THERE'S ONLY ONE STORY I'll ever tell." A whore stood with her pink thumb out to the road, blocking his cab stand. He interrupted himself, stomped the accelerator and rammed his front bumper up to the whore's tinsel dress...and stopped.

"Bitch," he muttered, and the girl ran away. "Like I was saying, one story. I was doing a search and destroy with this guy, on a five-mile perimeter. He was a--well, I didn't like him much. He was from Oklahoma, he was losing teeth, he was one of those ignorant bastards they have to teach hygiene to, you know? But in the situation, I had to respect him, you know. So we are walking in the jungle, looking out mostly for animals and the Okie looked like he was walking down Madison Avenue for the first time, and he tripped over a vine. A branch or something. And what really happened, he tripped a punji stick and took it all."

He looked over his shoulder at me, through scratched plexiglass that held him safe from his fares, with this smile on his face so old and firm like he knew I didn't speak the language.

"Punji sticks are bamboo shoots whittled at the end to a point, and dipped in cow shit, and stuck into the ground on a tight spring, and covered with a vine and leaves. When you trip the vine the stick impales you and infects the wound. They don't have it in boot camp." He twisted his smile, turned his head slowly back toward the windshield and started mumbling a song.

"RED FOR THE BLOOD YOU SHED, WHITE FOR THE COLOR OF THEIR BRAINS, AND BLUE FOR THE BLOOD YOU NEVER SEE--an old saying." The cabbie barked and stared ahead, focusing his eyes on nothing.

"You getting out?" he asked me. "You don't have to, but that's the only story I'm telling. Go tell it to all your buddies. They'll get a kick out of it. Go on. Screw. Keep your money."

I GO TO THE AMERICAN BAR where they play real rock'n' roll, where the guitarist takes his axe to his groin, wringing out the sound that bends and twists his whole body, jitters his knees and pumps all the life up through his head where it spatters out to the crowd in beads of sweat. The sweat that salts the beers and the crowd sucks in every guitar lick. Yes, yes, yes, they want more. They are jumping and rocking their seats, pounding the table and singing out of key, and they don't want to do anything in the world but listen to this song:

Give me back the love that I pissed away-hay

Give me a big black gun

I wanna get loaded and kill my mom

I wanna get pissed and let her know

...But first I wanna kill myself...

Twang.

They have played rock 'n' roll in this bar for years. The interior is black and ripped-up and lined with drainpipes. Songs of war, songs of peace--songs of love, all. Look at the kids pour down the stairs into the cooker. Before the show, they buy cheap wine and beer at the package store and get pissed before they have to pay premium at the bar. And they sit at the door, exchanging reds and frothy laughter, when the show time nears.

"Awww, come on Phillleeeeee... buy 'em, huh? Just buy 'em. Come on. I'm sellin' them CHEAP. You got the bread." And somehow, just before the soundcheck, just before the band strikes into its electric rancor, they always get the money.