Free Tales of the Out & the Gone by Imamu Amiri Baraka Page A

few nights a week, Ray, Laffy, and the rest of the crowd would ease into the library, draw the blinds, break out the cheap rum and vodka, and play music most of the night—in both luxury and captivity at the same time.
    But Johns almost never left the base. Only sometimes by himself would he catch the gua gua and end up in San Juan, preferably viejo San Juan, to wander around the wild and pretty streets, lamenting his fate. And Laffawiss, though not altogether gregarious, still occasionally wanted his on-base walking buddy to dare the wilds of the island with him. Shit, at least Aguadilla.
    But Ray, most times, just rolled over and flipped a page, or maybe he’d just turn up the box and check what Beethoven or Bird might have to say. Or maybe just wonder what Monk was thinking behind those weird blue glasses.
    “Johns, are you masturbating?” Laffy could get rude like that. Matter of fact, that was his standard tone.
    “Why, you bottling jerk-off come?” Neither laughed, though they were amused.
    “Naw, I just wanna find out how come you don’t have a go into town and release your tension.” Laffy made a lurid leer with the Groucho face on, swiveling his hips.
    “Why, you think my tension needs to be released? Shit, my tension can do anything it fuckin want to. Can’t you, tension?” He looked down at his fly, but there was no immediate answer.
    Laffy snickered at this, picking up a water glass as if it was a microscope. “Aha, now we are entering the area of microbiology,” he said, as he squinted in the same area Ray Johns made believe he was talking to. A perfect comedy team, though a trifle avant garde and abstruse for some of their buddies and anti-buddies.
    * * *
    Now they stalked the streets of Aguadilla, in which thousands of restless, sex-starved, largely ignorant troops were released during the evening. And there were always incidents, always unpleasantness (which included drunkenness, fighting, and sometimes cutting and shooting). And, of course, most of the people of Aguadilla just tried the best they could to do the shit they had to do to survive. But imagine being just outside the gate, and being invaded each evening by about 5,000 screaming crazed American airmen. Jeez, what about releasing them, this evening, into Darien? What about Scarsdale or Palo Alto or Basking Ridge? Yeh, yeh. I’d like to film that, boy. Or hire somebody to film that shit. Like a military-suburban Animal House , if you catch my sniff.
    This Friday evening it was already a little late, as it had taken Laffy an hour or so to convince Ray Johns to come on in and play cowboy. Assorted airmen of all shapes, sizes, and colors were staggering, dragging, heaving, and spinning past them, the number increasing each half-hour or so as that Friday wound its way out. Most of the troops were in little groups with their buddies, some stumbled alone, and the lucky ones were already with some local women.
    Laffawiss swiveled his head around on his neck, leering his Groucho leer. “That’s one, Johns. That’s one. A woman, ya see?”
    “Yeh, I see. Very interesting.”
    “There’s another one. You see, they got different features and all.”
    “Very interesting. So what happens now? My tension ain’t been released. Not a bit. Is this all you have to do, twist your head off at the neck? Somehow, I thought it was going to be more complicated than this.”
    “Wow, first you don’t even wanna leave the base and stop your meat-pulling, now you wanna turn into the original flesh fiend.”
    “Yeh, yeh.” Johns whooped a little weakly, in celebration of some of those “farmer motherfuckers” who could be heard, even now, up and down the street whooping cowboy and confederate war cries.
    Walking in the direction the way they were headed brought them face to face with The American , the first of the near-base bars for mainly white soldiers. Harry Truman had already desegregated the Armed Forces alright, but just as in the rest of