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on Fields Avenue. Since my retirement move to Angeles, I had yet to return to the go-go scene. There was no real reason for this. I just hadn’t felt the urge. Maybe my growing weight had something to do with it. Maybe it was how miserably I had failed with Maureen. Whatever the reason, I had all but forgotten about the nightlife that was only a few miles away. So when Hal suggested I come with him one night, I agreed. Anything, I thought, to mix things up a bit.
    The bars were pretty much what I remembered. Perhaps there was a bit more neon, a little more polish. But the girls were the same—young, brown and beautiful—and the scene seemed just as crazy as ever. The men were older. There were still some young guys around, but the steady flow of sailors and Marines and airmen was gone with the closures of the American bases. At first I thought it was funny and a bit sad, these middle-aged-and-older men looking for comfort from girls half their age and sometimes younger. I had always thought it was a sign of youth to fall prey to these desires, but that these older men were true sexual deviants.
    Only then, as I sat in the bar as one of those older men, watching the girls, chatting with them, laughing with them, and talking with the men, too—men who back home in the U.S. or Australia or England or wherever they were from had regular jobs and regular lives—I began to think maybe I was wrong.
    One of Hal’s friends came by the bar around ten p.m. He was a barrel-chested Aussie named Robbie Bainbridge. Robbie and I hit it off right from the start, and we spent several hours drinking and talking about everything from how to make a perfect margarita to the political situation in nearby Malaysia.
    When it was time for him to leave, he threw a thousand pesos on the bar and told the bartender to keep the change. He stuck his hand out to me, and we shook.
    “Good meeting ya, Jay,” he said as he stood.
    “Thanks,” I said. “Enjoyed meeting you, too.”
    “Come by my bar tomorrow night if you get the chance.” He’d mentioned earlier that he owned a place a few blocks down on Fields called The Lounge.
    “Sure,” I said. “If I’m around, I’ll come by.”
    He leaned in toward me. “Make a point of it,” he said softly so only I could hear. “I have something I’d like to talk to you about.”
    “Okay,” I said. I didn’t really have any other plans. “I’ll be there.”
    •    •    •
    The next night I stepped into The Lounge for the first time. It was early, half past eight, and there was only a handful of customers scattered around the room. On stage, half a dozen dancers were wearing hot pink bikinis, and more were milling about the bar, either talking amongst themselves or entertaining the customers. I didn’t see Robbie anywhere, so I walked over to the bar.
    “What can I get you?” the bartender asked. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five and probably stood no higher than five foot two. She was thin, had long dark hair and small dimples in her cheeks when she smiled.
    “I’ll take a mineral water,” I said. In the Philippines, mineral water was the same as your basic drinking water back in the States.
    She retrieved a bottle quickly and set it on the bar. She then wrote something on a piece of paper and stuck it in a wooden cup in front of me. My tab for the evening had begun.
    “First time here?” she asked.
    “Here, yeah. But not Angeles.”
    “I didn’t think I had seen you before. What’s your name?”
    “Jay. What’s yours?”
    “Cathy.”
    I unscrewed the cap from the bottle and took a drink. “I’m supposed to meet Robbie. Do you know if he’s here yet?”
    “Robbie?” she asked.
    “Said he was the owner.”
    Her eyes widened slightly. “Papa Rob?”
    “Sure, I guess. Is he here yet?”
    “Not yet. But not long, I think.”
    She moved away to help another customer, so I turned around to watch the show. Some loud pop song I’d never heard before was