit the end, and fly out onto the floor. It was hard trying to stand up with all the vomit and the piss. And then, one evening, just as the storm was abating, I felt a huge lurching of the ship and heard an explosion. There were two more explosions; it sounded like they were right under the ship; and then all the lights went out.

They started talking to us over the loudspeaker, telling us to be calm, not to panic, and to put on our life jackets. Finally they called our group to get up on deck. We filed up, and it was night. The motors were all shut off. The captain kept talking over the loudspeakers as softly as he could. He told us the convoy had been infiltrated by German submarines. We were about twenty-six ships and there were six navy destroyers with us. On the trip sometimes we’d see them running through the convoy.

I was fortunate enough, when I came up, to get fairly close to the rail. I was able to see down, and even though the motors were off, the ship was drifting, and where it was floating through the water there was phosphorous. That was the only light. You could see it to the left and to the right and in front-, the light of the boat cutting through the water.

I had my life belt on. It was cold. It was February, and we were just approaching the tip of England, going through the Channel. This was the spot where the German submarines used to lie in wait to get the convoys. We were all scared to death. Every now and then the captain, I assumed it was the captain talking, would say that they were going to set off depth charges, don’t be frightened. And that’s what I’d heard at the beginning. We saw a huge explosion off the back side to the right, and a little while after that there was another. Two of our ships were hit and exploded. We thought at any moment a torpedo was going to hit us.

You can never find out what happens, but I heard later that three submarines were hit. They kept testing by radar until they found that all the subs had left and, after a long, long time, they turned the engines on and we started moving again, but we had to stay on deck just in case. Sometimes they’d turn off the engines and lay on the bottom and wait—the radar picked up the engine vibrations—and then start up again.

Up to this point we hadn’t known for sure where we were going—England, France, or North Africa—but at last we entered Le Havre, and I’ll never forget the sight of that harbor. There were all kinds of ships, sunk, huge hunks of wreckage, and I guess the harbor was shallow because they were just lying there in the water. There were gun turrets blown to bits; you could see these huge howitzers, broken, all bent. The harbor itself was nonexistent: there were no more docks, so the Seabees had made landing places out of metal stripping.

The people started unloading and we watched from a port-hole, but when our ship’s turn came to go to the landing area everybody was unloaded except us. We didn’t know what was happening. It was too good to think we wouldn’t have to get off there and go to the Battle of the Bulge. We had been trained in stretcher bearing. If we did go we served as medics, helpless, no chance of defending ourselves. At the end of the third day there was no one on the ship but the crew and the band. Our warrant officer couldn’t find out why we hadn’t received orders to debark. We wanted to know if we could get off the ship and see the town, so he inquired and found that no American soldiers could go walking around Le Havre because the French would kill them. The Germans had taken the town at first, and there was a little damage, but they did just what they had to do, nothing more. Then the Americans came and took Le Havre back from the Germans and just mutilated the place. They were barbarians, animals, and the French despised them. We weren’t allowed to get off the ship.

After five days we were frantic, but at last the warrant officer came back. He said, “I’ve got great news!” We’d been ordered to Bournemouth. We landed at Southampton, where they had trucks waiting for us that took us to a convalescent center in an old city in England, a huge camp filled with people who’d been wounded in battle. If they weren’t dead but were wounded so badly they could never fight again, they were sent to the States, but if there was any chance at all of mending them up enough to put them back into battle, they were sent to England to one of these centers. Our function was to play for these people and give them a little entertainment, a little joy.

I stayed at the convalescent center for eight or nine months, playing and watching the VI and V2 rockets fly overhead, bombing London, and then I became an MP.

At the end of 1945 a lot of people were released from the war. They were sent home if they had enough points for longevity. Most of the guys in the band had been in the army for years so they qualified to go home, and rather than getting replacements they decided to do away with the band. I was put in the MPs and sent to London.

(Alan Dean) It was in the forties toward the end of the war, and I was singing with a small band in a hotel in Southampton. Southampton in those days was quite a place because it was more or less a clearinghouse for all the G.I.s who has fought in various areas of Europe during the war. They would come back to Southampton, and, according to priorities, would be put aboard troop ships and go back home, As I remember, Art and the guys that played with him in the military band had the unfortunate job of playing for them every morning as they took off to go back to the States. Of course the band remained behind.

I first met Art, I suppose, one night when he and a couple of other fellows came to us and said, “Hey, we like your band. Can we sit in?” We were, I must admit, a little reluctant at first, because it had been our experience that when a G.I. would say, “Can I sit in with you, I used to play with Tommy Dorsey,” it usually turned out that he hadn’t played with Tommy Dorsey at all. He could barely play his instrument. And it was bit embarrassing. But these guys seemed to be genuine, so we said, “Sure. By all means, sit in.” Well, of course, when they started to play we knew that they were fine musicians, particularly Art, who just . . . absolutely . . . just stopped us in our tracks, he was so good. And, after that, they would come into the hotel almost every evening and sit in and play a set with us, and we became good friends.

The engagement, which was for several months at this hotel, came to an end, and we went back to London, and almost at the same time the military band that Art was playing with was disbanded because some of their members were being sent back on the priorities system. They broke it up and sent Art back with a few of the other guys to London, and, of all things, made Art an MP, which I don’t think he was very happy about. He wasn’t cut out for that kind of action.

London was really quite an exciting place to be in those days. There was a sort of free-for-all atmosphere. The war had taken away a lot of the stuffy social stigma that I remember England having before the war (I haven’t lived in England for many, many years now). I know the war made people more together. They had nothing to lose so they had a good time. I know I did. Oh, there was rationing, and they had lots of bad air raids and that sort of thing, but generally life wasn’t that bad.

My dad had a pub in London, which is only significant because good liquor was very hard to come by during the war, and my dad, having a pub, used to get a fairly good supply and would always keep a few back for me or himself or his friends. Whenever Art and the guys needed a drink, they’d just buzz me, and I could usually rustle something up. I was always amused when I’d get a phone call from Art sometime around midnight, and he’d say, “I can’t take this MP thing. Have you got any gin?” I would say, “Yeah, I can get a bottle of gin.” “Well, get in your car and meet me on the corner. . .” of Picadilly and something or other. I’d get in my car and park, and suddenly, out of the darkness, this small figure with a huge white hat would loom up, and it would be Art, and he’d take a quick look around and hop in the back of the car and dispose of about a half a bottle of gin, and he’d say, “Well, now I feel more like it.” And back he’d go on the beat again. Studiously avoiding problems. He went the other way when he heard a fracas. He just wasn’t interested, and I didn’t blame him either.

The fellows came to my house on many occasions, and we used to sit ‘til all hours of the morning playing records and getting boozed. On one occasion, one of the guys got hold of something that resembled grass, but I don’t think it was. I didn’t smoke anything, even ordinary cigarettes; I still don’t, so I didn’t participate. Fortunately. Because the other guys smoked whatever it was and were all violently ill and fell about the place. I don’t think they tried it again.

Jazz was pretty hard to come by in London in those days, but there was this one place run by a man called Feldman who had three sons who were aspiring musicians—Robert, Victor, and Monte. Victor, who was then about ten, played the drums, and of course, it’s the same Victor Feldman who’s one of the top guys in the studio scene in Hollywood now. He played amazingly well as a child, and then took up vibes and piano, and, as you know, he’s quite a giant.

Feldman’s was the place where jazz happened, and Art would go there and sit in and play and, of course, made a tremendous impression on the musicians around him because his technique, his fluency, his complete command of his instrument, was far ahead of any of the other musicians around. None of the English saxophone players . . . There were some good ones, but they just didn’t have it all together like Art did. I think perhaps one of the reasons .. . I can’t remember knowing anyone, ever, quite so dedicated to their music as Art was. Even when he was doing those awful MP things, walking around until five o’clock in the morning with a great white hat and a nightstick, he would grab a couple of hours sleep and a shower and go straight to a rehearsal room and practice his instrument for hours and hours on end with very little sleep. For him it was more important to maintain his ability and improve, and he did it studiously, without any hesitation. No matter what else was going on that had to happen. And I always admired that tremendous ability he had to dedicate himself to his work.

One time in Feldman’s, a young fellow, oh, he wouldn’t have been more than sixteen I suppose (I was about twenty at that time), a young kid, asked if he could sit in with us. We asked him, “What do you play?” He said clarinet, and we said, “Don’t you play saxophone as well?” He said no, only clarinet. We said, “Well . . . alright.” He played beautifully, and we asked him what his name was, and he said, “Johnny Dankworth.” He said, “I’m actually studying to be a classical musician, but I love jazz, and I thought I’d like to try it.” And I remember Art asked me who he was, and I said I didn’t know. Art said, “Well, he has more promise than any musician I’ve heard in England to date.” And I think he was very perceptive where that’s concerned, because Dankworth, as you know, turned out to be one of the finest jazz musicians England has produced, and he’s still very prominent along with his wife, Cleo Laine.

Art, of course, and the other guys subsequently went back to the States, and I didn’t hear from them again until 1951, by which time I had become a name pop singer in England. I had won all the popularity polls and I had made a few recordings; some of them had sold very well. And, travelling around, I worked with a few cats from the States, and they suggested I try my hand in the States. I decided to do just that. Late in 1951 I emigrated. I brought all my records with me under my arm and a lot of press clippings and whatever money I had and off I went. A few days after I got to New York, I saw an ad that the Stan Kenton Orchestra was going to be playing at Carnegie Hall. I had every one of his records I could lay my hands on, and the thought of seeing the Kenton band live was just too much. I bought tickets in the first or second row and sat there waiting for the band to come on. When they walked on, who was sitting right in the middle of the sax section playing lead alto but Art Pepper! I was thrilled to death. I ran around backstage afterwards and we had a big backslapping contest—”How are you? What the hell are you doing in the States?” And that was actually the last time I ever saw Art.

I got an engagement as a singer in a nightclub in Washington D.C. and was very well received, and was then signed up by MGM Records. I had a few near hits, or near misses, whichever way you want to look at it, and my career went very well for me. I never got to star status, but I did very well until the advent of rock-and-roll which brought me undone like a lot of other people.

WE lived right by St. James Park in one of those old, four-storey tenements, across the street from King Peter of Yugoslavia; he was in exile or something at the time. At first I worked at the Marlborough Street jail. We stayed there for twenty-four hours and then we were off twenty-four. The prisoners were American soldiers who were AWOL and deserters. If they had a long time to do, we would transport them to Paris because they didn’t have space enough in London. We’d fly them to Paris carrying sawed-off shotguns and .45s. I’d fill a small suitcase with soap and nylon stockings and cigarettes and razor blades, things you could get through the army that people in Paris couldn’t get at all. We’d deliver the prisoners to the Paris detention barracks, and then we’d get a three-day pass. Somebody had given me the name of a woman in Pigalle, so I’d go to this lady and she’d buy whatever I had. She’d give me francs and I’d stay in Paris for three days and spend them.

They put us in some billets the army had taken over, miserable but cheap. I never went with any of the other guys. I’d stay by myself, wander around, riding the subway, drinking cognac, and every now and then I’d run into some pot. They had what they called Gunje, which was black, and I got some absinthe a few times, when it was the real stuff, and got wiped out.

Once in Pigalle I went into a club where there was a group playing jazz; they were from South Africa or Morocco. One guy played saxophone. I was drinking, so I went up and talked to them. I got across to them that I was a musician and that I would like to play. The guy let me use his horn, and they were amazed that I played so good. After I finished, this beautiful French girl smiled at me. She didn’t speak English, but we sat together and I bought her a drink and then we left together. We walked until we came to a gate. She said, “You have money?” I said, “A little.” She rang a buzzer and a light went on over our heads. A buzzer rang back, and the iron door opened, and we walked in.

It was a whorehouse. It was a place where the women take their tricks, but she didn’t seem like that. I’d been to Tijuana when I was a kid and I’d been to San Bernardino when there were whorehouses there, and they were really a drag. This was different. I gave them a certain amount when I checked in, and that paid her; it paid for the room and it paid for the drinks. We had a couple of drinks and went upstairs to a room with one of those little French balconies. It was really like making love. It was almost like being with Patti. The girl was gorgeous. She had short, straight, black hair with a little wave at the bottom; beautiful skin; small, perfect breasts; and a beautifully rounded ass. She was really a woman. She seemed to have character and depth. She had little lines around her eyes, and she had such soul and such feeling. We made love all night long. She talked to me in French. She had a beautiful voice, and afterwards I thought about her a lot. I went back to Paris once more after that and looked all over for her, but I couldn’t find her. I never saw her again.

The English girls had blotches on their legs, red blotches from a lack of protein. The English people never got eggs or anything like that. When I was in Bournemouth we’d have dances, and to get the girls to come, the girls from the surrounding territory, they’d get out all the old cheese and salami and “horse cock” bologna and make these godawful sandwiches using dry bread and stale mustard. They’d have old fruit all messed up and no good. They gave this stuff out, and no one was allowed in the dances except the girls. And the girls would come, and you could see them sneaking the food inside their clothes and then going over by the door, where their mother or grandmother or a little kid would be hiding out in the bushes. They’d sneak them a sandwich. That’s how the girls got paid off. Some of them would ball you for a bar of soap, a pack of chewing gum, a piece of chocolate, a stale piece of cheese or salami; they’d cut the mold off.

It was very hard to get liquor. The English would line up by the pubs because at a certain hour each pub would have two or four fifths of gin which they’d put in the spigot and start selling, first come, first served, and that would be it for the evening. The soldiers used to get Old Kuchenheimer 100-proof rye whiskey at two dollars a quart; it cost us ten shillings (we got paid in English money). I’d buy it and I’d buy up the rations of a couple of guys that didn’t drink so I always had my footlocker filled with alcohol.

I had been transferred to patrol duty in Picadilly, and when I had the day off I’d wander around the parks or Picadilly Circus, get drunk, observe things. This one time I went over to St. James Park, and there was a girl there, very pretty; her skin wasn’t like most of them, pale, pasty, sickly looking; their teeth were all bad. This one looked pretty good. She was sitting on the grass. It was morning, around ten o’clock, and I had a sack with two quarts of whiskey in it. The girl smiled, and I noticed that she had a beautiful body, so I walked over and said hello. She said hello, and I said, “What are you doing?” She said, “Just relaxing. What are you doing?” I said, “Nothing. I got the day off.” She said, “What have you got in the sack?” I said, “Oh, I have some goodies. Do you drink?” She said, “Yeeeesss!” I’d even brought a couple of little paper cups so I could drink outside. I went and got a cup of water from the drinking fountain and sat down beside her on the grass.

It was a pretty day. There’s very few days in London that are warm and pleasant, so when you have one it’s a joyous thing: everyone’s outside and happy. I filled the other cup with Old Kuchenheimer and we started drinking and talking, and I told her I was a musician, and I think she had heard of me. When I was in London I played at the Adelphi Theatre. George Shearing was on the card. They had jazz concerts, and I was the young American, the Yank. I played at the London Palladium as a guest star with Ted Heath’s band, so my name had been in the subways.

We talked and drank, and the time went by. She was pretty and I was very lonely. I balled only rarely, and then I’d suffer terrible feelings of guilt. And I’d look at myself every time I’d urinate. I’d be afraid there would be something dripping out the end of my thing, that I’d have a disease. But this girl appealed to me and I’d already made up my mind. We started lying close and goofing around with each other, and time kept passing. I asked her what she would like to do and she said, “Oh, don’t worry about it; everything will be alright.” At one point I said I could rent us a room but she said, “Don’t worry, everything will be fine.” It got later and later. At last I said, “There’s no point in laying here in this park. Why don’t we find some place that’s a little more private?” And she said, “Alright, let’s go.”

She lived way on the outskirts of London, so we got on the subway and rode and rode and rode, and by the time we got there it was dark. Then we walked. And as we’re walking, all of a sudden she says, “Well, it was nice meeting you. We’ll have to get together again.” I said, “What are you talking about?” Here I’d spent the whole day! We’d drunk almost the whole two quarts of Old Kuchenheimer! And I’d given her cigarettes! I said, “What do you mean? Yeah, naturally it’s been nice, but where are we going?” So then she said, “Well, I’ve got to get home, and my parents are home. We can’t go there.” I said, “Why didn’t you tell me? I told you I would have rented a room.” She said, “But I just met you.” Here she’d been rubbing up against me and spreading her legs! It was outrageous and I thought she was joking. I said, “Look, I went through all this thing with you and spent all this time, I’m not going to waste it. We’re going to make love regardless!” She said, “No, we’re not!” And she started to get snotty. I thought, “This fuckin’ broad is not going to make a chump out of me! No!” I really hate prick teasers.

We were walking. I looked over to the right and saw a church there and a cemetery. We were way out in the country and hadn’t passed anybody since we got off the subway. I said, “We’re going to make it one way or another; either you’re going to do it peaceable or . . . Suit yourself! She really got indignant and she started to pull away from me, but I held on to her and dragged her to this cemetery and threw her down on the ground. I said, “Come on! Are you kidding?” I thought she was playing a game with me. She said, “No, I can’t! Please believe me! I would if I could, but I can’t.” I said, “Are you having your period?” She said, “No, I can’t!” I said, “Well, you’re going to!”

It wasn’t even enjoyable. I spread her legs and got my thing out, and as soon as I got it in her she started fucking, and I came real quick, and it was nothing, and after I finished I said, “Oh, shit.” She said, “You’re going to be sorry.” I said, “Fuck you.” I hated her guts and I really despised myself. I would have liked to have killed her for causing me to go through such feelings as that. It would have been bad enough balling her if we’d been in nice surroundings and she’d wanted to ball. She walked off and I found my way back. I felt sick when I went into my billet. I showered and scrubbed myself as if I could wash the filth off me.

Right after that, word came that we were going home. I was so happy. They give you examinations before you go, and they found out I had the clap.

I tried to get out of going back but there was nothing I could do. And in those days you had to wait three months, period, before you could ball again or you might give it to the other person. So I had to come home to Patti and tell her that we couldn’t make love. She cried, and, oh, I cried, and I told her that the girl didn’t mean anything, and she knew that that was true. Patti marked the days off on the calendar. We went a month and three days, and it got so bad I had to do chin-ups on the doorsill of the bedroom because I hurt inside, because I wanted to make love so bad. Then finally the time came, and she forgave me. But that’s retribution.