If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where the hookers are, and where to get drunk cheap, and who sells meth the cheapest, and what a bunch of disappointing jerks you all are, and all that Gunny Highway kind of crap.

In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second, the company commander would crap a red star cluster if I went into it. He’s quite touchy about anything like that, especially since the last first sergeant got a DUI but they managed to cover it up. The company commander thinks he’s going to get a star, and he’ll put his mouth anywhere on anyone he thinks can get him one. And even though he preaches all the time about “do the right goddam thing!” he’s definitely not above completely lying to hide a mistake if he thinks he can get away with it.

Stay away from Antolini’s whore house. Yeah, sure, on the outside it looks just like a regular place, but the guys and girls in there are not your friends. This one time, I went there with a buddy. And we are in the bar waiting for our dates, and the bartender fixes me a highball of some sort of drink I’d never had. He makes them real strong, you can tell. Then something happened. I don’t even like to talk about it. I woke up all of a sudden on a couch. I woke and there’s some guy’s hand on my head. What it was, it was Mr. Antolini’s hand. He was rubbing my high-and-tight.

“What the hellya doing?” I yelled at him. Boy I was shaking like a madman. Whenever something perverty happens to me, I start sweating. That kind of thing has happened to me like 20 times since I was a private. So stay out of the whore house.

Now you might be tempted to walk over toward Broadway, just for the hell of it. Don’t. Jesus Christ, just don’t, okay? The liquor stores are full of Russian mafia guys who just can’t wait to steal your identity, see? I mean, full of them. Don’t even take your credit card with you, unless you want to be buying a goddam Russian oligarch’s girlfriend her next fake tits.

If you go to Hooters, that’s probably okay. But you have to stay out of the goddam bar next to Hooters. I went in there one time when I was an E-4, me and old DeShaun. Between he and I, we were pretty drunk, I don’t mind telling you, when this one goddam civilian starts trying to bother old DeShaun. Well, I got busted right in the goddam mouth but good. But old DeShaun put that guy right in the hospital. Which was too good for him. That guy should have wound up a lot worse than in the hospital. So stay out of the goddam bar next to Hooters.

Unless you want to wind up like the guy who had this job before me, wear a rubber. Jesus, okay? Not that it’s any of my business. But I don’t want it to have to become my goddam business either.

That’s all I’m going to tell you about. I could probably tell you what I am going to drink after I get home, or which gun I’m going to point at my temple and put in my mouth, and what happened to the money I saved for retirement, but I don’t feel like it. I really don’t. That stuff doesn’t interest me too much right now. If you want to know the truth, I don’t know what I’m even doing here. I really don’t.