Booze & Broads

Making extra bucks in the service as a GI, while not leaving the base, was a prime goal of mine but not easy to come by.

Bartending at the Enlisted Man's Club at Camp Kohler became my goal. 3.2 beer was as hard a drink as you could get. Drinking 6 bottles of 3.2 beer would get you to the latrine often to take a whiz but without getting a buzz on. 3.2 beer tested your bladder capacity. At 20, bladder capacity is minimal.

As a patron, the club seemed sane. As a bartender it was a madhouse. I made 50 cents an hour and all that I could steal or drink but I was too fucking slow, as a bartender, to steal. Everyone was screaming at me for their fucking beer. Who had time to even think of stealing or drinking? Also the Sergeant in charge of the mad house kept his jaundiced eyes on the bartenders' hands to be sure that the money went into the register and not their pockets.

I think the beer cost 10 cents a bottle. A carton of Chesterfield cigarettes did cost 50 cents. Civilians had a hard time getting cigarettes so I would send cigarettes to 'my girl' who, sadly for both of us, became my wife after the war.

American Tobacco, during the war, took the color green out of Lucky Strike cigarette packages and launched a campaign entitled 'Lucky Strike Green Went To War'. Chesterfields were my choice of coffin nails. I never did understand why 'Lucky Strike Green Went To War' became a slogan for American Tobacco.

Smoking, drinking and hallucinating about women were the GI's 'hobbies' of choice. Newspapers were unavailable and who the hell cared. No headphones for music or even individual radios. We lived in a soldier's world. Life was easy and uncomplicated. Sleeping while standing up and leaning against a wall wasn't a challenge. Easy done.

It seems like no one had ever heard of alcoholism in those days and our sex lives mostly consisted of 'wet dreams' or 'jackin off'. I often wonder when I turned into a 'sincere drinker' and then an alcoholic. For me it seems that my addiction really started with the WWII 'going away parties' for the guys leaving for the service. No girls, just a bunch of teenage guys getting roaring fucking dunk and loving it.

AA taught me that booze can be as big an addiction as drugs or sex, if you can get the sex.

How else could a dumb Jew from the Bronx feel totally worthwhile? Drinking gave me a leg up. Certainly not from listening to the 'Princess' who had an exquisite memory of every asshole thing that I ever did and I did plenty of them. The good things I did were instantly snuffed out of the 'Princess's' memory bank. I always felt worthwhile while sliding into the bag.

In AA a standard line is that your best day drunk wasn't as good as your worst day sober. Now that is, for me, pure bullshit.

I always like to talk about a fabulous menage a trois that I had with two hookers from Mozambique in Paris. The only problem is that I don't remember what happened but it had to be fabulous because I ended up with zero dollars in my pocket.

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