That title was right, this is about getting laid in Barcelona, so if your not into the whole “sex for fun and profit” thing, quit reading this now.
Ask any sailor who’s been there, especially before November 11th, 1975; (That’s when Generalissimo Francisco Franco died) what their best liberty port in the Med was and you’ll hear; Barcelona. Not long after I reported on board the Columbus, the topic of the next cruise came up, and with it, all the liberty ports we’d be visiting. I asked one of the guys what Naples was like and he said; “Cameo rings are the best, and you can get Meerschaum pipes, but the best times are in Barcelona”. I asked someone later what Athens was like, and he said; “The Ouzo is the finest, the ruins are spectacular, but Barcelona is the best”. Following each of those conversations, Barcelona was once again described. There are but three things a sailor talks about when discussing a port; its women, the booze, and the restaurants, in that order. With some ports women were omitted due to the lack thereof, but not Barcelona, not by a long shot.
We were about 2/3s of the way across the Atlantic when we received our first OP-ORDER, or Operations Order. Among other assignments that we were being directed to, the list of liberty ports came with it. Our first liberty port was going to be NAVSTAROTA, or Naval Station Rota, Spain. Then we were going on some drills and the second port was going to be Barcelona, for 8 days. Very few of the guys on my watch section, had ever been to Rota. So there wasn’t a whole lot of conversation going on about that, but we were only going to be there for a couple days. There was a chance that one of the duty sections wouldn’t even make it to the beach, but it really didn’t matter. I could tell from their expressions that Valhalla was within reach and it started to rub off on those of us who’d never been there. We’d hear story after story about who got laid or how many times in a single day… It can drive a guy crazy. Every calender had a circle around the day we were pulling into Barcelona.
Rota was where I had my first drink. I was 19 then and got smashed once on 3.2 beer in Bainbridge Md., during Radioman ‘A’ school, but this was the real thing. I walked right up and asked for two double shots of Scotch on the rocks. I’d read somewhere’s in a spy novel, and the dude drank Scotch, (As good a reason as any). I took a sip and it was like heated heaven going down my throat and I was sold. I finished off the first one real quick and sipped the second while the band played. Two good looking babe’s and a guy doing folk music and a little rock and roll. ABBA I think they were named. We enjoyed the show, but even then there were guys talking about Barcelona.
We went about our duties, changing commands in the Fleet, and then went into operations between Spain and Palma de Majorca. We were busy enough to keep ourselves from daydreaming too much but it still felt like an eternity until we pulled into Barcelona. The ship goes into a four duty section operation while in port, which means most of the ships company can go on liberty for three days out of four. Communications could only go on liberty one day in four. So unless you were in the first liberty section, you got to hear all about what happened the night before. If your on the fourth liberty section, you got to listen to three of those before you hit the beach yourself. And what you’d listen to was unbelievable. There couldn’t be that many women, there couldn’t be that much cheap booze, and there couldn’t be that much food, but there was.
At 0800 I was standing on the after brow (gang plank for the enlisted men) with a guy named Orton. I don’t remember his first name but he’d been on the last cruise and he invited me to go along with him. We walked down the piers until we came to the Passeig de colom and followed that until we came to the statue of Columbus. It’s a very impressive monument and a great landmark. From there we turned left on to Rambia de Santa Monica. Up until this moment, I’d never seen a foreign city on a foreign land and Barcelona welcomed me with open arms. The street is a boulevard and the center of it was all brick pavers. There were large trees with full canopies spaced 50′ apart, lining on both sides. People were everywhere and no one was in any big hurry to get wherever they were going. There were guys walking around with shoe shine kits and they seemed to be doing a good business. We were warned not to use them because there was a history of them slicing your achilles tendon, then making off with your wallet. To be honest, I never saw that happen, ‘though I did see one guy throwing his kit at another one once. Also on this boulevard were people selling articles that were found in Asia, Africa, and the near East. Some guy on the ship even bought a monkey once, and brought it back. It didn’t stay long, but for a short time, we had a breach in NOFORN, (No Foreign) dissemination. The streets themselves were a step below the center area and also bricked. They were two lanes wide and another step up to the sidewalk, also bricked. We’re talking about a LOT of brick here, and as you can tell, I was impressed. Orton led me through a couple stores, much like the fudgie shops up here, and the prices were laughingly cheap. At the time, the exchange rate for peseta’s was 70 for one American dollar. I was looking at a hand carved chess set in the motif of Don Quixote and it had a price tag of 800 peseta’s. At first, I thought that was a lot of money but after doing some quick math I came up with about 11 bucks so I bought it. The next store had Havana cigars, selling ‘em by the hundreds, so I bought one for 30 peseta’s. I lit it up right away in fear of getting busted for having contraband. We walked up the street a little more and then made a left, into the “Pan Am Bar”. There’s a small curb side bar at the entrance way, and I was looking around when a young good looking lady walked by me. She had a guy behind her but when she came next to me she reached down and stroked my balls. She looked up and said “Nice to see ya sailor” and kept walking. I looked over at Orton and he said “See?” and I was dumbstruck. He walked around the corner and headed up the steps, with me right behind him. About half way up the stairs he stopped and said “Can ya smell it”, I said “Smell what?”. He started heading back up the stairs and said “Pussy”. Here it was; 9 o’clock in the morning, I didn’t have to be back to the ship until Midnight, and I was about to find out why Barcelona was number one.
Once you get to the top of the stairs, you face a bar that runs the full depth of building. Go left, towards the back of the place, you’ll find the locals staying out of the way of the guys who went to the right. We got there early so finding a seat was no problem, and a couple of the guys from my division were already there. We figured we’d try and get drunk three times that day and the guys who were already there, were well on their way. I didn’t want to get too crazy right off the bat so I stuck to beer at first. Most of the guys were drinking Lowenbraü, so I thought I’d try that. I’ll tell you what dear readers, THAT wasn’t the same crap we drink over here. It’s good here, but the alcohol level is a quarter of that stuff and there aren’t any preservatives in it. After a couple of those I decided it was about time I got laid, after all 19 years old and still a virgin just wasn’t going to cut it. It was easy enough to do, just call out to a girl you find attractive and say; “Que Quanto?” She walked right up to me, put her arms around my head, pulled me into her tits and said “500 pesetas”. “Nope, too much” I said and she dropped her dress off her shoulder and stuck her nipple in my mouth, “400″ she said. “Still too much, 200″ I offered, “You fuckin’ crazy sailor, I got nice pussy” and hiked her dress up. There it was for all to see, every sailor’s dream. “300″ I said and she dropped into my lap. I had to buy her a drink first so the bar got it’s take. Her drinks were exorbitantly expensive, they were a buck a shot, mine were about 25 cents, but that behind us, we headed down the stairs. I remember hearing a cheer from the guys as she pulled me towards the exit. At the entranceway to the sidewalk, she told me I had to hold her hand, so we were “boyfriend and girlfriend” until we got to the hotel across the street. When we walked in there, she told me I had to pay for the hotel room, which was another dollar and we headed up to the room. The room was just big enough to hold a single bed and the walls were all mirrors, ceiling too. After paying her the 300 pesetas she stripped, turned about, grabbed my 13 button dress blues and opened the flap without missing a beat. Another button at the top and I was good to go. Now it was 10am, I’d got me a woman, drank some good booze, and now I was going to eat. I did it in exactly the way we prioritized it in the many discussions I’d had. That’s right guys, I ate my first piece before I screwed it. Whoa, such I time I had! I’d read a lot, and I mean A LOT about how this was going to go down and it worked out even better than I figured. Afterwards, she washed me up real nice, paying close attention to the niceties of such an event, we headed back to the bar. As soon as we walked back into the upstairs bar, she moved right over to another sailor and pushed her tit into his face.
These were all very nice people, the girls and the “Mother” who took care of them all. If there was a girl working who had crabs, the other girls would point her out and tell us to watch what she did. Every couple of seconds, she’d reach down and scratch her snatch and then go back to whatever else she was doing. There were some girls in there who were independent, but most of them worked as a group. The Mother would never let one of her girls work if she had any STD’s, and this was long before AIDS was a problem. Some of these girls I saw later, were working in a department store and not at all dressed like they were the night before. It’s just a business over there, a professional one, and the girls handled it all very well. Never, in my recollections, do I remember any of the sailors ever treating them badly, nor them us. I DO remember though, one guy who got laid ‘on credit’ and had to report to the quarterdeck to pay up, but that’s another story, right Butch?
Around noon, we all got hungry and headed out looking for something to eat. Problem was, Siesta. We wandered all over that city looking for something to eat, and finally found a place that sold sausage. The sausages were all hanging along the front of this little building with pools of grease underneath each one of them. They all glistened in the sunlight as it oozed out through the skin, moved down and dripped off the tip. Damn those things were good. After all that walking and eating, we sobered up enough to find our way back to the Pan Am bar.
By then, a lot of the guys who’d been out sightseeing had come in, and it was filling up pretty good. There was a bunch of Marines (Notice how I always capitalize the M, there’s a reason for that) setting in a large group in one of the corners. We always got along well with the Marines, we knew what they did and why, and on the ship we’d talk to each other. Once you hit the beach though, we politely avoided each other. The rest of the bar was sailors, standing room only and some more of the girls had shown up. I was thinking of going over with the locals when I saw Don sitting at a table with a couple other guys.
Don was the only guy I knew, who NEVER paid for a piece of ass. He’d walk over to one of the girls and say “Look at this” and open his fly. She’d look down, grab his hand and head for the door. We often talked about what we were going to do when we got out, but everybody knew what HE was going to do. We had just got back from another trip across the street when a young lady about 17 walked in. She was absolutely gorgeous and wore a blue print dress that came down to just above her knees. She walked up to us and offered her services for 100 peseta’s and Don said “Your worth a lot more than that, we should see how well you could do”. He stood up, took her hand and led her up on top of the table. “What are my bids for this young nubile” he announced when she was up there. “300″ was the first bid and Don gave him a quizzical look. “Show ‘em your legs sweetheart” he said, and she hoisted her dress up to her hips. “350″ rang out from a Marine in the back. “Ca’mon you guys, look at her!”. She started getting into it then and after dropping her hem, took her straps off her shoulders and revealed her breasts. Large and full orbs came into view and “500″ was shouted from the left side of the room. She scowled and dropped her dress to the table, and began gyrating her hips. The place erupted! Everyone started laughing and the bids went up. After some more exchanges it came to 750, which is a hellava lot of money for one piece of tail. Don gazed around the room waiting for one more bid, and when it didn’t come said “Sold”, and a huge cheer followed. She dressed, Don helped her down, and she gave him a kiss, then walked over to the winner and led him out. What a night!
We were all pretty screwed up by then so we decided to take a walk and get something to eat. We still had to get sober and drunk again, not to mention getting laid one or two more times so Orton led us to some back street restaurant. I think these back streets were laid out during a period when Moores held the city and a guy named El Cid was trying to get rid of ‘em. There isn’t a 50′ length where the streets are straight. They’re no more than 12′ wide and no sidewalks. If there’s a car coming down the street, you look for a doorway to jump into, and do it quick. As a country, Spain was definitely an ally, but not everyone there felt that way. We were always told to move in groups, for safety. After reading a report from the NSC that a radioman had been abducted, tortured and killed, we made it a point to stay together. He led us into a doorway, with no sign overhead saying what it was, but as soon as we walked in, we knew we were in the right spot. In this country, we walk in the front door, the kitchen is in the back. Over there, they lead you in through the kitchen so you can see what’s for dinner. There were flames bursting up everywhere, people moving about, the sound of dish’s and silverware being handled, and the three of us looking over their backs at the food being prepared. There was a pile of something in one of the frying pans that smelled great and I decided that’s what I wanted. When the waiter asked me in broken English what I wanted, I pointed to a table next to mine and showed him. We each bought a bottle of the local wine (Always buy the local wine, they love showing off) and I had it half empty when he returned with my dinner. The aroma wafted up off that plate and I knew that I’d made the right decision. After one taste, I was ABSOLUTELY sure of it, so when the waiter came back I asked him what the stuff was? “Calamari” he said. I looked over at Don and asked him what the hell Calamari was. “It’s Octopus, and a big one at that”. Since then, I’ve had the same from a few restaurants here in the States, but they were very small, I ate the entire little critters at one bite. I was eating just the suction cups and they were the size of silver dollars. When we left after dinner, we were walking back out through the kitchen and by the time I got to the door, I was almost ready to go back in. Instead of going back to the Pan Am, we decided to go to another joint that’s just across the boulevard, next to the hotel we’d been frequenting.
We walked into the “Los Calabos” bar just before the Cities gay community left, so we got to watch those fella’s dance for a while. These guys were ALL gussied up; skin tight leather pants and vest over some kinda flowered shirt, with a scarf. Everybody was dancing to “Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me” by…what’s his name. Anyway, at exactly 9pm the lights turned on, the music turned off, and all the little guys pranced out of the place. Just like that, no problems, no harassment, no snide remarks, and there were at least thirty of us there then. As soon as they all left, the lights dropped, the music was turned back on, and the local ladies come out. These woman weren’t of the same quality as those across the street, but they had their own attributes, and one more than the rest. She was a midget, so you know right off the bat why she was so popular, and better yet, her head was flat. You could actually set your drink on her head whilst she performed her expertise. I kid you not. It was nice having the hotel next door though and as I just found out, it was the Shore Patrol berthing too. I think Butch has a story about that so I won’t go into it, other than to say he had to stand Shore Patrol duty, and I wasn’t able to. By 11pm we were all three sheets to the wind, with the last unfurling and started walking back to the ship.
There were still many people out walking the streets and looking in the store windows, enjoying the late summer’s night. As we walked amongst the crowd, we talked about the women we’d been with, how much alcohol we’d consumed and how unique dinner was. By the time we’d made it back to the after brow, we were talking about the women we were still going to do, where we were going to drink, and which restaurant we were going to eat at next.
That day and night happened just as I described it to you and I’ve been having a great time writing it. I remembered how I felt that night walking back to the ship with my shipmates; after getting my first taste of women, beer, and Octopoda. How I felt being in a foreign country, watching it’s people, walking through the stores and paying with ‘funny money’. How the streets were laid out, even how to dive into a doorway to get out of the way. The most important part I think was finally feeling like a man. Up until then I’d nod my head and laugh along with the guys when the topic of copulating came up, and it often did, but now I knew what the hell they were talking about. Since that point in my life, whenever someone would ask me where I’d like to go back to, it’s always Barcelona!
I’d like to thank Chief Hite and John Feeney for helping me with some various subjects I covered here, but for security’s sake and our own well-being, I won’t say who remembered the midget.
