Barfines and Baboons

Like any good sailor, he always asked if she had her own place before he paid a barfine. She did. Barfine paid, they set out along a dirt path into the jungle. Her place turned out to be made of cardboard underneath a canopy of banana trees. She had extension cords run up through the jungle for a clock radio, an oscillating fan, and a string of Christmas lights. Even though the night was hot and sticky, the humble abode was agreeable.

They played cards well into the night, and in the morning he put on his scivies and "Philippino safety shoes" (flip flop sandals) and headed down the jungle trail for a beer and breakfast at Pinky's bar. Half way down the trail, they converged on him. Hordes of enraged baboons.

He lost both of his safety shoes in a mad dash through the jungle, across the hiway, and into the front of Pinky's. He hurdled straight through the saloon doors in the back of the bar, across the beach, under the volleyball net and swam out into Subic Bay. As he treaded water in Subic Bay, the sounds of a donnybrook arose from the bamboo structure ashore. When the noise subsided, Papa San emerged onto the beach with a baseball bat in his hand and waved the sailor ashore.

"You, Joe. You go get me more monkeys," requested Papa San. Across the pool table were the carcasses of ten or twelve slain primates. Eating was good at Pinky's and the sailor drank for half price thereafter.

There are stories that we are disinclined to share. Sometimes they are not stories at all, only wet, visceral pin point splatters in our memory. They are not chonological, and they are hard to give description to. Still, they are points of heightened humanity that makes us who we are.