Kicked Out Of A Whore House

 

            Arriving in Calcutta one day, my co-pilot had one promise to fulfill – find a woman before the next dawn.  After an evening of lapping up what loose gin and booze we could get our hands on, my gear jerker decided he was ripe for his moment of conquest.  Off to Kariah Road we went, where the finest of “houses” operated.  Your choice of flesh pots from all the corners of the world!  We hit the best – and only after we got the references from three cab drivers.  “Clean, Sahib.”  We put our trust in those scags and found they were speaking the truth.

            This house was elegant, and served tea and crumpets.  The madame trotted out her best, and even though I explained I was simply furnishing moral courage to a friend, the madame signaled one of her beauties to paw me.  Couldn’t pass up a Yankee dollar, you know.  As she did, she ran her hands across a .38 automatic pistol I carried in a shoulder holster under my bush jacket whenever I made a West trip.  She bounded up like an innocent lass getting her first kiss and screamed:  “He’s got a gun!  He’s got a gun!”

            The madame ran over to me and frisked me before I realized what was happening.  “You can’t stay here with that!” she yelled.  “Get out – or I’ll call the police!”

            Getting myself into focus, I knew I was in the midst of a losing battle among females.  I shrugged my shoulders, picked up my Bancroft Flighter and ambled out into the cruel night.  Calcutta has blackouts then.  Forgetting my co-pilot, who must have been soaring in his hour of glory, I walked all the way back to the Grand Hotel.  As I walked, unable to find transportation, I got madder than hell each minute, thinking I’d been kicked out of a whorehouse. 

            The next morning I asked my cowl-flap-in-trail man how things went, and he said rather vacantly, “Hell man, I don’t even remember what happened last night.”

            At the airport, I put him on oxygen before we cranked the Gooney Bird up and had him sober by the time we reached Agra.  “Want any more of that Indian wrestling?” I asked him.  “I just hope I’m clean,” he moaned.  He was.

 

Ted Solinski – China Airlift – The HUMP Vol. 1