Pussy Time

     It's hard to remember many of the details of our sexual escapades in Keflavik and beyond. As Mars would say, it's now all as hazy and murky as a misted snorkeling mask. But our stories, while embellished, are mostly true. I mean, we're not making anything up. Nonetheless, we may need to fill in and flesh out some of the dimmed and mawkish moments of our lives with a few excogitating pen strokes.

          The story and evening in question initiated by Mars in the previous chapter is actually our second pussy time score. The phase pussy time comes from our one and only teenage jaunt to downtown San Diego three years later when we found ourselves at an all-nude strip club in the red-light district of the city with several of our teammates on the Mission Bay High basketball team.

     The main throughfare-turned-boulevard in the downtown district, Broadway, had once been lined with a smorgasbord of sleazy peep shows and nudie bars. Doormen stood outside the entrances adorned with blinking lightbulbs and flashing neon signs coaxing any and all passerby to venture inside the dark curtained doorways and view the live shows inside.

     Long gone now, ID checks at these strip joints were lax to say the least. On a warm, sunny, perfect day in the summer of '76, when we were barely 16 years old, Mars, me, and a small group of our fellow Buccaneer jocks waltzed right past the lone bouncer at one of these joints. Climbing a steep flight of stairs, we dropped anchor at two booths in front of an empty stage in the darkly lit cabaret room.

     That's when the magic happened. After ordering a round of cokes, a disc jockey's voice from out of nowhere welcomed us with a barrage of strip show banter and then introduced the first dancer. The only words I distinctly remember him saying were, "It's pussy time!" He thundered the phrase like a game show announcer each time a lingerie-clad dancer was about to take the stage.

     We had a rip-roaring time. I'm not sure how many strippers we watched, or how attractive or unattractive they were. I just remember feeling wildly and naturally intoxicated, as high as a kite on the happy hormones of youth, exuberantly making sail on life's adventurous sea with its endless horizon of enthralling possibilities.

     "It's pussy time!" the DJ boomed, inviting the next stripper in the lineup to the empty stage. All of us burst into uproarious laughter every time. Thirty minutes in the waitress started pushing for a second round. We exited, stage left, making a beeline for Broadway. Outside, the air seemed a lot fresher, and the midday sunlight seemed all that much brighter.

     Parading and chortling gleefully along the wide, almost empty downtown sidewalks, we bellowed the DJ's signature phrase over and over again, hee-hawing our way to the nearest Jack-in-the-Box.