shake shake shake your boody

Went out last night for the first time since I got here in early May.  S. and I took the bus over to the Al Rasheed to meet Jo and Ja, two girls from KBR.  Walking up I tried to imagine what it must have been like the day before when the car bomb blew up just outside the gate…two yards from where we were now walking.  On the way in, walking past that really cool, but dry fountain (a female genie talking to a young child holding a bucket) I saw my roommate and  Fr.  Fr didn’t remember S. and I until I asked her if she’d found my telephone.  “Oh, that was you guys…”  That phone is lost forever. 
We walked down to the sports bar in the basement and saw Jo and Ja playing pool.  They played a really long game then we played a game of doubles.  We had as much fun as you can have playing pool with sticks with no tips on them.  Every shot I heard the loud click of a miscue.  This time it really was the sticks fault.  Jo and Ja beat us.
At nine thirty they shut down the sports bar so we headed upstairs to the disco.  It was loud and packed.  Except for the retro colors and furniture it could have been a club in any city - Studio 54 Baghdad.  I think John Travolta must have danced here in preparation for Saturday night fever.  I gotta hand it to the Baathists regime – they liked their 70’s décor…so much they never changed it.  But I guess updated lounge furniture and leather padded bars were hard to come by during the embargo that followed.
Then, just as the groove was clicking in The Man came in and shut the whole operation down.  The head The Man was Colonel F who saw me as I walked out – “Billy P. you West Coast sailor you!”  He says that everytime he sees me and its an acknowledgement that I don’t play by the rules.
We got Jo and Ja to give us a ride back.  We sat by the pool back at the palace talking to a young Air Force enlisted girl.  Two Army guys started singing “Show me the way to go home/I’m tired and I want to go to bed…”  from Jaws, my second favorite movie.  We got into a discussion of the merits of Peter Benchley’s writing.  He wrote Jaws and other novels about sea monsters where marine biologists types have leading roles cast along side attractive women who wear bikinis..…its not often you find someone whose read all Benchly’s books and admits it.
Yesterday, before going out Chief R. and I held training on proper Property Book maintenance per DA regulation 735-5.  It was really good training, Chief R put together an excellent Power Point presentation.  But he went three minutes over our allotted hour so we got booted out of the conference room.