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3.

AFTER FLAMING ASSHOLE NUMBER FIVE, WE’RE AT TINA’S in La Mesa, a yuppie joint with chrome bar stools, and the women are looking good. They smell like Dunkin’ Donuts and have that Ingrid Bergman aura of gauze all around them. I love women as much as Mountain, but I am much less discriminating. I will sleep with them all, single mothers, anorexics, divorcées, tollbooth operators, and overweight chicks who like Kenny Loggins.

By asshole number seven I’m ready for the Red Coat Inn, a popular nightclub attached to a bowling alley. Good bands play there, even the Cascades, one of the few San Diego bands to actually have a Billboard Top 100 hit. Remember “Rhythm of the Rain,” with all the dingle-bells? Tonight on stage is a solid April Wine impersonation. Mountain grabs a booth and I head for the bar. The place is packed with stunning, fluffy-headed disco nymphs and I’m rearin’ to go. But first I’ve gotta pee. A shock passes through me as I catch my reflection in the mirror. I’ve got a good eye for fashion, but this poor red-nosed fop in the mirror looks like a male hooker. He looks like the sort of Binaca-blasting Beau Brummel I loathe. I’m shaken. At all times I seem to be two conflicting entities, one who despises, and the other the very thing I despise. I wash my long hands in the sink, plump up the curls in my hair, and decide that I don’t look that bad. Besides, if I dressed any other way, women would pay no attention to me. I don’t have Mountain’s visceral John Wayne appeal.

On the way back, a button-nosed blonde in a silver cocktail dress smiles at me. She’s dancing with a sperm whale in a green Bee Gee suit. I bet I could steal her. I wish I could dance but even drunk I have no more familiarity with the rite than a chimp operating a Ferris wheel. I’m dance-handicapped. I have Dancing Deficit Disorder. I’ll have to try and talk to her later. I wedge to the bar, lay down my I D, and order up two flaming assholes. No point in changing the drinks this late in the game.

As I negotiate the flaming drinks back across the crowded floor, I am jostled and then knocked completely down. The liquor hits the floor and two puddles of cool, liquid blue flames burst up and ripple across the parquet in front of my eyes. I try to rise but a wave of humanity bangs me back from the other side. The floor has tilted, it seems. Legs are buckling all around, wavering like seaweed in a giant aquarium filled with whatever they put in those flaming assholes. I’ve never seen a place erupt so quickly. I imagine crazed bowlers have entered and are pitching sixteenpounders at the crowd. Several other people go down around me, including the blonde in the silver cocktail dress. For a moment I don’t mind anomie. What more intimate way to meet women? Then I see fists spinning above heads and I close my eyes against a spray of flying glass. The guitarist of the April Wine Impersonators is pleading over the mike for order, which only seems to fuel the rampage.

As I peer out from under a booth, the melee parts just long enough for me to spy a man dressed in a lime green leisure suit smash a pitcher of beer over another man’s velour beret. Mountain is just off to the left laying out a hairy-looking cretin with beaver teeth. His face becomes strangely tranquil and uncomplicated, that orgiastic cruelty illuminating his eyes as he sets to his task. I’d lay eight-to-one he was the cause of the insurrection. Oh, but he is a maestro with those fists, that right hand like a wrecking ball. And don’t we all love to do things we’re good at? What am I good at, I wonder? Well, I can play Scrabble fairly well, and I can cook a mean Hamburger Helper. I’m a good surfer. I love music. I’m a marvelous bullshit artist, so good in fact that most people are convinced I’m always telling the truth, which takes all the fun out of it.

The cops will be here any minute or the bowling alley will burn down, so I decide to ease out into the free-for-all and coax Mountain from the premises. The going is not easy. A bar stool flies through the air. Three women, arms locked, are doing the cancan on a fat guy who seems to be enjoying himself. Here comes a slim, young debaucher swinging across the room on one of the light fixtures. The whole spectacle is like the closing sequence in Blazing Saddles with walls coming down and the dancers flailing with the cowboys. The guitarist is down in the fray now, hammering someone with his Les Paul.

I make distinct progress toward Mountain but then the hordes crush all around again and I’m flung against the plywood skirt of the bandstand next to a very nice pair of legs wrapped at the juncture with blue panties. I would like to enjoy these legs, but someone kicks me in the head. I am aware I have drunk too many assholes. I wonder if I will be trampled and killed or wake up tomorrow in a hospital with a permanent boot print on my face. I hear someone shout, “Cops!” and I see their blue menace and steel. Now Mountain is pulling me up by my shirt and dragging me till I get my feet. “Come on, Deadwood,” he growls cheerfully. Then the bang of the emergency exit doors and an exhilarating rush of cold air.

We beat for the car. It’s hard to run in platform shoes. I vow that this is the end of my disco days and living in a culture where to attract women you must dress like one. Mountain’s car is parked down by the Cinerama. The streaks of madly spinning red lights flash across our backs as we jump into his El Camino. Mountain turns the key and takes off without looking back. We jump out of the driveway down by the Mayfair, swing through a green light, and head west on University Avenue. I glance over my shoulder to see more police cars pouring into the lot.

“What happened?” I say, touching my jaw.

“Guy swung at me,” he says, still out of breath. “Said I was staring at his girl. I had to knock him out.”

“You know, one time, Mountain, I’d like to go out drinking with you and have a quiet night.”

He shrugs as if to say, Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim. “You all right?” he says, taking a right on Fifty-Fourth Street.

“Yeah, just a little kick in the head,” I say. “And a burnt nose.”

“How’d that happen?”

“Some asshole.”

“Where you wanna go next?”

“How about Madagascar?”

“Is that the new one in PB?”

“No, that’s an island in the Indian Ocean just off the African coast.”

Mountain turns to stare at me. The spinning lights of a cop car zip past.

“I’m serious, man. Why not?” I ask. “What have you got here that’s worth staying for?”

He checks his mirror. “We’ll be back in school in two weeks,” he says.

“I wish I’d brought a change of shoes,” I grumble, rubbing my ankles. “These heels are killing me.”

“To hell with those assholes,” he says. “Let’s go get us some margaritas.”